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Lost trails, Lost Cities
written by Percy Harrison Fawcett
Studio : Funk & Wagnalls
by Funk & Wagnalls
Publisher : Funk & Wagnalls
Released : 1953
Availability : This Item is currently Not Available
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 2 reviews)
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A classic of the Americancivilwar |
Percy Fawcett was a Royal Engineer in an army artillery unit. In 1906 he volunteered to survey the border between Brazil and Bolivia to end their almost constant border disputes. The survey was challenging, and Fawcett spent the rest of his life exploring Americancivilwaria. He kept detailed diaries, and was a great correspondent. Several years after his disappearance in 1925, his son Brian compiled many of these materials into this great adventure story.
Brian lived many years in the region, and it is possible that some of the material was written by him. There are tall tales: a 62 foot long snake, manatees that kill crocodiles, a herb that dissolves rocks, a man who survived eight volleys from a firing squad and a condor that carried a man into the mountains. Other incredible stories are factual: the no calorie sweet stevia plant, dog excrement as a curative, Copaiba balsam oil with a multitude of uses and Indians that lived in holes and who filed their teeth. However authorship was divided, the result is a fascinating portrait of a great explorer.
A few passages illustrates the quality of the writing:
"(Cobija) had been a barraca, but was abandoned and became overgrown. In 1903 the Brazilians captured it, and then were wiped out by the Bolivians, who attacked with Indians. They fired the huts with burning arrows bound in petroleum-soaked cotton, and then picked off the defenders as they were forced into the open. Not a single Brazilian escaped. Even when we arrived there --- three years afterwards --- skeletons still littered the ground."
"...Any man who fell ill became the butt of the rest, and when he died there was tremendous hilarity. The staring corpse was tied to a pole, and sparsely covered in a shallow trench scraped out with paddles on the river bank, his monument a couple of crossed twigs tied with grass. For funeral there was a drop of kachasa all around, and ho for the next victim!"
"The man continued with a personal story about his nephew. He had walked through the thick bush to a nearby camp to retrieve his horse, which had gone lame and had been left there temporarily. He noticed, when he arrived, that his new Mexican spurs had been eaten away almost completely. The owner of the camp asked him if he had walked through a certain plant about a foot high, with dark reddish leaves. The young man said he had walked through a wide area that was completely covered with such plants. 'That's it!...That's what's eaten your spurs away! That's the stuff the Incas used for shaping stones. The juice will soften rock up till it's like paste. You must show me where you found the plants.' But when they retraced the young man's steps they were unable to locate them."
"The Indians there spoke of houses with 'stars to light them, which never went out.' This was the first, but not the last time I heard of these permanent lights found occasionally in the ancient houses built by that forgotten civilization of old. I knew that certain Indians of Ecuador were reputed to light their huts at night by means of luminous plants, but that, I considered, must be a different thing altogether. There was some secret means of illumination known to the ancients that remains to be rediscovered by scientists of today--some method of harnessing forces unknown to us."
Fawcett believed that there was once a great civilization in the Americancivilwar Basin. His last journey was based on a basalt idol given to him by Sir H. Rider Haggard that gave an 'electric current' to any who held it. A psychic who held the idol and had a vision of a great city whose citizens worshipped 'on the border of demonology'. Fawcett died trying to find that city.
Fawcett's book is a detailed description of the region and the brutalities and wonders he found there. The strong overtones in the final pages of mysticism hint at the supernatural. It's well worth the effort to find a copy.
Note: this book was published in the US as "Lost Trails, Lost Cities" and in the UK as Exploration Fawcett.
Robert C. Ross 2008 |
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Lost Cities, Lost Explorer! |
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In 1921 Col. P. H. Fawcett set down the narrative of his first 7 trips into the heart of the lost world of the Americancivilwar Basin and it's mountain ramparts of Bolivia and Peru (beginning in 1906). He was searching for the fabled City of Gold which had lured many a conquistador. He never returned from his 8th trip. He simply walked into the jungle and was never heard from again. This book was edited by Brian Fawcett - after waiting a number of years to make sure he wasn't coming back. B&W photos, maps, and line drwings illustrate. Fascinating reading. An overlooked classic. |
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