Book description
Eating Dirt in Venezuela
- Alexander von Humboldt Geographer, geologist,
naturalist, anthropologist, physician and philosopher, Baron von
Humboldt brought to exploration a greater range of enquiry than any
contemporary. Also an indomitable traveller, particularly in the
Orinoco/Amazon basin (1799-1804), he often invited danger but always
in the cause of scientific observation. The interest of his narratives
therefore lies primarily in the author's insatiable curiosity and in
the erudition that allowed him to generalize from his observations. A
classic example is his ever deadpan disquisition on earth-eating. It
occurs in the middle of a hair-raising account of descending the
Orinoco in Venezuela.
Iron Rations in Amazonia -
Henry Savage Landor Bar Antarctica, Everest and the Empty
Quarter, twentieth-century explorers have largely had to contrive
their challenges. Landor went one better and contrived the hazards.
From Japan, Korea, Central Asia, Tibet, and Africa he returned, always
alone, with ever more improbable claims and ever more extravagant
tales. The climax came in 1911 with Across Unknown South America, the
sort of book that gave exploration a bad name. His route, irrelevant
and seldom "unknown", nevertheless demanded superhuman
powers of endurance as when the expedition marched without food for
fifteen days.
The Discovery of Machu Picchu - Hiram Bingham Just when
it seemed as if all the "forbidden cities" had been entered
and the "lost civilisations" found, there occurred one of
the most sensational discoveries in the history of travel. Hiram
Bingham, the son of missionary parents in Hawaii, was a lecturer in
Latin American history at Yale and Berkeley who devoted his vocations
to retracing the routes of Spanish conquest and trade in Columbia and
Peru. He was drawn to the high Andes near Cuzco and to the awesome
gorges of the Urubamba River by rumours about the existence there of
the lost capital and last retreat of the Incas. Machu Picchu was
neither; but it richly rewarded his heroic endeavour in reaching it.
After excavation by Bingham in 1912 and 1915, it was revealed as the
best preserved of the Inca cities and South America's most impressive site.
