The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Author:David Grann [Grann, David]
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780385529228
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2005-10-13T22:00:00+00:00

Still, Holt was determined to see the expedition through, and went to Rio to collect supplies. Fawcett, meanwhile, was turning over in his mind every aspect of Holt's performance: each complaint, each misstep, each error. He even began to suspect, though he had no evidence, that Holt was a Judas, sending information back to Dr. Rice or another rival. Fawcett dispatched a message to Holt that said, “Unfortunately we live and think in different worlds and can no more mix than oil and water … And as the objects of this journey with me come first and personal considerations last, I prefer to finish it alone than to risk results unnecessarily.”

Holt, dumbfounded, wrote in his diary, “After close association with Col. Fawcett for a period covering one year, I … find that the lesson most clearly impressed upon my mind is: Never again under any circumstances form any connections with any Englishman whatsoever.” He lamented that, instead of earning fame, he remained a “vagabond ornithologist—or perhaps ‘tramp birdskinner' would be nearer a true title.” He concluded, “As far as my biased observation goes [Fawcett] possesses only 3 qualities that I admire: Nerve, kindness to animals, and quick forgetful-ness of a row.”

Fawcett told a friend that he had fired another expedition companion, who was “convinced I am sure that I am a lunatic.”

Now, for the first time, the thought began to take hold: If only my son could come. Jack was strong and devoted. He would not complain like a pink-eyed weakling. He would not demand a large salary, or mutiny. And, most important, he believed in Z. “I longed for the day when my son would be old enough to work with me,” Fawcett wrote.

For the moment, though, Jack, still only eighteen, was not ready, and Fawcett had no one. The logical choice was to postpone the journey, but instead he sold half his military pension to pay for provisions—gambling what little private savings he had—and came up with a new plan. This time he would try to reach Z from the opposite direction, heading from east to west. Starting in Bahia and passing where he thought the bandeirante had discovered the city in 1753, he would walk hundreds of miles inland toward the jungle in Mato Grosso. The plan seemed mad. Even Fawcett conceded to Keltie that if he went alone “the prospects of returning are diminished.” Nevertheless, in August of 1921, he set out, unaccompanied. “Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind,” he wrote. Thirsty and hungry, delirious and deranged, he marched on and on. At one point, he looked out at cliffs in the distant horizon and thought he saw the shapes of a city … or was his mind unraveling? His supplies were exhausted, his legs spent. After three months in the wilderness and facing death, he had no choice but to retreat.

“I must return,” he vowed. “I shall return!”

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