The Andes and the Amazon; Or Across the Continent of South America/With a Map of Equatorial America and Numerous Illustrations

New York : Harper and Brothers,

PROFESSOR ORTON’S route across the South American Continent was from Guayaquil to Quito, thence across the Cordillera to the Napo River, down that river to the Amazon, down the Amazon to the Para, and from the Para to the sea. This vast journey has resulted in a book, which is finely emblematic of the fatigues of the expedition, and which we suspect is no bad representative of the natural superfluity and redundancy of that tropical region. The equator seems to affect travellers very oddly : they are never able to leave anything out of their books, and present their readers with masses of detail which one ought to find very satisfying, but which nevertheless have little nourishment in them, and which leave one both oppressed and empty. One longs for something less of this intolerable abundance ; for a little clearness of arrangement; for some preparation of the material for the ordinary digestion, which refuses those heaps of raw geographical and ethnographical facts. With half the information that Professor Orton gives, — and he is but one of many victims of equatorial prodigality, — presented in a more ordered and tangible shape, we feel that we should be much richer than with the elemental whole, for we have not looked through his book without being arrested by many curious things. One gets from it (without much direct help from the author, to be sure) an idea of the character of the people and the country, which, if not quite novel, is founded upon fresh observation and is interesting, and there are some pictures of humanity, mainly developed by the verbal magnificence and actual squalor of life in LatinAmerican countries which are amusing and also humorously meant. Such, for example, is this sketch of the domestic affairs of the honored chief magistrate of Papallacta, in Ecuador :

“We put up at the governor’s. This edifice, the best in town, had sides of upright poles stuccoed with mud, a thatched roof, and ground floor, on which, between three stones, a fire was built for cookery and comfort. Three or four earthen kettles, and as many calabashes and wooden spoons, were the sum total of kitchen utensils. A large flat stone, with another smaller one to rub over it, was the mill for grinding corn ; and we were astonished to see how quickly our hostess reduced the grains to an impalpable meal. The only thing that looked like a bed was a stiff rawhide thrown over a series of round poles running lengthwise. This primitive couch, and likewise the whole house, the obsequious governor gave up to us, insisting upon sleeping with his wife and little ones outside, though the nights were cold and uncomfortable. Parents and children were of the earth earthy, — unwashed, uncombed, and disgustingly filthy.”

Generally about Ecuador Professor Orton does not tell much that is new, and he is content to quote from Mr. Hassaurek and other recent authors. He did not find the Quitonians a neat people ; the only broom which they enjoy being a besom of split stick. Since his return, he has sent a Quitonian friend a package of broom-corn seed, and he hopes clean things from this; but we fear he is too sanguine.

When he gets into the Amazon country he is more instructive in his studies, and of course the chief value of his book throughout is in the scientific observations, to which a general and literary criticism of this sort ought not to apply. He has several chapters on the animal and vegetable life of the great river and its borders, and one of these, concerning the different populations of Brazil, is interesting even to the unscientific reader. Professor Orton believes that the Indian is destined to extinction in that region as in our own, for there Nature anticipates our Piegan massacres, or rather obviates their sad necessity, and the consequent letter of any Brazilian General Sherman, by making the race very unfruitful. He advances the opinion that the tropics are not the original habitat of the race; that the Indian lives there “ as a stranger, far less fitted for its climate than the negro or Caucasian.” lie notices all the different aboriginal breeds, and generally the chapter is one of the best in the book. The information is thrown down here, as elsewhere, haphazard, and is often surprisingly abrupt and disjointed. It is not quite fair to give the passage as an example of Professor Orton’s method, but it is not unfair either to let him say here as he does in his book : “The Purú-purús bury in the sandy beaches, go naked, and have one wife.”