s which
had been travelled by civilized men for years before he followed in
their footsteps. But these places were in Spanish colonies, and access
to them had been forbidden by the mischievous and intolerant tyranny--
ecclesiastical, political, and economic--which then rendered Spain the
most backward of European nations; and Humboldt was the first
scientific man of intellectual independence who had permission to
visit them. To this day many of his scientific observations are of
real value. Bates came to the Amazon just before the era of Amazonian
steamboats. He never went off the native routes of ordinary travel.
But he was a devoted and able naturalist. He lived an exceedingly
isolated, primitive, and laborious life for eleven years. Now, half a
century after it was written, his "Naturalist on the Amazon" is as
interesting and valuable as it ever was, and no book since written has
in any way supplanted it.

Travel of the third category includes the work of the true wilderness
explorers who add to our sum of geographical knowledge and of the
scientific men who, following their several bents, also work in the
untrodden wilds. Colonel Rondon and his associates have done much in
the geographical exploration of unknown country, and Cherrie and
Miller have penetrated and lived for months and years in the wastes,
on their own resources, as incidents to their mammalogical and
ornithological work. Professor Farrabee, the anthropologist, is a
capital example of the man who does this hard and valuable type of
work.

An immense amount of this true wilderness work, geographical and
zoological, remains to be done in South America. It can be
accomplished with reasonable thoroughness only by the efforts of very
many different workers, each in his own special field. It is desirable
that here and there a part of the work should be done in outline by
such a geographic and zoological reconnaissance as ours; we would, for
example, be very grateful for such work in portions of the interior of
the Guianas, on the headwaters of the Xingu, and here and there along
the eastern base of the Andes.

But as a rule the work must be specialized; and in its final shape it
must be specialized everywhere. The first geographical explorers of
the untrodden wilderness, the first wanderers who penetrate the wastes
where they are confronted with starvation, disease, and danger and
death in every from, cannot take with them the elaborate equipment
neces