No Limits But the Sky

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Indians shivering in the piercing cold of July 27 at a station on Lake Titicaca, a procession of little children dressed in white uniforms celebrating the fiesta of Santa Maria, a hot and odoriferous dinner of ceviche, pre-Columbian walls, colorful market places — these are only a few of the homely details in Mary Kidder’s diary that make Peru and Bolivia much more vivid to our eyes than do most guide books and stories of travel. Kidder accompanied her husband on two archaeological expeditions to Peru, one in 1937 and the other in 1939- On the latter she had the unusual experience of keeping house, according to New England standards, in what may modestly be called exotic conditions. She observed the scene before her with fresh, keen intelligence and wrote down her impressions with zest. She gives us an absorbing picture of the ruined buildings and sites of the great Inca empire, of the Indian natives and of the superimposed European civilization, and the scenery through the high Andes. The diary has not been dressed up for publication; it remains the interesting, personal, and therefore revealing day-to-day story of a young American traveler in the regions that are attracting so much of our attention at the present time.