« The dawn of knowledge was only just breaking after
the dark night of the Middle Ages ; the world in its entirety was yet a
mystery, and each venture to probe it disclosed new wonders. The border between
myth and reality was not fixed, and the adventurer saw strange sights with an
eye distorted by superstition. »
« but there is always something fascinating about
mountains for the explorer. Who knows what may be seen from the topmost
ridge ? »
« Clusters of rock crystals and frothy masses of quartz
gave them the feeling of having entered a fairyland, and in the dim light
filtering down through the tangled mass of creepers overhead all the magic of
their first impressions returned. »
« Lake Titicaca can become surprisingly rough
sometimes, and perhaps nowhere else is it possible for a traveller to suffer
from sea-sickness and mountain-sickness at the same time ! »
« I awoke stiff the next morning, but standing at the
bedroom window forgot it in the joy of filling my lungs with the delicious
mountain air. »
« Near this place lived the most beautiful woman I have
ever seen. She was a Brazilian half-caste, with long silky black hair, perfect
features, and the most glorious figure. Her large black eyes alone would have
roused a saint, let alone an inflammable Latin of the tropic wilderness. I was
told that no less than eight men had been killed fighting for her, and that she
had knifed one or two herself. She was as she-devil, the living prototype of
the ‘jungle girl’ of novel and screen, and dangerous to look at in more ways
than one. »
« To venture into the haunts of the anaconda is to
flirt with death. »
« Inactivity was what I couldn’t stand. »
« There are three kinds of Indians. The first are
docile and miserable people, easily tamed ; the second, dangerous,
repulsive cannibals very rarely seen ; the third, a robust and fair
people, who must have a civilized origin, and who are seldom met with because
they avoid the locality of navigable rivers. »
« Ahead of me was the glorious prospect of home. For
the present I was satisfied with the wild, and my mind was full of the coming
journey to the coast ; of the lazy sea voyage, and the sight of England,
with its funny little trees, neat fields, and fariy-tale villages ; of my
wife, the four-year-old Jack, and the latest arrival, Brian. I wanted to forget
atrocities, to put slavery, murder and horrible disease behind me, and to look
again at respectable old ladies whose ideas of vice ended with the
indiscretions of so-and-so’s housemaid. I wanted to listen to the everyday
chit-chat of the village parson, discuss the uncertainties of the weather with
the yokels, pick up the daily paper on my breakfast-plate. I wanted, in short,
to be just ‘ordinary’. »
« A nostalgic pang shot through me. Inexplicably –
amazingly- I knew I loved that hell. Its fiendish grasp had captured me, and I
wanted to see it again. »
« where human life is not respected superstition is the
more marked. »
« Never had I seen suchwealth of flowers, such beauty
as was flaunted that day in the vivid yellows, reds and purples. Brilliant
butterflies, themselves more gorgeous than any flower, added to the wonder of
it. No painter could have done it justice. No imagination could conjure up a
vision equal to this reality ! »
« When human beings abandon a dwelling they inevitably
leave behind some shred of their own personalities ; and a deserted city
has a melancholy so powerful that the least sensitive visitor is impressed by
it. Ancient ruined cities have lost much of it and do not impress in the same
way. »
« Above us towered the Ricardo Franco Hills,
flat-topped and mysterious, their flanks scarred by deep quebradas. Time and
the foot of man had not touched those summits. They stood like a lost world,
forested to their tops, and the imagination could picture the last vestiges
there of an age long vanished. Isolated from the battle with changing
conditions, monsters from the dawn of man’s existence might still roam those
heights unchallenged, imprisoned and protected by unscalable cliffs. So thought
Conan Doyle when later in London I spoke of these hills and showed photographs
of them. He mentioned an idea for a novel on Central South America and asked
for information, which I told him I should be glad to supply. The fruit of it
was his Lost World in 1912, appearing as a serial in Strand Magazine, and
subsequently in the form of a book that achieved widespread popularity. »
« Stangely enough, sugar was the thing we had hungered
for more than anything else. »
« The Swiss Alps have peaks as spectacular as any the Andes can show – if not more so – though
the altitudes are, of course, considerably lower. Nevertheless, there is a
friendly feeling about them – they are domesticated, tamed as an elephant or
any great beast might be. In the Andes are things not of our world at
all. »
« At night the stars are a glory. One sees galaxies
which in the denser air at sea level are invisible to the naked eye ; and,
if the sky is clear, no night is really dark, so great is their
illumination. »
« gold is to be found here, as in so many other places
where the forests and mountains adjoin. »
« The moment we were in darkness there was the sound of
a book being thrown across the room, its leaves fluttering. »
« In colour and consistency it is like green
Chartreuse, but its flavour is entirely its own. »
« This part of the country is so beautiful that I could
well understand why, scattered through the forests, there are hermits of many
nationalities, preferring a life alone in the wild to a penurious and uncertain
existence in civilization. »
« Time means less to the primitive peoples than it does
to us. »
« The long beards of moss hanging from nearly every
branch lent an air of solemn mystery to the woods, and gnarled limbs seemed to
be waiting above ready to grab us. »
« The forest was spread out under us like a map – a
dark green carpet broken here and there by little clearings and the distant
gleam of streams winding crazily in and out of view. »
« Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a
quest fills the mind. The chief disadvantage seemed to be that were I to find
anything of scientific or archaeological value there would be no witnesses to
support my word. »
«But Spanish and Portuguese alike attach
great importance to etiquette; and it is desirable for the foreigner to know
the language. Some say these languages are easy to learn. To acquire a
smattering of grammar-book talk may not be difficult, but that is not enough.
Nor is it enough to reach the point of understanding either language rapidly
spoken by a provincial. The necessary standard is the ability to tell a good
joke, make witty remarks, and discuss philosophy and the arts. How many foreigners take the trouble to aim at that
objective? The staccato and slangy pronunciation acquired by a child may be
beyond the powers of an adult, but South Americans ignore the lack of this, and
even shortcomings in grammar, so long as conversation is witty and intelligent.
Conversation is the breath of life to them, and fifteen minutes of 'chawing the
fat' with a peon about Plato or Aristotle will do more to build up mutual
esteem than years of good intentions without the ability to express them. It is
always a matter of suprise to Americans and Europeans to find how profound can
be the conversation of even the humblest South American."
« If the journey
is not successful my work in South America ends in failure, for I can never do
any more. I must inevirtably be discredited as a visionary, and branded as one
who had only personal enrichment in view. Who will ever understand that I want
no glory from it – no money for myself – that I am doing it unpaid in the hope
that its ultimate benefit to mankind will justify the years spent in the quest ? »
Journey to the Lost City of Z - Exploration Fawcett - Col. Percy Fawcett
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