Overlooked books are often sources of anomalies which are easily lost to our collective memory. Thus, a couple of Sundays ago, a friend of mine called Trevor casually referred to what he labelled the "leprechauns" of South America. Readers of this blog will be aware that I no longer automatically scoff at such stories. (Why, this time last year I was translating newspaper articles about a plague of goblins in Argentina.) Trevor mentioned how they had been seen by Brian Fawcett (1906-1984), the younger son of the explorer, Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon jungle, almost certainly murdered by Indians, while searching for the Lost City of Z. Now, Trevor has provided extracts from Brian Fawcett's 1958 book, Ruins in the Sky, relating to his time working on the Peruvian railways, and the events took place near what was then the highest railway station in the world. The relevant extract is from pages 65 and 66.
