The Lost City of Z

The next morning, under Fawcett’s watchful eye, Jack and Raleigh put on their explorer outfits, including lightweight, tear-proof pants and Stetsons. They loaded their.30-caliber rifles and armed themselves with eighteen- inch machetes, which Fawcett had had designed by the best steelmaker in England. A report sent out by NANA was headlined “Unique Outfit for Explorer… Product of Years’ Experience in Jungle Research. Weight of Utensils Reduced to Last Ounce.”

Fawcett hired two native porters and guides to accompany the expedition until the more dangerous terrain, about a hundred miles north. On April 20, a crowd gathered to see the party off. At the crack of whips, the caravan jolted forward, Jack and Raleigh as proud as could be. Ahrens accompanied the explorers for about an hour on his own horse. Then, as he told Nina, he watched them march northward “into a world so far completely uncivilised and unknown by people.”

The expedition crossed the cerrado, or “dry forest,” which was the least difficult part of the journey-the terrain consisted mostly of short, twisting trees and savanna-like grass, where a few ranchers and prospectors had established settlements. Yet, as Fawcett told his wife in a letter, it was “an excellent initiation” for Jack and Raleigh, who picked their way slowly, unaccustomed to the rocky ground and the heat. It was so hot, Fawcett wrote in a particularly fervid dispatch, that in the Cuiaba River “fish were literally cooked alive.”

By twilight, they had trekked seven miles, and Fawcett signaled to set up camp. Jack and Raleigh learned that this meant a race, before darkness enveloped them and the mosquitoes devoured their flesh, to string their hammocks, clean their cuts to prevent infections, collect firewood, and secure the pack animals. Dinner was sardines, rice, and biscuits-a feast compared with what they would eat once they had to survive off the land.

That night, as they slept in their hammocks, Raleigh felt something brushing against him. He awoke in a panic, as if he were being attacked by a jaguar, but it was only one of the mules, which had broken free. After he tied it up, he tried to fall asleep again, but before long dawn broke and Fawcett was shouting for everyone to move out, each person wolfing down a bowl of porridge and half a cup of condensed milk, his rations until supper; then the men were off again, racing to keep up with their leader.

Fawcett increased the pace from seven miles a day to ten miles, then to fifteen. One afternoon, as the explorers approached the Manso River, some forty miles north of Cuiaba, the rest of the expedition became separated from Fawcett. As Jack later wrote to his mother, “Daddy had gone on ahead at such a speed that we lost sight of him altogether.” It was just as Costin had feared: there was no one to stop Fawcett. The trail forked, and the Brazilian guides didn’t know which way Fawcett had turned. Eventually, Jack noticed indentations from hooves on one of the trails, and gave the order to follow them. Darkness was descending, and the men had to be careful not to lose each other as well. They could hear a sustained roar in the distance. With each step it grew louder, and suddenly the men discerned the rush of water. They had reached the Manso River. Still, Fawcett was nowhere to be found. Jack, assuming command of the party, told Raleigh and one of the guides to fire their rifles in the air. There was no reply. “Daddy,” Jack yelled, but all he could hear was the screeching of the forest.

Jack and Raleigh hung their hammocks and made a fire, fearing that Fawcett had been seized by the Kayapo Indians, who inserted large round disks in their lower lips and attacked their enemies with wooden clubs. The Brazilian guides, who recalled vivid accounts of Indian raids, did nothing to calm Jack’s and Raleigh’s nerves. The men lay awake, listening to the jungle. When the sun rose, Jack ordered everyone to fire more gunshots and to search the surrounding area. Then, as the explorers were eating breakfast, Fawcett appeared on his horse. While looking for rock paintings, he had lost track of the group and had slept on the ground, using his saddle for a pillow. When Nina heard what had happened, she feared how “anxious” they all must have been. She had received a photograph of Jack looking unusually somber, which she had shown to Large. “[Jack] has evidently been thinking about the big job before him,” Large told her. She noted later that Jack’s pride would keep him going, for he would say to himself, “My father chose me for this.”

Fawcett let the expedition remain in camp another day to recover from the ordeal. Huddling under his mosquito net, he composed his dispatches, which from that point on would be “relayed to civilization by Indian runners over a long and perilous route,” as editors’ notes later explained.

Fawcett described the area as “the tickiest place in the world;” the insects swarmed over everything, like black rain. Several bit Raleigh on his foot, and the irritated flesh became infected-“poisoned,” in Jack’s phrase. As they pressed on the next day, Raleigh grew more and more gloomy. “It is a saying that one only knows a man well when in the wilds with him,” Fawcett told Nina. “Raleigh in place of being gay and energetic, is sleepy and silent.”

Jack, in contrast, was gaining in ardor. Nina was right: he seemed to have inherited Fawcett’s freakish constitution. Jack wrote that he had packed on several pounds of muscle, “in spite of far less food. Raleigh has lost more than I gained, and it is he who seems to feel most the effects of the journey.”

Upon hearing about Jack from her husband, Nina told Large, “I think you will rejoice with me in the knowledge that Jack is turning out so capable, and keeping strong and well. I can see his father is very pleased with him, and needless to say so am I!”

Because of Raleigh’s condition and the weakened animals, Fawcett, who was more careful not to get too far ahead again, stopped for several days at a cattle-breeding ranch owned by Hermenegildo Galvao, one of the most ruthless farmers in Mato Grosso. Galvao had pushed farther into the frontier than most Brazilians and reportedly had a posse of bugueiros, “savage hunters,” who were charged with killing Indians who threatened his feudal empire. Galvao was not accustomed to visitors, but he welcomed the explorers into his large red-brick home. “It was quite obvious from his manners that Colonel Fawcett was a gentleman and a man of engaging personality,” Galvao later told a reporter.

For several days, the explorers remained there, eating and resting. Galvao was curious about what had lured the Englishmen into such wilderness. As Fawcett described his vision of Z, he removed from his belongings a strange object covered in cloth. He carefully unwrapped it, revealing the stone idol Haggard had given to him. He carried it with him like a talisman.

The three Englishmen were soon on their way again, heading east, toward Bakairi Post, where in 1920 the Brazilian government had set up a garrison-“the last point of civilization,” as the settlers referred to it. Occasionally, the forest opened up, and they could see the blinding sun and blue-tinged mountains in the distance. The trail became more difficult, and the men descended steep, mud-slicked gorges and traversed rock-strewn rapids. One river was too dangerous for the animals to swim across with the cargo. Fawcett noticed a canoe, abandoned, on the opposite bank and said that the expedition could use it to transport the gear, but that someone would need to swim over and get it-a feat involving, as Fawcett put it, “considerable danger, being made worse by a sudden violent thunderstorm.”

Jack volunteered and began to strip. Though he later admitted that he was “scared stiff,” he checked his body for cuts that might attract piranhas and dived in, thrashing his arms and legs as the currents tossed him about. When he emerged on the opposite bank, he climbed in the canoe and paddled back across-his father greeting him proudly.

A month after the explorers left Cuiaba, and after what Fawcett described as “a test of patience and endurance for the greater trials” ahead, the men arrived at Bakairi Post. The settlement consisted of about twenty ramshackle huts, cordoned off by barbed wire, to protect against aggressive tribes. (Three years later, another explorer described the outpost as “a pinprick on the map: isolated, desolate, primitive and God forsaken.”) The Bakairi tribe was one of the first in the region that the government had tried to “acculturate,” and Fawcett was appalled by what he called “the Brazilian methods of civilizing the Indian tribes.” In a letter to one of his sponsors in the United States, he noted, “The Bakairis have been dying out ever since they became civilized. There are only about 150 of them.” He went on, “They have in part been brought here to plant rice, manioc… which is sent to Cuiaba, where it fetches, at present, high prices. The Bakairis are not paid, are raggedly clothed, mainly in khaki govt. uniforms, and there is a general squalor and lack of hygiene which is making the whole of them sick.”

Fawcett was informed that a Bakairi girl had recently fallen ill. He often tried to treat the natives with his medical kit, but, unlike Dr. Rice, his knowledge was limited, and there was nothing he could do to save her. “They say the Bacairys are dying off on account of fetish [witchcraft], for there is a fetish man in the village who hates them,” Jack wrote. “Only yesterday a little girl died-of fetish, they say!”

The Brazilian in charge of the post, Valdemira, put the explorers up in the newly constructed schoolhouse. The men soaked themselves in the river, washing away the grime and sweat. “We have all clipped our beards, and