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New Yorker Magazine staff writer David Grann's fascinating tale of Percy Harrison Fawcett's search for the elusive city he called Z is an interesting read. It's said that Fawcett's search for Z inspired Conan Doyle to write The Lost World. Grann tells how he tracked down Fawcett's granddaughter in Wales to obtain valuable maps and information and how he gained access to museum records and documents that enabled him to follow Fawcett's trail to the last-known location of the ill-fated 1925 expedition. Not an easy task 80 years after the fact! Grann is admittedly no latter-day Indiana Jones. In an interview, he was asked if he would like to repeat his trek into Mato Grosso wilds. Grann, unabashedly, said he had no desire to do so.
Grann's explanation of the disappearance of Fawcett, his son and a young friend seems to be the most plausible of many that have been written. At least a hundred people have lost their lives in pursuit of the Fawcett legend and the quest to find Z. It reminded me of a 1940s book, The Rivers Ran East, written by explorer Leonard Clark, in which he described his
harrowing journey from the headwaters to the mouth of the Amazon in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. However, Grann's book doesn't have extraordinary claims of 40-foot anacondas, poisonous plants and head shrinkers, but, nonetheless, it's an engaging and highly believable tale about a very dangerous part of the world.
To his great credit, Grann brings out the realities of human depredations on the flora and fauna of Brazil's Amazon region. He said in the last four decades an area the size of France has been burned and otherwise cleared of trees to make way for agriculture and other commercial pursuits. It's an action that may be regretted in an unforgiving region often called "The lungs of the world."
Climate in the amazon allows people to live without the effort to build great cities like the fabled "El Dorado". The story was an invention of the natives to attract the conquistadores deeper in the jungle where snakes and other animals fed on them.
There are poisonous plants and others that are medicinal. The largest anaconda skin I have seen is about 30 feet. Poisoned arrows and darts are a fact. Men and women go around almost naked.
I have been and still go almost every year to the nearly virgin venezuelan Amazon State that inspired Conan Doyle for his novel The Lost world. Nature and beauty of landscape is overwhelming but nothing suggests the existence of a forgotten city or civilization. It nearer to Paradise described in the Bible.
El Dorado is a small town where shovel and pan prospectors barter their meager gold harvest from river beds with food and other goods.
Climate in the amazon allows people to live without the effort to build great cities like the fabled "El Dorado". The story was an invention of the natives to attract the conquistadores deeper in the jungle where snakes and other animals fed on them.
There are poisonous plants and others that are medicinal. The largest anaconda skin I have seen is about 30 feet. Poisoned arrows and darts are a fact. Men and women go around almost naked.
I have been and still go almost every year to the nearly virgin venezuelan Amazon State that inspired Conan Doyle for his novel The Lost world. Nature and beauty of landscape is overwhelming but nothing suggests the existence of a forgotten city or civilization. It nearer to Paradise described in the Bible.
El Dorado is a small town where shovel and pan prospectors barter their meager gold harvest from river beds with food and other goods.
Sorry for dreamers.
Nagib,
Thanks for your comments on the Amazon. It's always good to hear the views of someone who has first-hand experience in that area. I recently read David Grann's book, which was of considerable interest. One thing that he pointed out is that the Amazon is an unforgiving place for the unprepared. The indigenous people know how to wrest a living from the jungle, but it's often a death trap to outsiders who think they can live off the land. Percy Fawcett was jungle savvy, but he nearly perished of starvation on one of his earlier expeditions. As you say, the dangers of man and beast are ever present, and the quest for the "golden city" continues to be an illusory lure.
In all our trips to the Orinoco and Amazon basin, we had contact with natives from the following tribes: Piaroas, Warao, Pemones, Kariñas, Maquiritares, Yanomamis and others who mingle in the most southern frontier city of Puerto Ayacucho on the Orinoco. Up river and down river, I doubt an outsider dares to enter the jungle on foot or in canoe. We always travelled with native guides, who barely speak spanish not to mention english or other language. Peoplein settlements alongside the river live in such absolute poverty (by our standards) but have been living there for millenia. Just to mention one small kid, 5 or 6 years old knew only one spanish word "agua" water, and that was in a settlement not too far from Puerto Ayacucho.
I just finished this book and thought it was pretty well done. Fawcett was quite the interesting fellow, and I gained a lot of knowledge about the Amazon. I am confident to say if someone were to drop me in the middle of the amazon, I would probably be dead or mad within 12 hours--and the remnants of my body be consumed by natural forces shortly thereafter.
Historical tales that end in mystery bother me, as I will never get closure, but in this case, I did not feel that way so much. I feel pretty certain he died of one of the thousands of fatal dangers that lie in the Amazon...
I am confident to say if someone were to drop me in the middle of the amazon, I would probably be dead or mad within 12 hours-
I spent a few of days in the Amazon with an Indian, with no supplies, but you'd need a machete. It looked pretty survivable. String a hammock, cut down some palm leaves to put over it in case it rains. Fish are easy to catch with simple tackle, and palm hearts easily available. You could live a long time on that, and in most places, the water in the Amazon is drinkable. Bugs were no problem, but you can't depend on that. If there are tannin-barked trees upstream, there will be no mosquitoes. Rig something that floats and go downstream, you'll come to people.
I recently was in Miami and bought the book (The Lost city o Z) about Fawcett's trips to the Amazon. I am not convinced of the existance of such a city, but The american explorer JIMMY ANGEL who discovered the ANGEL waterfall, the highest in the world, about a thousand yards, told tha he effectively saw the rests of an ancient city in the venezuelan side of Amazonia. On the other hand a geologist friend of mine showed me 3 or 4 stones he found in the area. In each, I saw incrusted by nature red nuggets he insisted they were rubies. How pure I never knew but they seemed like rubies and measured between one half to one inch. Who to believe I don't know.
I recently was in Miami and bought the book (The Lost city o Z) about Fawcett's trips to the Amazon. I am not convinced of the existance of such a city, but The american explorer JIMMY ANGEL who discovered the ANGEL waterfall, the highest in the world, about a thousand yards, told tha he effectively saw the rests of an ancient city in the venezuelan side of Amazonia. On the other hand a geologist friend of mine showed me 3 or 4 stones he found in the area. In each, I saw incrusted by nature red nuggets he insisted they were rubies. How pure I never knew but they seemed like rubies and measured between one half to one inch. Who to believe I don't know.
Nagib,
Thanks for your follow-up comments on your reading The Lost City of Z. I'm sure the prospect of finding a fabled ancient city will continue to attract adventurers, although gold and oil seem to be of more recent interest.
A book of Amazonian exploration that caught the imagination of readers in the 1950s was Leonard Clark's fascinating account in The Rivers Ran East of his travels in the Amazon. Apparently Clark, too, was searching for the fabled city of El Dorado, which, of course, he didn't find.
Like a lot of arm-chair travelers, I was enthralled by Clark's description of exotic plants and animals and the gripping adventures he described. To my mind, Clark was the original 'Indiana Jones.' His narrative was probably too expansive to be entirely true, and in recent years some doubt has been cast on his veracity. However, he was a wonderful story teller and the memories of a good tale still linger. He reportedly died in 1957 while exploring the Caroni River in Venezuela, of which you are probably familiar.
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Tales that grow with each telling
