TIERRA DEL FUEGO

Intrepid adventurer Lourie (On the Trail of Lewis and Clark, not reviewed, etc.), who’s explored everything from the Amazon to the Yukon, with the Hudson and Mississippi thrown in for good measure, travels to the island of Tierra del Fuego recounting adventures of Magellan, Charles Darwin, and turn-of-the-century world traveler, Joshua Slocum. As with other adventures, Lourie enlivens his narrative with period maps and drawings, photographs and quotes from journals and diaries from the past interspersed with contemporary photographs and tidbits about the people and places. Most interesting are the selections gleaned from the journal of a sailor who traveled with Magellan in 1520 seeking a passage that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. And the adventures of Joshua Slocum, who in 1898 sailed around the world in a 40-foot boat and described in his diary encounters with pirates and storms in the Strait of Magellan. After visiting Punta Arenas, Chile, Lourie, who is surprised to find himself in a modern city of 150,000, flies to Ushuaia, the southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego and refers to Darwin’s visit there on the Beagle in 1832. Finally he stops to visit with a modern-day sheep-farming family before flying back home. Lourie is a masterful storyteller well able to bring the past alive, but it is a little disappointing to discover the mysterious land at the bottom of the world is very much like home. Period photographs and drawings are especially appealing. (map, index, further reading) (Nonfiction. 10-14)