Yes, it was an interesting book - I got it out of the library several years ago.
What I remember of the book is that the highlighted part is very true...
How as I have an actual keyboard rather than a phone I'll expand.
Percy Fawcett bought into several of the then common beliefs; the reality of Atlantis, the existence of psychic phenomena and ghosts and was a follower of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical movement.
Fawcett wrote (in his book
Lost Trails, Lost Cities) that "the connection of Atlantis with parts of what is now Brazil is not to be dismissed contemptuously, and belief in it -- with or without scientific corroboration -- affords explanations for many problems which otherwise are unsolved mysteries."
He was also convinced his eldest son Jack was a reincarnated spirit destined to become some kind of messiah, an event predicted by Buddhist mystics. Fawcett wrote in Occult Review:
"One morning at breakfast on the verandah a deputation of soothsayers and Buddhists asked for an audience… I was told I was about to become the father of a son whose appearance was minutely described, the reincarnation of an advanced spirit, and my wife and I had been especially selected…..the child would have a mole on the instep of the right foot, and his toes in place of a sliding scale in size would run in pairs. He would be born on Buddha's anniversary, 19th May. This date was a month beyond the time anticipated. A remarkable feature about the boy, not shared by his brother or sister, is a slight obliquity of his eyes."
He'd been given by the writer (and follow occult enthusiast) Sir Henry Rider Haggard a 22cm black basalt idol which he (Haggard) had supposedly acquired in Brazil. This was a factor in Fawcett's seventh and eighth expeditions. Fawcett wrote of it;
"I could think of only one way of learning the secret of the stone image, and that was by means of psychometry -- a method that may evoke scorn by many people but is widely accepted by others who have managed to keep their minds free from prejudice."
The psychic supposedly told Fawcett of "a large irregularly shaped continent stretching from the north coast of Africa across to South America... Then I see volcanoes in violent eruptions, flaming lava pouring down their sides, and the whole land shakes with a mighty rumbling sound... The voice says: 'The judgment of Atlanta will be the fate of all who presume to deific power!' I can get no definite date of the catastrophe, but it was long prior to the rise of Egypt, and has been forgotten -- except, perhaps, in myth."
However Fawcett was also a very capable explorer, his work on the Bolivia/Peru/Brazil border issue in 1906-8 was well done and significantly relieved international tensions there. And that's despite the unpopularity of the RGS in Brazil.
Some of Fawcett's claims, the giant snake and the canine/feline creature he allegedly saw were considered dubious. But an anaconda of that size isn't impossible, there is fossil evidence of such, and the creature he saw could have been the elusive short-eared Zorro.
Certainly he was refreshingly free of the attitudes of many European explorers and got on well with, and was respected by, the indigenous peoples.
Fawcett’s achievements tend to be overshadowed by the story of his disappearance but he was recognised for his work, published in the RGS’s
Geographical Journal and in 1916 he received the RGS Founders Gold Medal for his work in mapping South America.
