The Lost City of Z

by David Grann

  Fawcett was taught not just how to survey but how to see—to record and classify everything around him, in what the Greeks called an autopsis. There were two principal manuals to help him. One was Art of Travel, written by Francis Galton for a general audience. The other was Hints to Travellers, which had been edited by Galton and served as the Society’s unofficial bible. (Fawcett brought a copy with him even on his final trip.) The 1893 edition stated, “It is a loss, both to himself and others, when a traveller does not observe.” The manual continued, “Remember that the first and best instruments are the traveller’s own eyes. Use them constantly, and record your observation on the spot, keeping for the purpose a notebook with numbered pages and a map . . . Put down, as they occur, all important objects; streams, their volume, colour; mountain ranges, their character and apparent structure and glaciation, the colour and forms of the landscape, prevalent winds, climate . . . In short, describe to yourself at the time all you see.” (The need to record every observation was so ingrained that during Robert Falcon Scott’s race to the South Pole he continued to make notations even as he and all his men were dying. Among the last words scribbled in his diary were “Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”)

  To hone the aspiring explorers’ powers of observation, the manuals, in conjunction with seminars provided by the Society, offered basic instructions on botany, geology, and meteorology. Students were also initiated into the fledgling field of anthropology, what was then often called the “science of savages.” Despite the Victorians’ dizzying contact with alien cultures, the field was still composed almost entirely of amateurs and enthusiasts. (In 1896, Great Britain had only one university professor of anthropology.) Just as Fawcett had been taught to see the contours of the earth, he was now taught how to observe the Other—what Hints to Travellers referred to as “savages, barbarians, or the lower civilised nations.” The manual warned each student against “the prejudices with which his European mode of thought has been surrounded,” even as it noted that “it is established that some races are inferior to others in volume and complexity of brain, Australians and Africans being in this respect below Europeans.”

  As with mapping the world, there were “tools” for taking the measure of man: tapelines and calipers for calculating body proportions; dynamometers for assessing muscle strength and spring balances to determine weight; plaster of Paris for making impressions; and a craniometer to gauge the size of a skull. “Where practicable, native skeletons, and especially skulls, should be sent home for accurate examination,” the manual said. Of course, this could be tricky: “It is hardly safe to risk the displeasure of the natives at the removal of the dead.” It was deemed unknown how “emotions are differently expressed by different races, so that it is worth while to notice particularly if their smiling, laughing, frowning, weeping, blushing, &c, differ perceptibly from ours.”

  Fawcett and his classmates were also schooled in the fundamentals of mounting and executing an expedition—everything from how to make pillows out of mud to choosing the best pack animals. “Notwithstanding his inveterate obstinacy, the ass is an excellent and sober little beast, far too much despised by us,” Galton pointed out, calculating, with his usual obsessiveness, that an ass could carry about sixty-five pounds, a horse up to a hundred pounds, and a camel up to three hundred.

  Before embarking, the explorer was instructed to have each member of his expedition sign a formal agreement, like a treaty. Galton provided a sample:

  We, the undersigned, forming an expedition about to explore the interior of ———————, under Mr. A., consent to place ourselves (horses and equipments) entirely and unreservedly under his orders for the above purpose, from the date hereof until our return to ———————, or, on failure in this respect, to abide all consequences that may result . . .

  We severally undertake to use our best endeavors to promote the harmony of the party, and the success of the expedition. In witness whereof we sign our names.

  (Here follow the signatures.)

  The students were warned that they should not lord it over their men and must constantly be on the lookout for cliques, dissent, and mutiny. “Promote merriment, singing, fiddling, with all your powers,” Galton advised. Care must also be taken with native helpers: “A frank, joking, but determined manner, joined with an air of showing more confidence to the savage than you really feel, is the best.”

  Disease and injury could devastate a party, and Fawcett received some basic medical tips. He learned, for instance, how to remove a decaying tooth by “constantly pushing and pulling.” If he ingested poison, he was taught to immediately make himself throw up: “Use soap-suds or gunpowder if proper emetics are not at hand.” For a venomous snakebite, Fawcett would have to ignite gunpowder in the wound or cut away the infected flesh with a knife. “Afterwards burn out [the area around the bite] with the end of your iron ramrod, heated as near a white heat as you can readily get,” Galton advised. “The arteries lie deep, and as much flesh may, without much danger, be cut or burnt into, as the fingers can pinch up. The next step is to use the utmost energy, and even cruelty, to prevent the patient’s giving way to that lethargy and drowsiness which is the usual effect to snake poison, and too often ends in death.” The treatment for a hemorrhaging wound—say, from an arrow—was equally “barbarous”: “Pour boiling grease into the wound.”

  Nothing, though, compared with the horrors of thirst and hunger. One trick was to “excite” saliva in the mouth. “This can be done by chewing something, as a leaf; or by keeping in the mouth a bullet or a smooth, non-absorbent stone, such as a quartz pebble,” Galton explained. When starving, Fawcett was instructed to drink an animal’s blood, if available. Locusts, grasshoppers, and other insects were also edible—and might save a man’s life. (“To prepare them, pull off the legs and wings and roast them with a little grease in an iron dish, like coffee.”)

  Then there was the threat of hostile “savages” and “cannibals.” When penetrating such territories, an explorer was cautioned to move under the cover of darkness, with a rifle cocked and ready. To seize a prisoner, “take your knife, put it between your teeth, and, standing over him, take the caps off your gun, and lay it down by your side. Then handcuff him, in whatever way you best can. The reason of setting to work in this way is, that a quick supple savage, while you are fumbling with your strings, and bothered with a loaded gun, might easily spring round, seize hold of it, and quite turn the tables against you.”

  Finally, the students were advised how to proceed if a member of their party perished. They must write down a detailed account of what had happened and have the remaining members of the expedition corroborate it. “If a man be lost, before you turn away and abandon him to his fate, call the party formally together, and ask them if they are satisfied that you have done all that was possible to save him, and record their answers,” Galton stated. When a companion died, his effects must be collected for relatives and his body buried with dignity. “Choose a well-marked situation, dig a deep grave, bush it with thorns, and weight it well over with heavy stones, as a defense against animals of prey.”

  After more than a year of course work, Fawcett sat down, along with his classmates, for the final examination. The students had to demonstrate a mastery of surveying, which required a deep understanding of complex geometry and astronomy. Fawcett had spent hours cramming with Nina, who shared his interest in exploration and worked tirelessly to help him. If he failed, he knew that he would be back to square one—back to being a soldier. He carefully filled in each answer. When he finished, he handed his paper in to Reeves. Then he waited. Reeves informed the students of their results, and broke the news to Fawcett. He had passed—and more than that. Reeves, in his memoir, singled Fawcett out, noting that he had graduated “with great credit.” Fawcett had done
it; he had received the imprimatur of the Royal Geographical Society—or, as he put it, “The R.G.S. bred me as an explorer.” All he needed now was a mission.

  FREEZE-DRIED

  ICE CREAM

  AND ADRENALINE

  SOCKS

  You can’t just go like that,” my wife said.

  I looked down at the bed, where I had laid out some shorts and a pair of Adidas sneakers. “I’ve got a Swiss Army knife,” I said. “You’re not giving me a whole lot of confidence.” The next day, at her prodding, I tried to find a place where I could purchase more suitable gear. Friends directed me to one of the many stores in Manhattan that cater to the growing number of hikers, off-road bikers, extreme-sports junkies, and weekend warriors. The store was virtually the size of an industrial warehouse, and, as I stepped inside, I was overwhelmed. There were rainbow-colored tents and banana-hued kayaks and mauve mountain bikes and neon snowboards dangling from the ceilings and walls. Whole aisles were devoted to insect repellents, freeze-dried foods, lip balms, and sunscreens. A separate section existed for footwear (“Gurus can lead you to a perfect fit!” a sign said), which didn’t include an additional space for “spring loaded ratchet binding” snowshoes. There was an area for “adrenaline socks” and one for Techwick “skivvies.” Racks held magazines like Hooked on the Outdoors and Backpacker: The Outdoors at Your Doorstep, which had articles titled “Survive a Bear Attack!” and “America’s Last Wild Places: 31 Ways to Find Solitude, Adventure—and Yourself.” Wherever I turned, there were customers, or “gear heads.” It was as if the fewer the opportunities for genuine exploration, the greater the means were for anyone to attempt it, and the more baroque the ways—bungee cording, snow-boarding—that people found to replicate the sensation. Exploration, however, no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward, to what guidebooks and brochures called “camping and wilderness therapy” and “personal growth through adventure.”

  I was standing in bewilderment before a glass case filled with several watch-like contraptions when a young attendant with long, lean arms appeared from behind the counter. He had the glow of someone who had recently returned from Mount Everest.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “What’s that thing there?” I asked.

  “Oh, that rocks.” He slid open the counter door and removed the item. “It’s a little computer. See? It’ll give you the temperature wherever you are. And the altitude. It’s also got a digital compass, clock, alarm, and chronometer. You can’t beat it.”

  I asked how much it was, and he said about two hundred dollars, though I wouldn’t regret it.

  “And what’s that?” I asked, pointing to another gadget.

  “Pretty much the same deal. Only that one monitors your heart rate, too. Plus, it’s a great logbook. It’ll store all the data you want to put in about weather, distances, rates of ascent—you name it. What kind of trip you planning anyway?”

  When I explained, as best I could, my intentions, he seemed enthusiastic, and I thought of one Fawcett seeker from the 1930s who had classified people based on their reactions to his plans:

  There were the Prudent, who said: “This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do.” There were the Wise, who said: “This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do; but at least you will know better next time.” There were the Very Wise, who said: “This is a foolish thing to do, but not nearly so foolish as it sounds.” There were the Romantic, who appeared to believe that if everyone did this sort of thing all the time the world’s troubles would soon be over. There were the Envious, who thanked God they were not coming; and there were the other sort, who said with varying degrees of insincerity that they would give anything to come. There were the Correct, who asked me if I knew any of the people at the Embassy. There were the Practical, who spoke at length of inoculations and calibres . . . There were the Apprehensive, who asked me if I had made my will. There were the Men Who Had Done A Certain Amount of That Sort of Thing In Their Time, You Know, and these imparted to me elaborate stratagems for getting the better of ants and told me that monkeys made excellent eating, and so for that matter did lizards, and parrots; they all tasted rather like chicken.

  The salesman seemed like the Romantic type. He asked how long I intended to go, and I said I didn’t know—at least a month, probably more.

  “Awesome. Awesome. That should let you get immersed in the place.” He seemed to be thinking of something. Then he asked if it was true that some catfish in the Amazon, called a candiru, “you know, that it—”

  He didn’t finish his question, though he didn’t have to. I had read about the almost translucent, toothpick-like creature in Exploration Fawcett. More feared than piranhas, it is one of the few creatures in the world to survive strictly on a diet of blood. (It is also called the “vampire fish of Brazil.”) Ordinarily, it burrows in the gills of a fish and sucks its blood, but it also strikes human orifices—a vagina or an anus. It is, perhaps, most notorious for lodging in a man’s penis, where it latches on irrevocably with its spines. Unless removed, it means death, and in the remote Amazon victims are reported to have been castrated in order to save them. Fawcett, who had seen a candiru that had been surgically extricated from a man’s urethra, said, “Many deaths result from this fish, and the agony it can cause is excruciating.”

  When I told the salesman what I knew about the candiru, he seemed to transform from the Romantic into the Practical. Although there was little to protect someone from such a creature, he told me about one gizmo after another that was revolutionizing the art of camping: a tool that was a digital thermometer, a flashlight, a magnifying glass, and a whistle; compression sacks that shrank everything inside; Swiss Army knives with a computer flash drive to store photographs and music; water-purifying bottles that doubled as lanterns; portable solar-powered hot showers; kayaks that folded into the size of a duffel bag; a floating flashlight that didn’t need batteries; parkas that converted into sleeping bags; poleless tents; a tablet that “destroys viruses and bacteria in 15 minutes.”

  The more he explained things, the more emboldened I became. I can do this, I thought, piling several of the most James Bond–like items into my basket. Finally, the salesman said, “You’ve never camped before, have you?”

  He then helped me find the things that I’d really need, including comfortable hiking boots, a sturdy backpack, synthetic clothes, freeze-dried food, and a mosquito net. I also tossed in a handheld Global Positioning System just to be safe. “You’ll never get lost again,” he said.

  I thanked him profusely, and when I got back to our apartment building I carried the equipment into the elevator. I hit the second-floor button. Then, as the door was about to close, I extended my hand to stop it. I got out and, hauling the stuff in my arms, walked up the stairs instead.

  That night, after I put my son, Zachary, to sleep, I laid out all the things I planned to take on the trip and began to pack them. Among the items was a file I had made with copies of the most important Fawcett documents and papers. As I flipped through them, I paused at a letter that detailed something, in Brian Fawcett’s words, so “ hush-hush” that his father “never spoke of its objects” to anyone. After receiving his diploma from the Society, the letter said, Fawcett had been given his first assignment, in 1901, from the British government. He was to go to Morocco— not as an explorer but as a spy.

  INTO

  THE AMAZON

  It was the perfect cover. Go in as a cartographer, with maps and telescope and high-powered binoculars. Survey your target the way you surveyed the land. Observe everything: people, places, conversations. In his diary, Fawcett had jotted down a list of things that his British handler—someone he called simply “James”—had asked him to assess: “nature of trails . . . villages . . . water . . . army and organization . . . arms and guns. . . political.” Wasn’t an explorer really just an infiltrator, someone who penetrated alien lands and returned with secrets? In the
nineteenth century, the British government had increasingly recruited agents from the ranks of explorers and mapmakers. It was a way not only to sneak people into foreign territories with plausible deniability but also to tap recruits skilled in collecting the sensitive geographical and political data that the government most coveted. British authorities transformed the Survey of India Department into a full-time intelligence operation. Cartographers were trained to use cover stories and code names (“Number One,” “The Pundit,” “The Chief Pundit”), and, when entering lands forbidden to Westerners, to wear elaborate disguises. In Tibet, many surveyors dressed as Buddhist monks and employed prayer beads to measure distances (each sliding bead represented a hundred paces) and prayer wheels to conceal compasses and slips of paper for notations. They also installed trapdoors in their trunks to hide larger instruments, like sextants, and poured mercury, essential for operating an artificial horizon, into their pilgrim’s begging bowls. The Royal Geographical Society was often aware of, if not complicit in, such activities—its ranks were scattered with current and former spies, including Francis Younghusband, who served as president of the Society from 1919 to 1922.

  In Morocco, Fawcett was participating in an African version of what Rudyard Kipling, referring to the colonial competition for supremacy over central Asia, called “the Great Game.” Scribbling in his secret scrolls, Fawcett wrote that he “chatted” with a Moroccan official who was “full of information.” When venturing beyond the main desert routes, where tribes kidnapped or murdered foreign trespassers, Fawcett later noted, “some sort of Moorish disguise is considered necessary, and even then the journey is attended with very great risk.” Fawcett managed to insinuate himself into the royal court to spy on the sultan himself. “The Sultan is young and weak in character,” he wrote. “Personal pleasure is the first consideration, and time is passed bicycle trick riding, at which he is a considerable adept, in playing with motorcars, mechanical toys, photography, billiards, pig sticking on bicycles, feeding his menagerie.” All this information Fawcett delivered to “James” and then returned to England in 1902. It was the only time Fawcett acted as an official spy, but his cunning and powers of observation caught the attention of Sir George Taubman Goldie, a British colonial administrator who in 1905 became president of the Royal Geographical Society.