Wanderings in South America.

By Charles Waterton.

Printed: 1886-1900

Publisher: Cassell & Company Ltd

Dimensions 11 × 15 × 1.5 cm
Language

Language: English

Size (cminches): 11 x 15 x 1.5

Condition: Very good  (See explanation of ratings)

£20.00
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Item information

Description

Cloth binding. Black lettering with gilt title on front cover.

In 1804 Charles Waterton travelled to British Guiana to take charge of his uncle’s slave plantations near Georgetown. In 1812 he started to explore the hinterland of the colony, making four journeys between then and 1824, and reaching Brazil walking barefoot in the rainy season. He described his discoveries in his book Waterton’s Wanderings in South America, which inspired British schoolboys such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. His explorations laid to rest the persistent myth of Raleigh’s Lake Parime by suggesting that the seasonal flooding of the Rupununi savannah had been misidentified as a lake.

Charles Waterton (3 June 1782 – 27 May 1865) was an English naturalist, explorer, and for seven years, a slave plantation manager.  He is best known as a pioneering conservationist.

Waterton is chiefly remembered for his association with curare, and for his writings on natural history and conservation. David Attenborough has described him as “one of the first people anywhere to recognise, not only that the natural world was of great importance, but that it needed protection as humanity made more and more demands on it”.

Waterton’s house, Walton Hall, which may be approached only by a pedestrian bridge to its own island, is now the main building of a hotel. There is a golf course in the vicinity and various public footpaths, some leading to a nature reserve- Anglers Country Park.

Waterton Lakes in Alberta, Canada, now a national park, was named after him by Thomas Blakiston in 1858. A Wakefield Road and school in Wakefield, Yorkshire, are also named after him.

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