High Jungles and Low

"Illuminated by the same joyful curiosity and erudition, lyric writing, and plain love of life that made a classic of Archie Carr’s The Windward Road."--Peter Matthiessen
 

"Archie Carr shows that he can write about people and forests engagingly and accurately without recourse to fake adventures or gringo condescension."--New York Times
 

Archie Carr’s story is his love for the rural high tropics of Central America, revealed with grace and humor in the personal account of the years (1945-49) that he spent in Honduras with his family as a teacher at the Agricultural School run by the United Fruit Company.

 High Jungles and Low has four parts, each written in a distinctive style. "The Land" is descriptive and includes a candid chapter on Yankee relations with Latin America. "People in the Land" is anecdotal, with sketches of the hill people of Honduras. "The Sweet Sea," a short history of Nicaragua, reveals the biological drama of four centuries of turmoil in that country. "Hall of the Mountain Cow" is Carr’s one-month diary of a 100-mile walk along the Mosquito Shore, the rain forest of the Caribbean coast.