The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey Read online

  A conspicuous contrast between the two men was in the philosophical conclusions that each drew from his experiences. For Roosevelt, the lessons of nature and human history proved the need to vindicate principles with assertive action—even when that action entailed bloodshed or conflict. Along with that passionate belief in action came a politician’s pragmatism—a flexibility in tactics that favored results over process.

  For Rondon, however, a life spent at the edge of Brazil’s frontier—and at the margins of its society—had instilled a powerful mistrust of imposed solutions and a determination to respect the workings of law and rationality even when none appeared to exist. In keeping with his Positivist beliefs, Rondon did not welcome conflict but, rather, sought to avoid it at all costs. Although a military officer, Rondon approached his duties with a pacifist’s idealism that would ultimately secure him a place not merely as Brazil’s greatest explorer, but as one of its pioneering social thinkers.

  Devotion to their principles would become part of the legend of both Roosevelt and Rondon. Both had developed their beliefs over a lifetime of experience and thought, and both would be remembered for the passion with which they put those beliefs into practice. From the very beginning, however, their contrasting approaches and personalities ensured that the newly renamed Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition would reflect its leaders’ powerful and divergent views about life and leadership. The beliefs of both men, moreover, would soon be put to the test on the River of Doubt.

  * * *

  CORUMBÁ THE town in which Miller, Cherrie, Fiala, and Sigg had been waiting for Roosevelt for three weeks, was larger than most along the Paraguay River. Cherrie had been impressed by his first glimpse of the town, seeing it “bathed in the early morning sunshine, the red tiled roofs and white walls in pleasing contrast to the rich green of banana trees and the fronds of waving palms.” It had not taken long, however, for the romance to wear thin. Although Corumbá, which had been founded as a military outpost in 1778, had ten thousand citizens, it did not have streetcars or even hirable carriages. “For ambulance service,” Cherrie noted, “a hammock was swung from a long pole that was borne on the shoulders of a couple of porters.”

  After a side trip to a nearby ranch where Roosevelt hunted jaguars, the Nyoac left Corumbá on Christmas Day, 1913. “It was a brilliantly clear day,” Roosevelt wrote. “We sat on the forward deck, admiring the trees on the brink of the sheer river banks, the lush, rank grass of the marshes, and the many water-birds. The two pilots, one black and one white, stood at the wheel. Colonel Rondon read Thomas à Kempis. Kermit, Cherrie, and Miller squatted outside the railing on the deck over one paddle-wheel and put the final touches on the jaguar-skins. Fiala satisfied himself that the boxes and bags were in place. It was probable that hardship lay in the future; but the day was our own, and the day was pleasant.”

  Rondon had gone to great lengths to try to manufacture Christmas cheer, even sending his men to gather palm leaves and other greenery along the shore so that they could decorate the boat. His American guests, however, could not help feeling homesick. “What a Xmas Eve!” Cherrie had written in his diary the night before. “Could anything be less Christmas like. How I wish I might be at home tonight.” Kermit confessed in a letter to Belle that he was not feeling “a bit Christmassy,” either. He missed her, he missed civilization, and he was worried about his father, who he feared had gotten in over his head—a situation for which he blamed Father Zahm. “The priest is a foolish well meaning little fellow, who mislead [sic] father greatly as to the conditions of travel and life down here,” he wrote. “He had never been off the beaten track and saw everything through a golden haze.”

  The Nyoac chugged along at a sluggish pace, leaving the men little choice but to settle back on the side-wheel steamer, jammed tight with men, dogs, crates, and reeking animal skins, and spend the next few weeks getting to know the land and one another. Everyone aboard the Nyoac, with the exception of Kermit, was understandably curious about Roosevelt. He had already surprised them by being warm and affable, more interested in hearing about their achievements and ambitions than in talking about his own, but they, like the men who had planned Roosevelt’s speaking tour, knew his reputation for physical vigor and must have wondered if now, at the age of fifty-five, he could still live up to it. It was not long before they had their answer.

  Not only could Roosevelt withstand extreme tests of physical endurance, but he relished them—to the distress of anyone who was unfortunate enough to be along for the ride. In the White House, Roosevelt used to torture the members of his Cabinet with long “point-to-point” walks through Rock Creek Park, the enormous forested park that runs through Washington, D.C. The walks went on any time of day or night and in any season. “On several occasions we thus swam Rock Creek in the early spring when the ice was floating thick upon it,” Roosevelt remembered. “If we swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes. I remember on one such occasion when the French Ambassador, [Jules] Jusserand . . . was along, and, just as we were about to get in to swim, somebody said, ‘Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven’t taken off your gloves,’ to which he promptly responded, ‘I think I will leave them on; we might meet ladies!’”

  Five years after leaving the White House, Roosevelt still had the endurance of a man half his age, and he proved it on New Year’s Day, 1914. After a 5:00 a.m. breakfast of sardines, ham, coffee, and hardtack, Roosevelt, Kermit, some Brazilian officers, and a handful of camaradas—the Portuguese word for “comrades” and the name given to poor laborers in Brazil—headed out for a jaguar hunt near the banks of the São Lourenço, a small river that the Nyoac had steamed into the day before. This was Roosevelt’s second jaguar hunt, but it would later become emblematic among the Brazilians aboard the Nyoac as the true measure of the former American president.

  Anthony Fiala, who witnessed the hunting party’s mounting exhaustion from the expedition’s base camp along the river, would never forget that day. He later told a reporter for the New York Times:

  We did not hear from the party until late in the afternoon, when a big Indian came running into camp, shouting “Burroo-Gurra-Harru,” which meant “Plenty work, tired.” He fell down in a corner and went to sleep. Twenty minutes later another Indian ran in, apparently all used up. He said, “Gurra-Harru,” and he went to sleep. The third Indian arrived then and said, “Harru,” as he threw up his arms and went off into a trance.

  This caused me to become anxious about the safety of the Colonel and his son, and we started to look for them, as it was getting toward sundown. After walking through the forest for a short distance we came to a small open space, where we found one of the Brazilian officers lying on the ground so dead tired that he could go no further. His clothes were torn and his face and neck were covered with dust and blood.

  Leaving him in the care of three of the natives to carry him back to the camp, I pushed on farther and in another clearing I saw Colonel Roosevelt and Kermit dragging the other Brazilian officer after them through the jungle. I shall never forget the awesome appearance of the intrepid Colonel as the falling rays of the sun streamed through the trees and lit up his dusty and begrimed features. His clothes were torn to tatters and Kermit was in the same condition, but had not his father’s warlike look.

  I called out to him, “Are you all right, Colonel?” and he replied, “I’m bully,” and then went to camp with the used-up officer. Next day the Colonel and Kermit were about the camp as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary, but the Brazilians were laid up for two days. The Indians regarded the Colonel with awe after that trip.

  CHAPTER 7

  Disarray and Tragedy

  WHEN THE EXPEDITION REACHED Tapirapoan just before noon on January 16, Roosevelt stepped off his boat expecting to find a well-organized army of oxen and mules prepared to carry heavy loads and make a quick departure for the River of Doubt. To his amazement and dismay, what awaited him in the little riverside village was not military prec
ision but utter chaos.

  Set into low scrub forest on the river’s edge, Tapirapoan consisted of little more than a collection of small, mud-walled huts and a central square flanked by the offices of the Rondon Commission. It had been swathed in bunting, colorful flags from all the countries of North and South America, and even Chinese lanterns in celebration of Roosevelt’s arrival. “However, if Tapirapoan bore a festive outward appearance,” Miller wrote, “it acted merely as a mask to cover up the general confusion that even a casual inspection could not fail to disclose.” Among a scattering of wagons, carts, and telegraph line trucks, a variety of animals, from oxen to mules to milch cows and beef cattle, wandered, Roosevelt wrote, “almost at will.”

  Rondon had arranged ahead of time for 110 mules and seventy pack oxen to be on hand for the expedition’s overland journey. He had also put Captain Amilcar Botelho de Magalhães, a trusted friend who had traveled with him on several previous expeditions, in charge of the baggage train. The problem was that the Americans had brought with them much more baggage than Rondon had expected. Rather than risk embarrassment by explaining the situation to Roosevelt, the colonel scrambled to find additional animals.

  Although extra mules and oxen were located, they were far from tame. Amilcar, despite his extensive experience with pack animals, had little control over his wild, willful charges. Most of the animals were “apparently fresh from the ranges and had never been broken to work of any kind,” Miller observed. “The corrals reminded one of a Wild West show. Gauchos, wearing fringed leather aprons, and wicked, keen-edged knives in their belts, and who swore fluently in two or three different languages, lassoed the panicky animals, blindfolded them, and adjusted the packs. When the covering was removed from the animals’ eyes they frequently gave a few sharp snorts, and then started through the corral in a series of rabbit-like leaps, eventually sending the packs, saddles, and all flying in every direction.”

  Roosevelt and his men had expected to stay in Tapirapoan for only one or two days. They quickly realized, however, that they would not be leaving anytime soon. Miller and Cherrie did not mind the delay because it gave them an opportunity to collect more specimens. Father Zahm too was “constantly engaged in congenial occupations,” and so relatively content. Kermit, however, had no patience with the bumbling antics that layered day after day onto his already unbearable absence from Belle. As he watched the camaradas struggle to control the animals, he silently seethed. “The oxen aren’t used to be carrying packs and won’t let themselves be loaded and when they are loaded they buck until the[y] fall down or throw off the packs,” he railed in a letter to Belle. “I have been ready to kill the whole lot and all the members of the expedition.”

  Perhaps the only man as anxious as Kermit to get to the River of Doubt and get home was Roosevelt himself. Although the opportunity to descend an unmapped river had seemed exciting and adventurous when he was in Rio de Janeiro, it now paled in comparison with what was happening on the world stage. While Woodrow Wilson was making high-stakes decisions about the United States’ role in the Mexican Revolution, Roosevelt was headed into one of the few places left on earth where his opinions would go unheard.

  Since taking office, Wilson had been doing his best to stay out of Mexico, but it had not been easy. The country’s current president, Victoriano Huerta, once the commander of the federal troops, had achieved his position nearly a year earlier by arresting and, a few days later, ordering the assassination of the acting president, Francisco Madero. Repelled by tales of Huerta’s ruthless and repressive regime, Wilson determined to help remove him from power—by diplomatic means. “Intervention must be avoided until a time comes when it is inevitable, which God forbid!” he told his wife. After sending two envoys in unsuccessful attempts to persuade Huerta to step down, Wilson had announced that United States policy toward Mexico would consist of “watchful waiting.”

  Such a passive policy was anathema to Roosevelt, who was constitutionally incapable of watchful waiting. As he had made clear in his 1912 campaign speech at Madison Square Garden, his ambition—more personal even than political—was to “smite down wrong.” With the political situation in Mexico continuing to unravel, Roosevelt, Rondon noticed, walked around Tapirapoan in a state of “constant preoccupation.” At a time when he should have been preparing for the expedition before him, Roosevelt was distracted by a situation that was beyond his control and thousands of miles away.

  To Roosevelt’s growing frustration, the expedition remained practically immobile. Not only were the pack animals recalcitrant, but the already massive amounts of baggage—360 enormous boxes and countless smaller ones—had been increased significantly by a set of beautiful, elaborate, and completely impractical gifts that the Brazilian government had waiting for the former American leader in Tapirapoan. Roosevelt’s only success in speeding up the expedition’s departure was to convince Rondon to divide the nearly two hundred pack animals into two separate detachments: Roosevelt and Rondon would lead the mule train, and Amilcar would lead the larger baggage train, made up of both mules and oxen.

  On January 19, the baggage train at last set off across the Brazilian Highlands with the camaradas that Rondon had hired in Tapirapoan—porters and future paddlers—and most of the expedition’s baggage, including the provisions that Fiala had packed in New York as well as his Canadian canoes, drawn on a cart pulled by six oxen. Amilcar’s early departure would help give the overburdened baggage train a head start on the mules, which would doubtless be moving at a much faster pace. But Rondon also wanted Amilcar and his men to ride ahead of the mule train so that they could remove any obstacles from the telegraph road and repair any sagging bridges that might impede Roosevelt’s progress.

  The expedition’s route called for the men on muleback to follow the supply train north until they reached an outlying telegraph station in Utiarity, where they would turn west and travel for another month, until they encountered the dark, snakelike upper reaches of the River of Doubt. They were still in the state of Mato Grosso, but they were now crossing a corner of a vast, ancient plateau known as the Brazilian Highlands.

  These highlands encompass 580,000 square miles—more than twice the area of Texas—but they were once even larger still. For millions of years, the Brazilian Highlands were connected to the Guiana Highlands in the north, and were separated only after the Amazon River formed twelve million years ago, splitting the enormous, contiguous plateau into northern and southern halves. The crystalline massifs of both plateaus thus rank among the oldest rock formations on earth, dating back to the Precambrian era billions of years ago. In fact, the Brazilian Highlands are so ancient and have endured such extensive erosion that the highest elevation on the plateau is less than ten thousand feet—half the height of the tallest mountains in the geologically young Andes—and their jagged expanse is marked by steep cliffs, deep ravines, and rolling hills.

  The highlands, as Roosevelt soon learned, are as varied as they are vast. On the first day out of Tapirapoan, the expedition passed through an open pastureland that was dotted with widely spaced trees. On the second day, the men plunged into dense tropical jungle. “Away from the broad, beaten route every step of a man’s progress represented slashing a trail with the machete through the tangle of bushes, low trees, thorny scrub, and interlaced creepers,” Roosevelt wrote. By the next morning, however, the mule train had climbed a steep slope into the cool, dry air of a high plateau that rested roughly two thousand feet above sea level—a region that the Brazilians refer to as chapadão, or tableland. The men were surprised by the region’s aridity, its conspicuous lack of wildlife, even mosquitoes, and the nights that turned so cold that, for the first time since beginning their journey, they had to wrap themselves in blankets while they slept.

  In the early twentieth century, modern maps of the Brazilian Highlands, drawn up by the world’s most respected and experienced cartographers, were strikingly wrong. “The whole region,” Lauro Müller, Brazil’s minister of for
eign affairs, had told Roosevelt, “would have to be remapped after the discoveries of the telegraph commission.” It was in exploring the Brazilian Highlands that Rondon and his men had lost all their oxen and had nearly starved to death. Rondon knew the region better now, but it was no more settled or welcoming to travelers than it had been on his first journey across it. In fact, his knowledge of the highlands only served to underscore for Rondon how difficult and dangerous their journey to the River of Doubt would be.

  * * *

  WITHIN DAYS of leaving Tapirapoan, Roosevelt and the rest of his men could for the first time clearly see signs of the hardships that lay ahead of them. Although they were still hundreds of miles away from the River of Doubt, the fabric of their expedition was beginning to unravel.

  The men were already obliged to get by with much simpler and less frequent meals. “Until Tapirapoan, our food was abundant, very good, and quite varied,” the expedition’s Brazilian doctor wrote. “Nevertheless, due to the conditions of the backland, we presently had to change the eating habits we had heretofore adopted, despite the great interest Colonel Rondon had placed on providing our guests with the same privileges granted to them up to that time.”

  Meals usually consisted of fresh meat from one of the oxen, black beans, rice, biscuits, and coffee, but in an effort to save provisions as well as time, Rondon had ordered that their midday meal be omitted completely. Breakfast was served anytime between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m., but then the men did not eat again until 8:00 p.m. at the earliest, and, on some nights, not until 11:00 p.m. For the men, the sometimes seventeen-hour stretch between the two meals was difficult. Even Cherrie, the consummate experienced explorer, complained in his diary one night, after a long ride without anything to eat until 10:00 p.m., that they were “all nearly famished.”