It is an unsolved riddle which has inspired explorers and writers for nearly 80 years. Yet now, after a decade of research, one British writer and director has shed unexpected light on the murky fate of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett and those who followed him deep into the Brazilian jungle. It has long been assumed that the missing colonel, a celebrated explorer who knew the popular adventure writers Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle, must have been murdered by Amazonian tribesmen in 1925 during his fabled expedition to find the Lost City of Z. The truth, however, turns out to be stranger than the myth. According to previously hidden private papers, it appears that Fawcett had no intention of ever returning to Britain and, perhaps lured by a native she-god or spirit guide whose beautiful image haunts the family archive, he planned instead to set up a commune in the jungle, based on a bizarre cult. 'The English go native very easily, he once wrote. 'There is no disgrace in it. On the contrary, in my opinion it shows a creditable regard for the real things in life.' More than 13 separate expeditions have so far failed to discover what happened to Fawcett in the darkest Amazonian jungle and 100 people have died in the attempt. Only eight years ago a group following his footsteps into the Mato Grosso region had to be rescued after they were held hostage by Kalapalo tribesmen and put in fear of their lives. But the veil is at last lifting. After visiting this remote jungle, then gaining permission to search through Fawcett's correspondence for the first time, theatre and television director Misha Williams now believes the other expeditions have all been travelling in the wrong direction and looking for the wrong things. Fawcett, he claims, hoped to follow what he privately described to friends and family as 'the Grand Scheme'. He wanted to set up a secret community which would be based on a mixture of unusual beliefs involving both the worship of his own son, Jack, and the tenets of the then-fashionable credo of theosophy.
View: Full Article | Source: The Guardian
