The Amazon can drive you mad. In Werner Herzog’s cult movie Aguirre: Wrath of God, Klaus Kinski affected a crazed stare that bordered on self-caricature. But the real-life explorer he portrayed was a first-class, unquestionable, copper-bottomed maniac, who systematically murdered his companions, as they drifted downriver in torrid, febrile paranoia in 1560. He recast himself as both pope and king, and, when he at last emerged from the rivermouth, launched an ill-starred attempt to conquer the Spanish empire. His was an extreme case, but the strange, overpowering environment is unnerving to outsiders even to this day.
The first Spanish explorers who navigated the river in 1540-2 showed some of the symptoms. They imagined (or perhaps just wildly exaggerated) the presence of Amazon warriors whose legend gave the region its modern name. Most readers of their accounts have dismissed as comparable fantasies their descriptions of populous cities lining the riverbanks.
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