Peru, My Unpromised Land

Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. Illustrated, large octavo, pp 231, with six folding charts in the rear pocket, very slightly used internally, paperback, the covers very slightly used and age-toned, the spine a little wrinkled. [Polish collector of insects and plants in Peru. Woytkowski emigrated to Peru in 1929, where he collected more than a thousand insect species new to science and copious botanical specimens. He, together with his new wife Helena, was lured to Peru by a settlement company whose advertisements promised free passage and a homestead farm. In reality, after landing in Callao he found himself with hundreds of other Europeans in a shanty immigrant camp waiting in vain for their free land. While most gave up and returned to their homes, Woytkowski decided to stay in Peru with Helena and their four-year-old son, settling in Yamaquezù near Oxapampa, where he established himself as a naturalist collecting insects and plants to send to scientists in the United States and Europe. He was for seven years employed exclusively by the Swiss pharmaceutical firm CIBA, looking for plants that could be used in medicines, and also served on the staff of San Marcos University (as a professor of French) and La Molina College of Agriculture in Lima. Here he built up an extensive herbarium, though he was best known for his entomological collections. He made numerous trips into Peru's mountainous areas, and explored all the country's provinces both independently and on behalf of research institutions including the University of California and Missouri Botanical Garden. Although successful in his collecting career, his family life was somewhat unhappy due to his constant need to move around, which led his wife to leave him in the 1940s. After more than 30 years collecting in Peru he was dealt another blow when he found he could not draw a small pension from the Botanic Garden in Lima, as he had never taken Peruvian citizenship. He thus returned to Poland in 1965, by now a strange land to him. Removed from his life's work and suffering in the colder climate, he died in Krakow, where he had been staying with his brother. Numerous insects are named in his honour, including a genus of army ants. The plant genus Woytkowskia Woodson is also named for him. This memoir was published in Polish in 1974.]. First English edition. Paperback. Good.