A Tour Through South America

CARTAGENA

WITH 145 ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
LONDON: STANLEY PAUL & CO. 31 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
First published in 1913 THIS BOOK IS BY KIND PERMISSION DEDICATED TO SIR OWEN PHILIPPS, K.C.M.G. TO WHOSE NAME NO TRAVELLER TO SOUTH AMERICA NEEDS INTRODUCTION THE AUTHOR FEELS THAT THIS SLIGHT TRIBUTE IS DUE TO ONE WHO HAS DONE AND IS STILL DOING MUCH TO LINK UP THE OLD WORLD WITH THE VAST TERRITORIES DEALT WITH IN THE ENSUING PAGES

THE artist or the writer who visits South America to-day finds it as a diamond of a hundred facets, and his main difficulty is to select those points upon which to concentrate his gaze. So vast is the subject, so full of romance, glamour, pulsating life, and world possibilities that not one book but many must be written upon it before the reader can form the barest idea of the well-nigh illimitable nature of the theme. Hence an author who offers any contribution to so vast a study has no need to excuse himself for his apparent temerity, provided he sets on record some new point of view or chronicles his impressions of paths not too well known.
Even if he fails in either or both these aims his work is justified if it contains individual conceptions of the myriad wonders which the continent discloses to the seeing eye. For this far-reaching stretch of earth is the last to be really explored and civilised by Western man. Compared with many portions of it, the forests of Central Africa, the plateaus of Middle Asia, and the deserts of Australia, are as open books. It is only South America to-day, or, to be more correct, a great part of it that is “a field enclosed, a fountain sealed.”
Consequently any contribution which aims at familiarising stay-at-home folk with the marvellous cities, the impressive scenery, the rich products, and the limitless resources of this mighty territory has surely a title to consideration.