Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10943
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Cerro Duida
Date
27 December 1853
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (drawing): 203mm
width (drawing): 330mm
width (drawing): 330mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Landscape sketch with vegetation and a small group of rocks in the foreground with mountains or tepui in the far distance and a few trees scattered in between.
Annotated ‘No. 26. Cerro Duida (8000 ft.) on the Upper Orinoco. From the cross near the village of Esmeralda. Dec. 27, 1853. RS. (incomplete)’.
Reproduced as Figure 36 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 the aforementioned work Spruce states, ‘If you can fancy all this seen by a setting sun-the deep ravines that furrow Duida on the east buried in nocturnal gloom, while the salient edges glitter like silver (the rock is chiefly micaceous schist)-you will realise in some degree a scene which has few equals’.
Annotated ‘No. 26. Cerro Duida (8000 ft.) on the Upper Orinoco. From the cross near the village of Esmeralda. Dec. 27, 1853. RS. (incomplete)’.
Reproduced as Figure 36 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 the aforementioned work Spruce states, ‘If you can fancy all this seen by a setting sun-the deep ravines that furrow Duida on the east buried in nocturnal gloom, while the salient edges glitter like silver (the rock is chiefly micaceous schist)-you will realise in some degree a scene which has few equals’.
Object history
Spruce spent 15 years exploring the Amazon from the Andes to its mouth, collecting plants on behalf of botanists including Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker FRS and George Bentham FRS. He was one of the first Europeans to visit many of the places from which he collected. Spruce was not a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Associated place