Out Speaks Dickey

My Jungle Book which appeared in bookstores last week* started out to be Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey's account of his discovering the source of the Orinoco River (TIME, Aug. 10). But for a long time he had wanted to speak out about men, institutions and conditions in Latin America which have vexed him. His book turned from a travelog into a philippic. Lest readers doubt his competence to criticize he took care to detail that he has spent but 30 months of the past 31 years outside of South America. For 25 years he was physician & surgeon to mines, railways, sugar and rubber estates in various countries. During vacations he explored. For the past rive years exploring has been his profession. Not strangely, explorers and exploring vex him most. He considers "the aims of most expeditions, particularly those to South America, falsely pretentious and insincere. . . . It is impossible that the preposterous sums raised for some of these junkets can be expended licitly and I know that very rarely are the results achieved worth a twentieth of the money involved in their pursuit." Nor does he like the way "stunt" expeditions are worked up. Sarcastically he declares that they usually are led by a man of considerable, already acquired or potential newspaper reputation, who possesses several degrees from so-called "learned societies," invariably British. The favorite degrees, in the order named, are F. R. G. S., which denotes that the bearer is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London; F. R. A. I., which shows that he has achieved the honor of fellowship in the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and the more simple F. Z. S., indicating fellowship in the Zoological Society of London, with the privilege of free entrance into the London Zoo six days a week. "No proof of achievement of any kind is required of the individual who wishes to break into these scientific circles. . . . But the degrees look lovely, in a row, and to the unsophisticated they imply a lot." The leader gets an expert publicity man, "who works on a commission of anything from 20% to 40% of the funds finally collected" from the public. That leader's "entire claim to fame, perhaps, rests on his once having made a trip to the Arctic as mate of a whaler." But he poses with a foot on a dead polar bear and gets the pictures in rotogravure sections of newspapers. During the expedition "strange rumors of dissension in the camp begin to percolate through the public consciousness, but are promptly quashed. . . ." Upon its return, "each member of the party gets ashore as rapidly as he can and rushes away without bidding farewell to his companions." The scientist of the party grumbles about wasted opportunities. Other rarely stated data: An article with photographs of an expedition brings $300 from the National Geographic Magazine. Salaries of men who go exploring for scientific institutions or Government departments "average about $3,000 a year. . . . You can't take out insurance if you are a chronic explorer." Dr. Dickey states that the appearance of a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation is "invariably the signal, about anywhere from Panama to Patagonia, for the small proprietors of land to register their properties as potential deposits of petroleum." Col. Lindbergh is "the Lucky Mechanic" to sneering Venezuelans. So absorbed did Dr. Dickey become in disclosing these and other scandals, and ridding himself of his vexations that in My Jungle Book he gives small account of his experiences toiling to the source of the Orinoco. There was no adventure to that --only foresight, prudence and labor. Last week he was showing a small party of "dudes" (TIME, Oct. 19) the efficacy of his expeditionary system. They were in Ecuador whence he was to guide them across the Andes and down the Amazon to the Atlantic on tourist schedule.

* Little, Brown & Co. ($5.50).

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