THE RIVER OF THE MOTHER OF GOD 
By Aldo Leopold 
I an conscious of a considerable personal 
the continent of South America. 
It has given me, for instance, rubber for 
which have carried me to lonely places on the face o: 
Earth where all her ways are pleasantness, and all hi 
are peace. 
It has given me coffee, and to brow it, RiI 
ble campfire with the dawn-wind rustling in autumnal 
It has given me rare woods, pleasant fruiti 
 
medicinee, nitrates To maze my garden bloom, anU 1oouI aOu5 
strange beasts and ancient peoples.   I a not unmin    l of my 
obligation for these things. But more than all of these, it 
has given me The River of The Mother of God. 
The river has been in m mind so long that I cannot 
reallwhen or how I first heard of it. All that I rember 
is that long ago a Spanish Captain, wandering in some far Andean 
height, sent back word that he had found where a mighty river 
falls into the trackless Amazonian forest, and disappears. He 
had named it El Rio del Madre de Dios. The Spanish Captain never 
 
came back. Like the river, he disappeared. But ever 
maps of South America have shown a short heavy line ru 
eastward beyond the Andes, a river without beginning a