Misha Williams

(27) 
 
 
occasion and even in the shape of animals. She lived in his bungalow but 
would go off mysteriously to meetings with other siths on particular days 
and of the year (dates which tally with Celtic Irish sith legends). 
 
She was a guru to Brian, encouraging him to achieve a high level of 
mysticism, and was the crucial influence in what he released about the 
Fawcett story to the public and media.  "She latched on to Brian" as Joan 
says. Apparently a relationship with a human opens up another dimension 
for a sith and this is why throughout history there are reports of them 
doing just this. Inevitably she and Brian must have fallen out during 
Brian's last years and she went off to find other humans to influence and 
relate to. Her emotions were closer to that of an animal and were a part of 
Nature itself. She could be affectionate but her feelings had the moral 
detachment of Nature that can be viewed by humans at times as heartless. 
 
Brian, thoroughly disgusted with a conditioned sterile society of clones 
created by governments to keep people stupid and in ignorance, was  
everlasting grateful to "M".  "Each year becomes more important to me 
and 'M' bears me along with growing impetus and herself becomes more 
influential in my everyday normal activities. International affairs seem of 
little importance beside my personal life. A lot of what she teaches me  
may be passed on to descendents or close relatives and thus need not be 
lost since it may be a long time before another member of the family is 
given the faculties I enjoy." 
 
 
ALBERT de WINTON and JESS 
 
These two are not entirely historical as the others are. Every drama needs 
antagonists to create the conflict essential in a play. The main antagonists 
in the Fawcett saga were undoubtedly the media and the press and they 
still are. Only recently Joan in Switzerland had yet another TV crew 
uninvited on her doorstep demanding the facts about her father.  
Albert and Jess represent to Brian the rude and crude assaults on his 
father's story and the attempts to commercialise it over a fifty-year 
period.      
 
 
 
 

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(28) 
 
 
However both are based on real people who I have transplanted to the 
1980's to emphasise the story's ongoing drama into our own times. 
The original Albert de Winton died in 1933. He was of British origin but 
had gone to Hollywood to become an actor and impresario. He gave up 
everything to go and look for Fawcett. His close friend Aida de Milt (who 
I have renamed Jess and saved the original name for her American 
producer friend) circulated the news of his death to various authorities. 
By the sound of her letters she was dismayed by Albert's obsession and 
felt he had wasted his life. 
 
Albert de Winton wrote to the Royal Geographical Society on 24th 
August 1932 stating his planned route, "I intend to ascend the Madeira  
River, then along the Guapore when I shall cross overland into the Mato 
Grosso. Please accept my thanks for any information you can give me 
relative to Col P.H. Fawcett" Albert was completely on the right track. He 
would have reached the River of Doubt (The Roosevelt) and then the 
Tapajos headwaters (exactly the route of Rattin and the Ullyatt brothers), 
but the RGS in their wisdom seem to have passed on the false Dyott co-
ordinates to him. It seems Albert took this advice and went to his death in 
an area that Fawcett had never visited. Aida de Milt wrote that he had 
been poisoned by a tribe who resented his presence and set him afloat 
very ill in a canoe.  
 
I have given to Albert some of Hugh MCarthy's story. In 1949, Hugh, a 
New Zealand schoolteacher, set off from a Mato Grosso church mission 
at Peixoto in a canoe with six carrier pigeons given to him by Rev. 
Jonathan Wells. Some came back with the message that he had found 
"Z", the lost city and then a final message that he was dying. The 
authorities concluded that Hugh must have lost his mind before his death. 
 
In the play nobody escapes from the whirlpool that eventually sucks 
every one in. Albert and Jess start out as typical stressed out media 
people, almost banally stereotyped, and then they gradually evolve as 
events take hold. Even Jess, the staunchest antagonist of all, finally 
succumbs. 
 
 
 
 
 

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(29) 
 
 
FAWCETT 
 
Enough biography has appeared in the preface and the play but there are a 
few extra points to make briefly: 
 
In the Secret Papers we get a description by Brian certainly not found in 
Exploration Fawcett: "Concerning his South American work…let anyone 
question his cherished theories on the pre-Colombian history of the  
continent and a shattering condemnation of the critic's knowledge was 
immediately forthcoming. Let anyone voice a preference for expedition 
methods different from his own and his scorn was immediate. Himself in 
his later years a pronounced ascetic, his expedition parties set out with 
equipment so rigorously pared down to the barest minimum that any 
member thereof who voiced apprehension was at once condemned as  
useless. This of course made it very difficult to find anyone willing to 
accompany him - or in his eyes - fit to do so."   
 
Brian writes in his journal that the short autobiographical story his father 
wrote in 1905 "The Hot Wells of Konniar" is the key to his future life and 
destiny. It also explains Fawcett's outlook that "Reality is a state of mind; 
it is totally subjective." The essay describes how Fawcett was given some 
white powder by a fakir in Ceylon and spent the night in a grove by the 
sacred wells and had a vision that instructed him about the course that he 
must take in his life. 
 
"But why did Daddy destroy one particular sheet of his manuscript?" 
writes Brian. " The clues add up to overwhelming evidence. I asked 
Mother if she had any idea and she said 'it had something to do with some  
woman, but he destroyed the sheet because he thought it might be 
offensive to me.' " 
 
Brian notes his father wrote on another occasion "I once met a messenger 
of the gods…an angel" and concludes that he might have met "M" at the 
sacred wells. To Mrs Bari, the medium Fawcett was in touch with right  
up to the end, he wrote asking if she knew anything about unions between 
humans and elementals and she replied on 23rd October 1923; 
 
"I was so glad you mentioned the possibility of unions between human 
beings and 'faeries' as I have thought a good deal about that. Elementals 
have a desire to mate with humans so as to acquire immortality." 

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