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The Hidden
Heart of Baja.
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER.
New York: William Morrow & Rcviewed by WILLIAM C. MASSEY,
University of Florida According to its dust jacket, this is “an account of
a most important and dramatic archeological discovery-the Indian caves of Baja California.”
A more fitting subtitle would have been “Camping Out in Baja California for Fun and Profit.”
Danger ever impending, is ever thwarted. Bwana narrowly escapes being scalded in a hot shower,
and starvation is averted by roasts flown in from
the old Cali- fornia homestead. No one gets lost, no one drowns in the flash floods which do not
occur. Pursuing writers are thrown off the track (although the wiseness of this last move
could be questioned).
Co., 1962. 256 pp.,
photographs (some in color).
$7.50. 951
American A~zlhropologist [66, 196.21
The writing style equals the author’s
knowledge of archeology. Even to an archeolo- gist, the few chapters given to the
“discovery” of the famed petroglyphs seem no more annoying than the preceding pages of
disorganized thinking, banal philosophies, and inconsistencies.
The book should not cost $7.50.
With its patent leading-out of large type, it is obviously padded. Most of the full-page, gray photographs are irrelevant-“A portion of the Mexicali Riding Club,” or “The dogs were afraid we were going to go away.”
Naive to the point of being pitiable is the erstwhile author’s statement that his effort will create “arguments
pro and con in scientific circles.” No scientist is going to bother arguing with opinions which
include, “Conceivably a tribe may have vanished, but hardly a nation,” and “It is my own belief
that these men were tall, hardy warriors, swift of foot, strong in body and in spirit.” On the
hand, no archeologist can possibly ignore the one contribution of Hidden Heart of Baja: It has now been
proved, once and for all, that a man in a helicopter can go almost anywhere that a man on burro or afoot has gone.