PERU: Hiram Bingham, LOST CITY OF THE INCAS

An especially esteemed WAISer has sent me an extraordinarily beautiful book:
"Hiram Bingham, Lost City of the Incas" (London: Weidenfeld& Nicolson, 2002, pp. 274). The original was published in 1948. The beauty of this edition is that it is illustrated with stunning photographs by Hugh Thomson, a well-known British documentary producer whose book "The White Rock", covering the same area of Peru, was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2001. Bingham's book has a special appeal for me for several reasons:

The first is that Hiram Bingham visited us in Stanford in the 40s, and we found him most likeable. Born in Honolulu of missionary parents in 1875, he was an extraordinary combination of explorer and scholar. He was a graduate of Yale (BA 1898), UC Berkeley (1900) and Harvard (PhD, 1905). Yale established for him a chair of South American history, said to be the first in the US.
Bingham made his first tour across South America in 1909, and he led three Yale expeditions to Peru in 1911, 1912 and 1914. He discovered Machu Picchu in 1911; it is now a well-known tourist destination. Peru should have been deeply grateful to him, but there were the usual silly complaints about Yankee etc., etc. However, when the road from Cuzco to Machu Picchu was opened in 1948, it was named the Hiram Bingham Highway.
He published a number of books: Expedition across Venezuela and Colombia (1909), Across South America (1911), Inca Land (1922), Machu Picchu, A Citadel of the Incas (1930, and Lost City of the Incas (1948), the original edition of the book here reviewed. He also wrote on the Monroe Doctrine.

This incredible man had an important public career:
As an aviator he chased Pancho Villa in Mexico in the campaign headed by General Pershing. He served as an aviator in World War I. He was Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut (1923-4) and Governor (1925), leaving that post to serve as Senator from 1925 to 33. Unfortunately he got caught in a political scandal, party infighting which can besmirch an honorable men like the remarkable Hiram Bingham. He was censured by the Senate in 1929 on charges of placing of a lobbyist on his payroll. My guess is that it was the lobbyist who wangled the job.
Bingham had kept up his interest in aviation. He was appointed a member of the PresidentŐs Aircraft Board by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925; During the Second World War, he lectured at naval training schools;. He was chairman of the Civil Service Commission's Loyalty Review Board from 1951 to 1953. He died in 1956 and was interred in Arlington National Cemetery. It was the end of an extraordinary career. Che Guevara, despite his American critics, was a generous, educated individual. He wrote an essay praising Hiram Bingham, which is quoted on the dust jacket of this book.

The second reason I like the new edition of Lost City of the Incas is that it has some splendid maps. Some show the Inca highways stretching from Colombia to Chile and Argentina. I traveled by land from San Francisco to Buenos Aires in 1942-43, and in South America I was following the Inca Highway. It was an extraordinary trip. Most of the time my accidental traveling companion was the well-known Mexican leftist politician Narciso Bassols. He was received all along the route with appropriate honors, of which I was the accidental beneficiary. We traveled from Cuzco to Machu Picchu by light train; the Hiram Bingham Highway had not yet been built.

In the evening the Prefect of Cuzco gave a banquet for us. I was seated between the president of the University of Cuzco and an elegant Argentine woman. Throughout the dinner the president of the university lambasted Hiram Bingham, who stole Peruvian treasures, etc. etc. Two days later I took the train to Lake Titicaca. Sitting in the same compartment were the elegant Argentine lady and her husband. However, she was surprisingly changed. She now bulged as though she were pregnant. She observed my surprise and explained that the University president had given her some Inca treasures from the university museum. Since it was illegal to export them, she had hidden them under her clothes. It was a case for "Cherchez la femme", but the border customs officials would never dream of being so uncouth. Those Inca treasures now doubtless decorate some Argentine home, unless they were sold. Now, if only Hiram Bingham had been an elegant woman.