October 1929, at the age of 59, amateur botanist Ynés Mexía set sail on a streamer from San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro, on an adventurous expedition to collect and catalogue rare plant species throughout South America.

From Rio, she ventured north. Then deeper and deeper into the Amazon rainforest, where she fell in love with its many wonders.

In Her Own Words...

Beautiful as is the forest scene from the river, it is repelling to enter. The canopy is so dense that it cuts off all sunlight, prohibiting undergrowth.

There are no trails; it is dark and dank, with crowding tree trunks, tangling lianas, rotting logs everywhere, and oozy, treacherous soil.

No flowers are to be seen; such trees as are in bloom keep their color and fragrance for the forest roof, where the real life of the forest displays itself.

Again the boat stops, the men drop into a canoe, paddle to a cove, casually cast a net, and back they come with the dugout piled high with gleaming, silvery fish, which we find very good eating at dinner time.

Like the exuberant growth above ground, the cafe-au-lait waters of the Amazon are seething with the life hidden in its opaque depths; but of this we catch the merest glimpse.

Most conspicuous of the water dwellers are the Bôto Preto and the Bôto Vermelho, the black and red porpoises, known only in this great freshwater system. They leap and play as do their cousins of the saltwater.