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By Root 1996 0

of the Conquest of Peru. “No living thing was to be seen but the wild tenants of the wilderness, the unwieldy boa, and the loathsome alligator basking on the borders of the stream.” With no Indian villages to rob for supplies, the expedition ran short of food. The forest around them had plenty of food, but the Spaniards didn’t know which plants were edible. Instead they ate all the surviving pigs, then the dogs, and then turned to spearing lizards. More and more men were sick. Having previously heard vague tales of a wealthy country further down the Napo, Francisco de Orellana, Gonzalo Pizarro’s second-in-command and cousin, suggested that he split off part of the expedition to see if he could obtain supplies. Pizarro agreed, and Orellana set off in the expedition’s prized boat on December 26, 1541, with a crew of fifty-nine, Carvajal among them.

Nine days and six hundred miles down the Napo, Orellana found villages with food—a society he called Omagua. His men gorged themselves and then considered their options. They did not relish the prospect of ferrying supplies back up the river to Gonzalo Pizarro and the rest of the expedition; rowing against the current would be difficult, and, as they knew all too well, there was nothing to eat along the way. Orellana decided instead to leave the starving Gonzalo to his fate and take the boat to the mouth of the river, which he correctly believed emptied into the Atlantic (incorrectly, he believed that the river was not too long).

Knowing that Gonzalo, in the unlikely event that he survived, would regard Orellana’s actions as treasonous, Carvajal took upon himself the task of creating a justificatory paper trail: an account “proving” that the choice to abandon Gonzalo had been forced on them. To satisfy Spanish legal requirements, Orellana made a show of resigning his temporary command rather than leave Gonzalo. The crewmen, Carvajal claimed, then swore “by God…by the sign of the Cross, [and] by the four sacred Gospels” that they wanted Orellana to return as leader. Bowing to pressure, Orellana accepted the post. Then they built a second vessel and set off downstream.

Their worries about Gonzalo’s reaction were well-founded. Half a year after Orellana’s departure, the surviving members of his expedition staggered in rags into Quito. Gonzalo was among them. He wasted no time in demanding Orellana’s arrest and execution. In taking the boat, most of the canoes, and some of the weapons from his famished troops, Orellana had displayed, Gonzalo said, “the greatest cruelty that ever faithless men have shown.”

Meanwhile, Orellana and his men had spent five months floating down the Amazon, Carvajal recording every moment. It is inconceivable that their surroundings did not induce awe. Vastly bigger than any river in Europe or Asia, the Amazon contains a fifth of the earth’s above-ground fresh water. It has islands the size of countries and masses of floating vegetation the size of islands. Half a dozen of its tributaries would be world-famous rivers anywhere else. A thousand miles up from the Atlantic, the river is still so broad that at high water the other side is only a faint dark line on the horizon. Ferries take half an hour to make the crossing. Seagoing vessels travel all the way up to Iquitos, Peru, 2,300 miles from the river’s mouth, the furthest inland deep-ocean port in the world.

The conventional view of Amazonia: endless untouched forest. The forest indeed exists, but humankind has long been one of its essential components.

The prospect of a mutiny trial constantly in mind, Carvajal wrote relatively little about his extraordinary surroundings. Instead he focused on creating a case for the value and necessity of Orellana’s journey. To the contemporary eye, he didn’t have much to work with. His case had three main elements: (1) the forcing of Orellana’s hand (see above); (2) the crew’s devotion to the Holy Virgin; and (3) the degree to which they suffered en route. In truth, the last does not seem feigned. In Carvajal’s account, pain and sickness alternate with starvation.