Shoumatoff observes that "Reading Bates is an emotional experience for someone who has travelled in Amazonia, because much of what he describes so poignantly is no longer there"; that the "charm and the genius" of the book is that Bates covers both natural history and everything else that is going on — as the subtitle so accurately says, "A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature Under the Equator, During Eleven Years of Travel."