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The Equator has no tangible existence beyond maps, but yet it lives, a hugely significant symbol in the minds and hearts of navigators, travellers, poets, madmen and dreamers of all eras. In this volume the Italian historian Gianni Guadalupi, and writer Anthony Shugaar, have collected tales of human culture, endeavour and equatorial adventures. Many have responded to the challenge of the Line, setting out to discover the mysterious source of the Nile, the enigma of the Congo's swell, the perils of the Doldrums, and the powerful search for El Nino, the quest for a lost Eden and the search for El Dorado. Others have been seekers after a new way of life, like Elisa the nude Baroness of the Galapagos, or Robert Louis Stevenson, for whom the fearsome King Tembinok built at Latitude Zero in the Gilbert Islands, an enclave named Equator City. So many grand expeditions and projects, together with the names of many great explorers and eccentrics, make this anthology a voyage of human discovery.