TREASURE HUNT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 1, 1 July 1939, Page 27

TREASURE HUNT

IN WILDS OF ECUADOR

Stories of expeditions which include among their scientific and other activities a search for lost treasure of fabulous value can always couiit upon a wide circle of readers. "Fever, Famine, and Gold," by Captain E. Erskine Loch, is a. story of this kind, and has the added merits of being a true one.

The uncharted rivers, jungles, mountains, and swamps of Ecuador Were the changing scenes of Captain Loch's expedition, which was dispatched for purposes of anthropological and other research by the Museum-of the American Indian in New York, > Many thousands ,of observations, thermometric and hygrometric readings, ethnological and natural history specimens were brought back from this practically unknown field. But the main interest of the author's truly amazing record of dauntless perseverance in the face of perpetual peril and implacable hardship lies, for the nonscientific reader, in the "lost treasure of Valverde." •.••:■

At the time of the conquest of the Incan Empire by the Spaniards, Valverde, a humble Spanish soldier, was guided by his Inca father-in-law to a hoard of gold deposited by a party of natives who were bringing it to ranisom their captive chief Atahualpa. When the ransom party heard that Atahualpa had been put to death by the Spaniards they threw the gold into an artificial lake. Valverde died a rich man, and left written instructions, still extant, to the King of Spain, as to how to reach the treasure. But neither the King nor anyone else ever found it. ; Captain Loch, a prominent explorer who describes himself with extreme modesty as a "British Army officer retired, who- does things for the love of' them," felt more sceptical than his companions about the hidden ransom of Atahualpa. But he actually discovered, while looking for a pass over the Llanganatis Mountains, what is,, most probably the very lake referred.to by Valverde; -,-, At the moment, of this discovery all the Indians and many of the peons had deserted the expedition, and the ravages of the climate had left the few Ecuadorean soldiers who alone accompanied Captain Loch at this stage in no case to investigate the lake or even to proceed any further on the journey. After calling for volunteers, he entered upon the most terrible period of his whole adventure—the passage to comparative civilisation, with only three companions. ' . '~ One of these was swept to his death in a rapid while bridge-building. Captain Loch himself was seriously injured in a fall down a precipice. And all endured, in addition to the extraordinary and almost hourly risks Mof this week-long mountain scramble,, tne torments of famine.