Spirits Full of Animals: The Fauna in Louis Agassiz and Richard Francis Burton Trips to Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Abstract

Nineteenth-century Brazil was the target of numerous travels made by foreign scientists. The purpose of this article is to analyze the impressions made by the Brazilian fauna, as expressed in the travel narratives written by the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz, in 1865, and by the English explorer Richard Francis Burton, in 1868. Those narratives prioritize the descriptions of the natural environment in different Brazilian regions and the characteristics of the wildlife that they found.

foreign travelers; wildlife; Brazil; natural history.