Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

narrative, not only cataloging his scientific and commercial observations, not only presenting his studies of the meteorology, anthropology, geology, and natural history of the Amazon, but also rendering his experiences with natives and nature as colorful scenes that exposed the legends and the beauty and the curious customs of the region, creating one of the finest accounts of travel and discovery ever written. His report so far surpassed his superiors’ expectations that Congress had published ten thousand copies as a book, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon , which described his adventures with such insight, such compassion and wit, and such literary grace that he had come to symbolize the new spirit of exploration and discovery sweeping mid-nineteenth-century America.
    A MONG THE GUESTS dining at the captain’s table that evening were the newlyweds Ansel and Addie Easton. Ansel’s short dark hair was swept back off of his broad forehead, a goatee covered his chin, and a glint of humor and serenity shone in his eyes. Addie had large eyes and a trim mouth; her dark hair, smooth and shiny, parted in the middle and twirled in soft buns about her ears.
    â€œCaptain Herndon had arranged to have us at his table,” Addie later wrote to a friend in San Francisco, “and as he was a most delightful man, we enjoyed it very much.”
    That first night out of Havana, the early conversation turned to a topic popular on the steamers: shipwrecks. Scandal had arisen three years earlier when a captain and crew had rescued themselves from a sinking ship and left passengers to perish. Addie later recalled her host’s charming segue to topics more pleasant. “How well I remember Captain Herndon’s face as he said, ‘Well, I’ll never survive my ship. If she goes down, I go under her keel. But let us talk of something more cheerful.’ And the captain told us some interesting and delightful experiences he had had in his remarkable Amazon expedition.”
    Much of Herndon’s charm was his self-mocking humor. He told stories with punch lines that underscored the joke was on him. In one story, he remembered being on the river all day, beaching his craft on the shore, and preparing a typical meal of monkey meat and monkey soup. The monkey meat was tough, but the liver was tender and good, and Herndon ate all of it. “Jocko, however, had his revenge,” said Herndon, “for I nearly perished of nightmare. Some devil, with arms as nervous as the monkey’s had me by the throat, and, staring on me with his cold, cruel eye, expressed his determination to hold on to the death…. Upon making a desperate effort and shaking him off, I found that I had forgotten to take off my cravat, which was choking me within an inch of my life.”
    At the other tables in the saloon, the nightly card games had begun, and the sharp clink of silver coins blackened by salt air pierced the splashing of the paddle wheels and the leatherlike creaking of the timbers. Encouraged by good claret and beneath a white layer of smoke from fine Cuban cigars, the conversation at the captain’s table continued late into the evening, until the Eastons retired to their stateroom and Captain Herndon excused himself to attend to ship matters.
    Early in his exploration of the Amazon, not yet sixty miles from the sea, Herndon had reached the great divide, separating the waters that flow into the Pacific from the waters that flow into the Atlantic. He stood at an elevation of 16,044 feet, following with his eyes a road cut along the flank of the mountain, at whose base sat “a pretty little lake.” When he got to the lake, he performed a curious ritual.
    â€œI musingly dropped a bit of green moss plucked from the hill-side upon the placid waters of the little lake, and as it floated along I followed it, in imagination, down through the luxurious climes, the beautiful