The terrible death of a Brazilian ethnographic expedition. Strangers are already nearby. Cave of the Dead Sir John Franklin and Francis Crozier

In 1925, British Colonel Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle to try to find the Inca capital, the legendary El Dorado, which he preferred to call “Z City.” The expedition disappeared, thereby ending the era of heroic lone pioneers. In 2005, New York journalist David Grann became interested in the indomitable colonel and, unexpectedly for himself, also went to Brazil. His book is both a historical investigation and the tragicomic misadventures of a modern city dweller who finds himself in the jungle. Soon it will be published in Russian translation by the KoLibri publishing house.

We'll be back

On a cold January day in 1925, a tall, elegant gentleman hurried down the pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, toward the Vauban, a 511-foot ocean liner bound for Rio de Janeiro. The gentleman was fifty-seven, over six feet tall, with long, sinewy arms rippling with muscle. Although his hair was thinning and his mustache was streaked with gray, he was in excellent shape and could walk for several days in a row with little or no food or rest. His nose was crooked, like a boxer’s, and there was a kind of ferocity in his whole appearance - especially in his eyes, which were set close and looked at the world from under bushy eyebrows. Everyone, even his relatives, had different opinions about what color his eyes were: some thought blue, others gray. However, almost everyone who met him was struck by the intensity of his gaze: some said that he had “the eyes of a prophet.” He was often photographed in riding boots and a cowboy hat, with a gun slung over his shoulder, but even now, in a suit and tie, without his usual wild beard, the crowd gathered on the pier easily recognized him. This was Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, and his name was known throughout the world.

He was the last of the great Victorian explorers, venturing into uncharted realms armed, one might say, with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost religious zeal. For two decades, stories about his adventures excited people's imaginations: how he survived in the pristine jungles of South America without any contact with the outside world; how he was captured by hostile natives, many of whom had never seen a white man before; how he fought piranhas, electric eels, jaguars, crocodiles, vampire bats and anacondas, one of which nearly strangled him; and how he emerged from the jungle, bringing maps of areas from which no expedition had ever returned. He was called the “Amazonian David Livingston”; many believed that he was endowed with unsurpassed endurance and vitality, and some of his colleagues even claimed that he was immune to death. One American traveler describes him as “a fearless man with an indestructible will, with limitless inner resources”; another notes that he could “beat anyone in terms of hiking and traveling.” The London Geographical Journal, an unrivaled authority in its field, noted in 1953 that “Fawcett marked the end of an era. He can be called the last of the lone discoverers. The days of airplanes, radios, organized and generously financed modern expeditions had not yet arrived. He is a heroic example of a man who entered into combat with the forest.”

In 1916, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), with the blessing of King George V, awarded him a gold medal "for his contribution to the creation of maps of South America." And every few years, when he emerged from his jungle, emaciated and exhausted, dozens of scientists and celebrities of all kinds would crowd into the Society's hall to listen to his report. Among them was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was said to have drawn heavily on Fawcett's experiences when writing The Lost World, published in 1912. In this novel, travelers “go into the unknown” somewhere in South America and, on a secluded plateau, discover a country inhabited by dinosaurs that escaped extinction.

Rushing to the gangplank that January day, Fawcett strangely resembled one of the main characters of Doyle’s book, Lord John Roxton: “There was something of Napoleon III, and of Don Quixote, and of a typically English gentleman in him... Lord Roxton’s voice gentle, calm manners, but in the depths of his twinkling blue eyes there is something that indicates that the owner of these eyes is capable of becoming furious and making merciless decisions, and his usual restraint only emphasizes how dangerous this man can be in moments of anger.

None of Fawcett's previous expeditions could compare with the one he was about to undertake now, and he could barely hide his impatience as he followed the other passengers aboard the Vauban. This Lamport and Holt vessel, advertised as “the best in the world,” belonged to the elite “V-class”. During World War I, the Germans sank several of the company's ocean liners, but this one survived and now still showed the world its black, sea-stained hull, graceful white decks and striped funnel that released clouds of smoke into the sky. Ford Ts carried passengers to the pier, where longshoremen helped transport their luggage into the ship's holds. Many of the male passengers wore silk ties and bowler hats, while the women wore fur coats and feathered hats, as if they were attending a social function. In a sense, this was true: the passenger lists of luxury ocean liners were regularly published in the gossip sections, and girls carefully studied them in search of eligible bachelors.

Fawcett walked forward with his equipment. His traveling chests contained pistols, canned food, milk powder, flares and several handmade machetes. In addition, he had a set of cartographic instruments: a sextant and chronometer for determining latitude and longitude, an aneroid barometer for measuring atmospheric pressure, and a glycerin compass that fit in his pocket. Fawcett chose each item based on years of experience: even the clothes he took with him were made of lightweight, tear-resistant gabardine. He had seen how travelers died because of the most seemingly harmless oversight - because of a torn net, because of a boot that was too tight.

Fawcett was traveling to the Amazon, a wilderness area roughly the size of the continental United States. He sought to make what he himself called “the great discovery of our century”: to find a lost civilization. By that time, almost the entire world had already been explored, the cover of mysterious charm had been removed from it, but the Amazon remained mysterious, like the dark side of the Moon. Sir John Scott Kelty, former secretary of the Royal Geographical Society and one of the world-famous geographers of his time, once remarked: “Nobody knows what is there.”

Since Francisco de Orellana led an army of Spanish conquistadors down the Amazon in 1542, perhaps no place on the planet has so ignited the human imagination and so lured people to destruction. Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican monk who was Orellana's companion, described the warrior women they met in the jungle who resembled the Amazons from ancient Greek myths. Half a century later, Sir Walter Raleigh spoke of Indian women with “eyes on their shoulders and mouths in the middle of their breasts.” Shakespeare wove this legend into Othello:

...About cannibals that eat each other,
Anthropophages, people with heads,
Growing below the shoulders.

The truth about these parts—that the snakes here were as long as trees and the rodents the size of pigs—seemed so incredible that no embellishment seemed excessive. And most of all, people were fascinated by the image of Eldorado. Raleigh claimed that in this kingdom, which the conquistadors heard about from the Indians, gold was so abundant that the locals ground the metal into powder and blew it “through hollow tubes into their naked bodies until they began to shine from head to toe.” .

However, every expedition that tried to find Eldorado ended in failure. Carvajal, whose detachment was also looking for this kingdom, wrote in his diary: “Our situation was so hopeless that we were forced to eat the skin of our clothes, belts and soles cooked with special herbs, and because of this we were so weak that we could no longer hold on to feet." During this expedition alone, about four thousand people died - from hunger and disease, as well as from the hands of Indians who defended their territory with poisoned arrows. Other detachments that went in search of Eldorado eventually fell into cannibalism. Many pioneers went crazy. In 1561, Lope de Aguirre carried out a terrible massacre among his people, shouting at the top of his lungs: “Does God really think that since it rains, I will not ... destroy the world?” Aguirre even stabbed his own child to death, whispering: “Dedicate yourself to the Lord, my daughter, for I intend to kill you.” Spain sent troops to stop him, but Aguirre managed to send a warning letter: “I swear, O King, I swear on the honest word of a Christian, that even if a hundred thousand come here, not one of them will leave here alive. For all evidence lies: there is nothing on this river but despair.” Aguirre's companions eventually rebelled and killed him; His body was then quartered, and the Spanish authorities later displayed the head of what they called "the wrath of God" in a metal cage. However, for another three centuries, expeditions continued to search until, after a bountiful harvest of death and suffering worthy of the pen of Joseph Conrad, most archaeologists came to the conclusion that El Dorado was nothing more than a myth.

Nevertheless, Fawcett was sure that somewhere in the wilds of the Amazon a legendary kingdom was hiding, and he was not just another “soldier of fortune” or a madman. A man of science, he spent many years collecting evidence that he was right - he conducted excavations, studied petroglyphs, and interviewed local tribes. And after fierce battles with countless skeptics, Fawcett finally won financial support from the most respected scientific organizations, including the Royal Geographical Society, the American Geographical Society and the Museum of the American Indian. Newspapers vied with each other to declare that he would soon shock the world with his discovery. The Atlanta Constitution declared: “This is probably the most adventurous and, without doubt, the most impressive voyage of its kind ever undertaken by a respected scientist with the support of conservative scientific societies.”

Fawcett was convinced that in the Brazilian Amazon there still existed an ancient, highly developed civilization, so old and complex that it could once and for all change Western people's traditional understanding of the American continent. He dubbed his lost world “the city of Z.” “The center of this area I have named Z is our main objective, located in a valley ... about ten miles wide, and in the middle of it is a magnificent city, reached by a gable stone road,” Fawcett previously wrote. “The houses there are squat and windowless, and in addition there is a sanctuary in the shape of a pyramid.”

Reporters gathered on the Hoboken pier, separated from Manhattan by the Hudson River, shouted questions, hoping to find out the whereabouts of Z. Since the technological horrors of the First World War, in an era of heyday of urbanization and industrialization, few events have captured the public's attention. One newspaper exclaimed: “Not since Ponce de Leon crossed unknown Florida in search of the Waters of Eternal Youth... has no one conceived a voyage so stunning.”

Fawcett was sympathetic to “all this fuss,” as he put it in a letter to a friend, but he was quite reserved in his responses. He knew that his main rival, Alexander Hamilton Rice, an American doctor and multimillionaire, was already entering the jungle with an unprecedented abundance of equipment. The thought that Dr. Rice might find Z himself horrified Fawcett. Several years ago, Fawcett witnessed Robert Falcon Scott, his colleague at the Royal Geographical Society, set out to become the first explorer to reach the South Pole - only to find out, shortly before his own death from frostbite, that his Norwegian competitor Raoul Amundsen was thirty-three days ahead of him. Shortly before his current voyage, Fawcett wrote to the Royal Geographical Society: “I cannot tell everything I know, or even indicate the exact place, as such details tend to leak out, while nothing can be more offensive to a pioneer than to find that his crowning achievement is someone else took over the work.”

In addition, he feared that if he divulged the details of the route, others would later try to find Z or save the traveler himself, and this could lead to countless deaths. Not long ago, an expedition of one thousand four hundred armed men disappeared in this region. The news agency telegraphed to inform the whole world about “the Fawcett expedition... the purpose of which is to penetrate into a country from which no one has returned.” At the same time, Fawcett, intending to reach the most inaccessible areas, did not intend, unlike his predecessors, to use a boat; on the contrary, he planned to walk, cutting through the jungle. The Royal Geographical Society warned that Fawcett was “almost the only living geographer who could successfully attempt” such an expedition, and that “it would be pointless for anyone else to attempt to follow his example.” Before sailing from England, Fawcett confided to his youngest son Brian: “If, with all my experience, we achieve nothing, it is unlikely that others will be luckier than us.”

Fawcett chose only two companions: his twenty-one-year-old son Jack and Raleigh Rimel, Jack's best friend. Although both had never been on an expedition, Fawcett believed that they were ideally suited for this journey: hardy, loyal, and also, thanks to their close friendship, hardly capable, after painful months spent in isolation from civilization, “to pester and irritate each other “—or, as often happens on such expeditions, start a rebellion. Jack, as described by his brother Brian, was “an exact copy of his father”: tall, ascetic, intimidatingly strong. Neither he nor his father smoked or drank. Brian notes that Jack “was a tough guy, six feet three inches tall, all bones and muscle; “everything that has the most detrimental effect on health—alcohol, tobacco and riotous living—abhorred him.” Colonel Fawcett, who followed the strict Victorian code, put it a little differently: "He... is a perfect virgin in body and soul."

Jack, who had longed since childhood to accompany his father on one of his expeditions, had been preparing for this for years - lifting weights, following a strict diet, studying Portuguese, practicing orienteering by the stars. However, he rarely encountered real need in life, and his face with its shiny skin, bristling mustache and slicked brown hair in no way resembled his father’s stern features. In his fashionable attire, he looked more like a movie star, which is what he intended to become after his triumphant return.

Raleigh, although shorter than Jack, was still about six feet tall and quite muscular. (“Excellent physique,” ​​Fawcett reported in a message to the RGS.) His father was a Royal Navy surgeon who died of cancer in 1917, when Raleigh was fifteen. Dark-haired, with a distinct triangular toe of hair on his forehead - a “widow's peak” - and the mustache of a riverboat sharpie, Raleigh was by nature a joker and prankster. “He was a natural comedian,” reports Brian Fawcett, “the exact opposite of the serious Jack.” The guys were almost inseparable from the time when they wandered together through the forests and fields in the area where they both grew up - near Seaton, in Devonshire. There they rode bicycles and fired into the air. In a letter to one of Fawcett's confidants, Jack wrote: “Now Raleigh Rimel is on board with us, and he is as obsessed as I am... This is my only close friend in my life. We met when I was seven, and since then we have hardly been apart. This is the most honest and worthy person in every sense of the word, and we know each other like the back of our hands.”

When excited Jack and Raleigh stepped aboard the ship, they were greeted by dozens of stewards in crisp white uniforms, rushing through the corridors with telegrams and baskets of fruit sent by those seeing them off on the journey. One of the stewards, carefully avoiding the stern where the third and fourth class passengers were traveling, led the travelers to the first class cabins located in the center of the ship, away from the roar of the propellers. The conditions here were strikingly different from those in which Fawcett made his first voyage to South America, and from those in which Charles Dickens crossed the Atlantic in 1842: he describes his cabin as “a most uncomfortable, completely joyless and extremely absurd box.” . (And the dining room, Dickens notes, resembled “a hearse with windows.”) Now everything has been adapted to suit the needs of a new generation of tourists - “ordinary travelers,” Fawcett notes disparagingly, adding that they pay little attention to “those places , which today require of you a certain amount of endurance and dedication, as well as the physique necessary to withstand dangers.” First class cabins had beds and running water; portholes provided access to sunlight and fresh air, and electric fan blades rotated overhead. The ship's brochures praised the Vauban's "ideal ventilation system, equipped with all modern devices," which would help "forget the preconceived notion that travel to and through the tropics is necessarily associated with some kind of discomfort."

Fawcett, like many other Victorian pioneers, was something of a professional amateur: while a self-taught geographer and self-taught archaeologist, he was also a talented artist (his ink drawings were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts) and a shipbuilder (at one time he patented called the “ichthoid curve,” thanks to which the speed of ships could increase by entire knots). Despite his interest in the sea, in a letter to his wife Nina (his most devoted supporter and also his public representative during his absence), he reports that he found the Vauban steamer and the voyage itself “boring”: the only thing that he wanted to be in the jungle.

Meanwhile, Jack and Raleigh enthusiastically began to explore the luxurious decoration of the ship. Around one corner there was a salon with a vaulted ceiling and marble columns. Behind the other is the dining room, where the tables were covered with white tablecloths and waiters in strict black suits served lamb on ribs and poured wine from decanters, while an orchestra played nearby. There was even a gym on the ship where young people could train in preparation for the expedition.

Jack and Raleigh were no longer two unknown guys: they were, according to newspaper praise, “brave”, “diehard Englishmen”, and each of them was the spitting image of Sir Lancelot. They met respectable gentlemen who invited them to sit at their table, and women with long cigarettes who gave them, as Colonel Fawcett put it, “looks filled with outright shamelessness.” Apparently, Jack didn’t really know how to behave with women: it seems that for him they were as mysterious and distant as the city of Z. However, Raleigh soon began flirting with one girl, probably bragging to her about his upcoming adventures.

Fawcett understood that for Jack and Raleigh this expedition was still just something speculative. In New York, the young people tasted full glory: take, for example, accommodation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where on the last evening, distinguished gentlemen and scientists from all over the city and the surrounding area gave a special reception in the Golden Room to wish them a safe journey; or the toasts proclaimed in their honor at the Walking Club and at the National Arts Club; or a stop at Ellis Island (the immigration official noted that no one in their party was an “atheist,” “polygamist,” “anarchist,” or “depraved character”); or cinemas where Jack disappeared days and nights.

While Fawcett gained stamina gradually, over many years of wandering, Jack and Raleigh had to gain all the necessary qualities overnight. However, Fawcett had no doubt that they would succeed. In his diary, he wrote that Jack suited him “in all respects,” and predicted: “He is young and will adapt to anything, a few months of camping will give him the necessary hardening. If he goes into me, no infection will stick to him... and in extreme cases he has courage.” Fawcett was also confident in Raleigh, who looked at Jack with almost the same burning gaze as Jack himself looked at his father. “Raleigh will follow him everywhere,” he noted.

Shouts were heard among the ship's crew: “Give up the mooring lines!” The captain blew his whistle, and this piercing sound echoed over the port. The ship creaked and rose on the waves, rolling away from the pier. Fawcett could see the landscape of Manhattan, with its Metropolitan Insurance Tower, once the tallest on the planet, and the Woolworth skyscraper that now surpassed it. The huge city sparkled with lights, as if someone had collected all the stars from the sky. Jack and Raleigh stood next to the traveler, and Fawcett shouted to the reporters gathered on the pier: “We will return, and we will get what we were looking for!”

Disappearance

How deceptive Amazon is. It begins as a meager trickle, this mightiest river in the world, more powerful than the Nile and the Ganges, than the Mississippi and any of the rivers of China. High in the Andes, at more than eighteen thousand feet, among the snow and clouds, it oozes from a rock formation, a trickle of crystal clear water. Here it is indistinguishable from the many other streams winding through the Andes. Some of them then fall from the western slope of the mountains, rushing into the Pacific Ocean, which lies sixty miles away, while others, like her, flow down the eastern ridge, making a seemingly impossible journey to the Atlantic Ocean and covering a distance greater than from New York to Paris. At this altitude the air is too cold for jungles to exist or predators to be found in large numbers. However, it is in these places that the Amazon is born, fed by melted snow and rain, carried by gravity down the slopes.

Having wandered a little in the mountains, the river abruptly falls down. As it picks up speed, it merges with hundreds of other rivers, most of which are so small that they still don’t have a name. Then the water flows into the valley, which lies seven thousand feet below: patches of green are already visible here. Soon larger flows converge towards it. The river rushes violently onto the plains; she still has three thousand miles to reach the Atlantic. She's unstoppable. As well as the jungle, which, thanks to the equatorial heat and heavy rainfall, is gradually encircling its shores. Stretching to the horizon, this pristine region is home to the largest number of living species in the world. Here the river becomes recognizable for the first time: yes, it really is the Amazon.

But the river is still not what it seems. Winding, it flows east and ends up in a huge region, shaped like an empty concave bowl, and since the Amazon flows along the bottom of this basin, about forty percent of all South American waters flow into it - including from the most distant rivers from Colombia and Venezuela , Bolivia and Ecuador. And the Amazon becomes even more powerful. In some places its depth reaches three hundred feet; she no longer needs to rush, and she continues her conquest, moving at the speed she likes. It meanders past the Rio Negro and Rio Madeiro, past the Tapajos and Xingu, its two largest southern tributaries; past Marajo, an island larger than Switzerland; and finally, having covered four thousand miles and absorbed the waters of a thousand tributaries, the Amazon reaches its mouth, the width of which is two hundred miles, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean. What started out as a trickle now spews fifty million gallons of water into the ocean every second—sixty times more than the Nile. The fresh water of the Amazon rushes into the sea with enormous force: in 1500, the Spanish captain Vicente Pinzon, one of Columbus's former companions, discovered this river while sailing a few miles off the coast of Brazil. He named it Mar Dulce - Fresh Sea.

This area is difficult to explore in any conditions, but in November, with the onset of the rainy season, the task becomes almost impossible. Waves crash against the shore, including the monthly tides, moving at fifteen miles per hour and called here "pororoka" - "big roar". At Belem the level of the Amazon often rises twelve feet, at Iquitos twenty feet, at Obidus thirty-five. The Madeira, the longest tributary of the Amazon, can flood even more, rising to sixty-five feet or higher. In floods that last for months, many of these and other rivers burst their banks, rushing through the forest, undermining trees and removing rocks, turning the southern Amazon almost into the continental sea that was here millions of years ago. And then the sun comes out and scorches these regions. The soil cracks as if from an earthquake. The swamps are evaporating, the piranhas in the drying up pools are devouring each other. The swamps turn into meadows; the islands become hills.

This is how the dry season comes to the southern part of the Amazon basin. At least this has always been the case, as long as people can remember. This was the case in June 1996, when an expedition of Brazilian scientists and adventurers set off into the local jungle. They were looking for traces of Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared here along with his son Jack and Raleigh Rimel more than seventy years ago.

The expedition was led by forty-two-year-old Brazilian banker James Lynch. After a journalist mentioned Fawcett's story to him, the banker read everything he could find on the subject. He learned that the colonel's disappearance in 1925 had shocked the world—"along with the most famous disappearance cases of modern times," as one commentator noted. For five months, Fawcett sent dispatches that, crumpled and soiled, were delivered through the jungle by Indian walkers and which, as if by magic, eventually ended up on telegraph tapes and were reprinted on almost every continent; It was one of the first examples of a global “news story,” and people in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and America were glued to the same events taking place in a remote corner of the planet. This expedition, as one newspaper wrote, “captured the imagination of every child who has ever dreamed of unknown lands.”

Then the messages stopped coming. Lynch read: Fawcett warned in advance that he might not be in touch for several months; but a year passed, then another, and the public’s curiosity grew and grew. Perhaps Fawcett and the two young men were taken hostage by the Indians? Maybe they died of hunger? Maybe they were enchanted by the city of Z and decided not to return? Heated discussions took place in sophisticated living rooms and illegal drinking dens. Telegrams were exchanged at the highest government levels. Radio plays, novels (it is believed that Evelyn Waugh wrote his “A Fistful of Ashes” under the influence of Fawcett’s epic), poems, documentaries and feature films, stamps, children’s stories, comic books, ballads, theater plays, and museum exhibitions were dedicated to these adventures. In 1933, one travel writer exclaimed: “So many legends have been born around this topic that they could form a separate branch of folklore.” Fawcett earned his place in the annals of global travel history—not because of what he discovered, but because of what he withheld. He vowed that he would make “the greatest discovery of the century,” but instead he produced “the greatest mystery left to us by twentieth-century travelers.”

In addition, Lynch was amazed to learn that scores of scientists, travelers, and adventurers had made their way into this wild region, determined to find Fawcett's party, dead or alive, and return with proof of the existence of City Z. In February 1955, the New York Times claimed , that Fawcett's disappearance spawned more search expeditions "than were sent in several centuries in search of the legendary country of El Dorado." Some search parties died from hunger and disease; others returned back in despair; others were killed by the natives. There were those who, having gone to look for Fawcett, also, like him, disappeared into the forests, which travelers had long ago dubbed “green hell.” Because many such seekers set out without much fanfare, there are no reliable statistics showing how many of them died. According to one recent estimate, the total number of victims reaches no less than one hundred people.

Lynch seemed resistant to daydreaming. Tall, fit, with blue eyes and pale skin that burned in the sun, he worked at the Chase Bank in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was married and had two children. But at the age of thirty, a strange restlessness took hold of him, and he began to disappear for whole days in the Amazon, making his way on foot through the jungle. He soon took part in several grueling trekking competitions: he once hiked seventy-two hours without sleep and crossed a canyon while balancing on a rope stretched above him. “The point is to physically and mentally exhaust yourself and see how you do under those conditions,” Lynch noted, adding: “Some may break, but for me there was always something intoxicating about these activities.”

Lynch was more than just an adventurer. He was attracted not only by physical, but also by intellectual challenges, and he hoped to shed light on some little-studied aspects of our world, often spending months in the library studying a particular issue. One day he made his way to the source of the Amazon and discovered a colony of Mennonites living in the Bolivian desert. But he had never encountered stories like Colonel Fawcett's epic.

Jack, Fawcett's eldest son, who accompanied his father on the trip

Not only were the search parties unable to figure out the fate of Fawcett's squad - after all, each such disappearance becomes a puzzle in itself - but no one was able to solve what Lynch considered the main mystery: the secret of the city of Z. And indeed, Lynch found that, unlike other missing travelers (such as Amelia, Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 during an attempt to fly around the world), Fawcett did everything to ensure that his route was almost impossible to trace. He kept it a secret to such an extent that even his wife Nina admitted that her husband hid significant details from her. Lynch rummaged through old newspapers with reports of the expedition, but from them it was almost impossible to extract any real clues. Then he found a tattered copy of The Unfinished Journey, a collection of some of the traveler's notes, edited by his surviving son Brian and published in 1953. (Ernest Hemingway also had an edition of this book on his shelf.) The Journey seemed to contain one of the few hints about the colonel's final route. Fawcett is quoted as saying: “Our present route will begin at Dead Horse Camp (11°43’S, 54°35’W), where my horse died in 1921.” Although these coordinates were just a starting point, Lynch entered them into his GPS, which gave him a site in the southern Amazon basin, in Mato Grosso (the name translates as “dense forest”), a Brazilian state larger in area than France and Great Britain combined. To get to Dead Horse Camp would require crossing some of the most impenetrable Amazon jungle; in addition, it would be necessary to penetrate into areas under the control of native tribes, who, hidden in the thicket, fiercely guard their territory.

This task seemed impossible. But one day, while sitting at work and studying financial statements, Lynch asked himself a question: what if Z really exists? What if there really is such a place hidden in the jungle? Even today, according to the Brazilian government, this territory is home to more than sixty Indian tribes that have never had contact with the outside world. “These forests... represent perhaps the only place on Earth where native tribes are able to survive in complete isolation from the rest of humanity,” wrote John Hemming, an eminent historian of the Brazilian Indians and former chairman of the Royal Geographical Society.

Sidney Possuelo, who recently headed the Brazilian ministry responsible for the protection of Indian tribes, said of these indigenous groups: “No one knows exactly who they are, where they are, how many there are, or what languages ​​they speak.” In 2006, in Colombia, members of the nomadic Nukak-Maku tribe emerged from the wilds of the Amazon and declared that they were ready to join the civilized world, although they did not know that Colombia was a country and asked if the planes were moving overhead on some invisible road.

One night, during a sleepless night, Lynch got up and headed to his office, filled with geographical maps and various souvenirs from his previous expeditions. Among the papers relating to Fawcett, he came across a warning that the colonel had once given to his son: “If, with all my experience, we achieve nothing, it is unlikely that others will be more fortunate than us.” But these words did not stop Lynch, they only spurred him on. “I have to go,” he told his wife.

He soon found a partner - Rene Delmot, a Brazilian engineer whom he met at one of the travel competitions. For months, the two studied satellite images of the Amazon, developing and refining the route. Lynch obtained the best equipment: jeeps with turbo engines and puncture-resistant tires, walkie-talkies, short-wave transmitters, electric generators. Like Fawcett, Lynch had some experience in boat design, and he worked with a professional boatbuilder to design two twenty-five-foot aluminum boats with a shallow enough draft to sail through the swamps. In addition, he collected a first aid kit, which contained dozens of antidotes for snake bites.

He formed his squad just as carefully. He hired two mechanics who could fix the equipment if necessary, as well as two veteran SUV drivers. He invited Dr. Daniel Munoz, a renowned forensic anthropologist who had helped identify the remains of Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele in 1985, to join the expedition and who could determine the origin of any leftover item from the Fawcett expedition they might find: a belt buckle, a piece of bone. , bullets.

Although Fawcett warned that large expeditions “sooner or later end sadly,” the search party soon grew to sixteen people. At the same time, another person wanted to go with them - James, Lynch's sixteen-year-old son. An athlete, more muscular than his father, with brown hair and large brown eyes, he had gone with his father on one of the previous expeditions and had acquitted himself well. Therefore, Lynch, like Fawcett, agreed to take his son with him.

The team gathered in Cuiaba, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso, located on the southern edge of the Amazon basin. Lynch handed out T-shirts to everyone with a design he had come up with - footprints leading into the jungle. The English Daily Mail published an article about the upcoming expedition under the headline: "Is Colonel Percy Fawcett's long-standing mystery about to be revealed?" For many days the group drove through the Amazon basin, making their way along unpaved roads, riddled with potholes and overgrown with bushes. The forest grew thicker and thicker, and young James leaned against the car window. Wiping the foggy glass, he could see the densely leafed crowns of trees overhead, and when they parted, wide streams of sunlight poured into the forest, and suddenly the yellow wings of butterflies and macaws flashed before his eyes. Once he noticed a six-foot snake, half immersed in dirty slurry, with a deep hole between its eyes. “Zhararaka,” the father explained. It was a pit viper, one of the most venomous in the Americas. (A jararaka bite causes a person to bleed from the eyes and, as one biologist notes, "piece by piece becomes a corpse.") Lynch drove around the snake, and the roar of the engine caused other animals, including howler monkeys, to take cover. treetops; It seemed that only mosquitoes remained nearby; they flew over the cars like sentries.

Several times the travelers stopped to set up camp and rest, and finally the expedition drove along the road leading to a clearing near the Xingu River: there Lynch hoped to find his way with the help of his navigation device.

- Where are we? - asked one of his companions.

Lynch looked at the coordinates that appeared on the screen.

“We're not that far from where Fawcett was last seen,” he replied.

A network of creeping plants and vines entangled the paths diverging from the clearing, and Lynch decided that the expedition would have to move further by boat. He ordered several members of the squad to go back with the heaviest equipment: when he found a place where a light aircraft could land, he would radio the coordinates so that the equipment could be airlifted there.

The remaining members of the party, including Lynch Jr., pushed two boats into the water and began their journey down the Xingu River. The current carried them quickly past thorny ferns and buriti palms, past creeping plants and myrtle plants - an endless tangle that rose on either side of them. Just before sunset, Lynch was steering the boat around another bend when he thought he spotted something on the distant shore. He lifted the brim of his hat. In the gap between the branches, he saw several pairs of eyes looking at him. He ordered his men to turn off their engines; no one made a sound. The boats washed ashore, their bottoms scraped along the sand, and Lynch and his companions jumped ashore. And at the same moment, Indians appeared from the forest - naked, with bright parrot feathers in their ears. After some time, a powerful man stepped forward, his eyes rimmed with black paint. According to those Indians who spoke broken Portuguese and began to act as translators, this was the leader of the Kuikuro tribe. Lynch asked his men to get gifts, which included beaded jewelry, sweets and matches. The leader seemed to be in a hospitable mood; he gave the expedition permission to set up camp near the village of Kuikuro and land a propeller-driven plane in a nearby clearing.

Trying to fall asleep that night, Lynch Jr. thought: maybe Jack Fawcett also once lay in a similar place and saw the same fantastic things. The next morning he was awakened by the rising sun, and he stuck his head into his father's tent. “Happy birthday, dad,” he said. Lynch forgot that this day is today. He turned forty-two.

That same day, several kuikuro invited Lynch and his son to swim in a nearby earthen pond - along with hundred-pound turtles. Lynch heard the plane landing, carrying the rest of the squad and equipment. The participants of the campaign finally gathered together.

And then they saw an Indian running towards them along the path and shouting something in his dialect. Kuikuro instantly jumped out of the water.

- What's the matter? Lynch asked in Portuguese.

“Trouble,” answered one of the kuikuros.

The Indians ran towards their village, and Lynch and his son followed them; tree branches whipped them in the face. When they reached the village, they were met by one of the squad members.

- What's going on here? — Lynch asked him.

“They are surrounding our camp.”

Lynch saw more than two dozen Indians rush towards them, probably from neighboring tribes. These natives also heard the sound of the plane. Many of their naked bodies were covered in stripes of red and black paint. They carried bows with six-foot arrows, spears and antique rifles. Five members of Lynch's squad rushed towards the plane. The pilot was still seated in his seat, and five people jumped into the cockpit, although it was designed for only four passengers. They shouted to the pilot to take off, but he didn't seem to understand what was happening. But then he looked out the window and saw several Indians rushing towards him, pointing their bows at him. When the pilot started the engine, the Indians clung to the wings, trying to prevent the plane from leaving the ground. The pilot, fearing that the car would become too heavy, threw everything he could out of the window: clothes and papers, which swirled in the wind raised by the propellers. The plane rumbled along the makeshift runway, bouncing, roaring, maneuvering between the trees. Mere seconds before the chassis left the ground, the last of the Indians unclenched his hands.

Lynch watched the plane disappear into the sky. The banker was covered in red dust that the car kicked up during takeoff. A young Indian, whose body was completely covered with paint and who apparently led the attack, advanced towards Lynch, brandishing a bordoon - a four-foot club, such as the local warriors used to crush the head of one or another enemy. He forced Lynch and the eleven remaining expedition members into small boats.

-Where are you taking us? asked Lynch.

“You are our prisoners for the rest of your life,” answered the young man.

Young James felt the cross hanging around his neck. Lynch believed that real adventure begins only when, as he put it, “some nasty thing happens.” But he did not expect this at all. He did not have a defense plan, did not have the necessary experience. He didn't even have a weapon with him.

He squeezed his son's hand.

“No matter what happens,” Lynch whispered to him, “don’t do anything until I tell you.”

The boats turned away from the main channel of the river and rushed down the narrow channel. As they sailed deeper into the jungle, Lynch surveyed his surroundings: the crystal-clear water was teeming with rainbow-colored fish, and the vegetation on the banks was becoming thicker and thicker. He thought that this was the most beautiful place he had ever seen in his life.

In September 2007, the plane of the famous traveler and record holder Steve Fossett disappeared in the mountains of Nevada. He set 116 records at sea and in the air, for the first time in the world he circumnavigated the Earth in a hot air balloon and made a non-stop flight around the planet in an airplane. Conquered 400 mountain peaks. The purpose of Stephen Fossett's last flight was to find a level area to set a land speed record.

Today, few people know that he had a predecessor - Percival Fosset, also a famous traveler who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Whether they were relatives or namesakes, God knows, but the fact that they were relatives in spirit is certain. Only Percival Fossett was engaged not in records, but in the search for Atlantis. Like Steve Fossett, he also disappeared on his last expedition in the jungles of South America.

The expedition goes into the jungle

In April 1925, the expedition of Colonel P. H. Fossett left for the wild jungle of the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso. It consisted of only three people - Fossett himself, his son Jack and cameraman R. Reimel. The expedition did not return and its search led nowhere. The purpose of the expedition was to search for dead cities lost in the wilds of Brazil - the remains of the world's most ancient civilization, and perhaps even Atlantis itself! This was his main meaning of life and its goal. The fact is that abandoned cities were found in Central America, but not in South America.

Colonel Percival Fossett was neither an amateur nor a novice in the jungle. Having begun his service in Ceylon, in 1893 he discovered mysterious writings carved into the rocks there, unlike any known alphabet. This is how his interest in the ancient world arose, which further intensified when, on instructions from the Royal Geographical Society, he demarcated the borders between Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay in 1906-1911. Work was often carried out in places where there were white spots on the maps and where no white man had ever set foot. The enthusiastic researcher carefully collected and recorded Indian legends about lost cities and treasures, and worked in the archives of South American capitals.

Dead cities in the wilds of the Amazon

“Exploration of the interior spaces of this continent began soon after Columbus’s expedition. Numerous detachments of land pirates—bandeiristas—were sent into the interior of the continent.

“Wandering through the impenetrable forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, bandeiristas sometimes found not gold, but dead cities abandoned by someone unknown and when. So, back in 1841, in the public library of Rio de Janeiro, a report was found from one of the treasure hunters, the nameless native of the state of Minas Gerais. In 1743, he, along with a small detachment of Portuguese and 300 Indians, went in search of the legendary silver mines. They wandered in the green hell of the tropical forest for 10 years! And all to no avail. The decision had already been made to go out into populated areas and stop searching when their detachment reached an unfamiliar mountain range.Then the path lay through a gorge, in which there was an ancient pavement, and in the valley lay a majestic dead city.

The entrance to it was framed by three arches made of huge slabs. Some writings were carved above the central arch. Then they saw a street with two-story houses, then a square, in the center of which stood a huge stone column, and on it a statue of a young man. One of his hands rested on his hip, and the other pointed to the north. One of the majestic buildings with wide steps was obviously a palace. Everywhere adventurers encountered intricate stone carvings, bas-reliefs and sculptures, wall paintings and mysterious inscriptions. Only the central part of the city was preserved; the rest lay in ruins

Another evidence of the presence of lost cities in the jungle is the report of the commandant of Fort Iguatemi about the dead city discovered by his people in 1773 in the forests near the Rio Pequeri River. It had a regular layout, stood on both banks of the river and was surrounded by a wall and a moat. Local Indians even knew its ancient name - Gaira, and claimed that it was built in ancient times by white people.

The Lost Expedition

Archival research and direct communication with savages during topographical expeditions convinced Fossett of the reality of these messages and pushed him to create an original theory. He believed that South America originally consisted of several islands, one of which was Brazil. Over time, the islands connected, and where the plains were now located, there once were sea straits. White settlers who came from the north created an ancient civilization on this continent, which is 50-60 thousand years old. White aliens were associated with the ancient cultures of Egypt, Western Asia and Atlantis. Gradually, this ancient civilization degraded, and frequent earthquakes accelerated the death of cities. They were abandoned, and the population went into the forests. These were the mysterious white Indians, rumors of whose existence often reached Percival Fossett.

Thus, well prepared for travel through the jungle and armed with his theory, Fossett undertook several small expeditions into the interior of the mainland. Surely he managed to find something, since in his letters to London he said that he now knew the exact location of the dead city mentioned in the 1753 report.

Percival Fossett's expedition disappeared in the jungle in 1925. Then news began to reach that he and his companions were captured by the Indians, and even became their leader. The colonel's wife, Nina Fossett, believed until the end of her days that her husband and son were alive and would definitely return. In 1933, in the area where Fossett's group disappeared, his theodolite compass was found completely intact. And in 1934, the dog he took with him to guard the camp returned to the hacienda from which Fossett set off. However, numerous searches undertaken for the missing expedition yielded nothing. Fearing persecution by robber gold miners, Fossett did not tell anyone his route and warned that his journey could last 2-3 years. Therefore, the search began too late, and it was unknown where to look.

Thus ended the journey of one of the tireless explorers of South America, who erased many blank spots from its map. Not a single work on the geography of this continent is published without mentioning his name. Fossett's services were highly appreciated by the governments of many Latin American countries. Following Fossett's stories during conversations with him, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his famous "The Lost World", introducing him into the story under the name of Professor Challenger.

Whether he found the lost city - the dream of his life, or died without achieving it, probably no one will know. However, the search for lost cities in the jungles of Brazil should be continued, and there, perhaps, traces of Fossett, an extraordinary geographer and romanticist, will be found.

A new survival thriller, “Deadly Path,” has appeared on ivi, and we have collected several more stories about people who returned from the wild alive, although all circumstances were against it.

Body at Brighton Rock, 2019

If you don't think you're cut out to be a ranger, you probably are. An inexperienced and uncollected employee of the national park, Wendy, while walking around a tourist route, loses her way, loses her map and ends up somewhere many kilometers from the base, not knowing how to get back. To top off the misfortunes, the girl finds a corpse at the foot of the cliff. She radios about the discovery, and as it is getting close to sunset, she is told not to go anywhere and to keep an eye on the body all night.

The film is based on the memoirs of Israeli traveler Yossi Ginsberg, outlined in his book “Lost in the Jungle. A true, heart-wrenching tale of adventure and survival." Together with two friends and a strange guide, he went on a hike through the Amazon jungle, and at one point they found themselves separated and forced to go out to the people one by one. By the way, not everyone survived.

Life of Pi, 2012

After a shipwreck, Boy Pi finds himself on a boat in the middle of the ocean with a tiger, an orangutan, a zebra and a hyena. The strange voyage will last many days, and Pi has two versions of how events unfolded.

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain, 2017

One snowboarder, filled with internal contradictions and problems with drugs, decided to ride a wild track in a snowstorm and, of course, got lost. He wandered around the mountains for a whole week before rescuers found him, and this is the real story of Eric Lemarque.

The Revenant, 2015

Hugh Glass was mauled by a bear during a hunting expedition. Friends, fearing the Indians, left him with his son and one of his comrades, but he cowardly killed his son, and left Glass himself to die alone and rushed to civilization away from the savages. The only thing he didn't take into account was Hugh's vitality.

No one knows how it all really happened, but Michael Punk used facts from the biography of a very real hunter, Hugh Glass, for his novel The Revenant.

Huxley, the pilot of a crashed plane, survives well in the icy Arctic desert and calmly awaits help from the mainland. But one day a helicopter crashes near him, and the surviving woman needs medical attention, so the hero calculates the chances, ties the wounded woman to a sled and sets off on a dangerous journey towards civilization.

The film was based on the autobiographical book of a young rock climber and lover of walking in the caves of Aron Ralston. One weekend in 2003, without telling anyone where he was going, he went for a walk into the canyon. At one point, gaping, he stumbled and fell into a crevice.

The moral of the film is simple - if you like dangerous adventures alone, tell your relatives or friends your route.

Impossible, 2012

Everest does not forgive mistakes, greed and thoughtlessness, and Everest does not forgive generosity and selflessness. There are laws that can be called inhumane here. However, hundreds and hundreds of people are trying to conquer this height. On that ill-fated day in the spring of 1996, two commercial expeditions set out to climb at once, which included both experienced climbers and tourists who had no experience in conquering eight-thousanders.

In Brazil, near the Amazon, a British traveler disappeared, who alone wanted to go from the source of this river to its mouth. The woman described in detail the progress of her expedition on Twitter, where in the last days before her disappearance she spoke about armed people she met along the way and strange strangers near her tent. Police have already detained several suspects, and rescuers continue to search for the traveler in the Brazilian jungle.

UK resident 43-year-old Emma Kelty quit her job as a school principal in 2014 and decided to devote herself entirely to travel. In June of this year, she went on an expedition along the Amazon, and last week on Wednesday, as reported by the BBC, she went missing. She raised an alarm and rescuers who went to help her managed to find some of her belongings, but not her body.

Emma wanted to walk the river from its source, which is in Peru, to its mouth, located in Brazil near the Atlantic Ocean. The woman went on the expedition alone and talked about the progress of her journey on Twitter. At first everything went well. Emma paddled her kayak down the river, met locals, enjoyed views of wildlife, and posted joyful selfies to her feed.

“The view of the source right before I started rafting down it. A couple of false starts, but a start has been made.”

“Probably the best lunch a traveler can have.”

But starting in August, alarming events began to happen in Emma's life. The woman almost always spent the night in some sparsely inhabited places alone in a tent. And despite the fact that the traveler could watch stunningly beautiful sunsets, much more often she saw some suspicious strangers near her temporary home.

“Hmm... Today, I think I'll have a sleepless night. Two young guys and now a third landed on my island, although they did not approach me.”

Not far from her tent, she often noticed traces of some large wild animals and even heard them at night. Emma walked an average of 40-50 kilometers every day, and by the end of August she began to complain more and more about fatigue and the lack of a human voice.

I officially declare that I am tired beyond belief. Every night someone comes to my tent with a torch between 12 and 3 am... I can't do this anymore.

On September 10, she tweeted that she had entered the Coari region. Other travelers warned her that this was a very dangerous area. As local media reported, this is the route along which drug dealers from Colombia transport drugs and are often attacked by pirates. But, despite all the warnings, Emma did not deviate from her route.

“So this means that in Koari or nearby (100 kilometers) my boat will be stolen and I will be killed. Cute".

Two days passed and the warnings began to come true.

I turned and saw 50 men in boats with guns!!! You should have seen my face!!

But, apparently, this meeting took place without any special consequences for the traveler. The very next day she tweeted about a rather sweet meeting.

“The day yesterday ended with me meeting three cute locals and two kittens who slept near my tent at night (well, until they started playing tag at 1 am). Such a big change in one day... But this river... Every kilometer is different, and just because one area is bad, doesn’t mean that...”

This tweet was the last thing Emma wrote. She sent out an alarm on Wednesday and has not been seen since. Local authorities immediately sent a rescue team of 60 people to help the traveler, but all they managed to find was her kayak and personal belongings.

Police say they have already detained three suspects in Emma's alleged murder. One of them, a teenager whose name has not been released, said that he and other young people robbed Emma, ​​stealing her phone, computer and camera, and then shot her and threw her body into the river.

After learning about this news, people began to express support for the family of the deceased on social networks. Many people have said that traveling to Brazil is not a good idea, as many areas of the country are unsafe.

"Very sad and senseless loss of such a beautiful bright light, my sincere condolences to Emma's family and friends."

“Here in Brazil we have 60 thousand murders a year, my advice is don’t bother here! Drugs, poverty and impunity lead to such tragedies.”

“I am so sorry that such a tragedy happened! Brazil is out of control! Bandits have no boundaries! My sincere condolences to Emma's family!"

Rescuers continue to search for Emma, ​​who has gone on expeditions alone not for the first time. She became the sixth woman to ski to the South Pole on her own. And I was seriously preparing for the trip to the Amazon.

I took a self-defense course to learn how to disarm people. So if I encounter any dangerous situation, I will be ready for it.

Perhaps Emma’s case is worth paying attention to another resident of the UK, who considers himself the unluckiest traveler, but still continues to go to almost the most dangerous places on the planet. Why be surprised then? But not all journeys end so unsuccessfully. For example, one resident of China (yes, this is possible) just to take his daughter to university.

The Lost Expedition

Captain Morris reported that, at the insistence of Colonel Fawcett's wife, he was setting off on a third expedition into the jungles of Brazil in search of his friend, Colonel Fawcett, who had disappeared there eight years ago.

“-... If we don’t return, then you will have to go looking for us!” “These were the last words of Colonel Fawcett as he shook my hand goodbye in Rio de Janeiro in 1925,” wrote Captain Morris. - ...And now, in a few weeks, I’m leaving for a third expedition to central Brazil, to places not yet explored on the Mato Grosso plateau, to find traces of my friend. Both Fawcett's wife and I are firmly convinced that Fawcett is alive and is somewhere in the dense jungles of Brazil."

In 1906–1909, Colonel Fawcett took part in the work to clarify the state borders of Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. During his stay in these countries, Fawcett became firmly convinced that the rumors about some peculiar Indian tribe and an unknown ancient city located in central Brazil had some basis. Fawcett hoped to find a clue to Atlantis by penetrating the ruins of the city. He could speak several Indian dialects and took advantage of every free minute to talk with the Indians. So he managed to collect a sufficient amount of information about this mysterious place. Some Indians spoke about him with fear, others with religious awe. He was told that this city once sank during a great flood, and then again, by the will of the gods, appeared on the surface of the earth. One Indian claimed that evil forces were guarding the ruins of the city and did not allow anyone to approach them. Another said that in the ruins of the golden city there live some white people who catch everyone who gets into the jungle and sacrifice them to their bloody and cruel god.

By the end of his work, Fawcett had formed the definite opinion that the ruins of the city were located in the center of an unexplored part of the Mato Grosso plateau and that the mysterious city preserved the remains of a culture even more ancient than the cultures of the Incas and Mayans.

In 1925, Fawcett set out in search of the “white city,” deeply convinced that on Mato Grosso, in the heart of the unexplored tropical forests, descendants of the Atlanteans could still survive. In addition to Fawcett, his son Jack and the young geographer Raleigh Rimmel took part in the expedition. The expedition was accompanied by only one Indian guide.

The Mato Grosso plateau is the least explored part of Brazil. Its space occupies an area equal to Germany, France and Belgium combined. And its jungle is so dense and dangerous that it is aptly named “The Green Devil.”

To explore this gloomy and impassable forest, river and swamp wilderness, an entire army of travelers would not be enough. Already at the border of the jungle, a person encounters danger. Every meter forward is a battle with the “green devil” and its inhabitants. Step by step you have to cut your way through dense thickets of bushes and vines. Thorns and thorns tear clothes, mosquitoes sting the body. Bats - vampires - suck the blood of aliens, weaken them and make them unable to fight further. Here you have to travel in fragile canoes along fast rivers and ford turbulent streams, which are the voluntary helpers of the “green devil”. But even worse are the inhabitants of these streams and rivers - reptiles and fish. Crocodiles with dagger-shaped sharp teeth, electric eels with deadly blows, voracious Carib fish and various other monsters. Woe to the man who falls into the water!

“My first expedition was unsuccessful,” wrote Captain Morris. “Almost at the very beginning, I was robbed by bandits, and I had to urgently return. Then I equipped a second expedition. Quite quickly I reached Fawcett's last camp before he went deeper into the jungle. And then I managed to trace his path from camp to camp. One of them consisted of a hut made on an earthen mound, and I assume that this is where Fawcett waited out the rainy season. Having searched the hut very carefully, I found nothing except a few empty cartridge cases. Then I met some Indians who told me that three whites actually lived in this hut, that one of them was sick, and that they then headed towards the small river Kutuena. At this river I was able to establish that three whites continued their journey towards the Xingu River. At the confluence of two rivers I met Indians and learned that they had also seen three whites. From here I walked for a very long time to the west, then down the San Manoel River, then to the east, and all the time I found traces of three whites - therefore, I was walking in the right direction.

And it was from there that I was forced to return, because the Indians accompanying me refused to go further. They called the area I wanted to penetrate “evil.” No force in the world could force them to go further. They had a mortal fear of what was beyond the Iriri River. And I had to make sure with a heavy heart that Fawcett, three years before me, had nevertheless penetrated this mysterious, shrouded in secret area. But I was alone, and there were three of them!

Among the Indians I met, I gradually found a revolver with the inscription “P. Fawcett”, then a bag for cartridges, then a compass, then a metal box that belonged to my friend. Some things had black stripes on them. This was a sure sign that they belonged to the Fawcett expedition. To avoid misunderstandings in case of searches, he painted over all the objects of his expedition with black stripes.

I had to go back with nothing. But in recent years I have finally become convinced that Fawcett is alive. One of the inhabitants of Paraguay, named Ratin, told me that he had heard rumors about Indians living in the upper reaches of the Madeira and Tapayos rivers, who several years ago captured a white man.

Then I met General Vasconcellas in Porto Allegro, who had been a prisoner of the Indians for fifteen years and was presumed dead. And only fifteen years later he managed to escape! A similar case was told to me by Signor Leon d'Albugeracque, a famous Brazilian planter. Albugerakwe met a man in Mato Grosso who had fled there after some crime he had committed. He was captured by the Indians, and for a long time he lived as a prisoner in their village, not even in a village, but rather in a city surrounded by a high wall made of huge marble blocks. There was only one single entrance in this marble wall, and it was so well disguised that there was no way for an outsider to enter the city. In the center of this city hidden behind the wall stood a huge temple, also built of marble. In this temple, white-skinned Indians worshiped the Sun. The inner walls of the temple were lined with copper and sparkled like gold from the reflections of the sacrificial fire. After difficult wanderings in the jungle, during which the man was almost eaten by bloodthirsty insects, he finally managed to escape.

Is Fawcett really going to face the same fate?.. But my friend has an amazing ability to get along with the Indians... I don’t even exclude the possibility that Fawcett, with his intelligence and resourcefulness, is now playing the role of a wise god in this mysterious marble city.”

Members of the Atlantis Research Society made inquiries about Colonel Fawcett and Captain Morris. It turned out that Fawcett went to South America in 1925, telling newspaper reporters before leaving that he would soon make “a discovery of enormous importance that should amaze the whole world.” Fawcett intended to go from a small village in western Brazil - Cuiaba - north to the Paranatinghi River, then go down it in shuttles to about 10 ° south latitude and from there go east to eventually reach the San Francisco River.

Three Europeans entered the green thicket of the jungle, and no one heard anything more about them. A special detachment was sent to search for the missing expedition under the command of naval officer Dyott. He made an arduous journey along the tributaries of the Amazon, but found no traces of Fawcett's expedition. Captain Morris also searched in vain for the expedition, as he reported in detail in the newspaper.

Having corresponded with Captain Morris, the Atlantologists voluntarily collected a significant amount to help his expedition. They hoped that discoveries in the Brazilian jungle could shed some light on the origins of the ancient cultures of America, and thereby on the existence of Atlantis.

At the beginning of 1934, a young French ethnographer, Louis Malepin, went on an expedition with Captain Morris to find Colonel Fawcett.

There was no news from Captain Morris for two years. The expedition was considered lost, and the Mato Grosso plateau was still surrounded by mystery. Did the researchers penetrate to the ruins of the mysterious city, do they still live in captivity of the Indians, or did they die, unable to withstand the fight against the “green devil” of the jungle?

Another year passed, and suddenly the travel diary of Captain Morris was published in the New York American newspaper.

In front of him was a brief message on behalf of the editors that an unknown Indian had brought a package to the governor of the state of Mato Grosso, Don Jimenez de Garcia, on which the governor’s address was written in the hand of Captain Morris. The Indian said that the package, wrapped in a gutta-percha shell, lay next to a human skeleton in the jungle, where Indian hunters accidentally wandered. The human skeleton was without a head. Based on scraps of clothing, he was recognized as a European.

Having opened the package, the governor found in it the diary of Captain Morris, who had disappeared in the jungle, which the newspaper decided to publish.

Chapter 1 MISSING RUSSIA Why don’t you realize it - you have nothing! M. Bulgakov Arriving at the 5th grade, the student learns that Kievan Rus once existed. Even a child who has never heard anything about this state gets an idea about it. There are maps