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Inca Lands
Prof. Hiram Bingham of Yale Makes the Greatest Archaeological Discovery of the Age by Locating and Excavating Ruins of Machu Picchu on a Peak in the Andes of Peru.
There is nothing new under the sun, they say. That is only relatively true. Just now, when we thought there was practically no portion of the earth's surface still unknown, when the discovery of a single lake or mountain, or the charting of a remote strip of coast line was enough to give a man fame as an explorer, one member of the daredevil explorers' craft has "struck it rich." Struck it so dazzlingly rich, indeed, that all his confrères may be pardoned if they gnash their teeth in chagrin and turn green with envy. The lucky man is Prof. Hiram Bingham of Yale, he whose hobby is South America. He has just announced that he has had the superb good fortune to discover an entire city, two thousand years old, a place of splendid palaces and temples and grim encircling walls, hidden away so thoroughly on the top of a well-nigh inaccessible mountain peak of the Peruvian Andes that the Spanish invaders of four hundred years ago never set eyes upon it. He calls it Machu Picchu. (From New York Times, June 15, 1913)
One hundred years ago in the summer of 1911, Bingham discovered Machu Picchu, returning in the summer of 1912 to excavate under the auspices of Yale and The National Geographic Society, and coming home to great acclaim and a spate of published articles and photos. He fully described the 1911 expedition and original find in his 1922 book INCA LANDS: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru. Help the Librivox 2012 World Tour celebrate South America in September 2012! (ToddHW)
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Burgess Animal Book for Children, The
Peter Rabbit goes to school, with Mother Nature as his teacher. In this zoology book for children, Thornton W. Burgess describes the mammals of North America in the form of an entertaining story, including plenty of detail but omitting long scientific names. There is an emphasis on conservation. -
Soul of the Indian, The
"We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. It teaches us to be thankful, to be united, and to love one another! We never quarrel about religion."
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Birches
Volunteers bring you 12 recordings of Birches by Robert Frost. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for February 21st, 2010. -
Consolation, The
Volunteers bring you 11 recordings of The Consolation by Anne Brontë. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 14th, 2010. -
Burgess Bird Book for Children, The
The Burgess Bird Book for Children is a zoology book written in the form of a story featuring Peter Rabbit. Peter learns from his friend Jenny Wren all about the birds of North America, and we meet many of them in the Old Orchard, the Green Meadow, and the Green Forest. (summary by Laurie Anne Walden)
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Freckles
Freckles is a young man who has been raised since infancy in a Chicago orphanage. His one dream is to find a job, a place to belong and people who accept him despite his youth and the disability of having only one hand.
He finds this place in the Limberlost Swamp, as a Limberlost guard of precious timber.
In the process, he discovers a love for the wilderness and animals he encounters every day on his rounds and a burning desire to learn about all the new birds and plants he sees on his rounds every day. He also finds and falls in love with a girl he calls the "Swamp Angel." This is the story of his plucky courage in sticking to his job in the swamp, and his adventures in learning about the natural world he finds himself in every day. He is befriended by the "Bird Woman" and with her help learns to love the Limberlost he has been hired to guard. -
Book of the Damned
The Book of the Damned was the first published nonfiction work of the author Charles Fort (first edition 1919). Dealing with various types of anomalous phenomena including UFOs, strange falls of both organic and inorganic materials from the sky, odd weather patterns, the possible existence of creatures generally held to be mythological, disappearances of people under strange circumstances, and many other phenomena, the book is historically considered to be the first written in the specific field of anomalistics. -
Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee: A Bee Keeper's Manual
Langstroth revolutionized the beekeeping industry by using bee space in his top opened hive. In the summer of 1851 he found that, by leaving an even, approximately bee-sized space between the top of the frames holding the honeycomb and the flat coverboard lying above, he was able to quite easily remove the latter, which was normally well cemented to the frames with propolis making separation hard to achieve. Later he had the idea to use this discovery to make the frames themselves easily removable. He found that, if he left a small space (less than 1/4 inch or 6.4 mm) between the combs, or between the combs and the sides of his hives, the bees would fill it with propolis thus cementing the combs into the hive. On the other hand, when he left a larger space (more than 3/8 inch or 9.5 mm) the bees would fill it with comb which had a similar effect. -
Hill, The
Volunteers bring you 15 recordings of The Hill by Rupert Brooke. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 15, 2011.
Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War (especially The Soldier). He was also known for his boyish good looks, which prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England". -
Hunting Dogs
The title of this book quotes its object. To tell something of night hunting, and especially to suggest how the ever necessary dog can best be selected, trained, maintained and utilized, is the consideration of first importance. To round out the subject all forms of hunting will receive some notice, and the various breeds of dogs will be so far dealt with, that their value and usefulness in their given fields may be determined. Best of all, the contents of this volume are based on the opinions and declarations of men who have had years of experience in the matters on which they presume to write.(Extracted from the Introduction) -
Yosemite, The
John Muir's adventure guide for the Yosemite Valley. -
Elizabeth and her German Garden
Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, first published in 1898; it was very popular and frequently reprinted during the early years of the 20th century. The story is a year's diary written by the protagonist Elizabeth about her experiences learning gardening and interacting with her friends. It includes commentary on the beauty of nature and on society, but is primarily humorous due to Elizabeth's frequent mistakes and her idiosyncratic outlook on life. She looked down upon the frivolous fashions of her time writing "I believe all needlework and dressmaking is of the devil, designed to keep women from study.' The book is the first in a series about the same character. It is noteworthy for being published without a named author. -
About Orchids, a Chat
This is not a manual of instruction for orchid growers; though there are many hints on cultivation, and a few paragraphs on how to hybridize. The author is just an enthusiastic amateur orchid lover. He takes the reader on a wander through the dangers and consequences of hunting orchids in the tropical jungles of the nineteenth century, and chats about the extreme peculiarities of orchid growth, behaviour and structure, colouring the essays with his own experiences and with his delight in cultivating these beautiful plants. Beware! A new hobby beckons! -
Lectures on Landscape
A series of lectures on landscape painting delivered at Oxford in 1871, by artist, critic, and social commentator, John Ruskin. -
Canyons of the Colorado
John Wesley Powell was a pioneer American explorer, ethnologist, and geologist in the 19th Century. In 1869 he set out to explore the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. He gathered nine men, four boats and food for ten months and set out from Green River, Wyoming, on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-day Moab, Utah. The expedition's route traveled through the Utah canyons of the Colorado River, which Powell described in his published diary as having …wonderful features—carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon. (Ironically, now almost completely submerged by Lake Powell, behind the Glen Canyon Dam.) One man (Goodman) quit after the first month and another three (Dunn and the Howland brothers) left at Separation Rapid in the third, only two days before the group reached the mouth of the Virgin River on August 30 after traversing almost 1,500 km. The three who left the group late in the trip were later killed—probably by Indians.
Powell retraced the route in 1871-1872 with another expedition, producing photographs, an accurate map, and various papers, including ethnographic reports of the area's Native Americans and a monograph on their languages. -
Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation
LibriVox volunteers bring you 7 recordings of A Selection from Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation by Anonymous. This was the Weekly Poetry project for November 20, 2011.
'Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation' contains the famous 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper's' tongue twister, although this twister was tripping tongues for many years before it first appeared in print. The book also contains a tongue twister of a similar style for every letter of the alphabet. This selection contains the verses for C, F and K. -
Making a Rock Garden
A short look at building a rock garden, right from the rocks themselves and how to arrange them, to choosing and placing the plants, touching wall and bog gardens, too. In this little monograph, the author is trying to draw the eyes of U.S. gardeners in to the intimate beauty of this neglected hobby. -
Book of Nature Myths, The
This is a book of myths told by the Indians of North America to their children. They could be compared to present day Fairy Tales. -
Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, A
Isabella Bird began travelling while in her early twenties to help alleviate illness that had plagued her since childhood. She was a single woman in her early forties when she made her treck through the Rocky Mountains. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains details this fascinating account of her travels through a series of letters written to her sister, Henrietta. These letters are filled with beautiful, vivid descriptions of the scenery, the people she encountered, the way of life, and a mountain man named Jim Nugent, that was as rough as they come, but a complete gentleman with Ms. Bird. She has the distinction of being the first woman to become a member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892. -
Life of the Spider, The
Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre (December 22, 1823 - October 11, 1915) was a French entomologist and author. He was born in St. Léons in Aveyron, France. Fabre was largely an autodidact, owing to the poverty of his family. Nevertheless, he acquired a primary teaching certificate at the young age of 19 and began teaching at the college of Ajaccio, Corsica, called Carpentras. In 1852, he taught at the lycée in Avignon. -
Steep Trails
A collection of Muir's previously unpublished essays, released shortly after his death. "This volume will meet, in every way, the high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his experiences during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will take rank among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has left few traces in American literature. ... The landscapes that Muir saw ... will live in good part only in his writings, for fire, axe, plough, and gunpowder have made away with the supposedly boundless forest wildernesses and their teeming life." (From the Editor's note to the 1918 first edition)
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Bilingual Versions - Alice's in Wonderland (English – Spanish)
This book tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures.