The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

by Candice Millard

  Until now, the wrangling over provisions and equipment had all seemed vaguely theoretical in nature, revolving around a river journey that was always distant in both time and geography. At the river’s edge, however, the immense difficulties and uncertainties of the task that Roosevelt had taken on were suddenly transformed into urgent realities. Everything that the men of the expedition knew about the journey ahead underscored the dangers that they would face from this point forward.

  Even more disturbing than what they knew was what they did not know. The obvious riddle of the river’s course was only one of a thousand potentially lethal mysteries that now surrounded them. As they plunged deeper and deeper into the jungle, the riot of nature that enveloped them—from the crowded canopy overhead to the buzzing, insect-laden air around their faces to the unseen depths of the black river—became increasingly strange, unfamiliar, and threatening, to say nothing of the constant threat of Indian attack, which transformed every shadow into a potential enemy.

  The most immediate problem was how to negotiate the river itself. Shifting whirlpools and whitewater rapids were obvious dangers, but even a seemingly benign ripple could be deadly. The danger was in the eddy line, the point at which the current, which is running downstream, collides with the eddy, which is heading upstream, causing a powerful and chaotic swirl of water just under the surface.

  To deal with the unpredictable dangers of powerful rapids, American river explorers had tried a variety of specialized boats, eventually developing unusual swayback drift boats, with a shallow draft and high aft and stern, which made it possible to ride out the churning white water. The remoteness of the River of Doubt and the chaos of the overland journey, however, meant that Roosevelt and his men would have no such equipment. Although Roosevelt had left New York with more boats than he would possibly need in the Amazon, he had, incredibly enough, arrived at the river with no boats at all. He had chosen to leave Father Zahm’s eight-hundred-pound motorboats—the Edith and the Notre Dame—in Rio de Janeiro after it had become clear that they were far too heavy to haul through the rain forest. Then, during the overland journey, the men had agreed to abandon Fiala’s Canadian canoes in Utiarity when their failing oxen could no longer carry even those light watercraft. Now that the expedition had finally reached the River of Doubt, it found itself with twenty-two men, hundreds of pounds of supplies, and not a single boat.

  Forced to find a local substitute for such vital equipment, the men were obliged to make do with a set of seven roughly hewn dugouts that Rondon purchased from a group of Nhambiquara Indians, and which were now tethered to the base of the telegraph bridge. Rondon assured Roosevelt that these dugouts were all “recently built,” but they had been built by one of the Amazon’s most primitive tribes, a group that was reviled by other tribes for its lack of even the most rudimentary hammock.

  There was no comparison between these massive, clumsy dugouts and the sleek 160-pound canvas-covered canoes that Fiala had ordered for the expedition and which were now carrying him safely down the Papagaio River. Little more than hollowed-out tree trunks, the dugouts would be nearly impossible to maneuver when the expedition encountered rapids. In contrast to drift boats, which are designed to ride high through bucking waters and to facilitate the agile changes of direction needed to avoid submerged boulders and other lethal obstacles, the dugouts provided only minimal flotation and had little or no capacity for steering, obliging their occupants to plow through—or into—whatever lay ahead. Even their buoyancy left much to be desired, as the men of the expedition quickly discovered: The fully loaded dugouts left them sitting only a few inches above the surface, and were quickly swamped in rough water. These particular dugouts, moreover, were in questionable condition. In fact, Roosevelt’s recounting of them sounded ominously like a description of the Seven Dwarfs. “One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky,” he wrote. “The other three were good.”

  * * *

  THE EXPEDITION’S unanticipated reliance on such primitive boats had implications far beyond mere efficiency or comfort, or even the increased risk of drowning and other disasters. In the jungle, the boats were not simply a form of transportation, but the expedition’s principal refuge from a broad variety of natural enemies. Every time the men of the expedition were forced to leave the relative sanctuary of the boats, they would have to expose themselves to the dangerous, unseen, and unpredictable creatures that surrounded them—on land and in the water.

  At up to twenty-five hundred pounds apiece, the dugouts were also enormously heavy. Should the river prove so impassable that the expedition was forced to portage around it, the boats would be an excruciating burden and distraction as the men, vulnerable and exhausted, tried to haul them through the forest. The weight of the craft also greatly increased the stakes of even a minor mishap. Any slip with the heavy, waterlogged boats during a portage, in the rushing current, or merely during routine loading and unloading as they bobbed near the shore, could easily crush a man’s hand or leg if it did not kill him outright. In the harsh, primitive conditions that lay ahead, the prospect of such accidents took on grave significance; the men understood that on the River of Doubt the difference between any injury and death was likely just a matter of time.

  From their rough, wet seats just above the waterline, Roosevelt and his men could see many of the predators that surrounded them in the river, and could only imagine those that waited below the inky surface. In the tangled vines that shrouded the shoreline, what appeared to be partially submerged logs suddenly blinked and slid beneath the surface, revealing themselves as caimans—South American alligators. Rhythmic eddies in the water betrayed the passage of anacondas, which can weigh as much as five hundred pounds. The men were by now well acquainted with the razor-toothed piranha; every time they were forced to wade while maneuvering their sluggish dugouts, they would be at risk of attack.

  If the rapids on the River of Doubt proved impassable and the men were driven ashore, they would face even greater dangers than on the river. The insects had already begun to swarm, brought out in droves by the ceaseless rain. The gravest threat came from mosquitoes, which carried everything from malaria to yellow fever, but perhaps the worst torment came from piums. These minuscule black flies gorge themselves on blood like mosquitoes but descend by the hundreds, inflicting red pinpoint bites that not only itch but leave their victims looking as if they have been shot with buckshot.

  In the rain forest, it seemed that every living thing—from animals to insects to bacteria—was ready to attack, whether in offense or self-preservation. Some of the world’s deadliest serpents were coiled on the forest floor and in the low branches of trees. There were poisonous frogs; lithe, stealthy jaguars; and collared peccaries, wild pigs known to run in packs of more than three hundred animals. Then there were the Indians, who could easily remain invisible to Roosevelt and his men, even if they chose to attack.

  Compounding all these dangers was the critical factor of time. The kind of delays that they had experienced during the overland journey would be more than frustrating while they were on the river: They would be deadly. Not only would each extra day they were forced to spend on the river leave the men more vulnerable to predators, disease, and Indian attack, but it would bring them that much closer to starvation. Every time their clumsy dugouts obliged them to portage around rapids, the men would expend more precious calories and would have to spend more time attempting to hunt or find food, slowing the expedition even further.

  In the face of such evident flaws in the expedition’s preparations, and the potential risks associated with any delay, the differences between its American and Brazilian leaders grew wider. Roosevelt and Kermit wanted nothing more than to move ahead quickly. Having put his life on hold for this expedition, all that Kermit asked of it was swift, uneventful progress. Even for Roosevelt, this trip, which was a rare opportunity for both adventure and achievement, was simply another trophy, one that he could keep next to his m
emories of his ranching days in the West, the Battle of San Juan Hill, and his seven years in the White House. If he survived, he would return as quickly as possible to the United States and the hectic political life that he had led before he had even set foot on South American soil.

  For Rondon, however, the descent of the River of Doubt was not an isolated event. It was an integral part of a quarter-century of extraordinary effort and sacrifice. When Lauro Müller asked him to accompany Roosevelt into the Amazon, Rondon had been in the midst of one of the most difficult periods of a notably difficult career. He had been fighting to keep his sick soldiers alive and his telegraph line moving forward while at the same time desperately trying to prepare for what he hoped would be the line’s November 1914 inauguration. Rondon had accepted the assignment because he knew that Theodore Roosevelt could give his commission the kind of public attention that it needed in order to maintain its funding and political support from the Brazilian government. But if he was going to descend this river, he intended to carry out his work with the same discipline and rigorous attention to detail that he had applied to each of his expeditions, no matter how grueling or dangerous. This expedition was an opportunity to write history, and Rondon was not going to rush through it—whatever the cost.

  * * *

  CAMPED AT the water’s edge, the men made their final preparations for the start of their river journey. A few days earlier, they had divided their provisions between the River of Doubt expedition and the separate Gy-Paraná expedition, which Miller and Amilcar would lead. Now, under Lyra’s direction, the camaradas did their best to organize the remaining boxes of rations, coils of rope, bags of survey equipment, tents, cooking supplies, and hunting gear and then pack them in a way that they hoped would protect them from rain, sun, and rapids.

  As the men inventoried their baggage, their concern about Fiala’s preparations began to turn into alarm. “Most of his equipment was useless, or as it has been appropriately termed ‘doodle-dabs,’” Miller wrote to Frank Chapman at the American Museum of Natural History. The rations were an even larger, and more critical, problem than the equipment. When the men pried open several of Fiala’s crates, they were stunned by what they found. “We discovered here whole cases of olive oil, cases of mustard, malted milk, stuffed olives, prunes, applesauce, etc., etc. Even Rhine wine,” Miller told Chapman. Such gourmet condiments were “all nice enough in their place,” he wrote, but “on such a tremendous journey” they were useless.

  Even if they had begun the expedition with full rations, Fiala had assumed that the men would rely heavily on hunting to supplement their diet. “For meat,” he wrote, “the rubber hunter and explorer depends upon his rifle and fish-hook.” Each food tin weighed twenty-seven pounds, and it would have been nearly impossible for the expedition’s dugout canoes to carry enough tins to feed every man, every day. With no experience in the rain forest, however, Fiala had no basis for his assumption that the expedition would be able to find enough game to sustain itself, and his expectations would prove to be wildly unrealistic.

  Having come this far, Roosevelt and his men now had no choice but to make the best of what they had. They spent most of February 26, the day before their departure, repairing the dugouts. They finally decided to lash the two “old, waterlogged, and leaky” boats together to form a more stable balsa, or raft, and they tied the cranky dugout to one of the three good ones. Since balsas are able to safely carry more weight than are single canoes, these four dugouts would haul the preponderance of the expedition’s provisions, equipment, and men. Each boat, however, would have to carry a heavy load.

  Even though Roosevelt and Rondon had repeatedly reduced the size of the expedition and the amount of its baggage since the pack trains left Tapirapoan more than a month earlier, they still had twenty-two men to feed, clothe, and equip for a journey that could last several months. To keep the baggage as light as possible, the officers agreed to share tents—Roosevelt, Kermit, and Cherrie under one fly, and Rondon, Lyra, and Dr. Cajazeira under another—and the sixteen camaradas would sleep wherever they could find a spot for their hammocks and shelter from the rain. They did pack one other light tent, but that was reserved for anyone who became too ill to walk.

  Despite all of these efforts, the loaded dugouts still sank so low in the river that the camaradas had to tie long bundles of burity-palm branches to their sides to help improve their buoyancy. Roosevelt was concerned about riding so heavily in the swift water, but he had adopted a philosophical attitude about the danger that he faced on the River of Doubt. “If our canoe voyage was prosperous we would gradually lighten the loads by eating the provisions,” he wrote. “If we met with accidents, such as losing canoes and men in the rapids, or losing men in encounters with Indians, or if we encountered overmuch fever and dysentery, the loads would lighten themselves.”

  * * *

  WHILE THE members of the River of Doubt team loaded the last of their belongings into their long, heavy canoes, Amilcar and Leo Miller, the naturalist who had been relegated to the descent of a different river, stood on the bridge, listening to their shouts and grunts of effort and watching the general commotion that accompanies the commencement of any long journey. “We had looked forward in eager anticipation to the end of the long ride across the Brazilian chapadão and the beginning of river work,” he wrote. “But now that the goal had been attained . . . the division of the expedition seemed to have come all too soon.”

  In a gesture of confidence in the successful outcome of his expedition, Roosevelt borrowed $520 from Miller’s museum money so that he could treat his men to a feast at the first semblance of a store that they found near the mouth of the River of Doubt, wherever that might be. He promised to pay Miller back in Manáos, the rubber boom city on the Rio Negro, where they all hoped to meet at the end of their respective journeys. That same day, Roosevelt also asked a favor of Cherrie. “Roosevelt asked me to cut his hair!” the naturalist wrote his wife, shocked that he had just groomed a former president of the United States. “I did the job but the Colonel refused to let me take his picture after I had finished!”

  Finally, everything was in place, and, just after twelve noon on February 27, 1914, Roosevelt carefully climbed inside his narrow dugout and found a seat on a bag that had been stuffed as tight as a sausage. As soon as the camaradas pushed off the banks, he immediately felt himself being swept up in the river’s rushing current. The last thing he heard before he was carried too far down the river for Miller’s voice to reach him, was a hearty “Good luck!”

  “For several minutes we stood upon the fragile structure that bridged the unexplored river and stared at the dark forest that shut our erstwhile leader and his Brazilian companions from view,” Miller would later write. “And then, filled with misgivings as to whether or not we should ever see them again, we turned our thoughts to the task before us.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Pole and Paddle, Axe and Machete

  CARRIED ALONG BY THE swift water, the expedition’s seven dugouts snaked through the forest single-file. The jungle was thickest at the river’s edge, where the trees crowded along the banks in a timeless battle for sunlight. They were matted together with vines and epiphytes that trailed in the water like heavy curtains and completely obscured the muddy bank. From his position in the last and largest canoe, which had a carrying capacity of one and a quarter tons, Roosevelt, along with Cherrie, Dr. Cajazeira, and their three paddlers, could see the other six dugouts floating in a long, broken chain ahead of him. Directly in front of him were the two balsas, which carried eight camaradas and most of the expedition’s baggage, but were even more difficult to steer than the rest of the boats. Rondon, Lyra, and three paddlers rode in the second dugout, and Kermit and two camaradas sat in the smallest canoe at the head of the expedition.

  “As we drifted and paddled down the swirling brown current, through the vivid rain-drenched green of the tropic forest, the trees leaned over the river from both banks,” Roosevelt wr
ote. “There were many palms, both the burity with its stiff fronds like enormous fans, and a handsome species of bacaba, with very long, gracefully curving fronds. In places the palms stood close together, towering and slender, their stems a stately colonnade, their fronds an arched fretwork against the sky.”

  Roosevelt reveled in the beauty and variety of the plant life and the “fragrant scents [that] were blown to us from flowers on the banks,” but he was puzzled by a distinct and eerie absence of sound. In the midst of all this lush life was a seemingly incongruent stillness. “Rarely we heard strange calls from the depths of the woods,” he wrote, but “for the most part the forest was silent.” Cherrie too was struck by how empty the jungle seemed. “Very little animal life was seen along the shore,” he scribbled in his diary.