The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Author:David Grann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: History - General History, Death and burial, Fawcett, Description And Travel, , Percy Harrison, Discovery And Exploration (General), Amazon River Region, Travel, Adventurers & Explorers, 1867-1925?, South America, History: World, El Dorado, Latin America - South America, Biography & Autobiography, Expeditions & Discoveries, Latin America, General, Explorers, History
ISBN: 9781400078455
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-01-05T08:00:00+00:00

THAT FEBRUARY, Fawcett left again for South America, in the hope of securing funding from the Brazilian government. Dr. Rice, whose 1916 journey had ended prematurely owing to the entry of the United States into the war, was already back in the jungle, near the Orinoco—a region north of the one Fawcett had targeted, which for centuries had been speculated to be a possible location of El Dorado. As usual, Dr. Rice went with a large, well-armed party, which rarely veered far from the major rivers. Ever obsessed with gadgetry, he had designed a forty-five-foot boat to overcome, as he put it, “the difficulty of bad rapids, strong currents, submerged rocks, and shallow waters.” The boat was shipped in pieces to Manaus, just as the city's opera house had been, and was assembled by laborers working around the clock. Dr. Rice christened the boat Eleanor II, for his wife, who accompanied him on a less risky leg of the journey. He had also brought along a mysterious forty-pound black box, with dials and with wires jutting from it. Vowing that it would transform exploration, he had loaded the contraption into his boat and taken it with him into the jungle.

One evening at camp, he carefully removed the box and placed it on a makeshift table. Slipping on a pair of earphones and twirling the dials as ants crawled over his fingertips, he could hear vague crackling sounds, as if someone were whispering from behind the trees—only the signals were coming from as far as the United States. Dr. Rice had picked them up using a wireless telegraphy set—an early radio—specially outfitted for the expedition. The device cost around six thousand dollars, the equivalent today of about sixty-seven thousand dollars.

Each night, as the rain dripped off the leaves and monkeys swung over his head, Dr. Rice would set up the machine and listen to the news: how President Woodrow Wilson had suffered a stroke and how the Yankees had purchased Babe Ruth from the Red Sox for $125,000. Although the machine could not send messages, it retrieved signals indicating the time of day at different meridians around the globe, so that Dr. Rice could more accurately fix longitude. “The results… far exceeded expectations,” remarked John W. Swanson, a member of the expedition who helped operate the radio. “Time signals were received at every locality where they were desired and a daily newspaper, published from news reports received from radio-stations in the United States, Panama, and Europe, kept the members of the expedition fully informed of current events.”

The expedition followed the Casiquiare, a two-hundred-mile natural canal that connected the Orinoco and the Amazon river systems. At one point, Dr. Rice and his men abandoned the boats and went on foot to explore a portion of jungle that was rumored to contain Indian artifacts. After cutting through the forest for about half a mile, they came upon several towering rocks with curious markings. The men quickly scraped away the moss and vines. The rock faces were painted with figures resembling animals and human bodies.

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