The Sea and the Jungle

Being the narrative of the voyage of the tramp steamer Capella from Swansea to Para in the Brazils, and thence 2000 miles along the forests of the Amazon and Madeira Rivers to the San Antonio Falls; afterwards returning to Barbados for orders, and going by way of Jamaica to Tampa in Florida, where she loaded for home. Done in the years 1909 and 1910. Considered a masterpiece of travel literature for nearly a century, The Sea and the Jungle is a wise and witty book of firsts: ostensibly a lighthearted story of a Londoner's first ocean voyage, it is also a carefully crafted journalistic account of the first successful ascent of the Amazon River and its tributary, the Madeira, by an English steamer. First published in 1912, The Sea and the Jungle remains one of the most popular accounts of a traveler's experience in Amazonia. As Peter Matthiessen observed fifty years later, "The Sea and the Jungle is one of the few level-headed works in the literature of this region. . . . accurate and difficult to improve upon."Henry Major Tomlinson (1873-1958) was a British writer and journalist. He was known for anti-war and travel writing, novels and short stories, especially of life at sea. He was born and died in London.Tomlinson was brought up in Poplar, London. He worked as a shipping clerk, and then as a reporter for the Morning Leader newspaper; he travelled up the Amazon River for it.In World War I he was an official correspondent for the British Army, in France. In 1917 he returned to work with H. W. Massingham on The Nation, which opposed the war. He left the paper in 1923, when Massingham resigned because of a change of owner and political line. His 1931 book Norman Douglas was one of the first biographies of that scandalous but then much admired writer. Read more