Sebastian Snow

Sebastian Edward Farquharson Snow, (January 21, 1929 – April 20, 2001), born in Midhurst, Sussex, was an eccentric English adventurer who became the first person to travel the length of the Amazon River.

Educated at Eton, Snow was exempted from the National Service on account of a sports injury and began his travels at age 22.

This was in 1951, when Snow went on his first expedition to South America, after having answered an advertisement in The Times to join a hydrological survey of the sourcewaters of the Amazon. With John Brown, he was eventually able to prove that the Ninococha ("Child Lake"), a glacier lake, flowed into the Marañón, the Amazon's most voluminous tributary. This was not groundbreaking news, however, since the Ninococha's being the ultimate source of the Amazon was something that previous French explorers to the region had posited on good evidence. Thus, Snow and Brown merely confirmed empirically what was already widely believed by geographers. Nevertheless, this expedition remained Snow's chief claim to fame during his lifetime.

Beginning in 1973 in the Argentinian city of Ushuaia, Snow set out to walk the length of the Americas, from Patagonia to Alaska along the Pan-American Highway, a distance of approximately 15,000 miles. His travel companion during the grueling and dangerous traversal of the Darien Gap was a young Canadian, Wade Davis, later to become famous in his own right as an ethnobotanist and author. Severe health problems forced him to take a hiatus shortly after crossing the Darien Gap, but a few months later Snow resumed his journey from the precise point at which it had been interrupted, in Costa Rica. However, Snow never completed this second half of his journey, giving up only a few weeks after having started.

Snow's other adventures included motorcycling through Lapland, traveling on foot through much of the Middle East, and climbing Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, and Sangay.

Travel Books

• My Amazon Adventure, describes his 1952-3 exploration of the Amazon Basin. John Brown's account of the same trip was called Two Against the Amazon, published by Hodder & Staughton in 1952.
• The Rucksack Man, describes his walk from Patagonia to Costa Rica.
• Half a Dozen of the Other, describes six of his other South American expeditions.