Old Gold; or, The Cruise of the Brig Jason, by George Manville Fenn.
________________________________________________________________________
Here we have yet another suspense-filled adventure novel by Fenn. There
seems to be no end to the situations into which the people in the book
can get themselves, and from which there seem to be no escape.
A couple of wealthy Englishmen are determined to sail as far as they can
up one of the great rivers of South America, perhaps the Orinoco or
perhaps the Amazon. At the time this has never before been done. After
finding a ship and skipper they are joined by Briscoe, a rather pushy
young man, who has some good characteristics, but whom none of them
really like, and who gets on board, with all his stores and a servant,
by a series of subterfuges.
As they make their way up the river--they choose the Amazon--they are
attacked by the local natives, armed with bows and arrows. Then a boat
they send out to explore near a great cataract is sucked in by the
towback of the falls. This is normally fatal, but the wind slightly
changes, and they find an eddy which carries them clear.
Creating a trackway to enable them to haul a large ship's boat past the
falls, they leave their brig at anchor below the falls, and continue
with the exploration. They find an extraordinary rock-hewn city in the
cliffs bordering a canyon, abandoned perhaps for centuries, and now
inhabited by serpents, bats and possibly with various deadfalls guarding
the various chambers. Needless to say they find golden artefacts in
profusion, but just as they find them they are attacked by a huge fleet
of local savages in canoes, so they leave in a hurry.
Re-equipping the brig next year, they cannot find the way back to this
El Dorado, and it is the same in future years.
A most enjoyable book.
________________________________________________________________________