Englishman To Search For Father In Brazil

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27636, 18 April 1955, Page 11

Englishman To Search For Father In Brazil

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, April 16. Mr Brian Fawcett, a 49-year-old author and artist, will sail from England in the liner Andes for Rio de Janeiro on April 23, to make an aerial search for his father and brother, who were lost in the Brazilian jungle 30 years ago while looking for a “lost civilisation.” When he arrives in the Brazilian capital on May 6 he will make for Belo Horizonte to meet a Brazilian Air Force pilot who, he says, will help him in an aerial survey of about 21,800 square miles of unexplored country in the Matto Grosso, beyond the headwaters of the »Xingu river. It was here that his father. Colonel Percy Fawcett, his brother, and another Englishman named Raleigh Kimmel, disappeared in 1925. Nothing has been heard of them since.

Mr Fawcett said today: "The airman is an old friend of mine. He is one of the. best bush pilots in Brazil, but I prefer not to reveal his name. "We shall fly over vast tracts of jungle and forest. Whenever we encounter an Indian village we shaU ‘buzz’ the inhabitants by opening the throttle <Jt our plane and zooming down to about 20 feet. We shall kick up such a shindy that everybody will come running out.

“As we pull out of the dive this will be our opportunity to look for a white face. . If we see one, we shall drop leaflets in Portuguese and English asking if .there is a white man named Fawcett among them and, if so, whether he can control the Indians while We land.”

Asked if he thought the backward tribes of the Matto Grosso would understand the message, Mr Fawcett said: “The language spoken by many of the Indians is not likely to be more than a few nouns of their own strung together. “But I think that if a white man has been living among them for a long time he will have passed on to them something of his own language. Indeed, I believe the Indians would welcome a new tongue which is more expressive than their own.’’ Questional as to what was his main theory about the fate of his father and brother after all these years of silence, Mr Fawcett said: “I think my brother, at any rate, may be stiff: alive, and that he is living with one of the tribes in a position of some authority. “The territory I am hoping to fly over is only a part of a still great unexplored country into which the Indians have been gradually concentrated by the white civilisation closing in upon them year by year. “There are many different tribes in this region, usually hostile to each other. But although they have retired to the depths of the jungles and forests

rather than have contact with civilisation, it is known that some of them like to have a white man with them if they can catch one, because it gives them prestige over other tribes. “In my opinion this is probably what has happened to my brother. I don’t think he has displaced a chief or a medicine man, but it is reasonable to suppose that, after all these years, he has got some authority and is looked upon as a leader.

“In these circumstances, he would be unable to get away, because escape would mean passing through the territory of other savage tribes which might be hostile and kill him on the spot. “From what I have seen of the country, I should say it would be quite impossible for a man deep in the interior to get out without help. One cannot live on the forest. There is no food there.’*

Mr Fawcett is taking his wife with him to Brazil, but she will not go in the plane. His equipment will be mostly photographic.