IN SOUTHERN LIGHT Trekking Through Zaire and the Amazon<i> By Alex Shoumatoff (Vintage: $9.95) </i>

Two short, unrelated travelogues by the author of “African Madness.” “In the Realm of the Amazons” takes Alex Shoumatoff to the banks of the Trombetas River in northeastern Brazil, to seek the source of the legends of female warriors that the early European explorers reported (which gave the Amazon its name) and the origin of the muiraquitas , jadelike amulets often associated with these tales. Shoumatoff finds numerous amulets and fragments of pottery, but no evidence of the Amazons: The legends appear to have been nothing more than stories the Spanish and Portuguese brought with them.

“Across Zaire” offers a depressing portrait of the corruption and mismanagement that have reduced a potentially wealthy country to poverty and administrative near-chaos. Shoumatoff wanders through the northeastern jungles, near the borders of Sudan and Uganda, observing the local flora, fauna and peoples, including the Efe Pygmies. He writes knowledgeably and well about what he sees, especially the brilliantly colored jungle butterflies, but he never quite fulfills his stated objective: to explain the wanderlust that caused a woman to ask him, “Why do you keep going to these awful places?”