Amazonia 1907: Outside the Circle of Civilization

The true story of two young men with one ambition: “to descend the Amazon from its beginning.” It was a feat that no one before them had claimed.

After six years of prospecting for gold in South Africa, 31-year-old Lee Williams sails to South America in pursuit of adventure. A long horseback trek across the highlands of Argentina brings him to La Paz, Bolivia, where he meets James Orton, an Englishman and, like himself, “an experienced victim of the wanderlust.”

Their expedition begins without fanfare high in the mountains of southern Perú. Day after day, as they follow the Urubamba River into the depths of endless rain forest, the trappings of civilization vanish behind them. Along that river, they will dine with plantation owners and, weeks later, beg an Indian woman for a bite of food. They will build a raft and drift peacefully one day, then cling to it for life the next. They will encounter the savagery of rubber barons and slave traders, but also the humanity of the people they call “savages.”

As they near their journey's end, they will imagine the acclaim that awaits them. But their story will take a tragic turn and have a far different ending.

Lee English Williams described himself as a “man to whom change is mistress and chance counselor.” Born in rural Alabama in 1875, he set off to wander the world at age eighteen. This account of his journey through the Amazon basin was the adventure of a lifetime, serialized in a New Orleans newspaper in 1911―and forgotten until now.