Explorers in the New WorldChristopher ColumbusPedro CabralPortuguese ExplorationVicente Yß±ez Pinz≤nAmerigo VespucciOther European ExplorersThe Conquistadors
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Madame Godin des OdonnaisIn 1767 Madame Godin des Odonnais, a French society woman, left Peru to join her husband in Cayenne, French Guiana. She started down the Amazon with a group of people – but was to be the expedition's only survivor. Madam Isabela Godin was a Peruvian noblewoman, married to Frenchman Jean Godin des Odonnais. Jean Godin had been part of La Condamine's expedition which had been sent to Quito in 1735 to determine the circumference of the earth at the equator. After having spent many years living in Quito, the Jean Godin decided that it was time to travel back to France, taking his Peruvian wife with him. Because Isabela was pregnant at the time (and was not in a good condition to travel), Jean Godin decided that it would be best if he first made the trip down the Amazon alone to make arrangements and prepare accommodations for Isabela and their children, then returned to make the trip with them. He set out from Riobamba, near Quito, in March 1749 – arriving in Cayenne, French Guiana, in April 1750. However, once he reached Cayenne, Jean Godin could not get permission from the Spanish and Portuguese authorities to return to Quito to fetch his wife. There was a long period during which he unsuccessfully tried to convince the authorities to grant permission, also using influential contacts in the French government to put pressure on the Spanish and Portuguese authorities. At that time the Spanish and Portuguese were not in the habit of letting foreigners travel through their territories in the Americas – Godin had originally been granted a special exemption because he was part of a very special scientific expedition, but now that expedition was over and his time had run out. Years passed, and Godin grew increasingly frustrated. In 1763, out of frustration, he even wrote a letter to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs encouraging France to invade Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas to claim the vast (and potentially very rich) territories of the Amazon – and also to make up for recent French losses of territory in North America and India. Godin received no reply from this letter and was terrified that it may have fallen into the Portuguese hands – meaning that he may never be granted entry to the territory. Suddenly, at the end of 1765 – fifteen years after he had arrived in Cayenne – Godin's luck changed. A Portuguese galley (a ship powered by oarsmen) arrived, with orders from the King of Portugal to pick up Godin, take him to his wife, and to return them both to Cayenne. But unfortunately, Godin's fear that the Portuguese had somehow intercepted his letter to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs overwhelmed him – he suspected that the sudden appearance of the ship was an elaborate trap to capture him. He pretended to be ill, while the Portuguese ship remained in the harbour waiting for him for almost a year. Meanwhile, the French authorities did not like the idea of a Portuguese ship waiting endlessly in their harbour and lost their patience. They ordered the ship to leave – with or without Godin. In his place, Godin agreed to send a friend who he provided with money and letters to help him fetch his wife. The ship left the harbour, and began the eight month voyage up the Amazon. However, somewhere along the way, Godin's friend absconded with all the money, and the ship reached its destination with no one to fetch Isabela. Instead, once the ship arrived its men had to wait again – this time for three more years! With no one to tell her of the ship's arrival, Isabela found out about it through rumours that were circulating around the country. She sent a servant off to investigate, but it was two years before he finally returned with confirmation of the rumour. It was 1769, and Isabela had now been separated from her husband for twenty years! With confirmation that there was a ship waiting for her, Isabela prepared herself for the journey. Unfortunately, none of the Godin's children had survived the years – the youngest, aged nineteen had recently died of malaria, so Isabela was the only one to make the trip. The journey to meet the waiting ship was a difficult one. It involved crossing the Andes, then a long dangerous journey trekking and riding canoes through dangerous tropical jungle. However, Isabela, together with her two brothers, her young nephew, four servants, thirty-one Indians, and a trio of French travellers set out for Lagunas where the ship was waiting. Isabela's father had also set out on the journey several months before Isabela to make sure that accommodation and other arrangements could be prepared in advance for her. The initial journey through the mountainous forests was difficult, but despite all the mud and other difficulties it went relatively smoothly. At the Indian village of Canelos, where the canoe voyage to Lagunas was supposed to start, the travellers found that the village had been decimated by an swift and virulent epidemic of smallpox. As a result, the village was now deserted with its inhabitants having either died or fled into the forest to escape the disease. Only one canoe and a raft remained, and there were no local Indians available (or willing) to act as guides. The canoe and raft were loaded with the remaining supplies and the expedition (reduced to just Isabela, her family and servants, and the three Frenchmen) set out upon the river. Unfortunately, the river journey was a disaster – one of the Frenchmen fell out of the canoe and drowned after being hit on the head by a floating log. The raft was also lost, and the canoe was capsized throwing the expedition members into the river. Fortunately, one of Isabela's servants managed to recover the canoe and dragged it up onto the riverbank. With the trials of the river journey, the travellers decided that it would be easier to send the canoe, with one of the Frenchmen and one of Isabela's servants, on the four day journey downstream and to return with help. Meanwhile, Isabela and the other expedition members would wait on the riverbank for the help to come. After building a shelter and making sure that sufficient supplies had been recovered for the wait (which should only have taken a few days), the Frenchman and Isabela's servant set out downriver in the canoe. The remainder of the expedition waited as promised – but help did not come. Things got much worse – the forest was not a good place to wait. The supplies eventually ran out and starvation became a threat. Disease (probably malaria) struck down many of the expedition's remaining members, and some even woke up in the night to discover vampire bats feasting by sucking blood from their feet. To make matters worse, one of the remaining Frenchman attacked one of Isabela's three female servants. Isabela tried to care for the sick, but one by one the expedition members died – misery which was compounded by the fact that no one had the strength to bury those that had died. Eventually Isabela was the only person left – everyone else had died, with the exception of one of the servants who had wander off into the forest never to be seen again. Heartbroken, miserable, and delirious, Isabela also staggered off into the forest, forsaking the sad little encampment, but no longer knowing where she was going. When Isabela's servant finally did return, a month after setting out in the canoe, he found the camp full of bodies and with no survivors. The return trip had taken much longer then expected because the Frenchman that he set out with had no real intention of looking for help, and merely continued on the journey. As such, the servant had to escape from the Frenchman then try convincing the Fathers at a local mission to provide him with a canoe, men, and supplies to return. News of the deserted encampment soon reached Isabela's father who had been waiting for her, and who devastated at the news of the death of his two sons, grand-nephew, and the supposed death of his daughter. The news eventually even reached Jean Godin who remained waiting in Cayenne. Meanwhile, Isabela remained wandering through the forest. She walked for nine days, not really knowing where she was going or what she was doing. On the ninth day she encountered two Indians in the forest – who took her to their homes, offering her food and shelter, and helping her to recover. They took her to the Mission station downriver. In gratitude, Isabela took two small gold chains that she was wearing and presented them to the Indians – but the cruel priests confiscated the chains from the Indians, substituting them with some worthless cotton cloth. Angry at this action, Isabela left the Mission immediately, in an Indian canoe heading further downstream to another mission station. Seeing that Isabela's clothes had been torn to shreds and that she was almost naked, an Indian woman took pity and gave her some cloth to wear. With the worst part of ordeal now over, Isabela was soon reunited with her father and delivered to the waiting ship in Lagunas. The ship travelled downstream, and Isabela was finally reunited with her waiting husband in Cayenne in mid-1770. The Godins remained in Cayenne for several years before returning to France, along with Isabela's father, in 1773. By now the story of the Godin's long separation, and Isabela's extraordinary ordeal were well-known throughout France – making them very famous. They settled on the family estate which Jean had inherited in Saint-Amand Montrond, 150 miles south of Paris, where the couple lived comfortably and worked for many years. Jean and Isabela both died in 1792.
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