Tea at Trianon: Lost City of the Monkey God

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Lost City of the Monkey God

Head of Jaguar

I read Preston's book and it was fascinating. From The Daily Mail:

The ruins of a mysterious jungle city protected from outsiders by a deadly flesh-eating disease may sound like the plot of an Indiana Jones film. But after centuries of local legends and fruitless jungles treks, the incredible ancient site - untouched for more than 600 years - was found to be real by a group of intrepid explorers. Author Douglas Preston, who was part of the group that found the ancient city, has revealed to MailOnline that his team discovered just a tiny fraction of the site and how he believes there could be a second city hidden under the trees of the Mosquitia rainforest in Honduras. Preston, along with a team including explorer Steve Elkins, travelled the 20,000-square-mile-deep rainforests of Honduras and Nicaragua in search of ancient site known as 'The Lost City of the Monkey God' in 2015. (Read more.)