PERU, air photos 

Prowling the sky paths over that ancient land, cruising among its peaks and high valleys, time and again Johnson had looked down on hidden nooks and crannies whose ruins hinted at forgotten people-a challenge to exploration.

There were weird craters waiting to be filmed for the first time, old churches tucked away in odd little towns beside the mountain trails, and tiny, isolated colonies where Inca descendants are yet born to live and die of old age, never venturing beyond these narrow valleys.

Of these things, and more, Johnson told us upon his return, until we marveled at such wonders. Gladly we joined him when his chance came to return to Peru. We took with us two specially built airplanes and full equipment for high flying, for exploring and making pictures along the byways of the old Inca land conquered by Pizarro.

Sailing from Brooklyn one December morning, we were a party of five, all under 30 years of age. There was, of course, Johnson himself, as chief photographer and field leader; Valentine Van Keuren, topographer; Max Distel, mechanic; Irving G. Hay, pilot and mechanic; and I, Robert Shippee, pilot and historian.

Landing at Callao, the gate to near-by Lima, we based our planes at Faucett's Field, Lima's airport. In the "City of the Kings" we set up our laboratory, later in charge of Harry Watkins and W. O. Runcic, both experienced in South American photographic work. Later, when making air pictures, we flew back to Lima to have our films developed.

In eight months of fascinating, adventurous work, afoot and in the air, we discovered and traced the "Great Wall of Peru," mapped the prehistoric city of Chan-Chan, with its 11 square miles of ruins, mapped the Talara oil fields, and explored the Colca Valley and that of the Andagua, the Valley of Volcanoes.

We made an aerial survey of Andagua Valley at an altitude of 21,000 feet, taking thousands of air and ground pictures and 30,200 feet of motion-picture film. Our total flying time was 454 hours and the highest altitude attained east of Lima, in about 12° south latitude, was 24,700 feet. The temperature at this height was 40 F.

Long ago the Chimus, a people antedating the Incas, built their great capital of Chan-Chan near the site of the present-day Peruvian city of 'I'rujillo. Van Keuren and I lived in Trujillo, with its oleanders, olive trees, morning-glories, and tiled patios, while making our ground survey of this ancient metropolis.

Although Chan-Chan's walls have endured time's assaults for countless centuries, they are fast crumbling now, especially from the action of repeated floods on their adobe structure. We were eager, therefore, to preserve the present-day appearance of the ruins in pictures, and also to map them from the air. It is only from the air that one can now obtain an idea of the once vast extent of the city and trace, even indistinctly, the remains of what once were its temples, palaces, plazas, gardens, and reservoirs.

After mapping the ruins of Chan-Chan we made a night inland as far as the Maranon River and returned around Mount Huascaran, down the valley of the Santa River, to the coast. Our course was over the edge of the foothills that border the narrow upper valley of the river on the…"