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Sir William Martin Conway, (1856 – 1937), was an English explorer, cartographer, and mountaineer who wrote of his explorations in Inca lands in his book "The Bolivian Andes; A Record of Climbing & Exploration". Conway's gifts both as explorer and as writer are familiar to all mountaineers and students of travel literature.The purpose of Sir Martin's book is, as set forth by him, "to give some description of the mountains and high plateaux of Bolivia, the least known of all South American countries, to the remainder of the civilized world." The famous mountain-climber, gives in this volume a record of his climbing and exploration in the Cordillera in the years 1898 and 1900. Apart from the new information furnished by the author concerning the unexplored heights of the Andes, this book gives many facts of commercial interest regarding the rubber industry, the gold mines of the region, and other industrial matters. It is a book to be depended upon for the freshest and most readable account of the little-known country which has come so late within the scope of this English explorer's efforts.Conway's book "The Bolivian Andes" was read by famed Inca explorer Hiram Bingham before he embarked on his exploration in the Andes. Of Conway, Bingham writes: "Accounts of climbs in the high Andes are full of failures due to the necessity of the explorers' being obliged to return to food, warmth, and shelter before having effected the conquest of a new peak. One remembers the frequent disappointments that came to such intrepid climbers as Whymper in Ecuador, Martin Conway in Bolivia." THE record of Sir Martin Conway's climbing and exploration in the Bolivian Andes commends itself to the general reader as well as the scientific geographer, for its sterling excellence. The book has a spirit, a soul, the reflex of the soul of a painstaking, scientific mountainclimber of fine enthusiasm. A hasty glance through the pages reveals no exclamation points and dashes to impress the reader with the awful thrill the explorer experiences as he hangs over an abyss or rolls over cliffs. But a calm perusal of the work shows beneath the careful planning and execution of mountain-climbing, a true appreciation of its difficulties and dangers.On Inca ruins Conway writes:"I found the famous Titicaca Island close at hand. We passed close along its western shore, and then through the narrow Tiquina strait that separates it from the peninsula of Copacabana. This island of Titicaca and its neighbor Coati, the islands of the Sun and of the Moon, are said to have been the original home of the Incas, as all who have read Prescott's Pizarro know. It was on Titicaca Island that Manco Capac (Mallcu Kcapa) and his wife Mama Oello Huaco (Marmi Ojllata) arose, the legendary founders of Inca civilization. The ruins of the great Inca buildings on these two islands were visible from the boat, and as I passed I promised myself to make a special pilgrimage to them."The natives of Bolivia are, in the author's view, ineradicably hostile to the white man. In the remote regions, recalling a run-in with locals, Conway writes;"At Umapusa, Maquignaz borrowed my gun and struck straight across the great swamp round the edge of which the mule-track passes. He shot a goose, and then made his way by the devious track, avoiding pools and quagmires, and ultimately issuing through a little village to the solid ground again. In the village he was attacked by furious dogs, and was driven to shoot one in self-defence, whereupon the Indians issued forth in great rage and threatened him with knives and stones...." Sir Martin! has an eye for many things besides the grandeur of a mountain and the result is a book which contains much that is of interest concerning the people, the history and the possibilities of Bolivia. What he cannot convey to the reader's mind by means of picturesque description, he succeeds in conveying with the aid
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- Title: The Bolivian Andes: A Record of Climbing & Exploration in the Cordillera Real in the Years 1898 and 1900 (1901)
- Author : Sir William Martin Conway
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- Genre: Kindle Store,Kindle eBooks,Travel
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