gems, jade, Fischer, South America, Guiana

An account of Robert Hermann Schomburgk’s explorations of British Guiana and the Orinoco region between 1835 and 1839, describing the geography, rivers, mountains, natural history, Indigenous peoples, customs, settlements, and resources encountered during his journeys. The work records extensive travel through the interior of the Guianas and neighboring Venezuela, with observations on geology, minerals, plants, animals, and regional trade, and constitutes an important early nineteenth-century description of the largely unexplored interior of northeastern South America.