As Pottermania comes to its crisis-point, a professionally distracted Wombat tosses out this squib of a quiz-question and promises to check in from time to time on the guessing...
In the the Amazonian jungle, he watched his son nearly killed when his canoe swept over a waterfall. He was nearly killed himself by flesh-eating bacteria. He saw a monkey's arm removed from the gullet of an enormous catfish. When one of his guides shot another, he helped in the burial of the slain man and called for the guilty party to be hunted down and killed in turn ("He who kills must die," he reportedly said. "That's the way it is in my country.") Of the experience, he wrote, "The very pathetic myth of 'beneficent nature' could not deceive even the least wise being if he once saw for himself the iron cruelty of life in the tropics." He died five years after his return from the jungle.
Who was he?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a box of Dead Sea Salt ("The Salt-Lover's Sea Salt"). No Googling or consulting Mentor. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you like.
Would this be the mighty Richard Burton? (aka The One Who Didn't Marry Liz Taylor)
Posted by: Gavin on July 15, 2005 10:24 AMNope! Good guess, but that's not it.
Posted by: BT on July 15, 2005 10:26 AMMy first guess is my best guess, but I will eschew "Bob Hope" and instead follow up with a presumed Dr. Livingston?
Posted by: Gavin on July 15, 2005 10:26 AM(Or maybe Stanley?)
Posted by: Gavin on July 15, 2005 10:27 AMOr Darwin's wacky cousin, Francis Galton?
Posted by: Gavin on July 15, 2005 10:27 AMNone of the above.
Posted by: BT on July 15, 2005 10:29 AMRudyard Kipling.
Posted by: BoxJam on July 15, 2005 11:04 AMPonce de Leon
Posted by: Jonathan on July 15, 2005 11:11 AMNo Ponces of any kind.
Posted by: BT on July 15, 2005 12:12 PMAnd no Kiplers neither.
Posted by: BT on July 15, 2005 12:12 PMJoseph Conrad.
Posted by: boxjam on July 15, 2005 12:14 PMNope. A slight clue: he was already pretty darn famous when he made the expedition.
Posted by: BT on July 15, 2005 12:36 PMBil Keane is still alive, so he's out, though the events recounted in the question would make awesome Family Circii.
I'm unable to rally enough of my brain cells to generate a credible guess, but let me toss Ernest Hemingway into the ring and hope something better bubbles up later.
Posted by: Scott on July 15, 2005 01:04 PMThinking butch outdoorsy Americans brings me to Teddy Roosevelt, too.
Posted by: Scott on July 15, 2005 01:15 PMsounds like Hammurabi
Posted by: James on July 15, 2005 01:39 PMChris Columbus (not the director)
Posted by: James on July 15, 2005 01:41 PMThe protagonist of that Evelyn Waugh novel. A Handful of Dust, was it?
Posted by: KF on July 15, 2005 02:55 PMGraham Greene
Posted by: James on July 15, 2005 03:15 PMJack London? We've done him already, though, and the Amazon doesn't seem so much like his scene.
Posted by: Scott on July 15, 2005 03:48 PMOh, or Dumbledore. Is this a cunning leak of HP&HBP?
Posted by: Scott on July 15, 2005 03:49 PMThinking butch outdoorsy Americans is always a good idea, Scott. The Takoma Kid takes it with Teddy. Roosevelt had wanted to be a naturalist when he entered college, but his taste for rough-rider-rugged fieldwork ran afoul of the laboratory-bound prejudices of biology faculty, and he became disillusioned with science as a career. After losing the election in 1912, he decided to go with his son and a famous Brazilian explorer on a trek to map one of the Amazon's possible tributaries. They got lost and he got sick and would have died if they hadn't been fortunately encountered by the relief party. Supposedly the Brazilian government re-named the river he explored (the Rio da Duvida or "River of Doubt") after Roosevelt, but I'm not sure of this.
Posted by: BT on July 15, 2005 03:58 PM