these old cities have been located and are open to scientific research. BECAUSE the CITIES
EXIST... of THAT I AM CERTAIN........You need have no fear of failure."
And those were the last words that anyone ever heard from him.
Fig.59bFawcett entrusted the letter to one of three assistants who had helped the expedition thus far
having told them that he no longer required their services. He had commented that a smaller
group would look less like an invasion to the Indians and therefore be less likely to be attacked,
an attitude that had in fact, always been his policy. He said to his assistants that the route was
carefully planned. He then disappeared into the Jungle, taking with him, his eldest son Jack and
another man, who was a close friend of Jacks. None of them were ever seen or heard of again.
Fawcett had been 58 years old at the time.
Despite his wishes, several rescue missions were actually undertaken in an effort to discover
what had become of Fawcett, some fraught with disaster and all without success. There were also
several, reported sightings by various persons of a man matching Fawcett’s description, though
none of these reports were ever confirmed. Rumors still abound concerning his disappearance.
Some have said they saw him living with a native tribe attending his son who had become too ill
to travel; some claim to have seen him wandering lost and crazed in the Jungle, still searching;
one claimed that he had been captured by headhunters and that he had even seen a shrunken head
resembling Fawcett. It has even been speculated that he actually found his lost city of gold but
that it was still inhabited and he was never allowed to leave.
The diaries of Percy Fawcett were later published in a highly informative book entitled
“Exploration Fawcett,” later re-released as “Lost Cities, Lost Trails.” I highly recommend
reading these factual accounts of one of the truly great explorers if the book can still be found. To
this day, no one has yet fully explored the Matto Grosso region of Peru and it still remains an area
shrouded in Legend and Mystery (fig.61).
The intriguing story of Colonel Fawcett and his search for the Lost Cities he was so sure
existed is one that could fill many books on its own. It began with a tantalizing tale Fawcett had
heard regarding a man named Diego Alvarez.
Alvarez had been a Portuguese mariner who had apparently reached South American shores a
few years after the discovery of the American continent after being shipwrecked. He had
struggled ashore in Peru and then began a life filled with everything you would find in a good