This is a ripping yarn, purportedly a factual account of exploration in the Amazon rain forest, beset by savage tribes and all manner of dangerous fauna. The writing is engagingly descriptive and very detailed, the narrative well paced, the settings and characters clearly delineated. However, as some things are clearly not factually correct, one is left with the awful feeling - how much of this is actually true and how much is fiction? I do not dispute that Leonard Clark was a fearless, resourceful individual, but some of his story does not ring true. Inez Pokorny who shared some of his travels was a 'escritora', a writer according to a Brazil visa application, a photographer by other accounts but left no discernible writings, despite living a full life. The notion (according to Clark) that she represented The Gold Bearing Society of El Dorado, with offices in London and Lima, capitalised at $175,000 is an absurd invention. Thus, still an enjoyable book but, due to these doubts, downgraded by one star by this reviewer! ( )

Leonard Clark decides to gamble. He takes the small amount of money he has and goes to South America, to find away down the eastern side of the Andes to the Amazon river where he has a questionable old map he hopes will lead him to the forgotten seven cities of gold and El Dorado. His cover story is research on native people's medicines. With two companions, Jorge and Inez, intermittently at his side, he talks his way out of one scrape after another, escaping from angry headhunting natives, meeting with isolated missionaries, and slavers. He manages not to be killed by crocodiles, snakes, jaguars, or any of the million stinging and biting insects. He doesn't drown or starve or get malaria. By the end of the book, whether he finds the gold or not, one hardly cares. ( )