The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

by Candice Millard

  The stories of death and disaster in the Amazon did not end with the withdrawal of the colonial powers from South America. As long as there was a wilderness in the heart of the continent, it seemed, men would be willing to risk their lives to find its riches, or at least discover what lay within. Less than twenty-five years before Roosevelt arrived in South America, a Brazilian engineer officer, Colonel Teles Pires, hoping to chart the course of an unmapped river that, like the River of Doubt, poured out of the Brazilian Highlands, lost all of his provisions in a descent through whitewater rapids. The expedition was then beset with fever and starvation, and in the end only three men survived. Pires was not one of them.

  The very idea of Theodore Roosevelt on a river that was as remote and unknown as the one that had killed Pires and his men was enough to make Foreign Minister Müller quickly regret his impulsive suggestion that Roosevelt change his trip. “Now, we will be delighted to have you do it, but of course, you must understand we cannot tell you anything of what will happen,” Müller hastened to warn Roosevelt. “And there may be some surprises not necessarily pleasant.”

  If Müller was nervous about Roosevelt’s decision to descend an unmapped river, Henry Fairfield Osborn was thunderstruck. The news, which Frank Chapman delivered to Osborn after receiving a letter from Roosevelt, set off alarm bells at the American Museum of Natural History. Horrified, Osborn immediately sent a blistering message to Roosevelt that he would “never consent to his going to this region under the American Museum flag.” This was not remotely the journey they had agreed on, and Osborn fumed that he “would not even assume part of the responsibility for what might happen in case [Roosevelt] did not return alive.”

  Roosevelt’s admission that his new plan was “slightly more hazardous” than the original was, according to Frank Chapman, the understatement of the century. “In a word,” the bird curator later wrote, “it may be said with confidence . . . that in all South America there is not a more difficult or dangerous journey than that down the [River of Doubt].” Roosevelt was more than willing to accept that danger for himself, but he would not force his men to do the same. Turning to his naturalists, his secretary, and his old friend Father Zahm, Roosevelt assured them that they were free to leave the expedition if they wished. “If they had the slightest hesitation I would take them with me to the headwaters of the unknown river and then go down it myself with Col. Rondon and my son Kermit, and I would send them back with the collections to the Paraguay and then home,” he later wrote Chapman. To Roosevelt’s surprise, each of the men—even Zahm, who had drafted the original route—agreed to the drastic change of plans.

  The journey that Roosevelt had lightheartedly described as his “last chance to be a boy” had suddenly turned into his first chance to be something that he had always dreamed of being: an explorer. “The little boy of six in the nursery on 20th Street had read with fervent interest of the adventures of the great explorer Livingstone,” Roosevelt’s sister Corinne would later write. “He had achieved his ambition to follow those adventures as a mighty hunter in Africa; he had achieved many another ambition, but none was more intense with him than the desire to put [the] ‘River of Doubt’ on the map of the world.”

  Roosevelt lived during the last days of the golden age of exploration, a time when men and women of science roamed the world, uncovering its geographical secrets at a breathtaking pace and giving rise to bitter international competitions. The year he was born, the earnest young explorer John Hanning Speke, traveling with the famed Orientalist Richard Burton, discovered the source of the White Nile. In 1909, the year that Roosevelt left the White House, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson won the race to reach the North Pole—the race that had nearly cost Fiala his life and the lives of all his men. Just two years later, in late December 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole. Robert Scott, a renowned explorer and British hero, made it to the pole a month later, only to find the Norwegian colors flapping in the polar wind where he had planned to plant the British flag. Shocked and dispirited, Scott and his men froze to death on their long, bitter journey back to their ship. Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men, in a legendary attempt to cross Antarctica, narrowly escaped the same fate two years later, the same year that Roosevelt would set off down the River of Doubt.

  To Osborn, Roosevelt’s decision to descend this river seemed insane if not suicidal, and he ordered Chapman to tell the former president that the American Museum of Natural History expected him to adhere to his original plan. However, when Chapman’s letter, with all the weight of the museum behind it, reached Brazil, it had less effect than a leaf falling in the rain forest. Having found the challenge he had been yearning for, Roosevelt was beyond the reach of Osborn’s persuasion. In a letter to Chapman, Roosevelt wrote, “Tell Osborn I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any nine other men I know; I have had my full share, and if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so.”

  * * *

  OSBORN’S OBJECTION to Roosevelt’s new expedition was not only that it would take him through one of the most remote and least known regions of the Amazon rain forest, but that it was based on a sudden decision. The months of planning that had taken place in New York the past summer had been for a completely different kind of journey, one that could not be easily, much less quickly, adapted to fit the new route. Even Roosevelt had to admit that the man he had originally entrusted with planning his Amazon expedition was far out of his league when it came to the descent of the River of Doubt. “Father Zahm is a perfect trump,” he wrote to Chapman on November 4. “But he knows nothing of any of the country which we have planned to go through, and in practice can give us no help or advice as to methods of travelling and what we will or will not be actually able to accomplish.”

  Zahm put on a brave face, writing to his brother, Albert, that he was “most eager to begin the strictly scientific part of our trip—the exploration of an unknown river and an unknown region,” but the abrupt change of plans must have been deeply disappointing. After little more than a week in South America, he was already beginning to lose control of his trip—a journey that he had conceived of, waited five years for, and lovingly planned. Zahm must have known that it would be unlikely that he would play a central role in the new expedition, if any role at all.

  It was becoming apparent to everyone in the expedition that they were not as well prepared for a journey, of any kind, into the Amazon as they had allowed themselves to believe. One of the most essential items for their trip—the motorboats that Father Zahm had ordered—not only were unsuitable for the new expedition, they would have been inappropriate even for the original route. Brazilians who had traveled in the Amazon took one look at the massive boats and bluntly told Roosevelt that it would be impossible to transport them through the jungle.

  Also, the provisions that Fiala had so carefully chosen and packed were more of a burden than a blessing in the eyes of the other men on the expedition. When Roosevelt’s party reached Buenos Aires, the sheer volume of baggage that was unloaded from the Vandyck drew a crowd of curious onlookers. There were mountains of crates: guns and ammunition, chairs and tables, tents and cots, equipment for collecting and preserving specimens, surveying the river and cooking meals. After one of the baggage handlers, soaked in sweat, carried the final item from the steamer to the dock, a customs officer asked him if everything was now accounted for. Mopping his brow, the stevedore replied, “Nothing lacking but the piano!” and the crowd erupted in laughter. Even worse for Fiala and Sigg, soon after they disembarked, the two men found themselves the lone custodians of this mountain of bags, boxes, and crates. Leo Miller and Cherrie promptly excused themselves, explaining that they needed to start doing some collecting, and fled to Asunción, Paraguay, leaving their companions to struggle with what Miller referred to as the expedition’s “appalling amount of luggage

  * * *

  ROOSEVELT, FORhi
s part, would have no opportunity to help get his expedition on track. From the moment he set foot in South America, he was plunged into a nonstop whirlwind of political commitments and controversies. His speaking tour through Brazil, Uruguay (a last-minute addition), and Argentina would follow a fishhook-shaped course down the Atlantic coast and then westward to Chile, before returning to Brazil and the Amazon.

  Frankly, Roosevelt was not looking forward to any of it. “I loathe state-traveling and speechmaking! Ugh!,” he wrote to his daughter Ethel in early December. He knew that his expedition through the Amazon would be difficult, but he suspected that it would be “less unhealthy than a steady succession of dreary ‘banquets,’ and of buckets of sweet tepid champagne.” Zahm, on the other hand, delighted in the endless parade of banquets and dinners and basked in the glow of Roosevelt’s reflected fame. “As you will see from the papers sent you, I have covered much ground since I wrote you and have been lionized everywhere, notwithstanding the fact that there has been a very big lion with me,” he wrote his brother. “If I were young enough to be spoiled, I should now be beyond redemption.”

  The excitement with which Roosevelt was met in nearly every city he visited—in countries whose governments and citizens supposedly feared and hated him—was testimony to the Rough Rider’s legendary charm. Not everyone in South America admired Theodore Roosevelt, however, and he soon found that his detractors were as loud and passionate in their derision as his supporters were in their praise. Although Father Zahm would later refer to the tour as one “continuous ovation,” Chile was a notable exception. Students at the university in Santiago disagreed with Roosevelt on several serious issues, not the least of which was the Panama Canal.

  Roosevelt considered the Panama Canal to be one of the greatest achievements of his presidency, and he believed that the canal’s architectural genius and the indelible mark that it—and, through it, he—would leave on the world more than justified the small South American revolution he had had to foment in order to make it a reality. In 1903, Roosevelt’s third year in the White House, the United States government decided, after much heated debate, that Panama rather than Nicaragua would be the best location for a canal that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. At that time, Panama was a state within Colombia, and so Roosevelt had offered Colombia twelve million dollars for the right to build the canal. When the Colombian Senate countered with restrictive treaty language and a demand for more money, Roosevelt’s response was impatience and contempt. He wrote to his secretary of state, John Hay, that the United States should not allow the “lot of jackrabbits” in Colombia “to bar one of the future highways of civilization,” and he proceeded quietly to encourage and support a Panamanian revolution that had been bubbling under the surface for years.

  On November 3, 1903, with U.S. Navy ships lined up in nearby waters, Panama declared its independence. Fifteen days later, John Hay and Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a Frenchman who had been the canal’s chief engineer, signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which gave the United States control of the Canal Zone, a five-mile-wide swath of land on either side of the waterway. A decade later, the Colombians were still fuming. When asked by a Brazilian official why he had left Colombia off of his South American itinerary, Roosevelt had replied, “Don’t you know, my dear friend, that I am not a ‘persona grata’ in Colombia?”

  Although Roosevelt had steered clear of Colombia, he would not be able to avoid a hostile encounter in Chile, where Colombian students had organized protests against him. When his train pulled into Chile’s capital, Santiago, in late November, he was greeted by a crowd that at first seemed to mirror the friendly masses that had welcomed him to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. But the moment he leapt from his Pullman to the train-station floor, with the triumphal strains of the American and Chilean national anthems echoing around him, his welcoming party suddenly transformed into an angry protest rally. “The human multitude, showing marked hostility, shouted with all their might vivas!—to Mexico and Colombia, and Down with the Yankee Imperialism!” a journalist for Lima’s West Coast Leader excitedly reported.

  The Chilean government went to great lengths to shield Roosevelt from the demonstrations, even buying and destroying newspapers that covered anti-Roosevelt rallies, but their guest had no desire to hide from any assault on himself or his country. On the contrary, he took every opportunity to face down his attackers, ready to explain in no uncertain terms why he was right and they were wrong. At a state reception welcoming him to Chile, he vigorously debated Marchial Martínez, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States, about the continued relevance of the Monroe Doctrine. Days later, in an electrifying speech, he gave an impassioned, utterly unapologetic defense of the Panama Canal.

  The speech was Roosevelt’s last in Chile, and it left the country, if not convinced of Roosevelt’s righteousness, at least impressed by his conviction. “As soon as he began to advert to the subject everyone was attention, and the silence that prevailed was almost painful,” Zahm later recalled. “The large auditorium in which he spoke seemed to be surcharged with electricity and everyone seemed to be prepared for a shock or an explosion. Everything—the environment, the speaker, the subject, the great historical event under review—was dramatic in the extreme, and everyone felt that it was dramatic.”

  Drama was Roosevelt’s forte, and few subjects stirred him to greater emotion than did the Panama Canal. Whatever animosities may have been harbored against him when he began speaking, he had his audience in his pocket by the time he walked out the door. “I love peace, but it is because I love justice and not because I am afraid of war,” Roosevelt told the spellbound crowd. “I took the action I did in Panama because to have acted otherwise would have been both weak and wicked. I would have taken that action no matter what power had stood in the way. What I did was in the interest of all the world, and was particularly in the interests of Chile and of certain other South American countries. I was in accordance with the highest and strictest dictates of justice. If it were a matter to do over again, I would act precisely and exactly as I in very fact did act.” As these words rang through the hall, the audience leapt to its feet, cheering and applauding the Yankee imperialist.

  * * *

  WHILE ROOSEVELT was distracted from his pending expedition by a thousand different commitments, his son and young cousin had only one thing on their minds: love. While in Buenos Aires, Margaret Roosevelt had received bunches of white roses every day from Henry Hunt, her admirer from the Vandyck.

  Kermit, for his part, was still waiting miserably for a reply to the marriage proposal he had sent Belle a month earlier. He was a confident young man, but Belle had always seemed elusive, and Kermit was far from certain that she would agree to marry him. Not only was he thousands of miles away from her, but he had been so for more than a year. He also was not living in the kind of place that would necessarily appeal to a girl like Belle. While working on the railroad, Kermit had lived in a retired day coach that could barely accommodate him and his few belongings. Perhaps worst of all, in the rural areas where he worked, there was a nearly constant threat of disease.

  Kermit had had so many recurring bouts of malaria since he had moved to Brazil that the disease had become almost commonplace for him. It would not, however, seem commonplace to Belle, nor did it to Kermit’s parents. When Roosevelt had first seen his son in Bahia, he had written to his sister Bamie that Kermit was not “in quite as good health as I should like to see him.” On the other hand, Roosevelt wrote, “He has matured very much. He earns $2,500 a year [the equivalent of about forty-five thousand dollars today], is deeply interested in his work, and it looks as if he has a future.”

  Kermit hoped that that future would be solid enough to impress Belle, but he could not be sure. She was a beautiful, wealthy girl who was surrounded by America’s and Europe’s most eligible young bachelors. He knew that she could have any man she wanted. What he did not know was whether she wanted him. On November 14, he fi
nally got his answer:

  Dear Kermit,

  I’m very glad you did send the letter, because, I do love you, and will marry you. I don’t know how, or why you should love me—perhaps because I too have prayed,—been unhappy—and now you love me and my heart is very full—What have I done that God should choose me out of all this world for you to love—but as He has done this, so perhaps He will make me a little worthy of your love. May He keep you safe for me! I love you, Kermit, I love you

  Belle

  When Kermit read Belle’s reply, all of his worrying, all of the excruciating weeks of waiting, were forgotten. He was obliged to attend a formal luncheon and an elaborate dinner that day, but he floated through both events in a joyous fog. “I don’t remember a word I said tho’ I remember all I thought for I was with you the whole time,” he wrote her. “It just seems like a dream, dearest, and I get so afraid that I may wake, for if it’s a dream I want to stay asleep forever.”

  Roosevelt was thrilled for his son. “Kermit is as much in love as any one could desire,” he wrote his daughter-in-law Eleanor. “And I am pleased beyond measure that he should be about to marry. Belle is a dear girl.” Edith, however, seemed less enthusiastic about the match. She remembered Belle from the summer before Kermit left for Brazil, and now that her quiet, serious son was engaged to the young socialite, a girl Edith had nicknamed “the Fair One with Golden Locks,” she wrote Ethel that she felt “a trifle down.”