William Lewis Herndon was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on 25 October 1813. One of seven children, young William was orphaned early and had to seek his own fortune. He entered the Navy in 1828 as a midshipman when but 15 years old. Promoted to passed midshipman in 1834, he saw service in the Guerriere, the Constellation, and the Independence before coming ashore in 1836 to marry Frances Elizabeth Hansborough. One child, Ellen Lewis Herndon, was born of the union. She later became the wife of Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States. Herndon was promoted to lieutenant in 1841, and two years later, he was assigned to the Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington, D.C. (now the Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office) . The head of the office was his cousin and brother-in-law, Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury. Despite their kinship, Maury drove Herndon hard and, after three years, Herndon left the Observatory with a nervous breakdown. He commanded a small steamer, the Iris, in the Gulf of Mexico for 18 months during the War with Mexico, after which he returned, his health restored, to labor an additional year under Maury. He was next assigned to the USS Vandalia, which was leaving for a tour with the Pacific Squadron.
In Valparaiso, Chile, in August 1850, he received advance word from the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory that he was to be assigned duty exploring the Amazon Basin.
There were at least three reasons for the United States to explore the Amazon Basin. The first and official one, as set forth in passports which Lieutenant Herndon presented to Peruvian and Brazilian authorities, was that the trip was "a geographical and scientific exploration."
In his orders, however, the Navy Department made it clear that "the geographical situation and the commercial position of the Amazon indicate the future importance, to this country, of the free navigation of that river. To enable the government to form a proper estimate as to the degree of that importance, present and prospective, is the object of your mission."
The orders then directed Herndon to collect general and specific areas of information dealing with the navigability of streams, the people, the products, soil, climate, and commercial resources. They continued: "You will make such geographical and scientific observations by the way as may be consistent with the main object of the expedition, always bearing in mind that they are merely incidental, and that no part of the main objects of the expedition is to be interfered with by them...."
The orders were signed by Will A. Graham, then Secretary of the Navy, and the looseness of communications is shown by the address-Lieutenant William L. Herndon, U. S. Navy, Peru or Bolivia.
The necessity for this duplicity was that, while Brazil in 1850 had opened the Amazon to steam navigation—the only commercially practical method of traversing the river—she had restricted such navigation to Brazilians only. Although a reversal of this decision was expected, a subterfuge was necessary. There was a third factor that might be termed the real reason. It should be noted that at this time the resolution of the question of slavery, and the inevitable consequences of unsuccessful resolution, was uppermost in the minds of all the nation's leaders. The Compromise of 1850 had merely postponed the conflict; some better solution had to be reached. In this context, let us examine certain actions of Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, then Superintendent of the Naval Observatory, and the officer whose "advance word" was sufficient for the commanding officer of the USS Vandalia to detach Lieutenant Herndon from the ship and place him ashore in Chile to await orders.
Maury was a scientific genius whose work then and now was appreciated more abroad than at home. He had published his first treatise on navigation in 1836, and, in 1842, a real opportunity was afforded for scientific study with his assignment as Superintendent of the Depot of Charts and Instruments. Here were stored the cruise logbooks of Navy vessels, and Maury realized the value of these books wherein the authors had conscientiously recorded facts on the force of wind encountered, fog, rain, unusual ocean currents, and other natural phenomena. This data, together with an abstract log devised and made available to ships of all nations, furnished information for the Wind and Current Charts which first began publication in 1847. These were followed soon afterward by his Sailing Directions. Even today, monthly pilot charts issued by the U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office bear the words "Founded upon researches made in the early part of the nineteenth century by Matthew Fontaine Maury, while serving as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy."
Maury followed this by a proposal that the United States invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a universal system of meteorology, and he was a leading spirit of the conference that subsequently met in Brussels in 1853. His deep sea studies contributed to the laying of the first Atlantic cable and his articles, "Scraps from the Lucky Bag," published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and other articles under the pseudonyms "Will Bluff" and "Will Watch," laid the groundwork for the establishment of The U. S. Naval Academy in 1845, and the reorganization of the Navy administration into bureaus. For these and subsequent scientific works, Maury received honors from universities, acclamation from nearly 50 learned societies, and decorations from emperors, kings, and Pope Pius IX. In general, however, his recognition at home was meager, and sometimes grudging.
Here, then, was a man with a scientific bent and talent, a man with the relentless constancy required to sort order out of the thousands of logbooks and abstract logs that went into his Wind and Current Charts. How does one explain, then, that this was the same man who wrote the seven articles published in the National Intelligencer between 17 November and 3 December 1852—articles signed "Inca" and which dealt with "the Amazon and Atlantic Slopes of South America" in the most laudatory and exaggerated manner, even though the author had but scant information on the subject? How does one explain Maury's authorship of a memorial for the free navigation of the Amazon which was endorsed by the 14-state economic congress, the Memphis Convention and presented to the U. S. House of Representatives on 3 March 1854?
This memorial borrows from the phraseology of the Declaration of Independence in its claims for the rights of the world to the glorious Amazon region. Its pronouncements on the size, wealth, and climate were hyperbole. Statements included were: "if the population density of Belgium were applied to the region it would be capable of supporting 601,660,000 inhabitants," and that the free navigation of the Amazon must be obtained, "peaceably if we can—forcibly if we must."
These are not the statements expected of the man whom Alexander Von Humboldt styled the founder of a new and important science. Perhaps the true explanation of why Herndon was selected by his kinsman and fellow Virginian to explore the Amazon is revealed in a letter dated 27 March 1855, from Maury to Captain A. H. Foote. In it Maury states:
The Southern States may emancipate just as New York, Massachusetts, etc., emancipated their slaves—large numbers were not set free; they, after the acts of prospective emancipation became laws, were sold at the South; and so the South may sell to the Amazon and so get clear of them. In no other way can I see a chance for it—the slaves of the South are worth about 15 hundred million. Their value is increasing at the rate of thirty or forty million a year. It is the industrial capital of the South.
This repeated a statement made by Maury in another letter to his first cousin, Mrs. Mary Minor Blackford, in December 1851, in which he proposed that the surplus of slaves (which would be built up by the slave population's roughly doubling itself every 30 years) be transported to work the rich forests of the Amazon River Valley.
Other letters and papers of Maury's attest to his intense love of the United States and his desperate attempts to save the Union, including his proposal of the "New Jersey Plan" whereby that state would act as mediator between the North and South. Maury was a practical man—he knew some concrete alternative must be given the South to induce it to give up slavery. The plan would not have to be immediate. There were enough moderates on both sides of the slavery question so that if only a workable solution for eventual resolvement were initiated, open conflict could be averted.
In Valparaiso, while awaiting orders to explore the Valley of the Amazon, Herndon made use of the libraries of Admiral Hornby, Commander of the British Naval Forces in the Pacific, several officers of the Chilean Navy, and an English botanist recently returned from the area. He conferred with General Ballivian, ex-President of Bolivia, then in exile in Chile, and with Don Jose Pardo, the Peruvian charge d'affaires to the republic of Chile. He also made use of the time to improve his knowledge of the Spanish language.
On 20 January, he received orders directing him to proceed to Lima, Peru, and to continue collecting information which would be of value in an exploration of the Amazon and the regions of the country drained by its Peruvian tributaries. The Department of the Navy was still engaged in securing permission for the trip from the Brazilian government and further orders were forthcoming. A bill of credit for one thousand dollars was enclosed, which must have eliminated one pressing problem.
On 4 April, Passed Midshipman Lardner Gibbon arrived in Lima with some scientific instruments and gave Herndon the official orders for the expedition from Navy Secretary Graham. Gibbon had been assigned to the Depot of Charts and Instruments and was probably detached from there to join the expedition mainly on the basis of his availability and his ability to sketch.
The orders directed that the party remain small and it was quickly made up. Henry Richards, a young master's mate from the frigate Raritan, then in Lima, joined the expedition. A young Peruvian, Don Manual Ijurra, was taken on as interpreter. Maurica, an Indian from a small village on the route, a muleteer, and seven mules made up the balance of the expedition.
The choice of Herndon's route had been left to him. With the admirable brevity of the period, he had been directed to ... "make such arrangements as may be necessary for crossing the Andes and descending the Amazon; and having completed them you will proceed on your journey without further orders."
The journey commenced at Lima on 21 May 1851. The first stage was to be by mule from Lima across the 16,000-foot Andes to the village of Tarma. Here the party split, as it was desired to cover as much of the vast Amazon Basin as possible. Gibbon and Richards went south and then east, to connect with the Madeira River near its headwaters and follow it until it joined the Amazon about two-thirds of the way along its length.
Herndon and Ijurra went north, leaving the mules at the village of Tinga Maria and embarking in boats for the trip down and north along the Huallaga River to its junction with the Maranon River. As this is the most prominent of several rivers which join to form the Amazon, it may be for all practical purposes considered as the headwaters of the Amazon, although the latter is not called such for several hundred miles inside Brazil. At Nauta, Peru, a side trip was made down the Ucayali River, which drains the interior of Peru almost as far south as the border of Bolivia and roughly parallels the coastline of Peru. Herndon went only as far as Tierra Blanca, a distance of approximately 300 miles, and then returned to Nauta to continue the trip down the main artery of the Amazon Basin. The total trip was of approximately 4,000 miles and took from 21 May 1851 until 11 April 1852. Travel was mainly by canoe, in the company of a number of local Indians who would be hired to take the party a given distance, at which place other arrangements would be made. Herndon learned to eat roast monkey cooked over a dung fire, turtle eggs, and manatee, or sea cow, among other delicacies.
As directed, he described the country, its flora, fauna, and wildlife, numbers and types of people, their occupations and productivity, domesticated animals, commercial ventures, the type soils, navigability of the streams and a wealth of other information in his log. Some typical entries perhaps explain why Herndon's vivid writings became so popular when published as his report:
(In the Andes) June 3 ... We passed the openings of a copper and silver mine, and rode along a boggy country, where turf is cut for fuel. We saw many snipes, ducks, and other aquatic birds. This upset all my preconceived notions; I had no idea that I would see, at fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea anything that would remind me of duck-shooting in the marshes of the Rappahannock ... the path was muddy and slippery and we were obliged to stop to blow at every half dozen steps ... On arrival at the top, I was fairly exhausted . . . I soon recovered, however, and was amply repaid by the splendor of the view. Gibbon almost froze taking a sketch of it; and the rest of us tired ourselves nearly to death endeavoring to get a shot at a herd of shy vicunas that were feeding among the distant rocks.
(On the Ucayali River) September 26-.. . The Indians commence paddling with a strong, slow stroke, of about fifteen or twenty to the minute, and gradually quicken them till they get to be half-second strokes. They keep this up for about half an hour, when, at a shout from the bowman, they toss their paddles in the air, change sides, and commence the slow stroke again. They, however, prefer poling to paddling, and will always make for a beach, where they can use their poles, which they do in a lazy inefficient manner ....
After breakfast we pulled nearly to the middle of the river, and, anchoring in thirty-three feet of water, we found the current, by log, to be a mile and three-quarters the hour. We passed the mouth of a small stream called Chingana, up which there is a settlement of the Mayorunas. Our men are much afraid of these people, and always sleep on the left bank so long as they are in their country. All the peons on this river have their mosquito curtains painted black, so that the Mayorunas may not see them in the night. The mode of attack of these savages is to wait till the travellers have fallen asleep, and then rush upon the mosquito nets and plunge in their lances. None of the Indians that I have travelled with seem to have any idea of the propriety of posting a sentinel.
Mindful of his assigned mission, however, Herndon filled pages with itemized amounts of trade, by country, and whether import or export. He also noted items of commercial interest, whenever obtainable, such as the granted leave of absence to command a Pacific Steamship Lines vessel, the Central America. Because these vessels carried U. S. mail and were subsidized by the government, they were required to have naval officers as masters. This tour went without incident for two years, but in September 1857, while en route from Colon, Panama, to New York with a mixed cargo of passengers, mail, freight, and $2 million in California gold, he encountered a fierce gale off Hatteras. After 12 hours of pounding, the ship's seams opened enough to admit water to the boiler fires and Herndon's main propulsion was lost. Sails were torn away as fast as they were rigged, and the mast and ship's boats also carried away. Attempts to rig a sea anchor failed and the ship fell off into the trough and began breaking up.
Signals attracted the brig Marine, which put boats in the water and made two trips, taking off about 50 passengers each trip. All the women and children on board and a few lucky males were saved. Darkness, however, stopped the rescue attempts and the Central America foundered during the night. Herndon, his officers, crew, and about 300 male passengers went down with the ship. Fifty-two were subsequently picked up, three of which had drifted 450 miles from the scene of the foundering.
For the extraordinary leadership and inspiration displayed by Herndon during the tragedy, his fellow officers erected a monument to his memory which may be seen today on the Naval Academy grounds.
What lasting result did Herndon's report work upon the United States and South America? We know it failed in its principal aim as Maury saw it—that of providing a market for the South's slaves, though, prior to and following the war, some individual Southern slave owners did emigrate to Brazil with their slaves and establish plantations. Nothing could be done immediately in the way of either slave-selling or commercial trading, however, as Herndon's expedition and the publicity which Maury focused on it produced an immediate and unlooked-for reaction on the part of the controlling country, Brazil. For Herndon and Maury had oversold their product. In attempting to dress up their discovery, they had made it so attractive that the Brazilian opposition to opening of the river to foreign commerce, particularly the "Yanqui," solidified. Brazil's traditional policy of exclusiveness had resulted in the Amazon Basin still being almost unknown in 1851, three centuries after the first European, Orellana, had traversed the river in 1541. Now Brazil was to pursue this policy in a treaty with Peru in January 1854, restricting the navigation of the river to Peruvian and Brazilian ships. Only Bolivia desired trade with all nations and by decrees of April and May 1853, made this fact known. Landlocked as she was, however, Bolivia's desires were of small avail in the face of Brazil's restrictive stand. In vain did Maury in his "Inca" articles and his state-supported memorial rail at the Brazilians. The latter just became more obdurate. Incensed by his language and by American filibustering expeditions to Central America and Cuba, the Brazilians feared that a scheme of eventual annexation was the real reason for Maury's insistence on the opening of the Amazon.
Thus, despite President Franklin Pierce's extended comment on the question in his annual message of December 1853, and the subsequent endeavors of Secretary of State William L. Marcy, all efforts were fruitless and the Amazon did not become the safety valve for the Union that Maury had desired so desperately.
Only with the passage of time did the pendulum swing in favor of the U. S. position. A Brazilian statesman, Tavares Bastos, perceived that Herndon's expedition and Maury's memorial had done for the Amazon what 300 years of Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilian rule had failed to do; it focused the attention of the country on the riches and potential of the Amazon region. Enlisting the aid of Brazil's greatest lyric poet, Goncalves Dias, the two began a campaign in 1861 that would result in Dom Pedro II finally opening the Amazon to world commerce in 1867.
It could be said that the opening itself has proved an illusion, for the vast Amazon, draining 2,722,000 square miles and with tributaries providing outlets to the hinterland of Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, and Bolivia, is still today a somnolent giant, yet to be awakened. In 1850, her population was 300,000. In 1900, it had only more than doubled to three quarters of a million. By 1950, it had grown to 1,800,000, still one of the least densely populated areas of the world. Opened to steam navigation now for 100 years, the Amazon has yet to exert its full potential and provide William Lewis Herndon with a true monument—one larger and even more lasting than the one of "Quincy Granite, cut in the best style" that was erected at the Naval Academy by his fellow officers in 1859.