Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

The Amazon and Madeira Rivers - Sketches and Descriptions from the Note-Book of an Explorer is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1875. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

The largest group of indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon, the Mojos, has coexisted with non-Natives since the late 1600s, when they accepted Jesuit missionaries into their homeland, converted to Catholicism, and adapted their traditional lifestyle to the conventions of mission life. Nearly two hundred years later they faced two new challenges: liberalism and the rubber boom. White authorities promoted liberalism as a way of modernizing the region and ordered the dismantling of much of the social structure of the missions. The rubber boom created a demand for labor, which took the Mojos away from their savanna towns and into the northern rain forests. Gary Van Valen postulates that as ex-mission Indians who lived on a frontier, the Mojos had an expanded capacity to adapt that helped them meet these challenges. Their frontier life provided them with the space and mind-set to move their agricultural plots and cattle herds, join independent indigenous groups, or move to Brazil. Their mission history gave them the experience they needed to participate in the rubber export economy and the politics of white society. Van Valen argues that the indigenous Mojos also learned how to manipulate liberal discourse to their advantage. He demonstrates that the Mojos were able to survive the rubber boom, claim the right of equality promised by the liberal state, and preserve important elements of the culture they inherited from the missions.

Excerpt from The Amazon and Madeira Rivers: Sketches and Descriptions From the Note-Book of an Explorer In June 1867, my father and I, who had been studying the maps and plans of a former expedition in the province of Parana, were commissioned by the Minister of Public Works at Rio de Janeiro to explore the Madeira River, and to project a railroad along its bank where, by reason of the rapids, navigation was rendered impossible. Since the end of the last century, - when, in consequence of the treaty of Ildefonso in 1777, Portuguese astronomers and surveyors ascended the Madeira, no regular or reliable plans had been executed of the immense forest-covered valley. The bold descent effected some twenty years ago by the American naval officer, Gibbon, I may observe, was too hurried, and undertaken with too slender means; and another expedition, commanded by the Brazilian engineer, Major Coutinho, proved to be a complete failure, though certainly not for lack of means. Upon the ensuing of peace, after the long war with Paraguay, the old question of a way of communication between the Brazilian coast and the province of Mate Grosso came to the front; and as that clever diplomatist, Conselheiro Felippe Lopez Netto, had also succeeded in concluding a treaty of boundaries and commerce with Bolivia, by which was secured the prospect of a passage through the valley of the Madeira, it was thought necessary that a thorough exploration should be made. General attention was, moreover, directed to that remote comer of the vast realm by the sudden appearance of a new Steam Navigation Company on the Lower Madeira, and by the recent opening of the Amazon River to the flags of all nations; the realisation of the full benefit of which latter measure depends on its extension to the lateral rivers as well. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.