Duguid

No doubt pronounced 'dugweed', a late Middle English corruption of 'duckweed'. Following my post of 20th October, I have now procured and read another South American book by Julian Duguid, 'Green Hell', which looks to have sold rather well in its time, that is to say around 1930.

Rather liking to poke around in my second hand books for interesting annotations, dried flowers, slips of paper, newspaper clippings and so on (some of my finds have been both surprising and entertaining), I find that this one was probably first bought by one B. G. Ealand in 1937, a gentleman (I assume a gent's handwriting and it is a gent's rather than a girl's book) of florid handwriting and who is named for a Lincolnshire village. Was he one of the Lords of the Manor or was he a bastard of same who took the name? Oddly for a book of this vintage, no bookseller marks, not even one of those little green jobs you often get at the bottom left of the right hand page illustrated, alternatively in a similar position at the back, telling you in very small gold print the name of the original bookseller.

I got this one from 'World of Rare Books' (http://www.worldofrarebooks.com/) who were introduced to me by Abebooks, a rather tired little hardback from Jonathan Cape which I had preferred to the paperback reprints on offer. For which I get a book which is easy to handle and easy on the eyes, neither of which is apt to be true of a new paperback (in which the printed page of the original is often reproduced photographically and smudgilly, rather than printilly). The sort of thing one might make into a rather handsome picture book now, with plenty of maps and pictures of steaming jungle. As it is, a decent atlas is a useful aid to comprehension.

An interesting tale of four men (one of them the 'Tiger-Man' of the other book) on a jungle journey in the jungle half of Bolivia in 1929 or so, the jungle half lying to the east and below the Andean half to the west. At the time a rather unpleasant place in which to travel. Sometimes unpleasantly hot, sometimes thirsty, sometimes wet and often eaten alive by various kinds of flying insect. Legs sometimes covered in rather unpleasant, possibly dangerous sores, in consequence.

First wonder was what exactly it is which propels small groups of men into such stunts, in much the same category as going to the South Pole or climbing up Mount Everest before the proper equipment and clothes had been invented. I have a fair number of books about such things, but at least I restrict myself to doing it by proxy from my armchair, rather than attempting the real thing.

Second wonder was (or perhaps it should be were) the feats of the Jesuit missionaries who attempted and in some part succeeded in taming this land back in the 17th and 18th centuries, before the King of Spain thought that they might be usurping his authority and recalled them. Part of their legacy being large cathedrals, with bells imported at vast expense from the motherland, in the most unlikely places. In 1929 at least, the service at these cathedrals was often a little unorthodox, somewhat tainted by just the sort of pagan rites that the Jesuits had sought to displace.

PS: there was a Hollywood film made all about this back in 1946, but Amazon for once in a while, fails me.