by David Grann
As we walked back into the Kuikuro village, Heckenberger stopped at the edge of the plaza and told me to examine it closely. He said that the civilization that had built the giant settlements had nearly been annihilated. Yet a small number of descendants had survived, and we were no doubt among them. For a thousand years, he said, the Xinguanos had maintained artistic and cultural traditions from this highly advanced, highly structured civilization. He said, for instance, that the present-day Kuikuro village was still organized along east and west cardinal points and its paths were aligned at right angles, though its residents no longer knew why this was the preferred pattern. Heckenberger added that he had taken a piece of pottery from the ruins and shown it to a local maker of ceramics. It was so similar to present-day pottery, with its painted exterior and reddish clay, that the potter insisted it had been made recently.
As Paolo and I headed toward the chief’s house, Heckenberger picked up a contemporary ceramic pot and ran his hand along the edge, where there were grooves. “They’re from boiling the toxins out of manioc,” he said. He had detected the same feature in the ancient pots. “That means that a thousand years ago people in this civilization had the same staple of diet,” he said. He began to go through the house, finding parallels between the ancient civilization and its remnants today: the clay statues, the thatched walls and roofs, the cotton hammocks. “To tell you the honest-to-God truth, I don’t think there is anywhere in the world where there isn’t written history where the continuity is so clear as right here,” Heckenberger said.
Some of the musicians and dancers were circling through the plaza, and Heckenberger said that everywhere in the Kuikuro village “you can see the past in the present.” I began to picture the flutists and dancers in one of the old plazas. I pictured them living in mound-shaped two-story houses, the houses not scattered but in endless rows, where women wove hammocks and baked with manioc flour and where teenage boys and girls were held in seclusion as they learned the rites of their ancestors. I pictured the dancers and singers crossing moats and passing through tall palisade fences, moving from one village to the next along wide boulevards and bridges and causeways.
The musicians were coming closer to us, and Heckenberger said something about the flutes, but I could no longer hear his voice over the sounds. For a moment, I could see this vanished world as if it were right in front of me. Z.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM GRATEFUL to so many people who contributed to this project. Fawcett's granddaughter Rolette de Montet-Guerin and his great-granddaughter Isabelle generously allowed me access to Fawcett's diaries, letters, and photographs. Percy Fawcett's ninety-five-year-old nephew, Dr. Peter Fortescue, gave me a copy of his unpublished memoir; he vividly recalled when he was a boy and saw Percy and Jack Fawcett at a farewell dinner before they journeyed to the Amazon. Two of Henry Costin's children, Michael and Mary, shared reminiscences of their father and let me read his private letters. Ann Macdonald, Raleigh Rimell's cousin once removed, provided me with his last letters home. Robert Temple, who is Edward Douglas Fawcett's literary executor, and Robert's wife, Olivia, shed light on the marvelous life of Percy Fawcett's older brother. Commander George Miller Dyott's son Mark and Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice's nephew John D. Farrington each furnished crucial details about their relatives. James Lynch told me about his own harrowing journey.
I am also indebted to a number of research institutions and their incredible staffs. Particularly, I want to thank Sarah Strong, Julie Carrington, Jamie Owen, and everyone else at the Royal Geographical Society; Maurice Paul Evans at the Royal Artillery Museum; Peter Lewis at the American Geographical Society; Vera Faillace at the National Library of Brazil; Sheila Mackenzie at the National Library of Scotland; Norwood Kerr and Mary Jo Scott at the Alabama Department of Archives and History; and Elizabeth Dunn at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.
I could never have made it out of the jungle without my wonderful and good-humored guide, Paolo Pinage. I am also grateful to the Bakairí, Kalapalo, and Kuikuro Indians for welcoming me into their settlements and talking to me not only about Fawcett but their own rich cultures and history as well.
To learn about Amazonian archaeology and geography, I drew on the wisdom of several scholars—Ellen Basso, William Denevan, Clark Erick-son, Susanna Hecht, Eduardo Neves, Anna Roosevelt, and Neil White-head, among them—though they should not be held accountable for my words. I would like to pay special tribute to James Petersen, who was murdered in the Amazon not long after we spoke, depriving the world of one of its finest archaeologists and most generous souls. And, needless to say, this book would have had a much different ending had it not been for the archaeologist Michael Heckenberger, a brilliant and fearless scholar who has done so much to illuminate the ancient civilizations of the Amazon.
William Lowther, Misha Williams, and Hermes Leal have all done prodigious research on Fawcett and patiently answered my questions.
In the United States, several terrific young journalists assisted me at various stages as researchers, including Walter Alarkon, David Gura, and Todd Neale. In Brazil, Mariana Ferreira, Lena Ferreira, and Juliana Lottmann helped me to track down a host of documents, while in England Gita Daneshjoo volunteered to retrieve an important paper. Nana Asfour, Luigi Sofio, and Marcos Steuernagel contributed first-rate translations; Ann Goldstein deciphered an ancient Italian script. Andy Young was an amazing help both with fact-checking and with Portuguese translations. Nandi Rodrigo was an industrious fact-checker and made wonderful editorial suggestions.
I can never thank enough Susan Lee, a remarkable young journalist who has worked on this project as a reporter, researcher, and fact-checker for months on end. She embodies all the best qualities of the profession— passion, intelligence, and tenacity.
Many friends came to my aid, lending their editorial insights while pushing me across the finish line. I especially want to thank Burkhard Bil-ger, Jonathan Chait, Warren Cohen, Jonathan Cohn, Amy Davidson, Jeffrey Frank, Lawrence Friedman, Tad Friend, David Greenberg, Raffi Khatchadourian, Larissa MacFarquhar, Katherine Marsh, Stephen Metcalf, Ian Parker, Nick Paumgarten, Alex Ross, Margaret Talbot, and Jason Zengerle.
It is also my good fortune to be surrounded by such talented editors at The New Yorker. Daniel Zalewski is one of the smartest and most gifted editors in the business, and painstakingly edited the piece that appeared in the magazine and then made invaluable contributions to the book. Dorothy Wickenden, who took the manuscript even on her vacation, provided her usual scrupulous edits and flourishes, improving the text immeasurably. Elizabeth Pearson-Griffiths is one of those editors who quietly make each writer they work with better, and every page benefited from her infallible eye and her ear for language. And I can never fully express my gratitude to David Remnick, who agreed to send me into the jungle in pursuit of Z and who, when the project began to grow and envelop my life, did everything he could to ensure that I finished it. This book would not have happened without him.
Kathy Robbins and David Halpern at the Robbins Office and Matthew Snyder at CAA are more than great agents; they are sage advisors, fierce allies, and, most of all, friends. I also want to thank everyone else at the Robbins Office, especially Kate Rizzo.
One of the best things in writing this book has been the opportunity to work with the extraordinary team at Doubleday. William Thomas has been what every book author dreams of finding: an incisive and meticulous editor as well as indefatigable champion, who has given everything to this project. Stephen Rubin, who ushered this book from its inception to its publication, has done so with his indomitable spirit and wisdom. Indeed, the entire team at Doubleday—including Bette Alexander, Maria Carella, Melissa Danaczko, Todd Doughty, Patricia Flynn, John Fontana, Catherine Pollock, Ingrid Sterner, and Kathy Trager—has been a marvel.
In John and Nina Darnton, I have not only perfect in-laws but also first-rate editors. My sister, Alison, along with her family, and my brother, Edwa
rd, have been a constant source of encouragement. So has my mother, Phyllis, who has been an amazing writing tutor over the years. My father, Victor, not only has supported me in every way but continues to show me the wonders of an adventurous life.
I hope that one day my son, Zachary, and my daughter, Ella, who was born after my trip, will read this book and think that perhaps their father wasn't such an old bore after all. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Kyra, who has given to this book more than words can describe, and is, and will always be, everything to me. Together, she, Zachary, and Ella have provided the most rewarding and unexpected journey of all.
A NOTE
ON THE SOURCES
DESPITE FAWCETT'S once-enormous fame, many details of his life, like those of his death, have been shrouded in mystery. Until recently, Fawcett's family kept the bulk of his papers private. Moreover, the contents of many of the diaries and correspondence of his colleagues and companions, such as Raleigh Rimell, have never been published.
In trying to excavate Fawcett's life, I have drawn extensively on these materials. They include Fawcett's diaries and logbooks; the correspondence of his wife and children, as well as those of his closest exploring companions and his most bitter rivals; the journals of members of his military unit during World War I; and Rimell's final letters from the 1925 expedition, which had been passed down to a cousin once removed. Fawcett himself was a compulsive writer who left behind an enormous amount of firsthand information in scientific and esoteric journals, and his son Brian, who edited Exploration Fawcett, turned out to be a prolific writer as well.
I also benefited from the tremendous research of other authors, particularly in reconstructing historical periods. I would have been lost, for instance, without John Hemming's three-volume history on the Brazilian Indians or his book The Search for El Dorado. Charles Mann's 1491, which was published not long after I returned from my trip, served as a wonderful guide to the scientific developments that are sweeping away so many previous conceptions about what the Americas looked like before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. I have listed these and other important sources in the bibliography. If I was especially indebted to a source, I tried to cite it in the notes as well.
Anything that appears in the text between quotation marks, including conversation in the jungle from vanished explorers, comes directly from a diary, a letter, or some other written document and is cited in the notes. In a few places, I found minor discrepancies in the quotations between published versions of letters, which had been edited, and their original; in these cases, I reverted to the original. In an effort to keep the notes as concise as possible, I do not include citations for well-established or uncontroversial facts, or when it is clear that a person is speaking directly to me.
ARCHIVAL AND UNPUBLISHED SOURCES
Alabama Department of Archives and History, ADAH
American Geographical Society, AGS
Costin Family Papers, private collection of Michael Costin and Mary Gibson
Fawcett Family Papers, private collection of Rolette de Montet-Guerin
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, FBN
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, HRC
Imperial War Museum, IWM
National Library of Scotland, NLS
National Museum of the American Indian Archives, Smithsonian Institution, NMAI
Percy Harrison Fawcett Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections
Library, Duke University, PHFP
Rimell Family Papers, private collection of Ann Macdonald
Royal Anthropological Institute, RAI
Royal Artillery Historical Trust, RAHT
Royal Geographical Society, RGS
The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, TNA
NOTES
PREFACE
4 “no Arts; no Letters”: Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 186.
4 “write a new”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1925.
CHAPTER 1: WE SHALL RETURN
8 He was the last: Though many of Fawcett's expeditions took place after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, he is often categorized as a Victorian explorer. Not only did he come of age during the Victorian period, but he embodied, in almost every way, the Victorian ethos and spirit of exploration.
8 “a man of indomitable”: Dyott, “Search for Colonel Fawcett,” p. 514.
8 “outwalk and outhike”: Loren McIntyre, in transcript of interview on National Public Radio, March 15, 1999.
8 “Fawcett marked”: K.G.G., “Review: Exploration Fawcett,” Geographical Journal, Sept. 1953, p. 352.
8 Among them was: Doyle, notes to Lost World, p. 195; Percy Harrison Fawcett, Ex- ploration Fawcett, p. 122. There is little known about the origins of the relationship between Percy Fawcett and Conan Doyle. Exploration Fawcett notes that Conan Doyle had attended one of Fawcett's lectures delivered before the Royal Geographical Society. Once, in a letter to Conan Doyle, Fawcett remembered how the author had tried to contact him during the writing of The Lost World, but because Fawcett was off in the jungle Nina had been forced to respond. In The Annotated Lost World, published in 1996, Roy Pilot and Alvin Rodin point out that Fawcett was “well known to Conan Doyle” and catalog the many similarities between Fawcett and the novel's fictional explorer John Roxton. Interestingly, Percy Fawcett may not have been the only member of his family to influence Conan Doyle's famous literary work. In 1894, nearly two decades before Conan Doyle came out with The Lost World, Fawcett's brother, Edward, published Swallowed by an Earthquake—a novel that similarly tells of men discovering a hidden world of prehistoric dinosaurs. In an article in the British Heritage in 1985, Edward Fawcett's literary executor and the author Robert K. G. Temple accused Conan Doyle of borrowing “shamelessly” from Edward's now largely forgotten novel.
8 “disappear into the unknown”: Doyle, Lost World, p. 63.
9 “Something there was”: Ibid., p. 57.
9 The ship: My descriptions of the Vauban and life on board ocean liners come from, among other places, the Lamport & Holt brochure “South America: The Land of Opportunity, a Continent of Scenic Wonders, a Paradise for the Tourist;” Heaton's Lamport & Holt; and Maxtone-Graham's Only Way to Cross.
9 “the great discovery”: Fawcett to John Scott Keltie, Feb. 4, 1925, RGS.
10 “What is there”: Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1925.
10 “their eyes in”: Ralegh, Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, pp. 177–78. 10 “thorow hollow”: Ibid., p. 114.
10 “We reached”: Carvajal, Discovery of the Amazon, p. 172.
11 “Does God think”: Quoted in Hemming, Search for El Dorado, p. 144.
11 “Commend thyself”: Simón, Expedition of Pedro de Ursua & Lope de Aguirre, p. 227.
11 “I swear to”: Quoted in Hemming, Search for El Dorado, p. 144. 11 “It is perhaps”: Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 12, 1925.
11 “The central place”: Brian Fawcett, Ruins in the Sky, p. 48.
12 “Not since”: Colonel Arthur Lynch, “Is Colonel Fawcett Still Alive?” Graphic (London), Sept. 1, 1928.
12 “I cannot say”: Fawcett to Keltie, Aug. 18, 1924, RGS.
12 “is about the only”: Quoted in Fawcett to Isaiah Bowman, April 8, 1919, AGS.
13 “it would be hopeless”: Arthur R. Hinks to Captain F. W. Dunn-Taylor, July 6, 1927, RGS.
13 “If with all”: Fawcett, epilogue to Exploration Fawcett, p. 304.
13 “will be no pampered”: Ibid., pp. 14–15.
13 “We will have to suffer”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1925.
13 “to harass and”: Ibid.
13 “the reflection of”: Williams, introduction to AmaZonia, p. 24.
13 “six feet three”: Fawcett, epilogue to Exploration Fawcett, p. 277.
13 “He is … absolutely”: Ibid., p. 15.
14 “fine physique”: Percy Harrison Fawcett, “General Details of Proposed Expedition in S. America” (proposal), n.d., RGS.
14 “He was a born”: Fawcett, epilogue to Exploration Fawcett, p. 277.
14 “Now we have Raleigh”: Williams, introduction to AmaZonia, p. 10.
14 “utterly impracticable”: Dickens, American Notes, p. 13.
15 “hearse with windows”: Ibid., p. 14.
15 “perfect ventilation”: Lamport & Holt brochure, “South America.”
15 “rather tiresome”: Fawcett, epilogue to Exploration Fawcett, p. 278.
16 “Jack has”: Ibid., p. 15.
16 “Raleigh will follow”: Ibid.
16 “We shall return”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1925.
CHAPTER 2: THE VANISHING
17 It begins as barely: My descriptions of the Amazon River are drawn from several sources. They include Goulding, Barthem, and Ferreira, Smithsonian Atlas of the Amazon; Revkin, Burning Season; Haskins, Amazon; Whitmore, Introduction to Tropi cal Rain Forests; Bates, Naturalist on the River Amazons; and Price, Amazing Amazon.
19 The expedition was: My descriptions of the 1996 expedition are based on my interviews with James Lynch and members of his team as well as on information from Leal's Coronel Fawcett.
19 “among the most”: Temple, “E. Douglas Fawcett,” p. 29.
19 “captured the imagination”: Daily Mail (London), Jan. 30, 1996.
19 Evelyn Waugh's: Heath, Picturesque Prison, p. 116.
20 “Enough legend”: Fleming, Brazilian Adventure, p. 104.
20 “than those launched”: New York Times, Feb. 13, 1955.
21 “Our route”: Percy Harrison Fawcett, Exploration Fawcett, p. 269. 21 Even today: New York Times, Jan. 18, 2007.
21 “These forests are”: Hemming, Die If You Must, p. 635.
22 “No one knows”: Ibid.
22 In 2006, members: New York Times, May 11, 2006.
22 “only one and all”: Percy Harrison Fawcett, “Case for an Expedition in the Amazon Basin” (proposal), RGS.