Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10930
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Saõ Gabriel do Rio Negro
Date
1852
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (drawing): 159mm
width (drawing): 242mm
width (drawing): 242mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Landscape view of Saõ Gabriel do Rio Negro with several buildings, a church and large crucifix on higher ground. Serras lie in the distance.
Annotated ‘Saõ Gabriel da Cachoeira, Rio Negro – 1852. Lat. 0°. 7’ S. View looking up the River. No. 9. The equator passes through the high peak to N.W.. R.S.’
Reproduced as Figure 16 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace (volume I, London, 1908).
In August 1852 Spruce wrote to fellow botanist George Bentham FRS reporting that he was never so near dying of hunger as at Saõ Gabriel. His last news from England was a year old and he seemed to have taken his last leave of civilisation.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent fifteen years collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849-1864, and observing the indigenous people and their cultures, learning 21 different languages while away.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
Annotated ‘Saõ Gabriel da Cachoeira, Rio Negro – 1852. Lat. 0°. 7’ S. View looking up the River. No. 9. The equator passes through the high peak to N.W.. R.S.’
Reproduced as Figure 16 in Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes: being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 edited by Alfred Russel Wallace (volume I, London, 1908).
In August 1852 Spruce wrote to fellow botanist George Bentham FRS reporting that he was never so near dying of hunger as at Saõ Gabriel. His last news from England was a year old and he seemed to have taken his last leave of civilisation.
Richard Spruce (1817-1893) British botanist was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. He spent fifteen years collecting in the Amazon of Brazil and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador between 1849-1864, and observing the indigenous people and their cultures, learning 21 different languages while away.
Spruce was already in South America when he was employed by a Kew Gardens-India Office project to secure seeds of the cinchona tree, whose bark yielded the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1860 he shipped around 100,000 dried seeds and over 600 young plants out of Ecuador. A year later, Ecuador adopted laws to protect its cinchona trees from mass exportation.
Associated place