Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few obvious misprints have been corrected, but in general the originally erratic spelling, punctuation and typesetting conventions have been retained. Accents in foreign language poetry and phrases are inconsistent in the original, and have not been standardized.
CONTENTS.
EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed. SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

A clever book of travels, over ground comparatively untrodden, is in these days a welcome rarity. No dearth is there of vapid narratives by deluded persons, who, having leisure to travel, think they must also have wit to write: with these we have long been surfeited, and heartily grateful do we feel to the man who strikes out a new track, follows it observantly, and gives to the world, in pleasant and instructive form, the result of his observations. Such a traveller we have had the good fortune to meet with, and now present to our readers.
We take it that no portion of the globe's surface, of equal extent, and comprising an equal number of civilized, or at least semi-civilized, states, is less known to the mass of Europeans than the continent of South America. Too distant and dangerous for the silken tourist, to whom steam-boats and dressing-cases are indispensable, it does not possess, in a political point of view, that kind of importance which might induce governments to stimulate its exploration. As a nest of mushroom republics, continually fighting with each other and revolutionizing themselves—a land where throat-cutting is a popular pastime, and earthquakes, fevers more or less yellow, and vermin rather more than less venomous, are amongst the indigenous comforts of the soil—it is notorious, and has been pretty generally avoided. Braving these dangers and disagreeables, a German of high reputation as a naturalist and man of letters, has devoted four years of a life valuable to science to a residence and travels in the most interesting district of South America; the ancient empire of the Incas, the scene of the conquests and cruelties of Francisco Pizarro.