Diplomats and civil servants were distinctly jittery about an all-girl team of British adventurers heading for the Atrato swamps of South America. Carolyn Oxton, 20, a slim, dark, champion horsewoman planned to lead nine spirited young women in search of the Raspadura canal in Colombia. It was believed to have been dug by the natives under the direction of a Spanish monk in the 18th century, linking two rivers that flowed to the Atlantic and the Pacific. The girls would wear fatigues, travel in rubber dinghies and sling hammocks between trees above the mosquito-ridden swamp. But each would pack a...
