ca Land
I
. By Christopher Sandeman (Phoenix A Wanderer in House. 45,.)
Inca La
UNrra, the arrival of the c quistadores writing was unknown to the people of Peru. No comaporary written records exist, and even the early chr4clers such s Garcilasso de la_ Vegawere dependent for their information on ere oral tradition. The history of Inca civilisation has therefore -t be put together laboriously by archaeo- logists. Hence:he import ce of the discovery of the jungle-covered fortress of Macau Picch by Hiram Bingham in r911—an event which was cotrmemorate in October, 1948, when the explorer (now an active man of eventy-two) himself opened the Hiram Bingham Highwhy, which lin future will make it possible for tourists to reach that reinee Andean city in reasonable comfort. Impressive photographs of Ilachu -Ivcchu are the centre and climax of Mr. Christopher Sandman's album. Like all his other photographs, they are accompanied by fluent, interesting paragraphs, and also by quotations from petry that is quite unconnected with the -subject. To the four shots A Machu Picchu the travelling botanist has fitted verses by Lamartne, Frances Cornford, Byron and Victor d'Auriac. A few words fro-a Bingham—or even from a later visitor such as Paul Morand—would have been a happier choice.
A Wanderer in Inca Land is not a book to read at a sitting but to—there is no eqiivalent in English for the French verb feuilleter. It would be a sueptuou Christmas gift. But it is more than that, for it contains the hear• of Peru. Anyone who knows Peru, or Bolivia, or the nor.pern gions of Chile, and who turns these pages, will desperately Will to off to those high-perched tropical valleys, that crystalline aft. thos "wild retreats among stupendous rocks" —and the flowers. The uthor has brought home some rare Andean
plants which may be in the herbaria of Kew Gardens and Oxford University , but ey are even more spectacular when photo- graphed in their own biente. •
Mr. Sandeman's text if we ignore the unfortunate facility for inappropriate quoation provides an admirable running com- mentary. It is easily rem' and is packed with miscellaneous informa- tion concerning the peopl , their customs, their history, their country and its flora. For examp , an effective photograph of the Amazonian jungle—a difficult abj for the photographer7-is accompanied by comment of this d:
" At the riv m in the press of plant life forms an impene-
trable wall of g:een, 'th roots protruding .from banks of oozing mud ready to crumb]. t flood-time when the rise -of the river tears great gaps in the for s face, in a few months' time to close again as though they bad n r been... .
" The great river its tributaries are the only means of travel through the primeval orest ; a thousand yards or less from these flowing roads are the ayfarer is hopelessly lost in the overwhelm- ing exuberance ..of tr al plant life, a land of grey7green twilight, where no landmark, nc orizon, often not a glimpse of the sky enables
him to guess at his tion.' •
Except in its axon passages, the book—like Peri' itself—h pervaded by the sta..) of the Incas. Peril is indeed haunted by that powerful and ecret re caste upon which Spain grafted another race—just as upo the nassive masonry of Cuzco she erected her own loyely, but f gile, ureles. Silent, frugal and inscrutable, the Indian of In heri e is ever-present in the heights and the valleys. While th S h churches crumble and need constant repair, their Inca bun ions remain as secure and final as the
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