Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America Resulting in the Discovery of the Idolatrous City of Iximaya, in an Unexplored Region; and the Possession of two Remarkable Aztec Children, Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country, Described by John L. Stevens, Esq., and Other Travellers.

By Pedro Velasquez, 1850, 35 pages

Online at Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29388/29388-h/29388-h.htm

An incredible story of discovery and adventure compressed into a few brief pages, with much of the text quoted from the travel journal of one of the explorers, this supposedly real tale is the stuff of H. Rider Haggard and Indiana Jones brought to life.  Following up on a decades-old legend of a remote, lost, and still-inhabited native city deep in Central America, two nineteenth-century Yankee explorers team with a jovial, resourceful, and well-traveled padre to investigate whether the remnant of a lost civilization is truth or myth.  After a long and difficult journey the fabulous, jealously-guarded secret city of Iximaya is indeed found to exist, but once entered, almost impossible to leave.  Escaping by night, the padre is one of the few who set out to return and tell the survivors’ tale.  Written in a vanished, elegant prose for its brevity, this story is a reminder of times long before Google Earth and GPS when travel was arduous and slow, when scientific instruments were carried on the backs of mules, the threats of falling from a rocky precipice or taking a spear in the shoulder were entirely too possible, and a cigar up a nostril was the remedy for nosebleed.  Maximo and Bartolo, the two “Aztec children” brought back with Velasquez were exhibited in the U.S. and Europe in circus sideshows for many years after the events described in the book, their true origins hotly contested.  Practical jokery is a low-key theme in the text, and the reader is left to wonder whether the account told here is as mythical as the legend of Iximaya that precipitated the journey…  At 61 words, the title is almost as long as the book.  Read for the longest-title challenge, and well worth a look for exciting, leg-pulling entertainment.