David Grann - The Lost City of Z - A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

Fawcett believed that Dr. Rice's equipment had limitations in the Amazon: existing radios were so bulky that they would confine the expedition to boats, and aerial observation and photography would not necessarily be able to penetrate the canopy. There was also the risk of landing a plane in hostile areas. The Times reported that the doctor's hydroplane was loaded with “a supply of bombs” to be used in “scaring the cannibal Indians”-a tactic that horrified Fawcett.

Nevertheless, Fawcett knew that an airplane could carry even the most inept explorer to extreme places. Dr. Rice proclaimed that “the whole method of exploration and geographical mapping will be revolutionized.” The expedition-or at least the film that Santos planned to shoot-was called No rastro do Eldorado, or On the Trail of El Dorado. Although Fawcett believed that his rival was still searching too far north for Z, he was petrified.

That September, while Rice and his team were making their way into the Amazon, Fawcett met a swashbuckling British war correspondent and onetime member of the RGS named George Lynch. Well connected in both the United States and Europe, he frequented the Savage Club in London, where writers and artists would gather over drinks and cigars. Fawcett found Lynch, who was fifty-six, to be a “highly respectable man of unimpeachable character and excellent repute.” What's more, Lynch was enthralled by the idea of finding Z.

In exchange for a percentage of the profits that would arise from the expedition, Lynch, who was a far more capable salesman than Fawcett, offered to help raise money. Fawcett had focused most of his fund-raising efforts on the financially strapped RGS. Now, with Lynch's assistance, he would look for support from the United States, that bustling new empire which was constantly expanding into new frontiers and was awash in capital. On October 28, Jack wrote Windust to say that Lynch had left for America “to get into touch with millionaires.” Realizing the power of Fawcett's legend and the commercial value of his story-“the finest exploration story that I think has ever been written in our time,” as Fawcett put it-Lynch initially mined his contacts in the media. Within days, he had secured thousands of dollars by selling the story rights for Fawcett's expedition to the North American Newspaper Alliance, or NANA-a consortium of publications that had a presence in almost every major city in the United States and Canada. The consortium, which included the New York World, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle, the Times-Picayune, and the Toronto Star, was known for giving press credentials to nonprofessional reporters who could provide gripping dispatches from the most exotic and dangerous locales. (The consortium later enlisted Ernest Hemingway as a foreign correspondent during the Spanish civil war and funded expeditions like Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 crossing of the Pacific by raft.) While explorers had typically written about their adventures after the fact, Fawcett would send Indian runners out with dispatches during his journey-even, if possible, from “the forbidden city itself,” as one newspaper reported.

Lynch also sold the rights to Fawcett's expedition to newspapers throughout the world, so that tens of millions of people on virtually every continent would read about his journey. Though Fawcett was wary of trivializing his scientific endeavors with “journalese,” as he called it, he was grateful for any funding, not to mention the assured burst of glory. What made him most happy, though, was a cable from Lynch informing him that his proposal was generating equal enthusiasm among prestigious American scientific institutions. Not only did these foundations have more money than many of their European counterparts, but they were also more open to Fawcett's theory. The director of the American Geograph ical Society, Dr. Isaiah Bowman, had been a member of Hiram Bingham's expedition that discovered Machu Picchu, which scientists at the time had never expected to be found. Dr. Bowman told a reporter, “We have known of Colonel Fawcett for many years as a man of soundest character and the highest integrity. We have the highest confidence, both in his capacity and his competence and reliability as a scientist.” The American Geographical Society offered the expedition a thousand-dollar grant; the Museum of the American Indian followed with another thousand dollars.

On November 4, 1924, Fawcett wrote Keltie, saying, “I judge from Lynch's cable and letters that the whole affair… is catching the fancy of Americans. It is I suppose the romantic streak that has made and no doubt will make empires.” Warning that it was bound to come out that “a modern Columbus was turned down in England,” he offered the Society one last chance to support the mission. “The R.G.S. bred me as an explorer, and I don't want them to be out of an expedition that was sure to make history, he said. Finally, with Keltie and other supporters lobbying on his behalf, and with scientists around the world gravitating toward the possibility of Z, the Society voted to support the expedition and help furnish it with equipment.

The total raised amounted to roughly five thousand dollars-less than the cost of one of Dr. Rice's radios. This was not enough money for Fawcett, Jack, or Raleigh to draw a salary, and much of the financing from newspapers would be paid only upon completion of their journey. “If they don't return there will be nothing” for the family to live on, Nina later wrote to Large.

“Not a sum which would inspire most explorers,” Fawcett told Keltie. But he added in another letter, “In some ways I am rather glad that not one of the three of us makes a red cent unless the journey is successful, for nobody can say we were after money in undertaking this rather perilous quest. It is an honest scientific research animated by its own exceptional interest and value.”

Fawcett and Jack paid a visit to the RGS, where all the ill feelings, all the frustrations, seemed to have evaporated. Everyone wished them luck. Reeves, the Society's map curator, later recalled what “a fine young fellow” Jack was: “well built, tall and strong, very like his father.” Fawcett expressed his gratitude to Reeves and Keltie, who had never wavered in their support. “I shall rejoice in telling you the whole story in three years' time,” he said.

Back at Stoke Canon, Fawcett, Jack, and the rest of the family were thrown into a whirl of packing and planning. It was decided that Nina and Joan, who was fourteen, would move to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where it was cheaper to live. Brian, who was devastated that his father had not chosen him for the expedition, had turned his attention to railroad engineering. With Fawcett's help, he found work with a railroad company in Peru and was the first to depart for South America. The family accompanied Brian, who was only seventeen at the time, to the train station.

Fawcett told Brian that he would be responsible for Nina and his sister's care during the expedition, and that any financial assistance he could give them would help them survive. The family made plans for the return of Fawcett and Jack as heroes. “In two years' time they would be back, and, when my first home leave fell due, we would all meet again in England,” Brian later recalled. “After that we might make a family home in Brazil, where the work of the future years would undoubtedly lie.” Brian said farewell to his family and stepped onto the train. As the carriage pulled away, he stared out the window, watching as his father and brother slowly disappeared from view.

On December 3, 1924, Fawcett and Jack said goodbye to Joan and Nina and boarded the Aquitania for New York, where they were to meet Raleigh. The path to Z finally seemed secure. When they landed in New York a week later, however, Fawcett discovered that Lynch, his business partner of “unimpeachable character,” had sequestered himself, drunk and surrounded by prostitutes, in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. “[He] succumbed to the lure of the ubiquitous bottle in this Prohibition City,” Fawcett wrote the RGS. He said that Lynch “must have suffered from alcoholic aberration. It may be more, for he was sexually disturbed.” The aberration had cost more than a thousand dollars of the expedition's funds, and Fawcett feared that the mission was in danger of unraveling before it began. Yet the venture had already become an international sensation, prompting John D. Rockefeller Jr., the scion of the billionaire founder of Standard Oil and an ally of Dr. Bowman, to step forward with a check for forty-five hundred dollars, so that “the plan can be initiated at once.”