It was immediately apparent that the expedition’s awkward dugout canoes could never survive these falls, even empty. The only way around them would be for the camaradas to build a corduroy road and portage everything, from cargo to canoes. When the four men studied the surrounding land, however, they discovered that it would be almost impossible to carry even their baggage around the falls, much less haul the massive dugouts. The gorge, Rondon realized, had been carved from hornfels, a hard, fine-grained, and slippery stone. There was no way, he told the men who were standing dejectedly at his side, that they could carry the canoes over the steep, jagged, and rocky pass.
When they returned to camp, Rondon assembled the weary and frightened men in front of him and explained the situation in blunt, unemotional terms. Cherrie wrote that he would never forget the expression on Rondon’s face as he delivered the crushing news: “We shall have to abandon our canoes and every man fight for himself through the forest.” Cherrie was as incredulous as the camaradas. “To all of us his report was practically a sentence of death,” the naturalist wrote.
Unless they stayed close to the river’s steep and heavily forested edge, they would not be able to find their way out of the jungle. The thought of losing their way terrified even the most hardened and experienced men among them. In the mid-twentieth century, the Polish explorer and writer Arkady Fiedler wrote of the dangers of becoming lost in the Amazon. “Many cases have been known of travelers and explorers returning from its green labyrinth to become chronic patients of sanatoria, or even not returning at all,” he wrote. “They have simply disappeared in the forest like stones in water. The jungle is jealous and voracious. . .. Of all the possible deaths man can die in the jungle, the most dreaded is that which results from being lost.”
Cherrie and Kermit’s greatest concern, however, was for Roosevelt. As devastating as it was for the other men, the idea of abandoning the canoes meant certain death for Roosevelt, and he knew it. Cherrie wrote that, although Roosevelt did not “utter a word of complaint” when he heard Rondon’s decision, “the effect of Rondon’s report on him, with his feeling of keen responsibility to us all,” immediately caused Cherrie to fear what the ex-president might do in response.
* * *
ONE OF Roosevelt’s most entrenched beliefs, as a cowboy, a hunter, a soldier, and an explorer, was that the health of one man should never endanger the lives of the rest of the men in his expedition. Roosevelt had unflinchingly cast off even good friends like Father Zahm when it became clear that they could no longer pull their own weight or were simply not healthy enough to endure the physical demands of the journey. “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 a weakness or ailment of his,” he wrote. “It is his duty to go forward, if necessary on all fours, until he drops.”
Roosevelt had always applied this wilderness law more strictly to himself than to anyone else. When he was a rancher in the Dakota Territories, he had had several painful accidents, once smashing his rib on a stone when he was bucked off his horse, and another time cracking the point of his shoulder when a “big, sulky” horse named Ben Butler flipped over backward while Roosevelt was still riding him. Every time he had been hurt, Roosevelt had forced himself to go on. “We were hundreds of miles from a doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed of itself,” he had written.
Roosevelt had even held himself to these unyielding standards after Schrank, the would-be assassin, shot him in Milwaukee. Few men would have even considered giving a speech with a bullet in their chest. Roosevelt had insisted on it. This was an approach to life, and death, that he had developed many years earlier, when living with cowboys and soldiers. “Both the men of my regiment and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were themselves a little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being shot,” he wrote. “This was what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the nonperformance of which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being creditable.”
Roosevelt had never allowed himself to fear death, famously writing, “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.” From a very young age, he had been prepared to die in order to live the life he wanted. When a doctor at Harvard told him that his heart was weak and would not hold out for more than a few years unless he lived quietly, he had replied that he preferred an early death to a sedentary life. After the Spanish-American War, he had written his friend Henry Cabot Lodge that, although he was then only thirty-nine years old, he was “quite content to go now. . .. I am more than satisfied even though I die of yellow fever tomorrow.”
Driven in part by his father’s decision to pay another man to fight for him in the Civil War, Roosevelt had a passion for military combat that, to a large degree, had shaped his adult life. “I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it,” he had written in his autobiography just months before heading to South America. Many of Roosevelt’s friends, however, suspected that he wanted not only to fight in a war, but to die in one. “The truth is, he believes in war and wishes to be a Napoleon and to die on the battle field,” former President William Howard Taft had written of his estranged friend. “He has the spirit of the old berserkers.”
There was no question that Roosevelt considered the descent of the River of Doubt to be a great cause—a cause that was, like war, worth dying for. To John Barrett, the former director general of the Pan-American Union, he wrote, “If I had to die anywhere, why not die in helping to open up to the knowledge of the world a great unknown land and so aid humanity in general and the people of Brazil in particular?” Roosevelt had also terrorized Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, under whose auspices he was traveling, with his assurances that, if necessary, he was “quite ready” to leave his bones in South America.
So determined was Roosevelt not to endanger the life of anyone else in his expedition that he had made a secret provision for a quick death in the Amazon, should it become necessary. Before he even left New York, he had packed in his personal baggage, tucked in among his extra socks and eight pairs of eyeglasses, a small vial that contained a lethal dose of morphine. “I have always made it a practice on such trips to take a bottle of morphine with me. Because one never knows what is going to happen,” he told the journalist Oscar Davis. “I always meant that, if at any time death became inevitable, I would have it over with at once, without going through a long-drawn-out agony from which death was the only relief.”
Now, on the River of Doubt, that vial of morphine represented his only chance to avoid becoming a burden to the other men in the expedition, especially his own son. He knew that he could not possibly make it through the dense jungle on his own, and that Kermit and the other men would try to carry him. Simply carrying the provisions that they would need to stay alive would take more strength than they had. Roosevelt refused to slow down the expedition when each man was fighting for his own life. For him, this was not about suicide, it was about doing the right thing.
That night, after the rest of the men had retired to their hammocks, caught up in their own worries about what lay ahead of them, Cherrie and Kermit agreed to take turns keeping watch over Roosevelt, whose condition had continued to worsen. Both men realized that it would be a long, difficult night, but neither of them was prepared for the decision that Roosevelt would make by morning.
Just before dawn, Cherrie was awakened by the sound of Roosevelt’s weak voice calling for him: “Cherrie! Cherrie!” The naturalist sprang from his hammock and stood with Kermit before Roosevelt. Lying on his small, rusted cot, the injured ex-president talked about the dangers that they faced with or without their canoes. Then, wi
thout a trace of self-pity or fear, Roosevelt informed his friend and his son of the conclusions he had reached. “Boys, I realize that some of us are not going to finish this journey. Cherrie, I want you and Kermit to go on. You can get out. I will stop here.”
CHAPTER 23
Missing
THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY, in New York City, Roosevelt’s family and friends had begun to fear the worst. They had been prepared to lose contact with Roosevelt for several weeks, perhaps even months. They were not prepared, however, for the news that they had received on March 23, when the New York Times announced that Roosevelt had “lost everything” in the rapids of the River of Doubt and that his whereabouts were unknown. Accompanying the article was a large but strikingly incomplete map of Mato Grosso, Brazil, the region through which Roosevelt was known to be traveling, and a picture of the former president framed in a circle in the left-hand corner. A series of fourteen headlines filled much of the far right-hand column, spilling down the page in a cascade of speculation and fragments of information. “May Be on Unknown River,” one headline read. “District Never Explored,” “Party Had Been Divided,” “No Word Yet to Family.”
The article had been sparked by a telegram that Anthony Fiala, the expedition’s outfitter, had sent to the newspaper the day before from Santarém, Brazil, a relatively large town on the Amazon River to which he had made his way after successfully descending the Papagaio River. The telegram was only two sentences long, but it was notable both for its brief but startling description of a disaster in the rapids, and its omission of any news about Theodore Roosevelt. “We have lost everything in the rapids,” Fiala had written. “Telephone my wife of my safety.” At that time, no one outside of the expedition, including even Fiala’s wife, knew that Fiala had been bumped from the descent of the River of Doubt and relegated to a different journey. They assumed that the quartermaster was still with the expedition he had outfitted and that, because he had lost everything, so had Roosevelt.
The newspaper did its best to reassure its readers that Roosevelt was “probably safe.” The fact that Fiala had not mentioned Roosevelt, the article argued, was a good sign rather than a bad one. “Mr. Fiala’s silence on the subject indicates that the Colonel is safe,” the article read. “The understanding with Mr. Fiala was that any personal injury to the Colonel was to be cabled immediately and fully.” This argument, however, must have been cold comfort to Edith Roosevelt and her children. The absence of any word on Roosevelt’s condition was conspicuous and alarming. Why had Fiala not mentioned the former president’s safety when he telegrammed his own, and if he had been in a position to send a telegram to New York, why hadn’t Roosevelt?
Since her return from South America in December and Margaret’s death just a few weeks later, Edith had tried to find distractions that would keep her too busy to worry about her husband and son, but she was struggling. Earlier in the year, she had moved into a hotel in New York City so that she could be near her daughter, Ethel, during the final months of Ethel’s first pregnancy. After the baby was born on March 7, Edith had stayed in the city for another week to help her daughter. She had then traveled to Groton, the prestigious boarding school in northern Massachusetts, which all of the Roosevelt boys had attended, to witness her youngest son, Quentin’s confirmation. Ten days later, on March 25, she had finally returned to Sagamore Hill, her peaceful but conspicuously empty home on Oyster Bay.
Edith had been at Groton when Fiala’s telegram reached the New York Times. By then, she had not heard from her husband in nearly a month, and she had no idea where he was or even if he was still alive. Representatives of the American Museum of Natural History, presumably at the urging of Henry Fairfield Osborn, had sent a cable to the American Consul in Para, Brazil, the same night the article had appeared. “Can you obtain any information concerning the Roosevelt party?” the telegram read. “Advise by telegraph at earliest possibility. All expenses guaranteed.” The next day, Fiala, still in Santarém, had sent another, longer telegram to the New York Times. To everyone’s great relief, he explained that, “as part of the expedition plan,” he had left Roosevelt’s party at Utiarity to descend the Papagaio River. “The Roosevelt party is in good health, exploring the Duvida River,” he assured the newspaper.
It must have been clear to Edith, however, that Fiala had no more ability to know whether the Roosevelt party was in good health or bad than she did. The story of his own disaster on a much less dangerous river did not ease her mind, nor did the April release of the first articles in the series that Roosevelt was writing for Scribner’s. Filled with stories of man-eating fish and warlike Indians, these articles only served to feed Edith’s fears and multiply in her mind the dangers that her husband and son were facing.
While Edith had spent much of her life worrying about her husband, Theodore had roamed the world in search of adventure and achievement, never showing much concern about leaving his family. After his first wife’s death, he had left his infant daughter in his sister Bamie’s care and fled to the Dakota Territories. At the start of the Spanish-American War, he had been desperate to get to the front even though Edith, who was struggling to recover from surgery that had probably saved her life, had asked him not to enlist. When he got his wish and was able to make his way to the heart of the war, Roosevelt had sent a letter home to his wife and children bluntly stating that he probably had a two-in-three chance of survival and asking Edith to give his sword and revolver to Theodore Jr. and Kermit, who were only ten and eight years old, if he did not make it home alive. Edith had read the letter aloud to her two oldest boys, who buried their heads in her lap and sobbed.
After leaving the White House, Roosevelt had increasingly begun to bring his children, at least his sons, with him when he traveled. Kermit had been a restless eighteen-year-old college student when his father had invited him on his African safari, and he had savored every moment. The Amazon expedition, however, had come when Kermit—twenty-four years old, just beginning to make his own way in the world, and in love—wanted to be almost anywhere in the world but on a remote river in the rain forest. Kermit had succeeded in convincing his father that, as Roosevelt had written to Ethel, “his feelings would really have been hurt if I had not let him come on this trip,” but Roosevelt understood how difficult it was for his son to be apart from his fiancée so soon after their engagement and while plans for their wedding were taking shape without him. The fact that Kermit had put his wedding, and his life, on hold for this expedition had weighed heavily on Roosevelt from the beginning of their journey. “I wish he would have gone straight to Belle,” he had written Ethel.
* * *
ALTHOUGH SHE missed Kermit, Belle, for her part, had not been suffering during the months of the expedition as her fiancé and her mother-in-law had. As Kermit fought for his own and his father’s survival on the River of Doubt, Belle happily settled into her new role as the fiancée of a Roosevelt while continuing to live the life of a trans-Atlantic aristocrat. From her hotel in Madrid, she traveled to New York, made trips into neighboring France, and, while there, occasionally crossed the English Channel. In London, she had even been presented to the Court of Saint James.
In January, with a brief cable to their friends back in Richmond, Virginia, Belle’s parents had announced their daughter’s engagement to Theodore Roosevelt’s son, and the newspapers had quickly picked up the story. A few days after Fiala’s disturbing telegram had appeared in the New York Times, Belle and her mother had been spotted in Paris happily shopping for her trousseau. When a correspondent for the Washington Post inquired, Belle “smilingly admitted the nature of her errand.” Less than two weeks later, she was back in New York, attending the opera with her anxious future mother-in-law.
While Belle charmed Europe, Kermit missed her deeply, almost obsessively. Although she had shown a flirtatious interest in him throughout their long-distance courtship, Belle had never seemed to yearn for Kermit with the intensity that he had for her. When he complain
ed that he had not heard from her in far too long, she had insisted that she had written to him, although always in a rush. “I have sent you quite a lot of letters in the last few months—all very hasty, and untidy, and incoherent,” she had written teasingly. “I can’t imagine why you haven’t received them. However, if not writing will bring you to Spain I think I shall cease entirely!”
During the expedition, Kermit’s longing for Belle had only deepened. On the overland journey, he used to break away from the rest of the expedition to go hunting with his big white mule and his beloved dog, Trigueiro. He particularly loved the vast, empty deserts of the Brazilian Highlands, where he could wander alone, dreaming of Belle. “The desert has always been a very good friend of mine,” he had once tried to explain to her.
Belle could have had no doubt as to the intensity of Kermit’s feelings for her, for he had written to her until he had finally run out of stationery as he made his way across the highlands to the River of Doubt, and he had never failed to tell her how much he ached for her. “You must be getting very tired of hearing me say how lonely I am for you,” he had written in late January. “But it’s what I am all the whole time, and I can’t keep it out of my letters. Oh, Belle dearest dearest one it just seems too good to believe that we’ll ever be together.”
Reading Kermit’s letters, it is difficult to remember that he barely knew Belle. Not only were the two young expatriates separated by thousands of miles, but they were fundamentally different people. Kermit’s and Belle’s childhoods, and the expectations placed upon them by their parents, could not have been more different. They both came from wealthy, well-known families, but Belle had been raised in the rarefied world of high society, whereas Kermit, although the son of a president, had spent most of his childhood tearing through the woods of Oyster Bay. Even Roosevelt’s sister Bamie had commented that she “never knew of such a badly brought up family.” Instead of stressing things like table manners—he himself was a notoriously sloppy eater—Roosevelt had expected his sons to know how to shoot a gun, skin a rabbit, and chop down a tree. Even when his family lived in the White House, he had winked at his children’s mischievous, even mildly destructive, adventures. Kermit, who had been twelve years old when his father became president, had regularly brought his kangaroo rat with him in his pocket to breakfast, and his younger brother Archie had used the passenger elevator to transport his pony to the second floor. “The house became one general playground for [Roosevelt’s children] and their associates,” Irwin Hoover, a longtime White House employee, once wrote. “Nothing was too sacred to be used for their amusement, and no place too good for a playroom. The children seemed to be encouraged in these ideas by their elders, and it was a brave man indeed who would dare say no or suggest putting a stop to those escapades.”