G. Whitfield Ray

Many places come to mind when one thinks of the dangerous and unexplored places of the nineteenth century world. Africa and Tibet, for example, both challenged brave explorers in that previous age. Yet one continent, though often overlooked, offered all the adventure a daredevil could want. South America was still politically unstable and geographically challenging. It was exactly for these reasons that George Whitfield Ray came sailing into Buenos Aires in 1889. A Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, Ray was a part-time missionary and full-time adventure junky. Within a short time he had managed to acquire a job as Official Explorer for the Bolivian Government . Shortly thereafter he began a series of explorations and misadventures which still make for hair-raising reading. Ray s account of his South American travels, Through Five Republics on Horseback, was gathered from his years spent exploring the untouched interior, visiting unknown tribes, and making careful observations of native life in a host of countries. Yet it was his equestrian adventures that made Ray justly famous. On his most noted horse trip into the interior, the equestrian explorer set out to find a lost tribe of sun-worshipping natives who resided in the unexplored forests of Paraguay. The journey was so brutal that it defies belief. The horses were repeatedly attacked by vampire bats, thousands of which lived in nearby jungle caves. Then Ray and his horses were reduced to sucking dew off leaves to survive. By the time he discovered the tribe, Ray s clothes were in rags, held together by horse hair thread. The intrepid American did eventually ride back to civilization, but not without paying a price for his boldness. He lost two toes to blood-sucking insects whose bites also caused much of the flesh on his feet to rot off. Long considered a classic of equestrian travel, Through Five Republics on Horseback is amply illustrated with classic photographs, as well as drawings that Ray made during the course of his remarkable adventures.

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