Master of the Eye

THE GOLD OF THE RIVER SEA by Char/fon Ogburn Jr. 534 pages. Morrow. $6.95.

The Brazilians sometimes call it "the River Sea," and in fact the Amazon is like an inland sea. It holds nearly one-fifth of all the fresh water in the world. In places it is so wide that a steamer sailing up the middle cannot keep both banks in sight. Even 800 miles inland, dolphins arch through its surface and cormorants skim its waves. For Author Ogburn, the River Sea is both setting and protagonist for a rousing, sprawling, splendidly old-fashioned story of high adventure and romantic idealism.

The Quest. It is the slack time of the 1930s, and Julian Tate is a young man in need of a quest. He finds it on the day he is offered a job working in Brazil for a man named Joao Monteiro, who is trying to interest Wall Street capital in a mining concession on the Massaranduba River, a major tributary far up the Amazon. There is gold in the Massaranduba valley, and rumors of diamonds and emeralds as well. But what fires Jul ian is the chance to explore the tropic frontier, to prospect and map the river and rain forest, to test himself against extreme physical hardships while at the same time proving himself in the heady world of international finance.

Aboard the freighter out of New York, Julian meets Cora Almeida. Slim, blonde, cool, casual, and effortlessly provocative, she is the American wife of the Brazilian politician who is the archenemy of Monteiro and the Massaranduba Concession. By the time Julian steps off the boat in the port city of Belem, he is enthralled. He is also neck-deep in Brazilian intrigue, for the Concession is not only a business deal but the political lever by which Monteiro and his party hope to gain control of the state government.

An Overmastering Lust. Yet Julian's real mistress is the great river. As soon as he can shove politics aside, he presses on to the Concession territory itself; this voyage of discovery, upriver for more than a thousand miles by steamship and motor launch, is the central theme of the book. Cora Almeida is put aboard by her husband to seduce Julian away from his loyalty to the Concession. The temptation is painful; in bracing contrast to most fiction today, it is overmastered by youthful lust for adventure and exploration.

He goes on, but his passion for exploration erodes into dementia: an obsession with prospecting for gold. The fever of malaria, and a wound from a poisoned arrow in an Indian attack incited by the enemies of the Concession, finally fell Julian in the wilderness and begin the process by which he regains his perspective and makes his way downriver again. But before he turns back, he does achieve a final, almost unbearably poignant understanding of the vision of unspoiled beauty and goodness that has whipped him on. Color & Light. Through it all runs the Amazon. The reader comes to know it, from the shallow forest streams where gold grains sparkle, all the way down to the point a hundred miles offshore where the water is still tan with silt and fresh enough to drink. Author Ogburn is a man who can see, and make the reader see. He is a spectacular colorist of light and air and foliage. His perceptions can be quick as an epigram. He is also master of a sweeping, supple, symphonic style that can keep the reader fascinated through a three-page passage about the junction of two rivers, or a seven-page description of the coming of a thunderstorm to an equatorial town. "There are times when one experiences a hunger of the consciousness," he observes, and he has prepared a rich and leisurely feast for such hungers.

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