Our friends back home can celebrate with us, because we have finally reached our goal. At least part of Professor Challenger’s claim has now been confirmed.
We have not climbed onto the plateau yet, but it is right in front of us.
Even Professor Summerlee seems less certain than before. He still refuses to admit that Challenger might be right, but he has stopped arguing every few minutes. For the most part, he now watches and listens in silence.
I must go back and continue my account from where I left off.
We are sending one of our local Indians home because he has been injured. I am entrusting this letter to him, although I have serious doubts about whether it will ever reach England.
When I last wrote, we were preparing to leave the Indian village where the Esmeralda had left us.
Unfortunately, I must begin with some bad news. Our first serious personal incident happened that evening. I am not counting the endless arguments between the two professors. This particular incident could easily have ended in tragedy.
I have already mentioned Gomez, our English-speaking half-breed. He is a strong worker and generally willing to help, but I suspect he has one serious weakness: curiosity.
That evening, while we were discussing our plans inside one of the huts, Gomez secretly hid nearby and listened to us.
Our enormous black servant, Zambo, discovered him.
Zambo is as loyal as a dog, and like many people of his race, he has a deep dislike of half-breeds. He dragged Gomez out of hiding and brought him before us.
Gomez immediately pulled out a knife.
He would certainly have stabbed Zambo if Zambo had not been enormously strong. He knocked the knife out of Gomez’s hand with one arm.
In the end, we reprimanded both men and forced them to shake hands.
Fortunately, it seems the matter is now settled.
As for our two professors, their quarrels continue almost without interruption.
To be fair, Challenger is extraordinarily good at provoking people. But Summerlee has an equally sharp tongue, and he rarely misses an opportunity to make things worse.
The night before, Challenger had remarked that he never liked walking along the Thames Embankment and looking toward Westminster.
“Why not?” someone asked.
“Because it is depressing to look at the place where one knows one is eventually going to end up.”
Naturally, Challenger meant Westminster Abbey. He was completely convinced that he was destined to be buried there.
Summerlee gave him a cold smile.
“I understand that Millbank Prison has been demolished.”
Challenger was too conceited to take the insult seriously.
He merely smiled through his beard.
“Really! Really!”
He said it in the gentle, pitying voice one might use with a child who had said something foolish.
In truth, they were both like children.
Summerlee was thin, irritable, and sharp-tempered.
Challenger was huge, intimidating, and impossibly arrogant.
Yet both men possessed extraordinary minds and had earned places among the leading scientists of their generation.
It is strange how different a person’s intelligence, character, and inner nature can be. The longer one lives, the more clearly one understands that these are three very different things.
The following morning, we finally began our real expedition.
To our surprise, all our equipment fitted easily into the two canoes. We divided the party into two groups of six.
For the sake of peace, we made sure that each canoe had one professor.
I went with Challenger.
That morning he was in an almost heavenly mood. He moved around with a look of complete happiness, smiling at everyone and seeming to radiate kindness.
But I knew him too well to trust such sunshine.
I had seen his other moods before. Sooner or later, one of his thunderstorms was bound to appear.
Traveling with Challenger was never boring. Even when he was pleasant, you could never relax completely. There was always the feeling that his enormous temper might suddenly explode without warning.
For two days we traveled up a broad river. It was several hundred yards wide and dark in color, yet remarkably clear. In most places we could see the riverbed below.
Many tributaries of the Amazon are like this. Others are pale and muddy.
The difference depends on the land through which the rivers flow. The dark water usually comes from areas rich in decaying vegetation, while the pale water comes from regions with clay soil.
Twice we reached rapids.
Each time, we left the river and carried the canoes through the forest for about half a mile before launching them again.
The forest around us was ancient, untouched woodland.
Oddly enough, such old forest was easier to pass through than younger, tangled growth. We had little trouble carrying the canoes between the trees.
But the experience itself was unforgettable.
I had grown up in a city, and nothing had prepared me for trees of such enormous size.
Their trunks rose like gigantic pillars, disappearing far above us. Only when we looked almost straight up could we see where the branches began.
High overhead, those branches curved and twisted together until they formed a vast green roof.
Almost no sunlight reached the ground.
Now and then, a golden beam broke through the leaves and fell all the way down, creating a narrow column of brilliant light in the deep darkness.
We walked quietly over a thick carpet of soft, rotting leaves and plants.
The silence reminded me of the feeling inside an old cathedral at twilight.
Even Challenger, whose voice normally seemed capable of shaking the trees, lowered his voice to a whisper.
If I had been alone, I would have known almost nothing about the trees around us.
Fortunately, our scientists identified some of them.
There were cedars, enormous silk-cotton trees, redwoods, and countless other plants.
This continent produces an astonishing variety of useful plants, even though it is much less developed in animal products.
Bright orchids and strange, colorful lichens covered the dark tree trunks.
Whenever sunlight reached a golden allamanda, a cluster of scarlet tacsonia flowers, or the deep blue blossoms of an ipomaea, the whole scene looked unreal.
It was like entering a fairyland.
In such a forest, every plant seemed desperate to reach the light.
Life could not tolerate the darkness below.
Even small plants twisted themselves upward, using stronger trees as support.
Vines grew everywhere, huge and tangled.
Some plants that normally never climbed had learned to do so here simply to escape the darkness.
Nettles climbed around tree trunks.
Jasmine did the same.
Even the jacitara palm sent itself upward around the trunks of the great cedars.
At ground level, there was surprisingly little animal activity.
The enormous forest stretched around us like a series of silent halls.
But far above our heads, we could hear constant movement.
Monkeys, snakes, birds, and sloths lived in the sunlight of the upper forest and probably looked down at us as we stumbled through the darkness below.
At sunrise and sunset, howler monkeys screamed together, while flocks of parrots filled the trees with sharp cries.
During the hottest hours, however, almost nothing moved.
Only the endless buzzing of insects filled the air, sounding like distant waves breaking on a beach.
Once, something with short legs came stumbling through the shadows.
It might have been an anteater or a bear.
That was the only land animal I saw during our journey through that enormous forest.
Yet it soon became clear that humans were not far away.
On our third day, we began hearing a strange sound.
It was a deep, rhythmic throbbing that came and went throughout the morning.
Both canoes were only a few yards apart when we first heard it.
Our Indian companions immediately stopped paddling.
They sat perfectly still, almost like statues, listening with frightened expressions.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Drums,” Lord John answered casually.
“War drums. I’ve heard them before.”
“Yes, sir. War drums,” Gomez confirmed.
“Wild Indians. Bravos, not mansos. They watch us all the way. They kill us if they can.”
I stared into the dark forest.
“How can they watch us? I can’t see anyone.”
Gomez shrugged.
“The Indians know how.”
He lowered his voice.
“They watch us. They speak to one another with the drums. Kill us if they can.”
By that afternoon, I counted at least six or seven different drums coming from different directions.
Some beats were fast.
Others were slow.
Sometimes one drum seemed to ask a question and another answered.
One came from far to the east, making a rapid, sharp rhythm. After a pause, a deep roll came from the north.
There was something deeply unsettling about it.
The sound seemed to repeat the same warning over and over.
“We will kill you if we can.”
The forest itself remained completely peaceful.
Nothing moved.
There was no obvious sign of danger anywhere around us.
Yet from the east came the same threatening message.
“We will kill you if we can.”
From the north came another answer.
“We will kill you if we can.”
The drums continued all day.
Their effect could be seen clearly on the faces of our Indian companions.
Even Gomez, who normally behaved like a fearless tough guy, looked frightened.
That day I discovered something important about both Summerlee and Challenger.
They possessed a special kind of courage—the courage of a scientific mind.
They were like Darwin among the dangerous gauchos of Argentina or Wallace among the head-hunters of Malaya.
When a scientist becomes completely absorbed in a problem, personal fear can almost disappear.
The human mind cannot truly concentrate on two things at once.
If curiosity and scientific observation occupy every corner of the mind, there may be little room left for fear.
So while the drums continued to threaten us, our two professors remained completely absorbed in science.
They examined every bird that flew overhead and every plant along the riverbank.
They argued constantly.
Summerlee would snap at Challenger.
Challenger would answer with a deep growl.
But neither showed the slightest concern about the Indians or the drums.
They behaved as if they were sitting safely together in the smoking room of the Royal Society Club in St. James’s Street.
Only once did they bother discussing the people who were watching us.
“Perhaps they are Miranha or Amajuaca cannibals,” Challenger said, pointing toward the forest.
“No doubt,” Summerlee replied.
“Like most tribes of that sort, I suppose their language will be polysynthetic, and they will probably have a Mongolian physical type.”
“Polysynthetic, certainly,” Challenger said with great confidence.
“I don’t know of any other kind of language on this continent. I’ve studied notes on more than a hundred of them.”
He paused.
“But I have serious doubts about the Mongolian theory.”
“I would have thought that even a basic knowledge of comparative anatomy would support it,” Summerlee said bitterly.
Challenger pushed his chin forward until his beard nearly covered his face.
“Naturally, sir. A limited knowledge might lead you to that conclusion.”
He smiled coldly.
“When one’s knowledge is complete, however, one reaches rather different conclusions.”
The two men stared at each other.
Neither was willing to give way.
Around us, the drums continued their distant warning.
“We will kill you.”
“We will kill you if we can.”
That night we anchored the canoes in the middle of the river using heavy stones.
We prepared ourselves for a possible attack.
Nothing happened.
At dawn, we continued upstream, and gradually the drums faded behind us.
At about three in the afternoon, we reached a very steep rapid more than a mile long.
It was the same rapid where Challenger had suffered his disaster during his first journey.
I confess that seeing it gave me some comfort.
For the first time, we had direct evidence—however small—that his earlier story might actually have been true.
The Indians carried the canoes through the thick vegetation first.
Then they carried our supplies.
The four of us from England followed with rifles over our shoulders, watching the forest for danger.
By evening we had passed the rapids safely.
We continued for another ten miles before stopping for the night.
By my calculation, we had now traveled at least a hundred miles up the tributary from the main river.
The next morning brought the most important moment of our journey so far.
Since sunrise, Challenger had been unusually nervous.
He kept staring at both banks of the river.
Then suddenly he stopped.
His face lit up.
He pointed toward a single tree that leaned out over the water at an unusual angle.
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
Summerlee studied it.
“Surely an assai palm.”
“Exactly.”
Challenger looked triumphant.
“That was the tree I used as my landmark on my first journey.”
He pointed farther ahead.
“The hidden entrance is about half a mile from here, on the opposite bank.”
“There’s no opening in the forest,” Summerlee said.
“That’s the point.”
Challenger smiled.
“The whole thing is hidden. Look where the vegetation changes from dark green to light green. See those pale rushes between the great silk-cotton trees?”
He pointed toward them.
“That’s my private entrance to the unknown.”
He turned toward us.
“Push through there, and you’ll understand.”
We reached the place he had indicated.
It really was extraordinary.
We pushed the two canoes through several hundred yards of light-green reeds.
Then, almost without warning, we emerged into another stream.
It was shallow and perfectly clear, flowing over a sandy bottom.
It was perhaps twenty yards wide, with thick vegetation growing along both banks.
If we had not noticed that small stretch of reeds replacing the normal bushes, we would never have guessed that such a river existed behind the forest.
And beyond it was a world that seemed almost impossible.
It was like something from a dream.
The vegetation grew together above our heads, forming a natural roof.
Underneath that green tunnel, the clear river flowed through a strange golden twilight.
The water itself was beautiful.
But the filtered sunlight gave it colors I had never seen before.
It was crystal clear and almost perfectly still.
It looked green, like the edge of an iceberg.
Every movement of our paddles sent ripples racing across the shining surface.
It seemed like the perfect road into a hidden world.
There was no sign of the Indians now.
But animals were everywhere.
And they seemed remarkably unafraid of us.
Small black monkeys with soft, velvet-like fur watched us from the branches.
Their white teeth flashed whenever they opened their mouths, and their bright eyes seemed almost mocking.
Now and then, a cayman suddenly crashed into the water.
Once, a dark, heavy tapir stood staring at us through an opening in the bushes.
Then it turned and disappeared into the forest.
On another occasion, we saw a large puma.
Its yellow body slipped silently through the vegetation.
It turned its head and stared back at us with cold green eyes before vanishing.
Birds were especially abundant.
Storks, herons, and ibises gathered in groups along fallen logs.
Some were blue, some scarlet, and others white.
Below our canoes, the clear water was filled with fish of every possible shape and color.
For three days we traveled through that green tunnel.
In the longer stretches, it became almost impossible to tell where the river ended in the distance and where the green roof above it began.
There was one remarkable thing about the place.
There was no sign of human beings anywhere.
“No Indians here,” Gomez said.
“Too much afraid.”
He lowered his voice.
“Curupuri.”
“Curupuri?” I asked.
Lord John explained.
“Curupuri is the spirit of the forest. More or less a name for any forest demon.”
He shrugged.
“These poor fellows believe something dangerous lives in this direction, so they stay away.”
By the third day, it became obvious that our canoe journey was almost over.
The river was getting shallower and shallower.
Twice within two hours, our canoes scraped the bottom.
Eventually we pulled them into the bushes and spent the night beside the river.
The following morning, Lord John and I walked about two miles through the forest, following the river.
The water became even shallower.
We returned and reported what Challenger had already suspected.
We had reached the highest point that the canoes could reach.
We pulled the boats onto the bank and hid them carefully among the bushes.
Then we cut marks into a tree with our axes so that we could find them again.
After that, we divided the supplies among us.
Guns.
Ammunition.
Food.
A tent.
Blankets.
And everything else we needed.
With our loads on our backs, we began the much harder part of the journey.
Unfortunately, we had barely started when another quarrel broke out between our two professors.
Ever since Challenger had joined us, he had been giving orders to everyone.
Summerlee clearly hated it.
Now Challenger assigned Summerlee a task.
It was nothing important—just carrying an aneroid barometer.
But this was enough to make Summerlee finally lose patience.
“May I ask you something, sir?” he said with icy calm.
“What exactly gives you the right to order me about?”
Challenger stared at him.
“I am the leader of this expedition, Professor Summerlee.”
“I must inform you that I do not recognize you as our leader.”
Challenger gave him an exaggerated bow.
“Indeed?”
He smiled sarcastically.
“Then perhaps you would be kind enough to explain exactly what you think my position is.”
“Certainly.”
Summerlee puffed on his pipe.
“You are a man whose claims are still being tested. We are here to determine whether you have told the truth.”
He looked directly at Challenger.
“You are not our leader. You are one of the people being judged.”
“Dear me!”
Challenger calmly sat down on the side of one of the canoes.
“In that case, you should obviously continue without me.”
He spread his hands.
“I will follow when I choose. If I am not the leader, then you cannot expect me to lead.”
For a moment, it looked as if the entire expedition might collapse.
Thank heaven Lord John Roxton and I were there.
We were the only two reasonably sensible men in the group.
We argued with them.
We pleaded.
We explained.
We tried everything possible to stop the two professors from behaving like spoiled children and forcing all of us to return to London without accomplishing anything.
Eventually, Summerlee moved on, still muttering behind his pipe.
Challenger followed, grumbling loudly.
Fortunately, we soon discovered something that could save us whenever another argument became too serious.
Both professors had an extremely low opinion of Dr. Illingworth of Edinburgh.
From that moment on, Dr. Illingworth became our secret weapon.
Whenever Challenger and Summerlee were close to coming to blows, we simply mentioned the Scottish zoologist.
Instantly, they found something they could agree on.
Their mutual hatred of Dr. Illingworth would bring them together for a few precious minutes.
Continuing in single file beside the stream, we soon saw that the river had become nothing more than a small brook.
Before long, even that disappeared into a huge green swamp.
The ground was covered with thick, sponge-like moss, and we sank almost to our knees.
Mosquitoes and every imaginable kind of flying insect swarmed around us.
We were delighted when we finally reached solid ground again.
We made a wide circle through the trees to get around the swamp.
The insect noise behind us was so loud that the whole marsh seemed to hum like a giant organ.
On the second day after leaving the canoes, the landscape changed completely.
We were steadily climbing.
As the ground rose, the tropical forest became thinner.
The enormous trees of the Amazon lowlands gradually disappeared.
In their place came scattered Phoenix palms and coconut palms, with thick bushes growing between them.
In the wetter hollows, Mauritia palms spread their long, graceful leaves.
We traveled by compass.
Several times Challenger argued with the two Indian guides about which direction to take.
On one occasion he became so offended that he declared that the entire party had chosen to trust the “primitive instincts of savages” instead of the finest achievements of European science.
The Indians, naturally, ignored him.
As it turned out, they were right.
By the third day, Challenger admitted that he recognized several landmarks from his previous journey.
In one place we even found four stones blackened by fire.
They must have been left behind by his former party.
We continued climbing.
Then we crossed a rocky slope covered with stones.
It took us two full days.
The vegetation changed again.
Almost the only tree left was the vegetable ivory palm.
But orchids grew everywhere.
Among them, I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia vexillaria, as well as the beautiful pink and scarlet flowers of Cattleya and odontoglossum.
Small streams ran down the hillsides.
They flowed through shallow valleys, their banks covered with ferns.
Each evening we found a good place to camp beside some rocky pool.
The clear water was filled with little blue-backed fish, about the size and shape of English trout.
They made an excellent dinner.
On the ninth day after leaving our canoes, we had traveled, by my estimate, about a hundred and twenty miles.
The trees had become smaller and smaller until they were little more than shrubs.
Then they suddenly disappeared.
Ahead of us was an enormous sea of bamboo.
It was so dense that we could not get through without cutting a path with the Indians’ machetes and billhooks.
It took us an entire day.
We started at seven in the morning and did not finish until eight at night.
We stopped only twice, for about an hour each time.
I cannot imagine anything more exhausting or monotonous.
Even in the widest sections, I could see only ten or twelve yards ahead.
Most of the time, all I could see was Lord John’s cotton jacket in front of me and a solid yellow-green wall of bamboo less than a foot away on either side.
Above us, there was only a thin strip of sunlight.
About fifteen feet overhead, the tops of the bamboo moved gently against the deep blue sky.
I have no idea what creatures lived inside that jungle.
Several times, however, we heard large animals crashing through the vegetation very close to us.
From the sounds, Lord John believed they might be some kind of wild cattle.
Just as darkness fell, we finally escaped the bamboo.
We immediately made camp.
Everyone was completely exhausted.
Early the next morning, we set off again.
The country had changed once more.
Behind us, the bamboo formed a solid wall, almost as clear and straight as a riverbank.
Ahead was an open plain that rose gently upward.
Groups of tree-ferns were scattered across it.
Far ahead, the land curved upward into a long, rounded ridge.
We reached it around noon.
Beyond it was a shallow valley.
Then the ground rose again toward another low, rounded ridge.
It was while crossing the first of these hills that something happened which may—or may not—have been important.
Challenger was at the front of the group with the two local Indians.
Suddenly he stopped.
He pointed excitedly to the right.
About a mile away, we saw something enormous and gray rise from the ground.
It looked like a gigantic bird.
It flapped slowly at first, then skimmed away close to the ground in a straight line.
Finally, it disappeared among the tree-ferns.
“Did you see that?” Challenger shouted.
He was almost beside himself with excitement.
“Summerlee! Did you see it?”
Summerlee stared at the place where the creature had vanished.
“What exactly do you think it was?”
“To the best of my judgment, a pterodactyl.”
Summerlee burst out laughing.
“A pterodactyl?”
He shook his head.
“It was a stork, if I’ve ever seen one.”
Challenger was furious.
For once, he said nothing.
He simply swung his pack onto his back and continued walking.
Lord John came over beside me.
His expression was much more serious than usual.
He was holding his Zeiss binoculars.
“I got a good look at it before it disappeared behind the trees,” he said.
“I won’t claim that I know what it was.”
He paused.
“But I’ll stake my reputation as a sportsman on one thing.”
“It wasn’t any bird I’ve ever seen in my life.”
And that is where the matter remains.
Were we really standing at the edge of an unknown world?
Had we just encountered one of the creatures guarding the outer boundary of the lost land Challenger had described?
I can only tell you exactly what happened.
You now know as much as I do.
After that, we saw nothing else that could definitely be called extraordinary.
And now, if anyone back home is still reading my account, I have brought you with us almost all the way.
You have followed us up the broad river.
You have passed through the screen of reeds.
You have traveled down the green tunnel.
You have climbed through the palm-covered country.
You have struggled through the endless bamboo.
And you have crossed the open plain of tree-ferns.
At last, our destination was directly in front of us.
After crossing the second ridge, we saw a broad, irregular plain dotted with palms.
Beyond it stood the high red cliffs I had seen in the picture.
There was no mistake.
It was the same place.
The cliffs were about seven miles from our present camp at their nearest point.
They stretched away in both directions, farther than I could see.
Challenger was strutting around like a victorious peacock.
Summerlee said almost nothing.
But he was still clearly unconvinced.
Another day’s travel should finally settle some of our arguments.
For now, however, we must wait.
Jose, one of our men, has injured his arm on a broken piece of bamboo and insists on returning.
So I am sending this letter back with him.
I can only hope it actually reaches civilization.
I will write again whenever circumstances allow.
I have also enclosed a rough map of our route.
It should make this strange journey a little easier to understand.