Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Z

Rating

7.5/10 It was a very enjoyable read about the origins of Percy Fawcett’s fascination with the jungle and his becoming of one of the key British explorers of the early 20th century. Written mostly by Fawcett himself and later put together by his son, it’s an authentic account of Fawcett’s work in the South America and his evolving obsession with the possibility of finding a lost ancient city in the middle of the jungle.

People compare Fawcett to Shackleton but this book is inferior to Shackleton’s Endurance. It’s still a fascinating read that makes you want to venture into the deep jungle, but it doesn’t provide the same thrill as the story of Endurance does. That said, I would recommend reading both, although Endurance would be higher on the list. What’s nice is that even if you know the rough outline of Fawcett’s story, this book talks mostly about all his adventures before his final mission on which he disappeared forever - hence it serves as a kind of prologue to that final journey.

What resonated with me the most were the few scattered accounts of white, educated men who moved from the civilized world to live in the jungle. Several times Fawcett described the ease with which civilized men adjust to the primitive jungle living and find pleasure and purpose in it. Although I don’t dream of living in the jungle, I do dream of living closer to nature, by the forest, and so these accounts stuck with me for that reason.

Finally, spoiler alert, the book ends with some speculations of what happened to Fawcett and his party on that final quest to the lost city of Z. I find the theories of being kidnapped or killed by savage Indians unsubstantiated and improbable. For most of the book, Fawcett talks about how jungle tries to kill you with it’s scores of predatory animals, snakes, disease carrying insects, torrential rains, thick undergrowth, and ever-changing terrain. He does of course mention the savage and sometimes cannibalistic Indians, but across all of his long-lasting journeys he only meets them a handful of times while the other threats are ever present. Hence I am much more likely to believe that he simply died of a disease, accident, or starvation - the unconditional probability (base rate) is simply higher for these options.

Synopsis

Percy Fawcett was an English explorer who got to know the Amazonian jungle thanks to his boundary delamination work in South America. He worked on surveying the borders between Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil deep in the Amazonian jungle between 1906 and 1914. After serving for the British army in WWI he returned to Brazil as an adventurer looking for a lost city of an ancient civilization. He was convinced that deep in the jungle there are ruins of an old city built by a pre-colonial people of South America. With his son and his son’s friend they took off into the deep jungle in central Brazil in 1925 to find this city that he called simply as Z (zet). The last time these three men were ever heard off was on the 29th of May, 1925 when they sent their final written message to Fawcett’s wife concluding it with a statement “You need have no fear of any failure…”

Notes

Some random quotes I saved:

• “It is the dreamer who is the investigator, and the investigator who becomes the pioneer”
• “… sudden death, in spite of its moment of terror and agony, is quickly over, and if we regarded these matters in a reasonable way it would be considered merciful.”

And some quotes on civilized men moving into the jungle:

• “Savage life has its compensations, and the more civilized man is the more ready he is to slough off the old life and relapse into an existence of extreme simplicity. Most of the whites i have met who ‘went savage’ were people of good education. It is they who seem to be the most adaptable.”
• “In this isolated spot he found the contentment denied him in the outside world…”
• “A man, however well educated, who has once sampled extreme simplicity of existence will seldom return to the artificial life of civilization. The burden of it is not realized until it has been laid aside.”
• “This part of the country is so beautiful that I could understand why, scattered through the forests, there are hermits of many nationalities, preferring a life alone in the wild to a penurious and uncertain existence in civilization. Rather than pity them for losing the amenities we are accustomed to consider so necessary, we should envy them for having the wisdom of knowing how superfluous such things really are. Perhaps they are the ones most likely to find the true meaning of life.”