With Durrell for interpreter, an orange armadillo, or a horned toad, or a crab-eating raccoon, or a baby giant anteater suddenly discovers the ability not merely to set you laughing but actually to endear itself to you.ContentsExplanationSaludos1. Oven-birds and burrowing owls2. Eggbert and the Terrible TwinsInterlude3. Fields of flying flowers4. The orange armadillos5. Bevy of bichos6. Fawns, frogs, and fer-de-lance7. Terrible toads and a bushel of birds8. The four-eyed bird and the anaconda9. Sarah Huggersack10. Rattlesnakes and revolutionInterlude11. The Rhea HuntAdios!Acknowledgements

    The four-masted barque Moshulu ended up as a dockside restaurant in Philadelphia; the young apprentice went on to become one of the greatest travel writers of this century. The Last Grain Race is Eric Newby's spell-binding account of his time spent on the Moshulu's last voyage in the Australian grain trade.As always, Eric Newby's sharp eye for detail captures the hardships, danger, squabbles, companionship and sheer joy of shipboard life - bedbugs, ferocious storms, eccentric Finnish crew and all. By pure chance, Eric witnessed the passing of the era of sail, and his tale is all the more significant for being the last of its kind.

    An account of the authors own adventures traveling to Greece, Islands in the Aegean and to Yugoslavia. Contains many illustrations by Mircea Vasiliu.

    "...a wicked, witty and utterly devastating account of the journey to Leningrad of 94 Americans and two dogs, all connected with the widely heralded production of PORGY AND BESS." - Sterling North

    Marshall traveled this spectacular country, from the Upper Koyukuk drainage to the Arctic Divide, making maps, recording scientific data, and exalting in the beauty of that incredibly pristine landscape. Although his early death at thirty-eight ended an exceptional life too early, he left journals and letters to describe his favorite place on earth. These were edited by his brother George Marshall and were compiled to create this classic of environmental literature, now in its third edition after nearly fifty years in print and with a new foreword by Rick Bass.

    Still the traveller without visas and without baggage, and usually without money, he wanders across Africa from Mozambique to the Sahara - sometimes alone, sometimes with raffish companions picked up on the way, but mostly with Anna, the gay and resourceful Dutch girl who was his companion in earlier adventures.

    That is the supreme moment to rhapsodize and pay homage, to make the final assault upon the hidden secret of Rome's eternal decay, and to be deliciously deceived... The early morning on the other hand is more to our purpose, for it is not at all romantic." The early morning serves to light for Lees-Milne the eight Roman buildings-from the somber Pantheon first built by Marcus Agrippa in 27 B.C. to the Trevi fountain, whose waters were brought to Rome via aqueduct by the same Agrippa, but whose completion had to await the eighteenth century-that are in the author's opinion the chef architectural monuments of the city. All of them, he says, are powerful archetypes, and two among them, the Pantheon and the Tempietto, have individual features that are reflected in practically every town in Europe, the British Commonwealth, and America.

    Meetings with dangerous and beautiful marine creatures were only one side of the expedition's activities. Their adventures included the discovery of many wrecks and the investigation of a 3,000-year-old Hindu temple lying on the ocean bed. Clarke and Wilson lived among the Ceylonese natives, their contact with Europeans virtually limited to the dozen members of the Ceylonese Reefcombers Club, who shared many of their underwater adventures. When weather conditions ruled out skin diving, they explored the awe-inspiring ruins of ancient Sinhalese cities, made trips into the jungles in search of wild life, and visited Buddhist monasteries.Clarke and Wilson's experiences provide vivid impressions of old and new Ceylon, one of the key countries of the Far East, and give vivid impressions of the fantastic life of the tropical reefs and the strange transformations which lost ships undergo when the sea works its will on them.