Lost Road by C. E. Scoggins is the kind of book I love to find - a novel and an author I had never heard of, an adventure in the jungle written in 1941, and a well kept hardcover edition. Charles Elbert Scoggins was an American author who mainly wrote adventure stories set in Central America, two of which were made into films in 1929 and 1947.
I'm going to give you as much information about this book as I can, as there is nothing else on the web, a book perhaps lost to time.
'Lost Road - The strange and gripping story of four people in the silence of the jungle'.
When young Hilda Ware tells dashing pilot Howard Massey of her father's mine deep in the jungles, west of Lima and Macchu Picchu, he agrees to fly her down. On a mesa at the base of the majestic Iscasinga, native Indians toil in the richest gold mine in Peru, while the Northern bosses relax in relative comfort as they did back home. Foreman Colin O'Leary is excited by the rare artifacts he found in the mines and is eager to search the uncharted Matto Grosso for a fabled area once inhabited. While scanning the jungle with Howard, the plane goes down in a storm.
As the search continues for months, only Hilda retains hope that Howard is still alive, her heart won't give up. A year goes by before she convinces a friend working at the mine to help her steal a work plane for a search - her flying skills at amateur level, Johnny Christopher insists on joining her. Crossing the vast jungle, across the mighty Amazon, they spot an area of dense green trees - planted in a square of straight lines! and manage to survive the crash landing. It is here they find Howard and Colin alive, feral and naked amongst a mute native people. Bearded, wild, and lost to time, they have looked to the man from the sky as a leader and Howard has taken full advantage, placing himself above all men. Both planes damaged, they are all prisoners now amongst the animalistic Indians, with the former international tramp Howard revelling in his seat of authority.
How the other three fight against him and devise a way out of the jungle, if only to make it to the Amazon to be discovered by a search party, caps this exciting tale.
Besides being a fun adventure in the Amazon, this was surprisingly well written, with beautiful passages sprinkled throughout. "The day that blazed across the forest was no more than heat in which the forest grew and light in which its creatures fed or fled. The creatures of the mesa were protected by taboos, but they had enemies that were not bound by any; they were grateful for a dawn they could not number. Animals that had been human once came shambling out into the light, howling by ageless habit, kneeling before the crumbling temples of a faith whose meaning they no longer knew."
Born in Mexico City, but educated in Texas, Scoggins spent many years selling saws in the Banana Republics, and it shows in the bits of culture and language woven into the story.
I feel lucky to have discovered Lost Road. I recommend it to adventure lovers, if you can find a copy. Looking online, I discover there is a previous adventure starring Colin O'Leary called The House of Dawn (1935) which I will have to track down.
1941 / Hardcover / 302 pages
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