The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon

by Robert Whitaker

  The decision that Isabel now had to make was not a simple one. A boat may have been waiting for her, but if she were to go, she would be leaving behind all that she had ever known. Her father, her two brothers and her sister, and her nephews and nieces all lived in and around Riobamba. Her children were buried here. This was her home. And to leave meant going on a journey that no woman had ever dared undertake, and one that her family was insistent that she not attempt.

  The skinning of an Amazon snake.

  From John Pinkerton, ed., A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, vol. 14 (London, 1813).

  To the colonial elite living in the Andes, the jungle was a place populated by savage Indians, terrifying beasts, and deadly disease. The wild Indians in this region, Ulloa and Juan had written, “live in a debasement of human nature, without laws or religion, in the most infamous brutality, strangers to moderation, and without the least control or restraint of their excesses.” There were also “tigers, bastard lions, and bears” to worry about, and poisonous snakes like the cobra and the maca. This latter reptile, Ulloa and Juan reported, was “wholly covered with scales and makes a frightful appearance, its head being out of all proportion to the body, and it has two rows of teeth and fangs like those of a large dog.” Most frightening of all was a man-eating snake that the Indians called jacumama:

  It is a serpent of a frightful magnitude and most deleterious nature. Some in order to give an idea of its largeness, affirm that it will swallow any beast whole, and that this has been the miserable end of many a man. … They generally lie coiled up and wait till their prey passes near enough to be seized. As they are not easily distinguished from the large rotten wood, which lies about in plenty in these parts, they have opportunities to seize their prey and satiate their hunger.*

  As for the terrain, all of the routes to the Amazon were “extremely troublesome and fatiguing, from the nature of the climate and being full of rocks, so that a great part of the distance must be travelled on foot.” These difficulties had scared Maldonado’s family thirty years earlier when he had been contemplating his trip to the Amazon, and if anything, the trek had since grown more dangerous. Indians throughout the viceroyalty were rising up in protest and had fled in significant numbers into the jungle, emerging periodically to attack outlying Spanish towns. Equally problematic, the Jesuits had recently been expelled from Peru, and it was their mission stations that had been the lifeline through this wilderness.

  The expulsion of the Jesuits had been a long time coming. They had come to the New World in 1549 to convert the “heathens,” and this missionary work had often put them into conflict with colonists seeking to exploit or enslave the Indians. The Jesuits had also grown very wealthy in their two centuries in the New World, adding to their predisposition to ignore governmental orders. Portugal ordered them out of Brazil in 1759, and eight years later Spain did the same. While other clergy had replaced the Jesuits in the mission stations along the Amazon, these priests and monks were—as Ulloa and Juan wrote—often utterly shameless in their behavior. Those living in the cities kept concubines, held drunken revelries, and exploited the Indians for financial gain, and these were the religious men that a traveler to Loreto would now have to depend on.

  To most in Riobamba, it was inconceivable that a woman would even think of making this trip. Not only did the many physical dangers cry out for Isabel to stay, but cultural norms were an even more powerful restraint. To go would violate values so deep in the Peruvian psyche that they could be traced back to the Reconquest. A woman ventured outside with a maid or a servant by her side or with her husband for an evening of entertainment, and then she scurried back inside. As a descendant of the Godin family would later write: “Her father and her brothers opposed her going with all their power.”

  On the other side of the equation, there was only this: The memory of a husband that Isabel had last seen and held twenty years before.

  There was much that Isabel had to do before she could depart. She sold her house in Riobamba and her furniture, and made a gift of her other properties—“a garden and estate at Guaslen, and another property between Galté and Maguazo”—to her sister, Josefa. There were also supplies to buy and her many personal belongings to pack. This all took several months, and once her family understood that they could not dissuade her, they rallied to her side. Both of her brothers decided that they would accompany her to Loreto and travel on to Europe. Juan obtained permission from his superiors to go to Rome, while Antonio—newly freed from bankruptcy jail—saw the journey as an opportunity to start a new life. He would take his seven-year-old son Martín with him to France, and once they were settled, he would send for his wife and his other son. Joaquín, the family’s most trusted slave, would go with them to Loreto—Isabel promised to give him his “card of liberty” as a reward once they reached that point. She would also be accompanied by her two maids, Tomasa and Juanita, who were eight or nine years old. Meanwhile, her sixty-five-year-old father decided that he would leave ahead of the others and arrange for canoes to be ready for them as they proceeded from mission station to mission station. He would travel all the way to Loreto and wait there until he knew that his daughter had reached the Portuguese galliot safely. Then he would return to Riobamba.

  News of Isabel’s trip quickly spread throughout the audiencia and beyond. Men and women alike began to gossip about the “lady” who was heading off into the Amazon, and in early September this brought to Riobamba an unlikely visitor: A French man named Jean Rocha, who claimed to be a doctor. He had been making his way up the Peruvian coast, with plans to cross Panama and return to Europe via that route, when, on a stop in Guayaquil, he had heard about Isabel’s trip. He was accompanied by a traveling companion, Phelipe Bogé, and a slave, and in return for passage with Isabel, he promised “to watch over her health, and show her every attention.” Isabel initially turned him down—her instincts said that he was not to be trusted—but her brothers convinced her otherwise, telling her that she “might have need of the assistance of a physician on so long a voyage.”

  The traveling party was now set: They numbered ten in all, and Isabel hired thirty-one Indians to carry their goods and supplies. The mules were loaded, the people of Riobamba came out to see them go, and Isabel—on the morning of October 1—picked up the hem of her dress and stepped into a waiting sedan chair. The sky was a brilliant blue, the air crisp and clear, and the group headed north out of town, toward snow-capped Mount Chimborazo. The road climbed to the top of a ridge, and once they had left the last houses behind, Isabel summoned up every bit of her will and turned her sights firmly to the east, toward the high cordillera and the jungle beyond.

  * Paris’s silence toward its overseas possessions was apparently common. In 1757, the governor of Louisiana complained that he had written fifteen letters without having receiving a single response from Paris.

  * This seems surprising until one considers how difficult it would have been for Jean to send a letter from French Guiana to Riobamba. He could not send one to Pará in the hope that it would be passed upriver, for the border between Portugal and Spain on the Amazon was closed. One possibility would have been to send a letter from French Guiana to France, with the thought that it could then be passed on to Spanish officials, who could place it in the care of a Spanish trading vessel, which could carry it to Cartagena or Lima; from there the letter could somehow be taken overland to Riobamba. This was a postal system that was almost certain to break down, and even if it did not, a letter could take years and years to be delivered. Jean’s father died in 1740, and yet his siblings’ letter informing him of the death did not arrive until 1748, and that letter had originated in France.

  * Étienne-François de Choiseul served as France’s minister of foreign affairs from 1758 to 1761 and from 1766 to 1770. He was minister of the marine from 1761 to 1766, and during this period his cousin, Cesar-Gabriel, Duc de Choiseul-Praslin, was minister o
f foreign affairs. However, Étienne-François retained his authority to formulate foreign policy while his cousin served in that position.

  * Slaves often took the surname of their owners.

  * Today we know this snake, the jacumama, as an anaconda, which is the largest member of the boa constrictor family of snakes. The maca described by Ulloa was a pit viper of some type, perhaps the fer-de-lance or the bushmaster.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lost on the Bobonaza

  ISABEL AND THE OTHERS knew that the most difficult and dangerous part of their journey would be the first 350 miles. They would travel overland down the steep eastern slopes of the Andes, from Riobamba to Canelos, and then they would canoe 225 miles down the turbulent Bobonaza River, from Canelos to Andoas. At that point, they would be on the broad expanses of the Pastaza River, and although the Pastaza below Andoas had its share of whirlpools and strong currents, canoes could traverse it fairly easily. They expected to take twelve days or so to reach Canelos and then another two weeks to make it to Andoas. Before the month was over, they hoped that the worst part of their journey would be behind them.

  Isabel, who had traveled very little in her life, found the first few days delightful. Once they had turned their backs on Mount Chimborazo and headed east, they began following the Chambo River, one of a handful of rivers in the entire Andean valley that cut through the eastern cordillera and drained into the Amazon. They crossed the Chambo on their second day out, entering into the mountains, and with the river now on their left and far below them, they picked their way across a steep slope. Mount Tungurahua, its top half covered with ice and snow, loomed ahead. The summit of the great volcano topped out at 16,465 feet, and Isabel, who had seen it from afar so many times, was awestruck by its size and air of hidden power. The graceful and slender Tungurahua she had always known, the petite “wife” of Chimborazo, now seemed fierce and threatening, holding within the furious fires of the earth. As they worked their way north around its lower slopes, at an altitude of about 8,000 feet, they had to struggle to cross gullies cut by water tumbling down from the ice fields above. Each time they came to one, they had to climb higher up Tungurahua’s slopes until the gully narrowed enough that their Indian servants could throw a small bridge across it. Then they would descend the mountainside on the other side of the gully, to where the slopes of the volcano were not quite so steep, and proceed on their way. Although this was slow going, the air was cool, and they were hit by only an occasional burst of icy rain. Each night the Indians built them a shelter of tree branches and cooked a hearty meal over a fire. They had brought along several live chickens and an ample supply of dried corn, beans, potatoes, and dried meats—llama, sheep, and pig. Most likely, this trip was the first time that Isabel had ever slept outdoors.

  On the fourth or fifth day of their journey, Isabel and the others reached the small town of Baños, perched on a shelf of land at the base of Tungurahua, about 250 feet above the Pastaza River. The Pastaza is formed by the merger of the Chambo and Patate Rivers a few miles above Baños, and it is a violent, turbulent river, hurling its way out of the Andes with a fury.

  Since leaving Riobamba, they had traveled about fifty miles and dropped 3,000 feet in altitude, and they had now entered the cloud forest that covers the eastern slopes of the Andes, a lush world of moss-covered trees, delicate orchids, and hanging vines. There is no other place on the planet where massive snow-capped mountains so closely overlook steaming tropical forest, the two disparate climates separated by less than 150 miles. In rapid order, the alpine world of the mountains turns into a dense forest perpetually bathed in clouds and fog, and then, at 3,000 feet above sea level, the cloud forest gives way to a rain forest, where although it may rain nearly every day, clouds are not constantly present. At an altitude of about 1,000 feet, the vegetation undergoes a further change, into lowland rain forest. For every 1,000-foot drop in elevation, the temperature rises about 4 degrees Fahrenheit, such that it will be fifty degrees colder on the slopes of Tungurahua than it is at the headwaters of the Amazon, only 100 miles away. As a result of these extremes in temperature, the terrain in between receives more than 160 inches of rain a year.

  The airflow that drives this wet climate originates in the Amazon basin. Along the equator, heat builds up each day and the warm air rises. Evaporation fills these currents with moisture, and as the air rises, it cools, the water condensing and falling as rain. While this cycle keeps the Amazon basin well watered, prevailing air currents bring a double dose of rain to the eastern slopes of the Andes. Moisture-laden clouds ascending from the jungle floor are pushed by prevailing winds toward the west, where they run smack into the Andes, and as the clouds rise up the slopes, they cool and the rains come. The Andes act as a moisture trap for the entire Amazon basin, and this brings showers to the region more than 250 days a year. It also bathes the mid-level slopes of the Andes, where Baños is located, in a perpetual mist, except for brief periods in the morning, when dawn may break clear.

  The constant watering produces a profusion of plant life, every tree covered with ferns, lichens, and other parasitic growth. The entire forest drips moss, and even the tree tops, as the nineteenth-century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt exclaimed, are “crowned with great bushes of flowers.” Brightly colored birds, such as the golden tanager and the crimson-breasted woodpecker, find this world a paradise, as do bands of gibbering spider monkeys and such reclusive animals as the spectacled bear. But the thick vegetation, which is draped across the steep cliffs and crags of the Andes, makes this region almost impenetrable to humans. As travelers try to hack their way through the forest, they must cope with constant downpours that turn every path into a muddy quagmire. One stream after another has to be crossed, torrents racing down the mountainside, filled with snowmelt and the daily deluge of rain. This was the very region where Gonzalo Pizarro and his men got bogged down in 1541, when they set out for Canelos, the land of the cinnamon trees.

  Isabel and her brothers did not tarry in Baños, stopping only long enough to purchase some additional food supplies and to enjoy a night of rest under a roof before plunging into the cloud forest. Barely had they started on their way before they had to confront the raging Pastaza. About three miles below the village, the river passed beneath two cliffs forty feet apart. They had to cross over on a bridge that consisted of three tree trunks that stretched from one cliff to the other. Thirty feet below, the river crashed against the rocks, throwing up a spray that kept the logs slick and wet.* Once they passed that peril, they began making their way along a narrow, muddy path that ran high above the river, just above the canyon cut by the Pastaza. Every few miles or so, they came to a stream cascading down from the mountains to the north. At times, the sheer beauty of the cascading waterfalls caught everyone’s breath, one river after another spilling down the steep mountainside and then, at the rim of the canyon, leaping outward into a free fall, dashing onto rocks hundreds of feet below.

  Each time they came to one of these rivers, they had to stop and find a way to ford it. A few were small enough that a log could be placed from bank to bank, but the Indians needed to cobble together bamboo bridges to navigate the wider ones. To do so, they would cut long poles of bamboo from the forest and drop one pole across the river. An Indian would shimmy along it, dragging a liana rope with him. Once on the other side, he would use the liana to bring a second bamboo pole alongside the first. Then two or three more would be positioned in this manner and lashed together. The sure-footed Indians would cross the bridge loaded down with the goods or carrying Isabel in her chair, the bamboo bending slightly under their weight but never breaking.

  Crossing a log bridge over a river in the jungle.

  Natural History Museum, London. Bridgeman Art Library.

  Their progress was slow—they were lucky to make twenty miles during the first two days. The trail was hopelessly narrow and slick with mud, and, perched as they were high above the Pastaza, it seemed to Isabel that at any mom
ent her servants might slip and they would all perish. At every step, she was pitched to and fro in her chair, thrown backward one moment and forward the next, leaving her bruised and battered. So uncomfortable was the ride that she wished she could proceed on foot, like her brothers, but that was out of the question for a woman, and she had to be carried, no matter how unpleasant it was. As Jean later wrote, this road was “impractical even for mules, and [those] who are able effect the passage on foot, but others”—and by this, he meant women—“are carried.” The rains fell constantly, soaking the travelers and their goods, and there was never a chance to get dry. At night, the Indians hastily cut palm leaves and fashioned them into a shelter. The group made camp whenever they came upon the smallest patch of level ground, but the very air was wet, and all they could do each evening was cross another day off the calendar, thankful that they were twenty-four hours closer to Canelos.

  Eighty-eight years later, the English explorer Richard Spruce made his way up this route, the first Englishman ever to traverse it. Although he was by then a seasoned traveler in South America, having spent ten years gathering plants from the forests, he was nearly defeated by this short sixty-five-mile trek from Canelos to Baños, which took him seventeen days. Every day, he complained, there was “rain from sunrise till nightfall. The sloppy ground, the soaked forest, and the unceasing rain kept us close prisoners.” At one point, he and his companions had to wade through “fetid mud” for nearly a mile. At another, they were slowed by “beds of prickly bamboos.” The path itself was “dreadful, what with mud, fallen trees, and dangerous passes, of which two in particular, along declivities where in places there was nothing to get hold of, are not to be thought of without a shudder.” In places, he noted, “the track ran along the very edge of the cliff, and the projecting bushes menaced thrusting us over.” He and his guides were constantly slowed by the charging rivers they had to cross, with one—the Topo—stymieing them for days. It “was one mass of foam, and the thunder of its waters against the rocks made the very ground shake to some distance from the bank.” When he at last arrived in Baños, the end of a journey that had involved climbing up out of the Amazon via the Bobonaza River, he was completely spent. He was emaciated, his face shrunken from the difficult trek, and so sick that he vomited up blood. He called the seventeen days from Canelos “heart-sickening,” and so filled with suffering that he could “hardly bear to think of it.”