Abstract
A “THREE-MONTHS Odyssey” is told in diary form, a thousand miles circular tour through northern Peru, starting from Lima, following old trails better known in the seventeenth century than to-day. The Andean divide crossed at 16,000 ft., the Huallaga River was reached where it becomes navigable by rafts and canoes at 2,640 ft. above the sea. Four hundred miles here were practically forgotten; the last navigators were Smyth and Lowe in 1834, and Herndon in 1850. A raft was built of the light balsa (? chroma) wood simply by lashing long poles together by lianes, the whole rather irregular and loose so as to give to the frequent collisions with banks and fallen trees as well as the strandings in shallow water.
A Forgotten River
A Book of Peruvian Travel and Botanical Notes. By Christopher Sandeman. Pp. xii + 300 + 15 plates. (London: Oxford University Press, 1939.) 12s. 6d. net.
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A Forgotten River. Nature 145, 685–686 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145685a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145685a0
