Monday

Correspondence from the Archive of K.L.

Dear Sir,

I thank you for your letter of the 24th instant, and for your desire to hear more of my ongoing explorative journeys. I cannot promise to these tales will engage the interest of any but the most diligent observer of cartographical expeditions, but at least I can strive to relate my ‘adventures’ (how I hate that word) honestly and with the immediacy that must necessarily arise as the journey unfolds.

I will begin, if I may, with a brief summary of the aims and objectives of this current expedition. You may be aware of the speculations that has gained some fervour within certain cartographical circles, that there exists a land-bridge connecting the southern end of the Hiberian Peninsula in Argentina to the Matron’s office at the Sisterhood of the Mercenary Virgin Ladies School in Trent. I need hardly stress the strategic importance of such a geological oddity should it be proven to exist.

As you noted in your correspondence, I have just recently returned from a perilous attempt to be the first white man to reach the North Pole from below. I am happy to report that the mission was a success, although not without terrible losses to my team of Novocastrian Tunnelling Geese. You can imagine, therefore, that my plans for the coming months were limited. I had hoped merely to rest at my country estate, and perhaps complete a short treatise on the significance of the Lobster motif in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. I was (I hope understandably) reluctant when initially approached to assemble an expeditionary force and claim the route for the Queen.

I was eventually swayed by the entreaties of the Queen herself, particularly her promise of unconditional funding for future expeditions and her corresponding threat of unconditional hanging should I refuse. For all the harsh words of her detractors, Queen Epstein Barr XIV the Fourth is a persuasive negotiator and a beautiful woman beneath her sweaty and pustulant exterior. We are all better off for her modern, sassy management style.

Once I had resolved to undertake this madcap escapade, I sought to equip the greatest expeditionary force yet seen in this or any other paragraph. With the patronage of the Crown I was able to purchase 70,000 yodelling badgers (for the inevitable mountain crossings) and 12 packets of scroggin.

Finally we were ready, and our team left London on the 30th of February (another ultra-leap year!). It was a breathtaking sight; the 70,000 badgers in their Lycra body suits, the remaining 7 packets of scroggin (I had become peckish in the long wait for departure) glinting in the weak morning sunlight.

The good times did not last, however. We were only seventeen minutes south of London when the badgers unionised, demanding better working conditions. The Federated Badgers Union (FBU) successfully negotiated joint custody of the remaining two packets of scroggin and a third share of any merchandising or film deals arising from the journey and any associated shipwrecks and/or cannibalism.

The negotiations complete, we pushed south for several hours through the oppressive mildness of the English spring. It was a Sunday, and no cafes were open. Fortunately, thanks to a loophole in their contract, I was able to eat the yodelling badgers and did not have to go without tea.

Sated and dripping with badger fat we continued south. The remaining packet of scroggin and I took shifts at the helm of our badger-skin canoe as we crossed the channel into unoccupied France. From here my recollection of the voyage is hazy. I was taking a lot of Laudanum to manage the unbearable lightness of being and spent several days unconscious as our stinking raft of death drifted down the Spanish coast. I recall that during these dark days the scroggin tended to me as one would a child that had grown up, become an explorer, embarked on a mission such as that related thus far and gotten wacked off its tits on habit forming opiates.

I must end this section of my tale here. I can hear the whooping of the local chimp militia calling us to afternoon prayer. I pray that I am able to leave Scotland as soon as possible, the food here is terrible.

Thank you again for your interest, I will write soon with further details of the expedition that thus far has taken me further and harder than I could ever have imagined.

Yours Postally

Kensington Longreach Esq.
Gentleman Explorer

Sunday

Day 423, Somewhere in Peru

It was foolish to come this far. These mountains send men mad. Today Jenkins came to me with a theory for an overhaul of the public school system that failed to take into account regional differences in income distribution. I was shocked to see how severe his deterioration had become. I recall the first signs we has had of something affecting the mental state of the group, when Jenkins (not the same Jenkins, another Jenkins with the same name) took three lumps of sugar instead of his normal four with his morning cup of Earl Grey. I should have turned back then, and saved us all from this slow, shameful descent into insanity.

And yet here we are, pushing onwards, deeper into the interior of this godless, sleeveless country. As the jungles have grown denser and the canopy has slowly strangled the light from the sky I have felt doubt clouding my mind, and I have even begun to doubt the existence of the fabled lost city of Nougat for which we have searched so long. Were it not for my faith in our Lord and my almost fanatical obsession with seeing an entire freaking city made out of nougat I fear I would not be able to go on.

Today I had the men make camp in a clearing at the base of a mighty hillock. We were a sorry lot indeed. Of our original team of thirty only half that number remained. I recall with regret the day I gave the missing 15 men an out of date train timetable at King’s Cross station. They were never seen again.

I sent two men to water the mules at a stream we had passed an hour before reaching the clearing, and sat with Jenkins (First Lieutenant Jenkins, not to be confused with the other two Jenkinses. I must confess that during my weaker moments I have been tempted to refer to the many Jenkinses by their first names. God help us all if I ever succumb to that urge) to discuss our plans for the coming weeks. We were forced to confront the morale of the men, which was low after repeated disappointments. The false prizes of the Marzipan Village and the Toffee Municipality, both discovered early in the expedition, had left the men disgruntled (although in some cases I doubt they had been gruntled in the first place) and will appalling dental problems.

We resolved to stay where we were for at least three days to allow the men to recouperate and the the mules to rest. Two parties were sent out to hunt some of the less weird fauna for supplement our meagre supplies after months of Marzipan Casserole and Peking Toffee (French Style).

The fantastical creatures encountered on this journey would make many a credulous observer hang up his doubting stick. In the second months of the trek we crossed a vast plain, unbroken save for the fences of farmers and the occasional motorway. Across these verdant fields ran strange creatures, in enormous flocks of sometimes more than twelve at a time. At first glance they appeared to be sheep, but as we drew nearer it became clear that they were in fact goats. But such goats! They were unlike anything we had encountered before or since. Jenkins managed to catch one when he shot it in the head and we estimated that it was up to ten percent larger than most of the domestic goats in England. We were dazzled by the rich off-whiteness of its coat, and the strikingly goaty expression on its face.

The tales we will tell on our return!