adventure story. The tale he tells is one of survival in the savage jungles, capture by cannibals,
bold escapes and daring adventures in fabulously rich gold and silver mines fiercely guarded by
hostile Indians deep in the thick jungles. Alvarez named the place as ‘The Lost Mines of
Muribeca’.
Fig.60Fawcett is reported to have found an old document in Rio de Janeiro, dated 1753, that spoke of
Alvarez and tells of how another man, of seemly unknown origin, whom Fawcett names only as
Francisco Raposo, - “I must identify him by some name” had at that time decided to make an
attempt to find the rich mines Alvarez had spoken of, only according to Raposo, he had
discovered no such mines. Instead after climbing a narrow pass up a difficult mountain he and his
men had found, hidden deep in the Amazon: “at their feet, about four miles away, a huge city."
Rapsoso said this ancient and now uninhabited city was located in an area known as the ‘Serra
do Roncador’ (Snorer or Bluster’s Mountain) near the Rio Xingu, in northeast Brazil. Raposo
described the City as being very large and showing evidence of once being inhabited by a “highly
civilized people.” He mentioned a city square, many cyclopean ruins, buildings still partially
roofed with stone slabs, stone archways, columns, and statues. Many of Raposos description are
quite detailed and also sound strikingly familiar to other Mayan ruins that have since been located
that he could have obviously known nothing about in 1753 giving a great deal of credibility to the
story and also going a long way re-enforce Fawcett’s tale of his still yet to be rediscovered ‘Lost
City’. A city Fawcett referred to only as “Z.”
Sometime later Fawcett himself also came to own a most unusual stone idol baring some
curious inscriptions in an unknown language that have still yet to be translated. He said the idol
generated an electric current that traveled up the arm of the person who was holding it. He
eventually came to believe that this idol was connected to the lost cities he sought, cities he also
firmly believed to somehow have a connection to the legendary land of Atlantis. He describes the
idol in his book:
“I have in my possession an image about ten inches high, carved from a piece of black basalt.
It represents a figure with a plaque on its chest inscribed with a number of characters, and about