dots-menu
×

Home  »  Through the Brazilian Wilderness  »  Page 347

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Through the Brazilian Wilderness. 1914.

Page 347


striking examples of what can be done in the midtropics. The governor of Para and his charming wife were more than kind.
  Cherrie and Miller spent the day at the really capital zoological gardens, with the curator, Miss Snethlage. Miss Snethlage, a German lady, is a firstrate field and closet naturalist, and an explorer of note, who has gone on foot from the Xingu to the Tapajos. Most wisely she has confined the Belén zoo to the animals of the lower Amazon valley, and in consequence I know of no better local zoological gardens. She has an invaluable collection of birds and mammals of the region; and it was a privilege to meet her and talk with her.
  We also met Professor Farrabee, of the University of Pennsylvania, the ethnologist. He had just finished a very difficult and important trip, from Manaos by the Rio Branco to the highlands of Guiana, across them on foot, and down to the seacoast of British Guiana. He is an admirable representative of the men who are now opening South America to scientific knowledge.
  On May 7 we bade good-by to our kind Brazilian friends and sailed northward for Barbadoes and New York.
  Zoologically the trip had been a thorough success. Cherrie and Miller had collected over twentyfive hundred birds, about five hundred mammals, and a few reptiles, batrachians, and fishes. Many of them were new to science; for much of the region traversed had never previously been worked by any scientific collector.
  Of course, the most important work we did was the