Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett
The Colonel Visits Cáceres
The story of Colonel Percy H. Fawcett has enthralled casual readers and serious researchers alike for more than 80 years. Newspaper accounts of Fawcett’s immortalizing disappearance in 1925 and the subsequent searches for him northeast of Cuiabá made Mato Grosso and the Xingu famous throughout the English speaking world. “Exploration Fawcett”, a book compiled by his son Brian from his manuscripts, letters and records, provides entertaining, though possibly embellished, posthumous accounts of his travels, studies and work in South America. Fawcett made a total of seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924 to the central South American wilderness, variously financed, but sometimes employed in boundary survey.
May, 1909 found Fawcett escaping a general strike in Buenos Aires in route to Corumbá. Leaving June 13th accompanied by a Bolivian official named Pacheco, two Chiquitana Indians, four white 'peons', plenty of provisions and more than a score of ill fated beasts of burden, he traveled upriver by launch and lighter toward Descalvados, a large ranch in Cáceres, Mato Grosso. During the passage the smaller craft sank with every animal on board. At the estancia they succeeded in acquiring replacement carts and oxen.
“[There] we lived in fair comfort aboard the launch, but the atmosphere was thick with the reek of decay and burnt bones, for we had tied up alongside the factory where cattle were killed for the preparation of canned beef. Our peons passed their time fishing for piraña, those vicious little carnivorous fish that in their teeming thousands make the rivers in the vicinity of slaughterhouses so perilous.
Here Fawcett’s account falls prey to the obligatory eye-witness account of men devoured whole by swarms of piranha before the eyes of onlookers. But there were festivities as well. At Descalvados a dance was organized, …
“... Gauchos, labourers, and their women drank large quantities of alcohol, and reeled through their tangos and cachuchas to the thrumming of guitars and lutes. Our own lot, headed by Pacheco, joined in the revels, but came flying back on board about midnight to the accompaniment of a fusillade of revolver-shots … One man was killed, another hit in the stomach and a woman was grazed … some of the Belgian employees operated on the wounded man by probing his vitals with a meat-skewer.”
From there the group proceeded overland to San Matias, Bolivia, where conditions had deteriorated since the previous year’s visit. A Brazilian had just received 1,000 lashes for killing a man with a knife, rattlesnakes had accounted for several inhabitants, and a French nobleman had been murdered.
“The place reeked of death, though the people were a hospitable lot when not engaged in crimes of violence”
Fawcett and his companions journeyed on toward Mato Grosso City, passing through Casal Vasco, which they found “deserted, for the savages had killed off the men ... however, spared the women and children.” Piranhas, snakes, tigers, bandits and Indians all figure into the narrative.
A most undignified entry (and departure) for an International Boundary Commission awaited at San Luis de Cáceres ...
“The river at San Luis is about one hundred and fifty yards wide, and the population of the village was gathered on the far bank to give us an enthusiastic welcome, for news of our coming had preceded us. A canoe crowed with men, women and children came over to fetch us, and so loaded was it that only two inches of free board remained.”
Then choppy water, a stiff breeze, and a nervous Pacheco teamed up to swamp the canoe and drown one man ...
“The population awaiting us had not seen such fun for a long time. Everyone roared with laughter, and the struggles of the drowning man were cheered to the echo. Not the slightest effort was made to help in any way, and when Pacheco, a poor swimmer, just managed to reach the bank and lay there gasping in the mud, there were more roars of laughter.”
Fawcett felt lucky to have avoided a piranha attack once more and within a week the river launch arrived in Cáceres. But upon boarding, the group’s appearance apparently put off the steward ...
“‘First class?’ He eyed us up and down disdainfully. Our forest kit was all we had with us, and its condition was pretty bad by this time; moreover, our beards were grown, and our faces and arms scarred with insect bites. On the whole I suppose we must have compared unfavorably with the passengers in elegant suits, loud ties and billycock hats on the top deck.”
And thus the survey party steamed south to Corumbá, revolution in Paraguay, Buenos Aires, Montevideo (where Pacheco, one night, lost his trousers and all his money,) and eventually made its way to La Paz.
“Exploration Fawcett”; Lt. Col. P. H. Fawcett, Arranged from manuscripts, letters, log-books, and records by Brian Fawcett; 1953, Hutchison & Co.
For accounts of the highly publicized search for Fawcett, one can read “Man Hunting in the Jungle”; G. M. Dyott, 1930, The Bobbs – Merril Company, and “Brazilian Adventure”; Peter Fleming, 1933, Jonathan Cape
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