Guyana: The Lost El Dorado: My Fifty Years in the Guyanese Wilds

As diamond prospector, gold-panner, surveyor of the uncharted bush, hunter and builder of roads, Matthew Young spent over fifty years working in the wild forests and savannahs of his native Guyana.He writes vividly of the beauties and hazards of that life, of marauding jaguars, deadly labaria snakes dropping from the trees, piranhas that can strip the flesh from a body in seconds and thirty foot anacondas that can squeeze the life out of a man; of battling up river against life-threatening rapids and thunderous waterfalls.This is a fascinating social history from colonial times to the 1980s, including Young's involvement with the aftermath of the tragic mass suicide of over 900 followers of the American cult leader Jim Jones at Jonestown. The Lost El Dorado gives an account of one of the last untouched tropical rainforests in the world and its teeming wildlife.