The Project Gutenberg EBook of Across Unknown South America, by
Arnold Henry Savage Landor

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Title: Across Unknown South America

Author: Arnold Henry Savage Landor

Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22483]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA ***

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[Illustration: The Author.]

ACROSS UNKNOWN

SOUTH AMERICA

BY

A. HENRY SAVAGE-LANDOR

WITH 2 MAPS, 8 COLOURED PLATES, AND 260 ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

_IN TWO VOLUMES_

VOL. I

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

_Printed in 1913_

_Copyright in the United States of America_

_by A. Henry Savage-Landor_

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED

TO

THE PEOPLE

OF THE

GREAT BRAZILIAN REPUBLIC

PREFACE

SOUTH America is, to my mind, "the Coming Continent"--the Continent of
the future. Everybody knows the wealth of the Argentine, Peru, Chile, and
Bolivia; but the interior of Brazil, the largest and richest country of
all, not unlike forbidden Tibet, was perhaps better known a century or
two ago than now. Few people realize that Brazil is larger than the
United States of North America, Germany, Portugal, and a few other
countries taken together. The interior is practically a _terra
incognita_--although the ancient Jesuits and, at a later date, escaped
slaves and native rubber collectors have perhaps found their way inland
to a considerable distance.

When I started on the transcontinental journey I did not take Europeans
with me. It is not easy to find men who can stand the strain of so long a
journey. I was also not surprised, although I was disappointed, not to be
able to obtain suitable officers in Brazil to go part of the journey with
me, so that I might be relieved of a portion of the tedious scientific
work of the expedition, especially taking and computing daily
astronomical observations, to which much time has to be devoted. All the
work of all kinds eventually fell upon my shoulders, and after departing
I found myself filling the posts o