On a cold January day in 1925, a tall, distinguished gentleman hurried across the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey, toward the SS Vaban, a five-hundred-and-eleven-foot ocean liner bound for Rio de Janeiro.He was fifty-seven years old and stood over six feet, his long arms corded with muscles. Although his hair was thinning and his mustache was flecked with white, he was so fit that he could walk for days with little, if any, rest of nourishment.His nose was crooked like a boxer's and there was something ferocious about his appearance, especially his eyes. They were set close together and peered out from under thick tufts of hair. No one, not even his family, seemed to agree on their color -- some thought they were blue, others gray. Yet virtually everyone who encountered him was struck by their intensity: some called them "the eyes of a visionary."He had frequently been photographed in riding boots and wearing a Stetson, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, but even in a suit and a tie, and without his customary wild beard, he could be recognized by the crowds on the pier. He was Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, and his name was known throughout the world.
Description:
Colonel Percy Fawcett definitely is a man to be reckoned with and a character worth reading about, especially in the capable hands of author/researcher David Grann. His book, The Lost City of Z, promises adventure, travel, exotic locales, and personal quests, some of my favorite topics.
By the early 1900s, the age of exploration was closing. There were few undiscovered places left for an adventurer to explore and make a name for himself. Percy Fawcett's chosen territory of expertise was the Amazon jungles of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. His goal? Discover an ancient, unknown civilization and their city of gold, the fabled El Dorado (the Lost City of Z) mentioned by early Spanish historians.
Fawcett researched the ancient accounts told to the Spanish conquerors by local Indians about a king who "slathered himself in gold and floated on a lake gleaming like a ray of the sun....while his subjects made offerings of gold jewelry, fine emeralds, and other pieces of their ornaments." To Fawcett these accounts were the siren calls he had to answer, taking it upon himself to broaden the knowledge of an unknown land and hopefully reap the fame and recognition that accompanies such an achievement.
Grann uses the paper trail of articles, maps, and diaries left by the explorer to slowly unravel Fawcett's research and exploits, revealing "the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose."
The Lost City of Z offers a riveting story of a man driven by ambition and dreams played out in an unforgiving environment. Grann skillfully shows Fawcett's sheer force of will in expedition after expedition into the unknown jungle, many lasting years, then watch him emerge at the conclusion of each journey half dead but ready to re-enter on another quest.
I will not spoil the answer as to whether Fawcett discovers his civilization and fabled city. This adventure tale is enough to keep anyone reading to the final pages. And what better recommendation is there for a book than it cannot be put down or abandoned until the very end?
Happy reading.
Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com
Adams, Mark. Turn Right at Machu Piccu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
The desk-bound author sets out with a modern-day Fawcett as his guide to walk the routes of Hiram Bingham in order to re-trace that explorer's search for the fabled city of gold in Peru, with very humorous and serious adventures along the way. (Previously reviewed here.)
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