Creature record / 1907
Early 1907. A canoe drifted on the sluggish current of the Rio Abunã, on the border between Bolivia and Brazil. Aboard was Major Percy Harrison Fawcett, surveying the frontier. Then, almost under the bow, a triangular head rose from the water. Several feet of undulating body followed. Fawcett sprang for his rifle and fired into its spine. The water foamed. Heavy thumps struck the keel. Ashore, he measured the snake as best he could. Forty-five feet out of the water. Seventeen feet in it. Sixty-two feet in all. He took no skin and kept no body. In London, scientists ridiculed him. The giant anaconda of the Abunã has divided believers and herpetologists ever since.
Early 1907, probably January. Some accounts say 1906. Major Percy Harrison Fawcett, retired from the Royal Artillery, was on his first boundary survey for the Royal Geographical Society and the Bolivian government. His route ran along the Rio Abunã, the river that divides Acre from Pando. Fawcett called it the "river of evil."