The Jungle and the Damned
SynopsisPlot
With his intrepid new wife, filmmaker Ruth Staudinger, Davis sets off on an improbable honeymoon, first to Devils Island, and then down an unexplored river in the interior of French Guiana. The result is a swashbuckling saga that deserves a place on any adventure bookshelf.
Story
About this book
Hassoldt Davis was an American adventurer and travel writer who lived from 1907 to 1959. In The Jungle and the Damned, he recounts a trip taken with his wife, filmmaker Ruth Staudinger, shortly after their marriage. The couple traveled first to Devil's Island, the notorious French penal colony off the coast of French Guiana, and then continued into the interior of the territory to follow a river that had seen little or no outside exploration.
French Guiana in the mid-twentieth century was still administered as an overseas territory of France, and Devil's Island had only recently closed as a prison. Davis describes the landscape, the people they encountered, and the practical difficulties of navigating a remote tropical river by small boat. Staudinger, who worked as a filmmaker, accompanied him throughout. The book sits within a tradition of husband-and-wife expedition writing that was common in that era, though few such journeys began at a former penal colony.
Davis published several travel books during his career, and Ernest Hemingway reportedly described his writing as fantastic and magnificent. The Jungle and the Damned focuses on a single expedition rather than a survey of a region, giving it a narrower and more immediate scope than some of his other work.
