Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon.
For over two decades, Rondon, now forty-eight and the commander of Brazil’s Telegraphic Commission, explored and mapped the “wild, western wilderness of Brazil.” He and his team cut roads, built bridges and telegraph stations, installed telegraph poles, and strung thousands of miles of telegraph lines. It was a superhuman feat that came at a price—the immense suffering of the workers.
Malaria, starvation, Indian attacks, and vicious bites from piranhas, snakes, and insects were all part of the job. For many, it cost them their lives.
Even in the face of constant danger, Rondon maintained a steely resolve. There was still more that he wanted to explore in the Amazon jungle. Four years prior, in 1909, while Rondon was in an unexplored area in Mato Grosso, he discovered the headwaters of an unknown river.
Since no one knew how long the river was, where it would lead, or what they would find, Rondon named it the Rio da Dúvida, or the River of Doubt. At the time of the discovery, Rondon was weak from a bout with malaria and near starvation. He was barely able to hack his way through the jungle, let alone map an unknown river.
When Lauro Müller contacted Rondon, via telegraph, to act as Roosevelt’s guide, Rondon balked at the idea at first. He wasn’t interested in being anyone’s tour guide, not even the former president of the United States. But when it was made clear to Rondon that Roosevelt’s intent was scientific in nature, Rondon agreed to do it.
However, the famous explorer didn’t think that Roosevelt’s current plans, to travel down an already well-known river, “could offer anything new to an Expedition whose object was to unravel unknown aspects of our wilds.”
So Rondon made a suggestion. He offered to instead take Roosevelt down the unknown River of Doubt to survey it and fill in the blank space on the map.
When Müller presented this offer, Roosevelt listened with rapt attention. He knew that what Rondon was proposing would be a major contribution to science. It was a chance to be a true explorer—mapping an unknown river and discovering new wildlife species in a land never before seen by any naturalist, or any non-native person for that matter. It was an extraordinary opportunity. But it came with a warning.
“Now, we will be delighted to have you do it,” said Müller. “But, of course, you must understand, we cannot tell you anything of what will happen, and there may be some surprises not necessarily pleasant.”
Roosevelt didn’t hesitate.
“Well, by George, that is just what I would like to do,” he said to Müller. “To make the try and see what would happen down the river.”
When Roosevelt’s wife, Edith, heard about the offer, she thought it was a terrible idea—with good reason. Roosevelt’s leg wasn’t his only health concern.
A year earlier, while Roosevelt was on the campaign trail and getting ready to make a speech, John Schrank, a thirty-six-year-old bartender from New York, shot him at point-blank range in the chest. If it hadn’t been for the fifty-page speech tucked in his right breast pocket, along with his spare pair of glasses that were safely stowed in a steel carrying case, the bullet would have pierced his lung.
Despite being shot, Roosevelt gave his fifty-minute speech in a blood-soaked shirt before going to the hospital.
“It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!” he said.
The doctors didn’t remove the bullet, deeming it unsafe, so it remained lodged in Roosevelt’s fourth rib, just an inch away from his right lung.
Regardless of Edith’s misgivings, Roosevelt’s mind was made up.
He immediately wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn at the American Museum of Natural History, who was sponsoring the trip, to let him know about the change in plans. Osborn was worried.
“I looked over a route the Colonel [Roosevelt] proposed to follow, and I wrote to him it was so dangerous he could never get back alive … This was Colonel Roosevelt’s answer: ‘I have lived so many lives in my time, and I have had so much more than my share of good things of life that if I have to leave my natural history remains in South America I am willing to do so.’ ”
Top: Roosevelt’s blood-soaked shirt from the assassination attempt. Bottom: An X-ray showing the bullet lodged in Roosevelt’s chest.
Theodore Roosevelt knew that a successful trip down the River of Doubt would be a monumental feat and a valuable contribution to science. And he was determined to be the first to explore the unknown river and change the map of the world. Or die trying.
CHAPTER 4
A Bad Beginning
Four Months Later
February 27, 1914
Day 1 on the River of Doubt
It was the first day on the River of Doubt, and the expedition wasn’t off to a good start. Roosevelt thought it must be sometime after twelve o’clock, but he wasn’t exactly sure—his watch wasn’t working anymore.
It had stopped ticking sometime when he went hunting for a jaguar during the several-hundred-mile journey to reach the River of Doubt. Like the lion in Africa, the jaguar is the king of the South American jungle, and the American Museum of Natural History wanted one for its collection.
Roosevelt was tireless in his hunt for one. When the jaguar swam across alligator-infested lagoons, Roosevelt swam after it, holding his rifle over his head. Even though he gave it his all, the jaguar escaped. And his watch got ruined. Still, Roosevelt had to admit it was an exciting time, so to speak.
But now, while he sat in a heavy wooden dugout made from a huge, hollowed-out tree trunk on the headwaters of the River of Doubt, Roosevelt was worried. He was supposed to be sitting in a lightweight, state-of-the-art canoe, but that had been abandoned during the punishing journey to get here—along with many of their supplies, including much of their food.
It had taken nearly three months just to reach the River of Doubt. After Roosevelt had completed his two-month speaking tour, he left Asunción, Paraguay, on December 9, 1913, on a gunboat-yacht traveling down the Paraguay River.
Three days later, at the Brazilian border, Rondon’s boat came up alongside Roosevelt’s yacht, and they met for the first time. Since Rondon didn’t speak English, and Roosevelt didn’t speak Portuguese—with the exception of mais canja, meaning “more chicken soup,” his favorite Brazilian dish—they conversed in French. Or, more accurately, Roosevelt tried to converse in French. He spoke French very poorly, but that didn’t stop him or diminish his enthusiasm. Plus, there was someone he could rely on when his hand-gesturing and broken French stalled the conversation.
Roosevelt’s son Kermit, who spoke Portuguese fluently, was also on the expedition—although he didn’t want to be there. It wasn’t that Kermit didn’t love a good adventure. He was just like his father in that respect. It wasn’t because he was recovering from a bad case of boils and an attack of malaria—though that didn’t help matters. The real problem for Kermit was that he was head over heels in love with his fiancée, and he couldn’t wait to get back to civilization so he could marry her.
But his mother had begged her favorite son to go so he could look after his father. Kermit understood why; he was worried, too.
Ever since the trolley accident, when his father’s leg was injured, Kermit was very protective of him. Like his father, Kermit wasn’t afraid of many things—with the exception of one. He was afraid of his father dying. And if his father’s leg got injured again, his death was a real possibility.
So Kermit agreed to accompany him. He wrote a letter to his fiancée, Belle, explaining his decision:
“You see he has never quite recovered from the accident he had when the wagon he was driving in got run over by a trolley. One of his legs is still pretty bad and needs a lot of care.”
Kermit also worried that he would regret not going, especially if his father needed him. He explained to Belle:
“If I weren’t going I should always feel that when my chance had come to help, I had proved wanting, and all my life I would feel it.”
At first, Roosevelt was against th
e idea of Kermit joining such a dangerous expedition. Plus, he didn’t want to interfere with Kermit’s wedding plans. In a letter to his daughter-in-law, Eleanor, he wrote:
“I did not like Kermit to come on this trip with me, but he did not wish to be married in my absence, and moreover felt that this semi-exploration business was exactly in his line.”
Kermit had insisted, and, truth be told, Roosevelt was happy to have his son with him. Kermit was always a good companion and an excellent outdoorsman, possessing the same relentless endurance as his father. While in Africa together, Roosevelt wrote about Kermit in a letter to his son Archie:
“We worked hard; Kermit of course worked harder, for he is really a first-class walker and runner … Kermit has really become not only an excellent hunter but also a responsible and trustworthy man, fit to lead; he managed the whole caravan and after hunting all day he would sit up half the night taking care of the skins. He is also the nicest possible companion.”
Throughout his children’s lives, Roosevelt had instilled in them his love of nature. He had also entertained them with stories of his hunting adventures in the Dakota Territory and read adventure and nature books to them. One of Kermit’s favorite books was Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa by Cornwallis Harris. Like his father, Kermit enjoyed studying the wildlife drawings.
At eight years old, Kermit learned to shoot using the same pinfire shotgun that had been his father’s. When Kermit was fourteen, his father sent him to South Dakota, and Deadwood Sheriff Seth Bullock took Kermit camping, fishing, and bear hunting.
Like his father, Kermit was fearless. Ironically, this fearlessness scared his father, and it was a constant source of worry for him, especially when they were hunting lions, elephants, and rhinoceroses in Africa together.
Roosevelt wrote about it in a letter to his daughter Ethel:
“Kermit continues to be a dear, the most pleasant of companions when he is where he can’t get into a scrape, and a constant source of worry owing to his being very daring, and without proper judgement as to what he is, and what he is not, able to do. He is very hardy, a very good rider, and bears himself admirably in danger; but he does not know his own limitations, and forgets that at nineteen there is much one has to learn. I am very proud of him, and devotedly attached to him; but Heavens, how glad I shall be to get him out of Africa!”
During the overland journey to reach the River of Doubt, Roosevelt looks on while Kermit (in the white hat) and others examine an animal.
While Kermit and his father shared similar interests and character traits, their personalities were quite different. Kermit was quiet, brooding, and not much of a talker. Where his father had the gift of gab, Kermit had a gift for learning foreign languages. In addition to Portuguese, he also knew Greek, French, and even Swahili, which he learned during their hunting trip to Africa.
So with Kermit as interpreter, Roosevelt and Rondon’s first meeting on December 12 officially marked the beginning of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition. Transferring onto Rondon’s boat, the expedition members traveled down the river, making stops to hunt for wildlife specimens, such as the jaguar, anteater, armadillo, tapir, and an assortment of deer, monkeys, and exotic birds for the American Museum of Natural History.
One month and hundreds of miles later, on January 16, 1914, the expedition arrived at Tapirapuã, the headquarters of the Telegraphic Commission and the last outpost of civilization. The River of Doubt was still nearly four hundred miles away—about the distance from New York City to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Using the telegraph poles and lines as a guide, the men traveled through the barren chapadão, or plains, of Mato Grosso, Brazil, on foot, by mule, and, for a short stretch, by automobile in order to eventually reach the start of the river.
To protect himself from the many biting and stinging insects, Roosevelt wore a head net and long gloves so he could write about the expedition at the end of each day.
Roosevelt quickly learned that it wasn’t the best time to be traveling through the Brazilian wilderness. It was the rainy season, and everyone and everything was constantly damp and soggy.
“It was not possible to keep the moisture out of our belongings; everything became mouldy [sic] except what became rusty,” Roosevelt noted.
Regardless of the weather, the expedition rode mules and marched for over sixteen hours a day, sometimes through sheets of rain and slippery mud, sometimes under the baking sun. And despite the heat and humidity, they were often forced to wear stifling head nets and gloves in order to protect themselves from the clouds of insects that hounded them. The worst were the piums, similar in appearance to a black fly, except the pium bit and sucked their blood. The bite itself didn’t hurt, but the itchy welt it left behind caused plenty of discomfort.
“Men unused to the South American wilderness speak with awe of the danger therein from jaguars, crocodiles, and poisonous snakes. In reality, the danger from those sources is trivial, much less than the danger of being run down by an automobile at home. But at times the torment of insect plagues can hardly be exaggerated,” Roosevelt wrote.
Two of the animals the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition may have encountered in the Amazon: left: the jaguar, which is a good swimmer and can also climb trees to ambush its prey; and right: the tapir, which has a flexible snout that can be used as a snorkel when it swims.
Finally, on February 25, 1914, nearly three months after Rondon and Roosevelt first met, the expedition reached the headwaters of the River of Doubt.
But not everyone had made it. More than half of the pack mules and oxen died from exhaustion and starvation—the loads were too heavy and there wasn’t enough grass for them to eat. The expedition was forced to dump supplies to lighten the loads. As a result, the canoes were left behind, along with what remained of the dead animals after the men had eaten what they could.
But most worrisome to Roosevelt was learning that Rondon had left behind food rations for his own men. Rondon thought nothing of it: He and his men would go without their rations to lighten the load. He didn’t want Roosevelt and the other Americans to suffer. Rondon’s men—including a doctor, a navigator, three soldiers, and thirteen camaradas (canoeists and laborers)—were used to going without food and comfort, and their leader figured they could live off the land. Deprivation and hardship were just part of the job of exploring and surviving in the Brazilian wilderness.
Although Roosevelt respected Rondon, he disagreed with him, insisting that the Americans’ food rations now be divided evenly among everyone despite the fact that they were already low. Roosevelt believed that every effort should be made to give each person an equal chance of finishing the expedition alive.
Rice, oatmeal, dehydrated potatoes, canned roast beef, gingersnap cookies, sugar, coffee, and chocolate were some of the items packed in watertight tin containers. Each one weighed no more than twenty-seven pounds to ensure that it would float if a canoe capsized.
“We took with us provisions for about fifty days; not full rations, for we hoped in part to live on the country—on fish, game, nuts, palm-tops. Our personal baggage was already well cut down … The things that we carried were necessities—food, medicines, bedding, instruments for determining altitude and longitude and latitude—except a few books,” Roosevelt wrote.
The canoes and supplies weren’t all that were left behind on the overland journey. As every explorer knows, it’s crucial to pick the right people for an expedition. Physical strength and mental endurance are essential, but equally important is a willingness to cooperate and work hard for the good of the group. If someone puts his own needs first—whether he is injured, sick, or simply refuses to cooperate—that person becomes the weakest link. If this happens, everyone’s chances of survival are threatened.
Roosevelt ended up sending a couple of men from his team home before they reached the river. One was so sick with malaria that he couldn’t even start the overland journey. The other complained too much about the physical hardships�
��demanding that he be allowed to sit in a chair and be carried for the last two hundred miles.
“No man has any business to go on such a trip as ours unless he will refuse to jeopardize the welfare of his associates by any delay caused by weakness or ailment of his,” Roosevelt wrote. “It is his duty to go forward, if necessary on all fours, until he drops.”
These were the words Roosevelt lived by, and he knew that the expedition would require only the strongest men—and the luckiest.
CHAPTER 5
Survival of the Fittest
February 27, 1914
Day 1 on the River of Doubt (continued)
By the time the expedition reached the headwaters of the River of Doubt, Roosevelt knew who had the best chance of surviving the journey. He chose to bring his son Kermit, and of the six American men that he originally brought with him to South America, he chose only one to continue with them down the River of Doubt. His name was George Cherrie, and he was one of two naturalists that the American Museum of Natural History had hired to accompany Roosevelt.
Tall and lean with salt-and-pepper hair and a handlebar mustache, at first glance forty-eight-year-old Cherrie didn’t necessarily look like someone who had spent the last twenty-five years in the South American wilderness. But his trembling hand told another story.
Born and raised in Knoxville, Iowa, Cherrie started out as a mechanical engineer. Yet after only two years behind a desk, the call of the wild beckoned him.
Known as the “prince of tropical American bird collectors,” Cherrie had made more than two dozen exploration expeditions in the West Indies and Central and South America, collecting thousands of birds for the British Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the American Museum of Natural History, among others.
Death on the River of Doubt Page 3