Richard Schultes: The immensity of the forest. I knew from books that the Amazon was rich in a number of species, but I never expected to see such a tangle of different roots, vines, lianas going up to the tops of 100-foot trees. And it is breathtaking. And it first took me maybe six months or a year to get used to this. What shall I collect, with all of these plants? Of course you wanted to collect everything! I had done some work in southern Mexico, but up in the highlands of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, which has a wonderful flora, but extremely limited in comparison with the wet lowland tropics of the Amazon. And with many plants that we have up here, like oaks and pines. I really didn’t feel that much out of New England in Oaxaca when I could see a white pine, but in the Amazon everything was different. That’s probably the first impression that I got. The second was of course to find these Indians so helpful, because I had read some of these books about how treacherous they were, and how dangerous it was for your life. I don’t believe in censorship, but I believe that some of our publishing houses should send manuscripts to people who have been in the Amazon before they publish some of the books.