In Patagonia Summary :: essays research papers

In Patagonia is one of the more interesting books that Ive read lately. Its the only book that I know of that crosses theives with archaeology. It is mainly a collection of Bruce Chatwins logs and descriptions of his travels in the South American frontier in the late 70s and early 80s (during the Cold War), filled similarly with short stories and vignettes. Some of them are true, though some mix the facts with fiction. Chatwin leaves these stories interruption and ties most of them back together in the end.      Chatwin tells of the lives of the people in Patagonia with more detail. He goes into much detail describing the poor Welsh, Scottish, English, and Italian farmers. Since farmers make up most of Patagonias workforce, Chatwin stays with quite a few them and learns about the culture, history, and hereditary pattern of Patagonia. Many of the generous people he lodges with were outcasts or exiled from their own rude and told him the fascinating stories of their own lives and how they came to be in Patagonia. They also tell the focus stories of the rich Patagonian borderland, where theives and criminals run wild. One such pair of criminals was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They commit all sorts of crimes including larceny and murder (though Butch Cassidy never killed a globe until late in his crooked career). After committing many crimes in Utah, they travelled down to South America to avoid the law.     In Patagonia also depicts the capture history of the Archaeological findings and the many discoveries that have been made in move of South America. The book starts off with a remenisence of Chatwin playing with his grandmothers "brontosaurus fur". This is what sparked his desire to search the South Americas. The English sailor Charley Milward had found it originally. then he reported it to a major archaeologist at that era by the name of Florentino Ameghino. In the end, the skin turns out to not be the skin of a brontosaurus, but rather a Mylodon.