Books: Six on a Raft

KoN-TiKi (304 pp.)—Thor Heyerdahl —Rand McNally ($4).

Peruvian sailors watching the crazy craft under construction at Callao thought the six Scandinavians must be mad. The crude raft was made of balsa logs, the longest 45 ft. long, hauled from the Ecuadorian jungles and lashed together with ropes. A crude steering oar swung astern; a big, archaic square sail drooped drunkenly from the mast, and the cabin aft was a bamboo hut thatched with banana leaves.

This seagoing eyesore had a name: Kon-Tiki, after a Peruvian chief of 500 A.D. who had hopped a balsa-log raft...