Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10944
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Mountains north of Tarapóto
Date
August 1856
Creator
Richard Spruce (1817 - 1893, British) , Explorer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (drawing): 232mm
width (drawing): 363mm
width (drawing): 363mm
Subject
Description
Landscape sketch with two buildings in the foreground and a female figure, and several large mountain peaks in the distance.
Annotated bottom left ‘No. 30 Andes of Peru. Mountains to North of Tarapoto, 3000 to 5000 high. Aug. 1856. R.S.’
Reproduced as Figure 4 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 II, London, 1908).
In the aforementioned work Wallace notes this ‘beautiful drawing of the mountains north of Tarapoto is the only one of large size which was carefully shaded by Spruce himself… The curiously ridged mountain to the right exactly corresponds to his description of it… and we can well understand the difficulties of the ascent of such a mountain through many miles of tropical forest, among deep ravines and impassable gorges, along a track used only by Indians crossing the mountains to a good fishing stream which flows directly into the Huallaga’.
Annotated bottom left ‘No. 30 Andes of Peru. Mountains to North of Tarapoto, 3000 to 5000 high. Aug. 1856. R.S.’
Reproduced as Figure 4 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 II, London, 1908).
In the aforementioned work Wallace notes this ‘beautiful drawing of the mountains north of Tarapoto is the only one of large size which was carefully shaded by Spruce himself… The curiously ridged mountain to the right exactly corresponds to his description of it… and we can well understand the difficulties of the ascent of such a mountain through many miles of tropical forest, among deep ravines and impassable gorges, along a track used only by Indians crossing the mountains to a good fishing stream which flows directly into the Huallaga’.
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