amyasleigh
Abominable Snowman
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2009
- Messages
- 813
Post prompted by material recently seen on another site, concerning a highly-Fortean character: Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, born 1867, last heard from early summer 1925 (ninety years ago). British explorer who did his stuff in the interior of South America. This lately Net-discovered gen about Fawcett, contains much which is also featured in a book, Exploration Fawcett, about his exploits – mostly in his own words, with addenda by his son Brian Fawcett (well-acquainted with South America, on different scenes thereof); which book was in my family home some half-century ago. Full of fascinatingly creepy and non-mundane stuff (and sometimes mundane “compellingly squalid / repulsive” ditto -- about the best thing that he and his colleagues could come up with about backwoods South America a hundred years ago, was, "It's hell, all right, but one kind-of likes it"). Fawcett was heavily into various at least borderline-occult matters and into things concerning envisaged vanished and unknown civilisations. He “disappeared from human ken” in 1925, on an expedition questing for lost cities of whatever exact kind, in the Mato Grosso area of Brazil. And elements in above-cited book, contributed to kicking-off my interest in things cryptozoological. (Some of which may be referred to in previous “Cryptozoology” threads on FTMB – I admit to not having investigated.)
Re earlier (circa 1906 – 1910) expeditions under Fawcett’s leadership, in the then very little-known Brazil / Bolivia / Peru borderlands; I approximately quote from above-mentioned Net material.
“Along the way he claimed to have had some encounters with wildlife never seen before, including an anaconda described as ’62 feet’ long. At the time, the giant anaconda seemed to be hyperbole, the largest ever proven was about 5.2m, a quarter of the length of the snake Fawcett claimed to have killed. However, given the numerous claims and the existence of fossils of an anaconda over 12m long, such creatures might be real. Fawcett also claimed to have seen a small animal (the size of a foxhound) with canine and feline characteristics, now called the Mitla. It is not known if this is a real animal or a misidentification of some other creature such as the elusive (but real) short-eared Zorro. In the Madidi swamps of the Beni river in Bolivia, Fawcett wrote of finding the tracks of ‘some mysterious and enormous beast’ which he thought might be those of a living Diplodocus. This was one of the inspirations for Conan Doyle’s The Lost World ”.
I recall also from the book which we had, Fawcett’s mentioning re these “B/B/P borderlands”, a reckoned unknown-to-science large bird which he had seen once or twice, “resembling a giant Peacock Butterfly in flight”. No mention in the book (had there been any, I’m sure I would have remembered) of Amazonia’s alleged – feared and reputedly fearsome – Mapinguary: Yeti / Bigfoot “be-alike”, possibly crossing over into relict giant sloth. All tantalisingly interesting, anyway, if such stuff is one’s fancy.
Re earlier (circa 1906 – 1910) expeditions under Fawcett’s leadership, in the then very little-known Brazil / Bolivia / Peru borderlands; I approximately quote from above-mentioned Net material.
“Along the way he claimed to have had some encounters with wildlife never seen before, including an anaconda described as ’62 feet’ long. At the time, the giant anaconda seemed to be hyperbole, the largest ever proven was about 5.2m, a quarter of the length of the snake Fawcett claimed to have killed. However, given the numerous claims and the existence of fossils of an anaconda over 12m long, such creatures might be real. Fawcett also claimed to have seen a small animal (the size of a foxhound) with canine and feline characteristics, now called the Mitla. It is not known if this is a real animal or a misidentification of some other creature such as the elusive (but real) short-eared Zorro. In the Madidi swamps of the Beni river in Bolivia, Fawcett wrote of finding the tracks of ‘some mysterious and enormous beast’ which he thought might be those of a living Diplodocus. This was one of the inspirations for Conan Doyle’s The Lost World ”.
I recall also from the book which we had, Fawcett’s mentioning re these “B/B/P borderlands”, a reckoned unknown-to-science large bird which he had seen once or twice, “resembling a giant Peacock Butterfly in flight”. No mention in the book (had there been any, I’m sure I would have remembered) of Amazonia’s alleged – feared and reputedly fearsome – Mapinguary: Yeti / Bigfoot “be-alike”, possibly crossing over into relict giant sloth. All tantalisingly interesting, anyway, if such stuff is one’s fancy.
