Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, 1851-1852

An epic and intimate firsthand account of a true American hero’s daring journey into the heart of the Amazon forest in the nineteenth century.   Captain William Lewis Herndon was memorialized in Gary Kinder’s bestselling book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, which recounts Herndon’s final acts of heroism as his ship foundered in a hurricane off the Carolina coast in 1857. Seven years before those tragic events, the secretary of the Navy had appointed Herndon to lead the first American expedition into the Amazon Valley, an epic adventure that Herndon immortalized into words.   Herndon departed Lima, Peru, on May 20, 1851, and arrived at Para, Brazil, nearly a year later, traveling 4,000 miles by foot, mule, canoe, and boat. He cataloged the scientific and commercial observations requested by Congress, but he filed his report as a narrative, creating an intimate portrait of an exotic land before the outside world rushed in. Herndon’s report so far surpassed his superiors’ expectations that instead of printing the obligatory few hundred copies for Congress, the secretary of the Navy ordered 10,000 copies in the first print run; three months later, he ordered 20,000 more.   Herndon described his adventures with such insight, compassion, and literary grace that he came to symbolize the new spirit of exploration and discovery sweeping mid-nineteenth-century America. Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon stands as one of the greatest chronicles of travel and exploration ever written.