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Literature Text
Mysteries of the Unexplained
page 126-7, “From 1920 to 1940”
When we hear of expeditions seeking lost cities, we think of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores’s [sic] 16th-century dream of El Dorado. But another such expedition set forth into Brazil’s little-known Mato Grasso on April 20, 1925. It was led by Lt. Col. Percy Fawcett, an archeologist, geographer, and adventurer whose dreams of discovery were no less vivid and alluring than those of the conquistadores. They led him, his son Jack, and their companion Raleigh Rimell to an unknown fate in a forbidding land.
Fawcett had served in Great Britain’s Indian Army in Ceylon at the turn of the century, spending his free time searching for ancient tombs and treasures. Going to South America, he spent the years 1906 to 1909 surveying “a long and excessively unhealthy sector of the Brazilian-Bolivian frontier.” At the end of that period he carefully studied 18th-century Portuguese account of a great city that lay in ruins but was purportedly rich in gold and gems.
Convinced that the city existed—indeed, that Brazil’s lost cities predated even those of Egypt—Fawcett and his party started out from Cuyabá, traveling light and planning to live off the country. His last dispatch, dated May 30, stated in part:
The world heard no more from Fawcett and his companions. Because he had warned they would be gone for at least two years, and because his wife was convinced he was well, there was no search party until May 1928, and by then the trail was cold. Indians from several of the mutually hostile tribes in the area accused each other of killing the explorers. Others told of seeing the Englishmen near death from disease and exhaustion. For more than a decade travelers returned with stories that Fawcett had “gone native,” a half-mad old man in rotting rags among the Indians, but no convincing evidence to ever emerged to resolve the mystery. (Peter Fleming, Brazilian Adventure, pp. 6-13, 40-43, 187-90; Francis Hitching, The Mysterious World: An Atlas of the Unexplained, pp. 235-36)
[Transcription note: the same Fawcett, as a major, seems to be the man claiming to have shot a 62-foot anaconda in the Rio Abuná in 1907 while surveying for the Royal Geographical Society of London. He was called a liar for his efforts, and evidently had no proof for this claim. This account is found on page 141 of the same source as the article above.
Also, there is a recent book presenting Fawcett’s search for the city of Z as a historical narrative by David Grann. I haven’t read it, but I want to.]
page 126-7, “From 1920 to 1940”
When we hear of expeditions seeking lost cities, we think of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores’s [sic] 16th-century dream of El Dorado. But another such expedition set forth into Brazil’s little-known Mato Grasso on April 20, 1925. It was led by Lt. Col. Percy Fawcett, an archeologist, geographer, and adventurer whose dreams of discovery were no less vivid and alluring than those of the conquistadores. They led him, his son Jack, and their companion Raleigh Rimell to an unknown fate in a forbidding land.
Fawcett had served in Great Britain’s Indian Army in Ceylon at the turn of the century, spending his free time searching for ancient tombs and treasures. Going to South America, he spent the years 1906 to 1909 surveying “a long and excessively unhealthy sector of the Brazilian-Bolivian frontier.” At the end of that period he carefully studied 18th-century Portuguese account of a great city that lay in ruins but was purportedly rich in gold and gems.
Convinced that the city existed—indeed, that Brazil’s lost cities predated even those of Egypt—Fawcett and his party started out from Cuyabá, traveling light and planning to live off the country. His last dispatch, dated May 30, stated in part:
We have cut our way through miles of cerraba, a forest of low dry scrub; we have crossed innumerable small streams by swimming and fording; we have climbed rocky hills of forbidding aspect we have been eaten by bugs…. We shall not get into interesting country for another two weeks.
The world heard no more from Fawcett and his companions. Because he had warned they would be gone for at least two years, and because his wife was convinced he was well, there was no search party until May 1928, and by then the trail was cold. Indians from several of the mutually hostile tribes in the area accused each other of killing the explorers. Others told of seeing the Englishmen near death from disease and exhaustion. For more than a decade travelers returned with stories that Fawcett had “gone native,” a half-mad old man in rotting rags among the Indians, but no convincing evidence to ever emerged to resolve the mystery. (Peter Fleming, Brazilian Adventure, pp. 6-13, 40-43, 187-90; Francis Hitching, The Mysterious World: An Atlas of the Unexplained, pp. 235-36)
[Transcription note: the same Fawcett, as a major, seems to be the man claiming to have shot a 62-foot anaconda in the Rio Abuná in 1907 while surveying for the Royal Geographical Society of London. He was called a liar for his efforts, and evidently had no proof for this claim. This account is found on page 141 of the same source as the article above.
Also, there is a recent book presenting Fawcett’s search for the city of Z as a historical narrative by David Grann. I haven’t read it, but I want to.]
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Source: the Reader's Digest book, title shown and published in 1,984. It also relates to Ignatius Donnelly's work in Atlantology, but that connection is not listed here.
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