The River of Doubt (12 page)

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R
ONDON WAS
not, as he later put it, “tormented with nervousness” when, at 11:30 a.m., the
Adolfo Riquielme
finally pulled up alongside the
Nyoac
and he and his officers stepped aboard the yacht to meet Roosevelt. Although Rondon had spent the better part of the past twenty-five years in the jungle, “frequenting the Ministries of the Borôro, Pareci and Nhambiquara Indians, perfecting . . . the etiquette of their respective Courts,” he was confident that he would know how to greet a former president of the United States. “If, when we greet in
the Borôro fashion, we are immediately prepared for the sharp odour of naked bodies painted with urucum,” he wrote, referring to the pungent red pigment used by Amazon tribes, “in compensation, when we exchange amiabilities in the language of Corneille and Molière, we are insensibly drawn to gentleness and refinement.”

In fact, the language of Corneille and Molière was the only language that Rondon and Roosevelt—now officially co-commanders of the expedition—had in common. Roosevelt had learned only two words of Portuguese
—mais canja
, which means “more soup”—and Rondon, although he knew ten different Indian dialects, did not speak English. Unless Kermit was around to translate, the two men had to rely on French—a language that Roosevelt admitted to speaking “as if it were a non-Aryan tongue, having neither gender nor tense.” Despite this barrier, the two colonels seemed to have little difficulty communicating, and by the time their combined party reached the Brazilian river town of Corumbá on December 15, they had already developed a deep and lasting respect for each other.

For Roosevelt, Rondon represented the kind of man he had championed and admired throughout his life: a disciplined officer who thrived on physical challenges and hardship, and accomplished great feats through sheer force of will. It would be a measure of his profound respect for Rondon that, years later, Roosevelt would count the Brazilian officer among the four greatest explorers of his time—alongside Roald Amundsen, Richard Byrd, and Robert Peary.

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.

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C
ORUMBÁ 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:

W
HEN 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 precision 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.”