 | |
| Author | Peter Fleming |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Travel |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Alden Press |
Publication date | 1933 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Followed by | One's Company |
Brazilian Adventure is a book by Peter Fleming about his search for the lost Colonel Percy Fawcett in the Brazilian jungle. [1] The book was initially published in 1933 by Alden Press.
In 1925, British explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett, along with his son and another companion, disappeared while searching in Brazil for the Lost City of Z. Not long after, Peter Fleming, who was literary editor for London's The Times , answered a small ad seeking volunteers for an expedition to find out what had happened to them. Fleming's story of that 1932 expedition is told in Brazilian Adventure. [2]
Despite a great deal of fanfare, the expedition seems to have been very poorly organized. Fleming and his companions do not seem to have done much preparation, not even bothering to learn any Portuguese. They left everything up to the leader they hired, an eccentric American, Major George Lewy Pingle (not his real name) who lived in Brazil. They sailed from England, met Pingle, and followed him to the Araguaya river and down it, with Fleming, an admirer of Hemingway, blasting away at the wildlife "for sport" as they went.
When the expedition reached the Tapirapé River, which Fawcett was known to have traveled, the group fell apart. Major Pingle, whose bizarre moments of unreason had been making things more and more difficult all along, claimed the search was impossible and he was giving it up. Some of the members of the expedition agreed with him. Fleming and two others, however, decided to continue on their own and left to go up the Tapirape with their bearers. Traveling through the tropical jungle was very difficult; eventually only Fleming and Pettiward could keep going. When they spotted natives in the distance who were said to be cannibals, they turned back. They were still uncertain about the fate of Fawcett, but they had turned up more clues than they started with.
Returning to the mouth of the Tapirape and heading back up the Araguaya, Fleming and his group found Major Pingle and the others. Fleming desperately wanted to be the first to get back to civilization with his version of why they had split, because Pingle was trying to get his own version, which was harshly critical of Fleming, to arrive first. So the two groups furiously raced each other down the long Tocantins and Amazon rivers to the port city of Para, where they could report back to England and catch a ship for home.
Fleming's account was not widely disputed during its initial publication and is still considered a classic in travel literature; along with Fleming's later books, One's Company: A Journey to China in 1933 and News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir (1936).
Robert Churchward (organiser), "Major George Lewy Pingle" (a pseudonym), Peter Fleming, Roger Pettiward, Neville Priestley, Noel Skeffington-Smyth, Walter Blunt-Mackenzie, Arthur Humphries
Peter Fleming was the brother of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond thriller series.
The Marañón River is the principal or mainstem source of the Amazon River, arising about 160 km to the northeast of Lima, Peru, and flowing through a deeply eroded Andean valley in a northwesterly direction, along the eastern base of the Cordillera of the Andes, as far as 5° 36′ southern latitude; from where it makes a great bend to the northeast, and cuts through the jungle Andes, until at the Pongo de Manseriche it flows into the flat Amazon basin. Although historically, the term "Marañon River" often was applied to the river all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, nowadays the Marañon River is generally thought to end at the confluence with the Ucayali River, after which most cartographers label the ensuing waterway the Amazon River.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Peter Fleming was a British adventurer, journalist, soldier and travel writer. He was the elder brother of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond.
Percy Harrison Fawcett was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer of South America. Fawcett disappeared in 1925 during an expedition to find an ancient lost city which he and others believed existed in the Amazon rainforest.
The Araguaia River is one of the major rivers of Brazil though it is almost equal in volume at its confluence with the Tocantins. It has a total length of approximately 2,627 km.
The Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition was a survey expedition in 1913–14 to follow the path of the Rio da Dúvida in the Amazon basin. The expedition was jointly led by Theodore Roosevelt, the former president of the United States, and Colonel Cândido Rondon, a Brazilian explorer who had discovered its headwaters in 1909. Sponsored in part by the American Museum of Natural History, they also collected many new animal and insect specimens. The river was eventually named "Rio Roosevelt" for the former president. He nearly died during the voyage and his health was permanently damaged.
Benedict Colin Allen FRGS is an English writer, explorer, traveller and filmmaker known for his technique of immersion among indigenous peoples from whom he acquires survival skills for hazardous journeys through unfamiliar terrain. In 2010, Allen was elected a Trustee and Member of Council of the Royal Geographical Society.
Paititi is a legendary Inca lost city or utopian rich land. It allegedly lies east of the Andes, hidden somewhere within the remote rainforests of southeast Peru, northern Bolivia or northwest Brazil. The Paititi legend in Peru revolves around the story of the culture-hero Inkarri, who, after he had founded Q'ero and Cusco, retreated toward the jungles of Pantiacolla to live out the rest of his days in his refuge city of Paititi. Other versions of the legend see Paititi as an Inca refuge in the border area between Bolivia and Brazil.
The Xingu Indigenous Park is an indigenous territory of Brazil, first created in 1961 as a national park in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its official purposes are to protect the environment and the several tribes of Xingu indigenous peoples in the area.
The Lost City of Z is the name given by Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British surveyor, to an indigenous city that he believed had existed in the jungle of the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. Based on early histories of South America and his own explorations of the Amazon River region, Fawcett theorized that a complex civilization once existed there, and that isolated ruins may have survived.
Baron Peter Von Puttkamer is a Canadian filmmaker known for his unique approach to adventure documentary series for network television, and for his work with Indigenous communities in his country and around the world. He has won major international awards for his work as a writer, director and producer, and was recently nominated for the 2015 Environmental Media Awards for his Nat Geo series, Biggest & Baddest, which he directed and co-produced with his wife and business partner, Sheera Von Puttkamer. For over thirty years, the couple has run Gryphon Productions and has a catalog that includes hundreds of finished films and videos, many that have appeared on television and cable networks globally and continue to be used in classrooms and outreach centers as educational and advocacy videos.
The Lost City of Z is a 2016 American biographical adventure drama film written and directed by James Gray, based on the 2009 book of the same name by David Grann. It portrays British explorer Percy Fawcett, who was sent to Brazil and made several attempts to find a supposed ancient lost city in the Amazon. It stars Charlie Hunnam as Fawcett; Robert Pattinson as his fellow explorer Henry Costin, Sienna Miller as his wife, Nina Fawcett; and Tom Holland as his son, Jack.
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is a non-fiction book by American author David Grann. Published in 2009, the book recounts the activities of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, disappeared with his son in the Amazon rainforest while looking for the ancient "Lost City of Z". In the book, Grann recounts his own journey into the Amazon, by which he discovered new evidence about how Fawcett may have died.
George Miller Dyott was an English pioneer aviator, cinematographer, and explorer of the Amazon. Dyott accompanied Arthur S. Vernay to India and helped produce a documentary on tiger hunting.
Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils is the third of 12 Indiana Jones novels published by Bantam Books. Rob MacGregor, the author of this book, also wrote five of the other Indiana Jones books for Bantam. Published on November 1, 1991, it is preceded by Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants and followed by Indiana Jones and the Genesis Deluge.
White Amazonian Indians or White Indians is a term first applied to sightings or encounters with mysterious white skinned natives of the Amazon Rainforest from the 16th century by Spanish missionaries. These encounters and tales sparked Percy Fawcett's journey into the uncharted jungle of the Amazonian Mato Grosso region. Various theories since the early 20th century have been proposed regarding the documented sightings or encounters.
Loren McIntyre, was an American photojournalist who worked extensively in South America. His photographs and writing appeared in National Geographic and hundreds of other periodicals. He has numerous books to his credit, including The Incredible Incas and Their Timeless Land (1975), Exploring South America (1990), Amazonia (1991), and Die Amerikanische Reise (2000)
Yosseph "Yossi" Ghinsberg is an Israeli adventurer, author, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and motivational speaker, now based in Byron Bay, Australia. Ghinsberg is most known for his survival story in an uncharted part of the Bolivian Amazon jungle for three weeks in 1981. Ghinsberg's survival story was enacted in the 2017 psychological thriller Jungle, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Yossi Ghinsberg. Ghinsberg's story was also featured in the documentary series I Shouldn't Be Alive on Discovery Channel.
The Pettiward Family were a landed family prominent in Putney and Great Finborough, Suffolk who control the Pettiward Estate in Earl's Court, London.
The Adventure Girls was a three-book series written by Clair Blank, author of the Beverly Gray stories. A trilogy by default, The Adventure Girls series was published by A. L. Burt in 1936 and never continued. All works were copyrighted on April 27, 1936, the same day as Beverly Gray on a World Cruise. Although a fourth work was advertised at the end of the third, it was never published; where the Beverly Gray series survived and prospered following the publication of its four part "breeder set," The Adventure Girls series was unable to catch on. Purchased by Saalfield in 1937, the series was entirely shelved until being reissued in the fall of 1942. None of the books had their copyright renewed, and all have thus passed into the public domain.
Bruce Barron is a professional expedition guide, explorer, and photographer.