The Lost City of Z

11. DEAD HORSE CAMP

“There,” I said to my wife, pointing at a satellite image of the Amazon on my computer screen. “That’s where I’m going.”

The image revealed the cracks in the earth where the massive river and its tributaries had ruthlessly carved the land. Later, I was able to show her the coordinates more clearly using Google Earth, which was unveiled in the summer of 2005 and allowed anyone, in seconds, to zoom within meters of virtually every place on the globe. First, I typed in our Brooklyn address. The view on the screen, which had shown a satellite image of the earth from outer space, zoomed, like a guided missile, toward a patchwork of buildings and streets, until I recognized the balcony of our apartment. The level of clarity was incredible. Then I typed in Fawcett’s last published coordinates and watched the screen race over images of the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, past a faint outline of Venezuela and Guyana, before zeroing in on a blur of green: the jungle. What was once blank space on the map was now visible in an instant.

My wife asked how I knew where to go, and I told her about Fawcett’s diaries. I showed her on the map the location that everyone assumed was Dead Horse Camp and then the new coordinates, more than a hundred miles south, which I had found in Fawcett’s logbook. Then I revealed a copy of a document with the word “CONFIDENTIAL” printed on it, which I had discovered at the Royal Geographical Society. Unlike other documents written by Fawcett, this one was neatly typed. Dated April 13, 1924, it was titled “Case for an Expedition in the Amazon Basin.”

Desperate for funding, Fawcett had seemingly relented to the Society’s demand that he be more forthcoming about his plans. After nearly two decades of exploring, he said, he had concluded that in the southern basin of the Amazon, between the Tapajós and the Xingu tributaries, were “the most remarkable relics of ancient civilization.” Fawcett had sketched a map of the region and submitted it with a proposal. “This area represents the greatest area of unexplored country in the world,” he wrote. “Portuguese exploration, and all subsequent geographical research by Brazilians or foreigners, has been invariably confined to waterways.” Instead, he planned to blaze a path overland between the Tapajós and the Xingu and other tributaries, where “none has penetrated.” (Conceding how much more dangerous this course was, he requested extra money to “get the survivors back to England,” as “I may be killed.”)

On one page of the proposal, Fawcett had included several coordinates. “What are they for?” my wife asked.

“I think they’re the direction he headed in after Dead Horse Camp.”

The next morning I stuffed my gear and maps in my backpack, and said goodbye to my wife and infant son. “Don’t be stupid,” my wife said. Then I headed to the airport and boarded a plane for Brazil.