EAST TO THE AMAZON

A bit of late-high-imperial adventure deep in the wilds of South America, from two English explorers.

Blashford-Snell, our narrator and man in charge, launched the expedition (Snailham participated in its final leg) in May 2001 with two objectives. The first was to determine if a reed boat could navigate its way from the Bolivian coca region to the Atlantic, thus making some sense out of why cocaine was found in the ancient, mummified body of an Egyptian princess. The second was to follow the lure of a lost Incan city, Paititi—“South America has a good tally of such lost cities,” remarks Blashford-Snell in a comment typical of his prose style, which feels like it has been torn from a Victorian adventure story. “ ‘I've been thinking,’ he said when we met him,” begins one characteristic passage. “This was ominous. Oswaldo, often inscrutable and enigmatic, had a penchant for dramatic throwaway observations.” The ensuing capers are strewn with equally appropriate characters: Leopold d'Arenberg, “a prince of the Holy Roman Empire”; Marigold Verity-Dick, a harpist whose “sweet evening recitals had soothed many a savage breast”; and the sinister Austrian Sigfried Trippolt, whose rotten behavior prompts Blashford-Snell to crow, “a highly satisfactory instance of local obstructionism taking on British determination and coming off a poor second.” The expedition didn’t prove anything per se, but the explorers did unearth some important archaeological sites, the medical team performed lots of good works, and some of the conservation studies may bear critical fruit. But it is the swash and buckle of it all that really matters here: tackling a monstrous, murderous set of rapids head on with a reed boat and getting beaten like a gong, keeping an eye skinned for vipers and giant fire ants, or besting the Nazis yet again.

Blashford-Snell may have come up short on scientific results, but not even a mad dog would challenge him to a sitting contest in the noonday sun. (25 color photos)