LEGENDS OF THE LOST

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 115, 16 May 1936, Page 29

LEGENDS OF THE LOST

Stories of lost explorers have a i knack of turning up with remarkable i persistency, says the "Manchester 1 Guardian.1' Sometimes, the white man i is said £0 be well, sometimes ill. Some- : times he is cut off and lonely in the J jungle; sometimes he is living happily i with the natives and has no desire to : do what is known' as "return to civili- i sation. 1' And always the source "is some local rumour which conflicts usu- ', ally with all the other local rumours, i The latest to be reported is the United Slates airman Paul Kedfern, who disappeared in August, 1927, while on..a non-stop flight from Georgia to Rib de Janeiro. A Cornell University scientist says that he heard from natives recently that Redfer'n is alive and well in.the remote.Tumucumague Mountains of Northern Brazil. One informant "made a zooming noise like an aeroplane engine" to indicate the manner of the white man's arrival. According to a Dutch official who claims to have seen him, the natives

treat the "castaway as a "great spirit" and when the Dutchman tried to take him away they attacked with spears, quite in the manner of the savages in Mr. Wells's. story who had acquired an English diver from a salvage ship as their tribal deity. The story appears ;at least plausible. Redfern is said to have been last sighted over the Orinoco Delta, which proves that he must have crossed the Caribbean safely, and the assumption that he was lost somewhere in the interior, even possibly as far south as the place mentioned, sounds tenable. So are many of the assumptions made about the fate of Colonel Fawcett, in search of whom, since.his disappearance in 1925. expedition after expedition has entered the Brazilian jungle in fruitless search. .The only thing that all the stories seem to prove, unfortunately, is that South America-is on its way to take the place of Africa as the new home of mysterious and exciting legend.