Green Hell - Adventures In The Mysterious Jungles Of Eastern Bolivia

Text extracted from opening pages of book: GREEN HELL Adventures in the Mysterious Jungles of Eastern Bolivia By JULIAN DUGUID With a Foreword by HIS EXCELLENCY MARQUES DE MERRY DEL VAL, G. C. V. O. Ambassador of Hts Majesty The KM& of Spam $ o tht Court of St. Jamts Illustrated from Photographs Taken by Members of the Expedition THE CENTURY CO. NEW YORK LONDON OPENING WORDS TO THE AUTHOR To WRITE well is one thing, to write vividly another. How many descriptive narratives do we read power fully designed and beautifully rounded off as in hard cold marble. They are useful but through their pages our interest flags. You in Green Hell have reached the unsurpassable. At once we are rushed into the midst of your surroundings, your experiences, your feelings phys ical and moral, your very thoughts. They do not rise like water-colors in distant beauty and perfection be fore us. They do not even pass in realistic views under our eyes as on the ribbon of a film. We simply live your life with you. We are blinded by the sun's glare, scorched by its rays, entranced by the glow of its set ting, cowed by the eerie, living, creeping silence of the forest, which in its fearful eloquence is no silence. We agonize under festering stings, the cracking drought of throat and lips, the misery of tropical rain. We exult in the cool relief of a vivifying pool. The soft treading Indians march with us threateningly on either side of the jungle-path. We actually hear their bullfrog war OPENING WORDS cry, we are eye-witnesses of their sudden emergence and disappearance. We trek with you over waste and moun tain, through thorny, clammy, intertwined woods, and gigantic swollen rivers. What is more admirable still wethink the daring thoughts and feel the strong emotions of your hearts. And as we leave you at the End, we turn about once more and doff our hats to the ground in mute homage and wonder, the highest praise! How you achieve this magical feat it is not for me to question. A foreigner may not presume to scrutinize English style. I am content to thank you and devoutly hope for more. TO THE READER THIS book has taken from the Queen of Cats an arresting quality. If you put your hand on it you cannot shake it off until at the finish you are cut off. It is as if the author had learnt the trick from the engaging creepers of the jungle. A book for men of all ages, the adventures it describes thrill and attract the more be cause true. You will enjoy every line. For me it possesses an added charm in its recognition of the heroism of two peculiarly Spanish products of Spain, the adelantados of the early colonial days and the Jesuit Missionaries, of the Chaco. Both were breeds of supermen. No other race has given the world such explorations nor the ideal reductions of the Guarani Indians. Because we know that among our arid mountains and our wind OPENING WORDS vii d VVV% JVtf* rfVV rfV rfV*/ Vtf* fW* tftfW** W swept plains the wood still grows from which those men were hewn, because we know that their blood flows from Rio Grande to the Horn, we in Spain have faith and hope in the future of the race. I am sorry to stumble in Mr. Duguid's entrancing pages on an account of Atahualpa's death notoriously concocted by Spain's untiring detractors. The reason was very different from that therein given. Modern research explains. Read its testimony. But also read this book. You will feel all the better for itand in your heart you will erect four more niches to virility of body and soul. MERRY DEL VAL London, 2jth, November, 1930 To My Companions In Adventure MAMERTO URRIOLAGOITIA J. C. BEE-MASON ALEJANDRO SIEMEL ( TIGER-MAN) with admiration and respect FOREWORD Two roads of almost equal peril lie open to the chroni cler of travel. He may describe with tedious detail each moment of his trip and quote long passages from his diary in support of his contentions. Or, artistically, he may select this incident and that, seeking to weld his experiences into a