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1519: A Journey to the End of Time
When Hernán Cortés met the Mayans, Aztecs and other cultures of the gulf coast of Mexico in 1519, it was the first extended contact between the peoples of continental America and Europe. The Spanish found cities larger and better run than any in Europe, and pyramids greater than Egypt's. The Aztecs believed time was running down and they lived in the final age of the world. Many Spaniards believed Christ's millennium was approaching, and God's revelation of Americas had opened the final act: the conversion of the remote races of the earth. After the Day of Judgement God's experiment with man was over. The laboratory, the physical world, would be destroyed. Both cultures were acting out the last days.
Halfway through researching this book John Harrison had a scan which told him he would not live to write it; he was seeing out his own days.
The Aztec people were concerned with the transitory nature of worldly things; some of their rulers were revered as much for their philosophical poetry as their conquests. John Harrison follows Cortés's route along the Mexican coast and across country to modern Mexico City, home of the Aztecs. A journey within journeys to the end of time, the book becomes a meditation on time, on mortality and self, from a modern master of travel writing.
Halfway through researching this book John Harrison had a scan which told him he would not live to write it; he was seeing out his own days.
The Aztec people were concerned with the transitory nature of worldly things; some of their rulers were revered as much for their philosophical poetry as their conquests. John Harrison follows Cortés's route along the Mexican coast and across country to modern Mexico City, home of the Aztecs. A journey within journeys to the end of time, the book becomes a meditation on time, on mortality and self, from a modern master of travel writing.
300 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 2015
4 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
John Harrison
553 books17 followersThere are more than 16 authors in the GoodReads database with this name. This is John^Harrison (adventurer, writer, broadcaster & lecturer), . This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
After hitch-hiking from London to Johannesburg before he was 21, and two further years hitching around every country in South and Central America, John never really shook off the travel bug. He studied Latin American History and Sociology at university before becoming a language teacher in Spain and Portugal. He then worked as a tour guide for Journey Latin America, taking small groups to South America, and bringing most of them back. It was during this time that he started making his own expeditions – especially to the Amazon. A lover of wilderness, he has also canoed in Africa, Europe and North America.
‘Up the Creek: an Amazon Adventure’, originally published in 1986, and was reissued in February 2012, was an account of one of these journeys, and ‘Into the Amazon: an incredible story of survival in the jungle' was published in 2011.
The film ‘John Harrison Explorer’ was made for the ‘Voyager’ series by National Geographic in 1991, about a canoe journey on the Rio Ximim-Ximim in Brazil.
John has written and presented several radio programmes for the BBC, and contributed articles to many magazines and newspapers.
He has entertained audiences with more than 200 lectures over the last 25 years, including four talks at the Royal Geographical Society in London, (where he has also chaired three seminars on tropical forest expedition logistics), plus motivational seminars and visits to schools and Luncheon Clubs. He has also been an on-board speaker for the Cunard, Silversea, Seabourn, Holland America and Fred Olsen cruise lines.
He lives in Bristol in the UK with his wife and two children, where he has his own construction company.
After hitch-hiking from London to Johannesburg before he was 21, and two further years hitching around every country in South and Central America, John never really shook off the travel bug. He studied Latin American History and Sociology at university before becoming a language teacher in Spain and Portugal. He then worked as a tour guide for Journey Latin America, taking small groups to South America, and bringing most of them back. It was during this time that he started making his own expeditions – especially to the Amazon. A lover of wilderness, he has also canoed in Africa, Europe and North America.
‘Up the Creek: an Amazon Adventure’, originally published in 1986, and was reissued in February 2012, was an account of one of these journeys, and ‘Into the Amazon: an incredible story of survival in the jungle' was published in 2011.
The film ‘John Harrison Explorer’ was made for the ‘Voyager’ series by National Geographic in 1991, about a canoe journey on the Rio Ximim-Ximim in Brazil.
John has written and presented several radio programmes for the BBC, and contributed articles to many magazines and newspapers.
He has entertained audiences with more than 200 lectures over the last 25 years, including four talks at the Royal Geographical Society in London, (where he has also chaired three seminars on tropical forest expedition logistics), plus motivational seminars and visits to schools and Luncheon Clubs. He has also been an on-board speaker for the Cunard, Silversea, Seabourn, Holland America and Fred Olsen cruise lines.
He lives in Bristol in the UK with his wife and two children, where he has his own construction company.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 21, 2016
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher to read and write an honest review.
The year is 1519 and the cultures of Central and South America are at their peak. Their cities are magnificent, larger than European ones and they have ritual monuments larger than the Egyptians. But the Aztec thought that their time was running out and that they were living in their final days. Their leaders were admired as much for their outlook as their conquests.
Into this came the Spanish. Led by Hernán Cortés, they believed that the final days were happening, and that they had an urgent mission to convert the remaining peoples of the earth before judgement day. This aggressive desire to change the practices of the native people of these lands would lead to battles and bloodshed and shocking displays of brutality on both sides. The Mayans and the Aztec fought back as best they could, but the Spanish had the upper hand, horses with mounted soldiers and steel blades.
It is into this ancient landscape that Harrison steps. Starting with the points where Cortés landed, and being ferried around in boasts, he follows the route that along the coast that the Spanish took, before heading inland. Travelling on buses and taxis between the towns and cities, he meets the locals and visits the places that saw the main events and battles happen. It is still a country rich with culture and history and the scale of the architecture still left can take your breath away. But this was a journey that nearly never happened, because part of the way through the research for this trip, John was diagnosed with throat cancer and a prediction that he would not live to make the journey.
As with all of Harrison’s books, it is solidly researched and well written. His relaxed manner whilst travelling and the way that he engages with the people and the places that he goes to makes you feel that you are sitting alongside him looking through the grubby coach window. It is amazing that he actually made this expedition at all, not only was his cancer quite aggressive, but when he travelled he was in remission and recovering. Woven through the historical accounts and the travel is diary of his treatment and feelings as he faces the bleakest of futures. Very poignant.
It was a little heavy on the history, but that was a minor flaw in what is another marvellous book from Harrison.
The year is 1519 and the cultures of Central and South America are at their peak. Their cities are magnificent, larger than European ones and they have ritual monuments larger than the Egyptians. But the Aztec thought that their time was running out and that they were living in their final days. Their leaders were admired as much for their outlook as their conquests.
Into this came the Spanish. Led by Hernán Cortés, they believed that the final days were happening, and that they had an urgent mission to convert the remaining peoples of the earth before judgement day. This aggressive desire to change the practices of the native people of these lands would lead to battles and bloodshed and shocking displays of brutality on both sides. The Mayans and the Aztec fought back as best they could, but the Spanish had the upper hand, horses with mounted soldiers and steel blades.
It is into this ancient landscape that Harrison steps. Starting with the points where Cortés landed, and being ferried around in boasts, he follows the route that along the coast that the Spanish took, before heading inland. Travelling on buses and taxis between the towns and cities, he meets the locals and visits the places that saw the main events and battles happen. It is still a country rich with culture and history and the scale of the architecture still left can take your breath away. But this was a journey that nearly never happened, because part of the way through the research for this trip, John was diagnosed with throat cancer and a prediction that he would not live to make the journey.
As with all of Harrison’s books, it is solidly researched and well written. His relaxed manner whilst travelling and the way that he engages with the people and the places that he goes to makes you feel that you are sitting alongside him looking through the grubby coach window. It is amazing that he actually made this expedition at all, not only was his cancer quite aggressive, but when he travelled he was in remission and recovering. Woven through the historical accounts and the travel is diary of his treatment and feelings as he faces the bleakest of futures. Very poignant.
It was a little heavy on the history, but that was a minor flaw in what is another marvellous book from Harrison.
December 31, 2015
So much has been written about the Spanish conquest of Latin America that it has become difficult to find new approaches to the topic. Hugh Thomas's definitive history of the invasion of Mexico, now called simply Conquest, is 20 years old, but his monumental history of the Spanish monarchy is much more recent, and volume 2 covers the establishment in Mexico of ‘New Spain’. This is the story which Harrison revisits, but the different approach he masters (as he did in telling the story of the conquest of the Incas in Cloud Road) is to follow the routes originally taken by the conquistadores as far as they can still be distinguished, travelling on buses, on horseback or on foot.
While doing so, he weaves together his own travel journal, descriptions of what is known of the indigenous civilisations as they were at the time of the conquest, and the story of Hernán Cortés and his compatriots, and how they schemed and fought their way to power over what is now Mexico and Central America. There is another element to the story, too. Harrison had been diagnosed with cancer while planning the book and interwoven with the Mexican episodes are flashbacks to his experiences in dealing with the illness.
What could have been a disorganised patchwork actually fits together very well. It produces rather a different book to Cloud Road, as the journey to and through Peru was essentially linear and largely on foot. In Mexico, Harrison deals with the different expeditions that culminated in the conquest, and attempts to cover some of the rather complex routes followed by Cortés, his soldiers and translators. As in the earlier book though, Harrison delights in description, especially of the landscape and of the dozens of small traditional settlements that still exist in many parts of Latin America, often with at least some buildings dating from the time of the conquest.
As have many other writers, Harrison inevitably revisits the question of how the Spanish succeeded in defeating such a powerful empire. As in Peru, the availability of horses is clearly a major factor. The Incas were an empire divided between two rival princes, whereas in Mexico the weakness of the Aztecs (or, more accurately, the Mexica), exploited by the conquistadores, was the fact that they were hated by adjoining kingdoms, from which they extracted taxes. Cortés was therefore able to find allies who provided the foot power he would otherwise have lacked. Once reinforcements arrived from Spain, fortune brought with them smallpox, against which most of the Spanish were resistant but which devastated the Aztec forces. The final violent conflict lasted for weeks but at the end practically all the Aztecs had been exterminated if not by the sword then by starvation or disease.
Harrison is even-handed about the violence used by the warring cultures. The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures practised human sacrifice, but as he points out if you believe in gods who might destroy the world again, as (according to myth) they have in the past, extreme measures to appease them may be required. As he also notes, the region is plagued by natural disasters (droughts and floods were and are frequent, in addition of course to the more spectacular earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and hurricanes). As in Christianity, such events were seen as acts of god(s).
Cortés, like Pizarro in Peru, was ruthless towards his enemies. Harrison points to the massacre of the whole population of the city of Cholula as a turning point after which he resorted more and more to overwhelming violence. Also like Pizarro, he was happy to double-cross both allies and enemies. The Spanish may have been impressed by the sophistication of the cities they found, but this didn't alter their view that their inhabitants should automatically offer obeisance to the Spanish throne and renounce their religions – or else be treated like savages. (If they did convert, of course, this usually only postponed the savagery.)
The great virtue of Harrison's approach is that it make the complex history and geography more easily digestible. The interaction between cultures, the details of different religions, the reasons for the precise architecture of Mesoamerican cities and the way that its people came to have a complex understanding of the calendar and of celestial movements can be bewildering. By treating them episodically in step with his travel story, Harrison manages to serve them up in a much more digestible way.
The fact that he is travelling in the present day is also a constant reminder that Mesoamerican culture still survives in many forms. Living in Nicaragua, my daily Spanish is fertilised by words spoken in the Nahuatl language that the Aztecs spoke when Cortés defeated them, and which is today still a minority language (as are many of the Mayan languages). Harrison finds the very church where captured chiefs were baptised as Christians, the earliest church surviving in the western hemisphere, and also the city with the hemisphere's longest continuous occupation (since the 13th century). Much of what Cortés saw can still be seen, therefore, despite (in most cases) the best efforts of the conquistadores and the passage of five centuries. Harrison encourages us to go and look at some of these wonders for ourselves.
While doing so, he weaves together his own travel journal, descriptions of what is known of the indigenous civilisations as they were at the time of the conquest, and the story of Hernán Cortés and his compatriots, and how they schemed and fought their way to power over what is now Mexico and Central America. There is another element to the story, too. Harrison had been diagnosed with cancer while planning the book and interwoven with the Mexican episodes are flashbacks to his experiences in dealing with the illness.
What could have been a disorganised patchwork actually fits together very well. It produces rather a different book to Cloud Road, as the journey to and through Peru was essentially linear and largely on foot. In Mexico, Harrison deals with the different expeditions that culminated in the conquest, and attempts to cover some of the rather complex routes followed by Cortés, his soldiers and translators. As in the earlier book though, Harrison delights in description, especially of the landscape and of the dozens of small traditional settlements that still exist in many parts of Latin America, often with at least some buildings dating from the time of the conquest.
As have many other writers, Harrison inevitably revisits the question of how the Spanish succeeded in defeating such a powerful empire. As in Peru, the availability of horses is clearly a major factor. The Incas were an empire divided between two rival princes, whereas in Mexico the weakness of the Aztecs (or, more accurately, the Mexica), exploited by the conquistadores, was the fact that they were hated by adjoining kingdoms, from which they extracted taxes. Cortés was therefore able to find allies who provided the foot power he would otherwise have lacked. Once reinforcements arrived from Spain, fortune brought with them smallpox, against which most of the Spanish were resistant but which devastated the Aztec forces. The final violent conflict lasted for weeks but at the end practically all the Aztecs had been exterminated if not by the sword then by starvation or disease.
Harrison is even-handed about the violence used by the warring cultures. The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures practised human sacrifice, but as he points out if you believe in gods who might destroy the world again, as (according to myth) they have in the past, extreme measures to appease them may be required. As he also notes, the region is plagued by natural disasters (droughts and floods were and are frequent, in addition of course to the more spectacular earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and hurricanes). As in Christianity, such events were seen as acts of god(s).
Cortés, like Pizarro in Peru, was ruthless towards his enemies. Harrison points to the massacre of the whole population of the city of Cholula as a turning point after which he resorted more and more to overwhelming violence. Also like Pizarro, he was happy to double-cross both allies and enemies. The Spanish may have been impressed by the sophistication of the cities they found, but this didn't alter their view that their inhabitants should automatically offer obeisance to the Spanish throne and renounce their religions – or else be treated like savages. (If they did convert, of course, this usually only postponed the savagery.)
The great virtue of Harrison's approach is that it make the complex history and geography more easily digestible. The interaction between cultures, the details of different religions, the reasons for the precise architecture of Mesoamerican cities and the way that its people came to have a complex understanding of the calendar and of celestial movements can be bewildering. By treating them episodically in step with his travel story, Harrison manages to serve them up in a much more digestible way.
The fact that he is travelling in the present day is also a constant reminder that Mesoamerican culture still survives in many forms. Living in Nicaragua, my daily Spanish is fertilised by words spoken in the Nahuatl language that the Aztecs spoke when Cortés defeated them, and which is today still a minority language (as are many of the Mayan languages). Harrison finds the very church where captured chiefs were baptised as Christians, the earliest church surviving in the western hemisphere, and also the city with the hemisphere's longest continuous occupation (since the 13th century). Much of what Cortés saw can still be seen, therefore, despite (in most cases) the best efforts of the conquistadores and the passage of five centuries. Harrison encourages us to go and look at some of these wonders for ourselves.
February 9, 2020
He took me the length of the Inca Road and now once again I was with John Harrison on a journey that I longed to take, following Cortes’s route from the coast to Tenochtitlan. Only this journey is intertwined with John’s own journey after being diagnosed with cancer.
I slightly moaned about Cloud Road, in that fact that I felt I was being lead somewhere, and while a minor gripe it did affect my relationship to the book (you are of course correct, who cares) but there was no such leading here. With his dry ironic humour, Harrison details the start of his own personal journey with cancer in chapter two, right after detailing the start of his personal journey with Cortes in chapter one. From then on the chapters, while on completely separate paths, intertwine throughout, but while the ironic humour lurks around the edges, the personal journey that ultimately matters the most becomes more poignant.
Yet it never overshadows his journey in Mexico, which in itself seemed to undeservedly frustrate me. Harrison never seems to get where he needs to be, or follow the route he wants to follow. I know it is near impossible to follow Cortes’s route or the exact location of some of the places is not known, but while reading I felt like Harrison was circling around it, near it, perhaps crossing it, but not really unearthing it. I’m not sure what I was expecting given the impossibility of the task my mind had set him, and he didn’t seem that bothered.
But it was fascinating none the less, given how much Mexico has changed since that path was first trodden, and given it’s current state, it is a place I would have reservations travelling to today. Landing and travelling across the west coast, to the founding of Vera Cruz, all the way overland to the mighty city of Tenochtitlan in the basin of Mexico, long buried under it’s successor, Mexico City. Along the route Cortes’s defied Moctezuma’s insistence not to travel, befriending allies along the way, other tribes that the Mexica had subjugated. After reaching the Tenochtitlan, Cortes’s subdued Moctezuma and asserted control for God and the King (and for himself).
But Harrison plods along, and there are times when he drops the travel writing element and gives us an almost to raw personal moment, which is one of the reasons I keep coming back to him. He never quite hits the hopes I have for him Harrison, but he keeps hold of me, pulling me along, giving me another hope, that I can do it too.
(blog review here)
I slightly moaned about Cloud Road, in that fact that I felt I was being lead somewhere, and while a minor gripe it did affect my relationship to the book (you are of course correct, who cares) but there was no such leading here. With his dry ironic humour, Harrison details the start of his own personal journey with cancer in chapter two, right after detailing the start of his personal journey with Cortes in chapter one. From then on the chapters, while on completely separate paths, intertwine throughout, but while the ironic humour lurks around the edges, the personal journey that ultimately matters the most becomes more poignant.
Yet it never overshadows his journey in Mexico, which in itself seemed to undeservedly frustrate me. Harrison never seems to get where he needs to be, or follow the route he wants to follow. I know it is near impossible to follow Cortes’s route or the exact location of some of the places is not known, but while reading I felt like Harrison was circling around it, near it, perhaps crossing it, but not really unearthing it. I’m not sure what I was expecting given the impossibility of the task my mind had set him, and he didn’t seem that bothered.
But it was fascinating none the less, given how much Mexico has changed since that path was first trodden, and given it’s current state, it is a place I would have reservations travelling to today. Landing and travelling across the west coast, to the founding of Vera Cruz, all the way overland to the mighty city of Tenochtitlan in the basin of Mexico, long buried under it’s successor, Mexico City. Along the route Cortes’s defied Moctezuma’s insistence not to travel, befriending allies along the way, other tribes that the Mexica had subjugated. After reaching the Tenochtitlan, Cortes’s subdued Moctezuma and asserted control for God and the King (and for himself).
But Harrison plods along, and there are times when he drops the travel writing element and gives us an almost to raw personal moment, which is one of the reasons I keep coming back to him. He never quite hits the hopes I have for him Harrison, but he keeps hold of me, pulling me along, giving me another hope, that I can do it too.
(blog review here)
August 9, 2020
Excellent!
May 21, 2016
1519: A Journey to the End of Time by John Harrison
This book tells three stories. The story of Hernán Cortés as he conquers Mexico. The story of John Harrison as he follows in Hernán Cortés’ footsteps nearly 500 years later. And, finally the story of John Harrison’s battle with throat cancer.
The Spanish began their expeditions to Mexico from Cuba. Cortés was the third Spanish explorer to set foot in Mexico. All three expeditions began in the Yucatan. I had always assumed that they began in Veracruz. The first stop was actually Cabo Catoche near Holbox on the northern Yucatan coast. You can’t get there today by road and it is difficult to get there by boat.
Travelling alone, John was recovering from throat cancer, and brings to the book, a parallel personal journey, putting his body back together. John Harrison follows in Cortes’ footsteps as he travels around the Yucatan peninsula to Veracruz and then inland to conquer Mexico City from Moctezuma.
This book tells three stories. The story of Hernán Cortés as he conquers Mexico. The story of John Harrison as he follows in Hernán Cortés’ footsteps nearly 500 years later. And, finally the story of John Harrison’s battle with throat cancer.
The Spanish began their expeditions to Mexico from Cuba. Cortés was the third Spanish explorer to set foot in Mexico. All three expeditions began in the Yucatan. I had always assumed that they began in Veracruz. The first stop was actually Cabo Catoche near Holbox on the northern Yucatan coast. You can’t get there today by road and it is difficult to get there by boat.
Travelling alone, John was recovering from throat cancer, and brings to the book, a parallel personal journey, putting his body back together. John Harrison follows in Cortes’ footsteps as he travels around the Yucatan peninsula to Veracruz and then inland to conquer Mexico City from Moctezuma.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews