Following the trails of the early Spanish discoverers, Richard Halliburton tells of his adventures in the glamourous lands to the South.

San Salvador, the island where Columbus first landed, he rediscovered by airplane.

The trail of Cortez's conquest of Mexico he followed on foot, climbing twice, to Popocatepetl's lofty crater.

In Yucatan, land of the ancient Mayas, he found the famous Well of Death where human sacrifices were thrown to the Rain God, and from which a hundred skeletons of men and girls have been dredged. To challenge the grim tradition of the pit he dived from the sacrificial altar into the dark waters seventy feet below.

And then to satisfy the doubters, he did it again.

Bound for Nicaragua, a lucky chance landed him on the magic island of Cozumel, where the corals grow in exotic gardens beneath a turquoise sea that is a swimmer's dream of paradise.

His fifty-mile Panama Canal swim was an adventure that attracted wide newspaper notice, since for the first time in the history of the Canal the great locks were opened to lift and lower a single individual.

He found and climbed the peak in Darien from which Balboa first stared at the Pacific.

In Peru, the land of the Incas, he searched out the hidden mountain city of Manchu Picchu to which the hundred sacred Sun Virgins escaped from Pizarro and his men.

Crossing the Andes to Argentina and Brazil, he and a most engaging monkey earned their way for two thousand miles through the heart of South America with a hurdy-gurdy.

Then he flew to French Guiana to see for himself the horrors of the Devil's Island prison colony. There he came to know many of the tragic castaways, heard their stories, and, putting on the prison uniform, lived as they lived.

Finally he went to Robinson Crusoe's island, found himself a cave, a suit of goat's skin, a beard, a cat, a parrot and a man Toosday, and reenacted Crusoe's story.

Here indeed, is a knapsack full of the true adventurer's gold,—dreams brought to reality by the alchemy of courage and daring. Mr. Halliburton writes with poetic appreciation, a strong feeling for the dramatic, and a sense of humor that never fails. The qualities that have made his earlier books number their readers by the hundreds of thousands are all here, plus a more mature understanding of the life he sees and the adventures that come his way.

From the dust jacket