Under such circumstances it was not strange that James should interrupt his medical studies in order to join the expedition which Agassiz was preparing to lead to the Amazon.
No richer or more instructive experience could well have offered itself to him at twenty-three than this journey to Brazil seemed to promise. He was no sooner on the Amazon, however, than it became clear to him that he was not intended to be a field-naturalist; and he pictured the stages of this self-discovery in long, diary-like letters which he sent home to his family. On arriving at Rio he was forced to consider the question of his going on or coming home, by an illness that kept him quarantined for several uncomfortable weeks, and left him depressed and unable to use his eyes during several weeks more. Although he decided in favor of continuing with Agassiz, he revealed more and more clearly in his letters that he was seeing Brazil with the eye of an adventurer and lover of landscape rather than of a geologist or collector, and that the months spent in fishing and pickling specimens were to count most for him by teaching him what his vocation was not. He found that he was essentially indifferent to the classification of birds, beasts, and fishes, and that he was not made to deal with the riddle of the universe from the only angle of approach that was possible in Agassiz's company.
It would be a mistake, however, to let it appear that nine months of collecting with Louis Agassiz were nine months wasted. There are some men whom it is an education to work under, even though the affair in hand be foreign to one's ultimate concern. Agassiz was such an one, "recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense, one of those folio-copies of mankind, like Linnæus and Cuvier." Thirty years after, James could still say of him: "Since Benjamin Franklin we had never had among us a person of more popularly impressive type.... He was so commanding a presence, so curious and enquiring, so responsive and expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and his own, that everyone said immediately, Here is no musty savant, but a man, a great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and sin."[30]—"To see facts and not to argue or raisonniren was what life meant for Agassiz," and James, who was already incorrigibly interested in the causes, values and purposes of things, and whose education had been most unsystematic, profited by his corrective influence. "James," said Agassiz at this time, "some people perhaps consider you a bright young man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then, what they will say will be this: That James—oh, yes, I know him; he used to be a very bright young man!" Such "cold-water therapeutics" were gratefully accepted from one who was not only a teacher but a kind friend; and James remembered them, and recorded later that "the hours he spent with Agassiz so taught him the difference between all possible abstractionists and all livers in the light of the world's concrete fullness, that he was never able to forget it." Considering with what passionate fidelity his own abstractions always face the concrete, this is perhaps more of an acknowledgment than at first sight appears.
The Thayer Expedition set sail from New York April 1, 1865. The next letter was written from ship-board, still in New York Harbor. The "Professor" will be recognized as Louis Agassiz.
To his Mother.
[Mar. 30?], 1865.
...We have been detained 48 hours on this steamer in port on account of different accidents.... A dense fog is raging which will prevent our going outside as long as it lasts. Sapristi! c'est embêtant....
The Professor has just been expatiating over the map of South America and making projects as if he had Sherman's army at his disposal instead of the ten novices he really has. He may get some students at Rio to accompany the different parties, which will let them be more numerous. I'm sure I hope he will, on account of the language. If each of us has a Portuguese companion, he can do things twice as easily. The Prof. now sits opposite me with his face all aglow, holding forth to the Captain's wife about the imperfect education of the American people. He has talked uninterruptedly for a quarter of an hour at least. I know not how she reacts; I presume she feels somewhat flattered by the attention, however. This morning he made a characteristic speech to Mr. Billings, Mr. Watson's friend. Mr. B. had offered to lend him some books. Agassiz: "May I enter your state-room and take them when I shall want them, sir?" Billings, extending his arm said genially, "Sir, all that I have is yours!" To which, Agassiz, far from being overcome, replied, shaking a monitory finger at the foolishly generous wight, "Look out, sir, dat I take not your skin!" That expresses very well the man. Offering your services to Agassiz is as absurd as it would be for a South Carolinian to invite General Sherman's soldiers to partake of some refreshment when they called at his house....
At this moment Prof. passes behind me and says, "Now today I am going to show you a little what I will have you do." Hurray! I have not been able to get a word out of the old animal yet about my fate. I'm only sorry I can't tell you....