For Todd
Contents
Frontispiece
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Naturalist
Chapter 2: A Force of Nature
Chapter 3: The Offer
Chapter 4: A Bad Beginning
Chapter 5: Survival of the Fittest
Chapter 6: Into the Unknown
Chapter 7: The Roar
Chapter 8: Welcome to the Jungle
Chapter 9: Misfortune
Chapter 10: Risking It
Chapter 11: The Arrow
Chapter 12: No Doubt
Chapter 13: True Colors
Chapter 14: A Death Sentence
Chapter 15: Dire Straits
Chapter 16: Do or Die
Chapter 17: Criminal
Chapter 18: A Turn for the Worse
Chapter 19: Left for Dead
Chapter 20: The Hunt
Chapter 21: Signs of Life
Epilogue
Teddy’s Travel Tips
Theodore Roosevelt—Career Highlights
Sources
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Photo Credits
Copyright
PROLOGUE
Knocking on Death’s Door
March 27, 1914
Day 29 on the River of Doubt
Time was running out. It was twenty-nine days into the journey, and food supplies were frighteningly low. The men were starving. No one knew how many more miles they would have to travel down the River of Doubt. There was no map to follow, and they had no idea what lay ahead. But Theodore Roosevelt and the men who were with him were certain about one thing. If they didn’t hurry and get out of the Amazon jungle soon, they would all be dead.
The winding black river stretched out before them like a slithering snake. Roosevelt sat in his lightly packed canoe, weakened from fever, hunger, exhaustion, and worry. His clothes were damp and sticky, and his eyeglasses were foggy from the thick and steamy air.
A slight breeze offered some relief from the insidious and torturous swarms of biting flies, stinging bees, and disease-spreading mosquitoes. Even with mosquito nets and bug repellent, everyone on the expedition was covered with painful bites.
Map of South America in 1913.
The dense tropical trees along the river’s edge towered overhead, providing shade along the banks, while big-beaked toucans called out with their harsh sounds and flocks of parakeets flashed their green, blue, and red feathers.
Hidden from view, in the dark shadows of the forest, were the Cinta Larga Indians. The silent and stealthy natives kept a close watch on the expedition’s every move, with their poison arrows primed and ready to shoot.
While the Cinta Largas watched them from the shadows, the adventurers were looking for monkeys hanging from trees. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they’d be able to shoot one to curb their never-ending hunger pains. But times were tough, and monkeys were a rare indulgence lately.
The expedition had discovered the hard way that in this part of the unexplored Amazon jungle, for some reason unknown to them, food was scarce. The Brazil nuts they had been counting on to sustain them were in short supply, and the piglike tapir, with its prehensile snout, was elusive. And in this section of the river, with the exception of the vicious saw-toothed piranhas, fish were few and far between.
Their progress down the Amazon was slow, and after paddling less than two miles that day, steep hills covered with lush green trees appeared before them. It was a sight to behold. But the beauty was quickly overshadowed by the fearsome sound of rapids just ahead. The adventurers knew all too well that it was dangerous to try to paddle their six canoes through the churning waters, and they couldn’t risk losing any more canoes or food.
The men pulled their dugout canoes onto the river’s sandy bank and started chopping through the thick vegetation with machetes and knives to make their way around the main rapids. To save precious time, they decided that instead of dragging the heavy canoes over land, they would let them run down the river empty.
The first four empty canoes traveled down to the end of the rapids with great success. The last two, which were tied together, were then set on the course. They rushed down the river but were suddenly turned by the rapids and hurled against some boulders, then became trapped under a tangle of vines and tree branches.
The powerful current pinned the canoes in place, and water quickly rushed into the vessels and sank them. The men knew it was only a matter of time before the force of the water would dislodge the boats, sending them downriver and smashing them to pieces on the edges of jagged boulders.
Everyone quickly ran to help, with Roosevelt being the first to enter the raging river. Using axes, the men chopped away at the rope that tied the two canoes together. Several men made their way to a small island of rocks, just above the canoes, and threw a rope down. Roosevelt and the others below, who were up to their armpits in water and slipping on the mossy rocks, tied the rope to the outermost canoe.
The men above pulled the wet ropes, their hands burning, while those below lifted and shoved, heaving the canoe up. Finally, the canoe was free, and the men slowly dragged it up to safety.
The same procedure was repeated for the second canoe. It was a much-needed victory as both canoes were saved. But the adventurers quickly realized their success had come at a price.
During the ordeal, Roosevelt had slammed his leg into a boulder, gouging his shin. As his blood oozed into the piranha-infested water, he quickly waded to the river’s bank and limped back to the campsite at the foot of the rapids.
At first glance, the wound appeared to be minor. But the former president knew what a bloody gash to his leg really meant, especially in the unknown and unforgiving jungle.
Roosevelt was knocking on death’s door.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1900.
CHAPTER 1
The Naturalist
Five Months Earlier
October 21, 1913
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America
Since leaving New York two and a half weeks ago, Theodore Roosevelt’s steamship, Vandyck, had been plagued by bad weather. For the last two days, the voyage hadn’t been any different as the steamer inched along the coast of Brazil. Despite this, the passengers onboard—at least the ones who weren’t made seasick by the relentless rocking motion—were awed by the sight of huge porpoises and flying fish sailing out of the choppy sea as the vessel cut through the storm.
It was late at night when the city of Rio de Janeiro first came into view, and the ship finally passed the famed Sugar Loaf peak, which marked the entrance into Rio’s calm natural harbor. The next morning, on October 21, Theodore Roosevelt and the other passengers woke up and looked out from the deck.
They were greeted on all sides by sparkling blue water, soft sandy beaches, and lush green mountains. Rio’s harbor, considered one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World—like the Grand Canyon—was a breathtaking sight to behold. Even though it was an unseasonably cold morning, there was no doubt that Rio de Janeiro, often called “Marvelous Rio,” was a paradise.
At that moment, taking in the view of Rio de Janeiro, Roosevelt had no idea that he was about to receive an offer he couldn’t refuse. It was a dangerous offer—one that could easily get him killed. But it was also of great importance. And that was precisely why the danger-loving, thrill-seeking ex-president of the United States wouldn’t be able to resist.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s capital city at that time, was the second stop on Roosevelt’s planned tour of South America. He was there, at the request of the governments of Argentina, Braz
il, Uruguay, and Chile, to give a series of lectures on world democracy.
Initially, when Roosevelt received the invitation to come and speak, he turned it down. But a few circumstances led him to reconsider.
First, it would be a chance for Roosevelt to visit his twenty-four-year-old son, Kermit, the third of his six children. For the past two years, Kermit had been working in South America, where he was currently supervising the construction of bridges for the Anglo Brazilian Iron Company.
A few months prior, Kermit had been standing on a steel beam that was being hoisted over the river gorge when the crane slipped. Kermit plunged thirty-five feet, “bouncing like a ball” into a rocky ravine. Lying helplessly on his back, with two broken ribs, a dislocated knee, and two missing teeth, Kermit watched the collapsing bridge come crashing toward him. Amazingly, it just missed killing him.
Although Kermit wrote to his father, “I didn’t think I had a chance in a million nor did anyone else,” he brushed off the incident, writing that it was “the chances of the game.” Even with Kermit’s cool reassurances that he was fine, Roosevelt was worried and wanted to see him.
Kermit (right) with his brother Archie about a year before Kermit went down the River of Doubt.
In a letter to his son, Roosevelt wrote:
“By George! It was the narrowest squeak I have heard of, and it was a marvel that you got through as well as you did—although two broken ribs, two broken back teeth and water on the knee make an unpleasant aggregate of injuries … I cannot say how inexpressibly thankful I am that the accident came out all right. We are all of us much concerned about you.”
Apart from seeing his son, Roosevelt was looking forward to going on a hunting trip through the interior of South America at the end of his speaking tour. He planned to collect new species of birds and other animals for the American Museum of Natural History.
At the time, South America was a very mysterious continent. Large parts were unexplored, leaving a blank space about the size of Montana on the map. The mighty Amazon jungle, which landed squarely in that unknown space, was a dangerous, dense, and nearly impenetrable wilderness.
For those who dared to enter the jungle, many did not make it out alive. Merciless disease, wild beasts, and Indian attacks were a constant threat. Even those who survived its perils warned others against going, calling it suicidal, and telling them to expect nothing less than catastrophe. But that kind of risk didn’t discourage Roosevelt—it made him want to go even more.
Though Roosevelt was born into a wealthy family, living a life of privilege and luxury in New York City, he chose to live a “strenuous life,” meaning, in his words, “the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife.”
As a result, he was a man of action who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty—literally. He could often be found baling hay and chopping wood at his country home on Long Island, refusing to let any physical limitations get in his way. But that wasn’t always the case.
Roosevelt would grow up to be “as fit as a bull moose,” but when he was a child, he was very sickly, frail, and nervous. In fact, his parents didn’t expect him to live long.
As a child, Roosevelt suffered from acute asthma, a respiratory disease that caused his airways to constrict, making it difficult for him to breathe. If he was unlucky, an asthma attack could lead to suffocation. At the time, doctors didn’t know what caused these attacks, and there wasn’t any medicine that could help.
All Roosevelt could do was stay in bed, propped up on pillows, feeling like he was being strangled as he coughed, wheezed, and gasped for breath. Sometimes, in desperation, his father would load him into a horse-drawn carriage and speed through the city streets, hoping the air would be forced into his son’s lungs and help him breathe. His parents had him try other remedies of the time—such as smoking cigars and drinking black coffee—but nothing helped.
Since Roosevelt was unwell and often stuck indoors, he spent much of his time reading books. He loved reading about forests and jungles, intensely studying the sketches and detailed information about wildlife—monkeys, vampire bats, lions, cheetahs, and bears, to name a few.
When he was well enough to get out of bed, he carried The Illustrated Natural History by J. G. Wood under one arm, and a book about Africa under the other. All his reading about nature sparked a lifelong passion.
Roosevelt, nicknamed “Teedie” by his family, at about seven years old.
One day, when eight-year-old Roosevelt was walking up Broadway in Manhattan, he passed by a market where he was sometimes sent to buy strawberries before breakfast. But on this occasion, something else caught his eye.
“I suddenly saw a dead seal laid out on a slab of wood … I asked where it was killed, and was informed in the harbor … As long as that seal remained there I haunted the neighborhood of the market day after day,” Roosevelt recalled.
Even though Roosevelt didn’t have a tape measure, he used a pocket ruler to take the measurements of the seal, a rare find in New York City. He carefully wrote down the measurements in a notebook, just like a naturalist who studies animals and plants. He was eventually given the seal’s skull, and he and his cousins displayed it in his bedroom closet, which he called the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.”
This marked the beginning of Roosevelt’s collection of wildlife specimens. Soon the “Roosevelt Museum” displayed tadpoles, bugs, bird nests, and more animal skeletons. Roosevelt’s notebook became filled with detailed descriptions of the physical characteristics and habits of the wildlife he observed.
In a short while, the collection of wildlife specimens expanded beyond his closet. He brought home an assortment of live animals, too.
He successfully raised a few baby gray squirrels, feeding them milk through a glass syringe. His tree frog lived in the parlor, while his snapping turtle could be found tied to the laundry tub. In an empty flower pot he housed a sociable family of white-footed mice. But the woodchuck proved to be a mistake. It was a bad-tempered animal, despite Roosevelt’s best efforts to tame it.
The only time his mother put her foot down was when dead mice were found stored in the icebox. Roosevelt reluctantly got rid of them, feeling it was a terrible “loss to science.”
Pages from Roosevelt’s field notes of the flora and fauna of New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, plus his hand-drawn map. He began this notebook when he was thirteen years old.
By the age of thirteen, Roosevelt could be found spending many hours during the summer in a cramped and stuffy shop filled with taxidermied animals on the corner of Broadway and Worth Street, not far from where the Brooklyn Bridge was being built. The shop’s owner was the tall and white-haired John Graham Bell, who always wore a formal black frock coat.
Bell, who had accompanied the celebrated naturalist John James Audubon on his trip up the Missouri River, was the most famous taxidermist of the time. Roosevelt, who had a growing collection of birds, wanted to learn how to do taxidermy so he could stuff and preserve his specimens himself.
That same summer, Roosevelt also received his first gun, a double-barrel, breech-loading pinfire shotgun. Upon trying to shoot a target, he quickly realized something: He had terrible eyesight.
“It puzzled me to find that my companions seemed to see things to shoot at which I could not see at all,” Roosevelt recalled.
The first time Roosevelt put on his new glasses and looked through them, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“[It] literally opened an entirely new world to me.” With his newfound sight, the young Roosevelt was ready to take on whatever came next.
CHAPTER 2
A Force of Nature
Thanks to his new glasses, Roosevelt could now identify birds by sight, and not just by hearing them. His bird collection grew even bigger and his observations in his notebook grew longer, especially the following summer when his family took a trip down the Nile River.
“My first real collecting as a student of natural history was done in Egypt on this
journey,” Roosevelt recalled.
He was determined to become a naturalist and decided that he would study it in college.
But before he went off to college, Roosevelt would undergo another transformation. It began after some boys bullied him when he was thirteen.
Roosevelt wrote, “I made up my mind … I would not again be put in such a helpless position; and having become quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply its place by training.”
So Roosevelt learned to box from a champion fighter. He also lifted weights, rode horses, hiked, ran, swam, rowed, and tried all different types of sports. Although Roosevelt wasn’t a natural athlete, he possessed another quality that made him stand out. He was absolutely relentless—always trying and always refusing to give up.
“He’s not strong, but he’s all grit,” his doctor said. “He’ll kill himself before he’ll even say he’s tired.”
Along with improvements in his physical and mental strength, the training helped boost Roosevelt’s self-confidence. He was no longer riddled with nervousness. Instead, he was fearless.
An older Theodore Roosevelt jumping on horseback, a hobby that he took up as a teenager.
“There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first … But by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid,” Roosevelt stated.
By 1875, when Roosevelt was seventeen years old, he was no longer a timid and sickly child. He was now bursting with so much energy that he would be called a “steam engine in trousers.”
Over the years, Roosevelt’s enthusiasm and interest in natural history had not waned. He still planned on studying it at Harvard University.
“When I entered college, I was devoted to out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or Coues type,” Roosevelt wrote.
But soon after he started college, he made a surprising decision. He wasn’t going to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a naturalist.
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