A real-life Indiana Jones set out on a chilly, drizzly July morning in 1911 to investigate rumors of Inca ruins. The intrepid Yale lecturer edged his way through jungle-tortured thickets and liana-choked trees, and crept through a murky morass concealing venomous pit vipers.
Hiram Bingham III struggled up a slippery, steep canyon often on hands and knees, sometimes holding on by his fingernails, he wrote. Reaching the jungle brow, the lost city in the clouds held him spellbound.
