A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro

Alfred Russel Wallace spent four years on the Amazon and the Rio Negro from 1848, collecting specimens, sketching river systems, and recording the languages and customs of the people who lived along them. On the voyage home his ship caught fire and sank, taking most of his collections and notes with it, so much of this account had to be rebuilt from memory and the few papers he saved. What survives is a young naturalist’s field record: climate and geology, palms and fish and butterflies, and the practical business of getting up a river in a small boat with almost no money. The thinking here later fed his independent theory of natural selection. Free to read as a PDF or EPUB.