Road to Nowhere

MAN HUNTING IN THE JUNGLE--G. M. Dyott--Bobbs Merrill ($5).

Why is an explorer? They give various excuses for their wanderings. When Explorer P. H. Fawcett, with his son Jack and Raleigh Rimell, trekked into the Xingu (pronounced: Shengoo) country of Brazil in 1925, they intended to investigate rumored traces of a lost civilization. When they had not returned nearly three years later, a search party was sent out under Explorer G. M. Dyott. With him went four inexperienced white men. In Cuyaba, last outpost of civilized Brazil, they picked up five camerados (porters). This book tells what the relief expedition accomplished.

All their supplies were carried in sacks; cans weighed too much, took up too much room. Their collapsible canvas boats were always being punctured by rocks in the rapids of the Kuluseu, but came in handy when they reached the Xingu, tributary of the Amazon. Flies were their constant companions: borochudas, which leave a blood-blister; garapatas, which cling together in swarms; stingless bees, which crawled "up our nostrils, into our ears, down our necks"; fire ants, whose bites "feel exactly like flames rippling over one's body"; big black ants which hissed like snakes when you pinned them down with a twig. When they were working through rapids they had to look out for sting rays. It took them 27 days of "most persistent toil" to make 180 miles --which was 60 miles in a straight line.

The first traces of lost Explorer Fawcett they found among the Anauqua Indians. One of the chief's children was wearing a small brass ornament, the nameplate of Fawcett's London outfitters. In the chief's house was an English metal trunk. Chief Aloique admitted having seen Fawcett and guided him; said he had been killed by the neighboring Suya Indians. When Dyott arranged with Aloique to be taken to the scene of Fawcett's death, Aloique promised, then one night disappeared. News of the white men spread. Indians swarmed to their camp, demanding presents. It began to look as if the Dyott expedition too would some day need a search party. Then Dyott, after telling the Indians they would give presents next day, then start upstream, escaped with his party in the middle of the night, paddled downstream for 14 hours, got away. Says Explorer Dyott: "That Colonel Fawcett and his companions perished at the hands of hostile

tribesmen seems to me and to all my party beyond dispute."

The Author. Commander Dyott, 47, was born in Manhattan but is an English citizen. During the War he served with the famed Dover Patrol of the Royal Naval Air Service. He is married to an American, Persis Stevens Wright. The expedition in search of Fawcett was his ninth to South America. Last year the Royal Geographical Society, of which he is a member, gave him the Gill Award in recognition of his explorations. Among his idiosyncrasies: he likes work, likes photographing wild life, likes to pun in print. Other books: Silent Highways of the Jungle, On the Trail of the Unknown.

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