The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
“For several minutes” Miller, In the Wilds.
CHAPTER 11: Pole and Paddle, Axe and Machete
From his position Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th, of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916).
“As we drifted” Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
“fragrant scents” Ibid.
“Very little animal life” George Cherrie, Diary, Feb. 27, 1914, AMNH.
While Roosevelt and Cherrie TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Pulling the dugout Rondon, Lectures.
“the muscles stood out” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“strapping set” Ibid.
“like pirates” Ibid.
Roosevelt’s own boatmen Ibid.
Alexander von Humboldt John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers (New York, 2000).
Kermit and his paddlers George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930).
“literally toward” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness; Rondon, Lectures.
“close supervision” TR to John Scott Keltie, Feb. 25, 1915, in Letters, vol. 8.
After only two hours TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
After making their way Ibid.
CHAPTER 12: The Living Jungle
Soaring more than John Terbough, Diversity and the Tropical Rain Forest (New York, 1992).
Unable to sink Edward S. Ayensu, The Life and Mysteries of the Jungle (New York, 1980).
The most obvious Adrian Forsyth and Kenneth Miyata, Tropical Nature (New York, 1984).
While most plants Ibid.
A principal risk Ibid. This book offers a fascinating and more detailed discussion of the relationship of vines, epiphytes, and trees.
Another adaptation Edgar Aubert De La Rüe, The Tropics (New York, 1957); Ayensu, Life and Mysteries.
Some have developed Forsyth and Miyata, Tropical Nature; Francis E. Putz, The Biology of Vines (Cambridge, Mass., 1991).
Its shading action Ayensu, Life and Mysteries.
If Roosevelt had been John Kricher, A Neotropical Companion (Princeton, 1997).
Every morning George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930).
“The ragged bugler” Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
The colonel still woke Donald F. O’Reilly, “Rondon: Biography of a Brazilian Army Commander,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1969.
He was, Rondon wrote “Col. Roosevelt as His Guide Remembers Him,” New York Times, Jan. 6, 1929.
Although they had risen TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Hour after hour passed Cherrie, Dark Trails.
He drank in TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“There would be” Kermit Roosevelt, The Long Trail (New York, 1921).
“Our clothes” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
That afternoon Kermit Roosevelt, Diary, Feb. 28, 1914, KBRP; TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“Often, even in” Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons (London, 1864).
This blindness left them TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“Frequently at night” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
“Let there be” Ibid.
CHAPTER 13: On the Ink-Black River
The river had been George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930).
Floating in the shallow New York Times, Jan. 6, 1929.
During telegraph line expeditions Todd A. Diacon, Stringing Together a Nation (Durham, N.C., 2004).
One morning during Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
While crossing a river John Hemming, Die If You Must (London, 2003).
“the fish that eats men” Ibid.
“ferocious little monsters” Ibid.
“The [piranha’s] rabid” Ibid.
“Suddenly I heard” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
“As I fell” Ibid.
This sharp-spined fish Stephen Spotte, Candiru: Life and Legend of the Bloodsucking Catfishes (Berkeley, Calif., 2002).
In 1897, George Boulenger Ibid.
Instances of candirus parasitizing Ibid.
On the morning of March 1 George Cherrie, Diary, March 1, 1914, AMNH.
As they moved TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Around another bend Ibid.
The village Kermit Roosevelt, Diary, March 1, 1914, KBRP.
In fact, Rondon speculated Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916).
Moments later, a monkey Cherrie, Dark Trails.
In 1931, Clodomiro Picado Harry W. Greene, Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature (Berkeley, Calif., 1997).
No antivenom existed The problem was so serious that one of Brazil’s scientific research centers was devoted to venom research. A few months earlier, soon after his arrival in Brazil, Roosevelt had been given a tour of this center, the Instituto Serumthérapico. The institute, which was situated just outside of São Paulo, had been founded twelve years earlier in response to an outbreak of bubonic plague, but snakebites had become such an overwhelming national problem—at that time, roughly twenty thousand Brazilians were bitten by venomous snakes each year, and five thousand died from their wounds—that much of its scientists’ time was now devoted to producing snakebite serum. The institute had successfully developed an antivenom for the bite of the fer-de-lance, a particularly powerful and dangerous species of pit viper, but despite its best efforts, it had yet to find a formula that would fend off death after a coral-snake bite. (TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.)
While the camaradas noisily TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“Despite his two hundred” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
When Roosevelt’s foot TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
CHAPTER 14: Twitching Through the Woods
“The number of twists” George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930).
When they set off George Cherrie, Diary, March 2, 1914, AMNH.
Scientists have divided Milky rivers are also frequently referred to as “white-water” rivers, a potentially confusing terminology that has nothing to do with the more colloquial use of that adjective to refer to churning, rapids-filled rivers. To avoid confusion, the term “whitewater” will be used in this book only in the latter, layman’s meaning.
Alfred Russel Wallace Michael Goulding, Ronaldo Barthem, and Efrem Ferreira, The Smithsonian Atlas of the Amazon (Washington, D.C., 2003).
“Instead of finding” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
Stretching before them Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
“with enormous velocity” Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916).
“the last stronghold” Ibid.
The water channel TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“It seemed extraordinary” Ibid.
“No canoe could” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
Even Kermit Kermit Roosevelt, Diary, March 2, 1914, KBRP.
The camaradas had already TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“bumping and sliding” Ibid., 254.
The tent-making bat Louise H. Emmons, Neotropical Rainforest Mammals (Chicago, 1997); Ronald M. Nowak, Walker’s Bats of the World (Baltimore, 1994).
The lumbering armadillo Emmons, Neotropical Rainforest Mammals.
Aspredinidae and Anabantidae Author’s interview with Marcelo de Carvalho, ichthyologist with the American Museum of Natural History and the University of São Paulo.
The three-toed sloth Emmons, Neotropical Rainforest Mammals.
The mere fact Ibid.
So perfectly has the sloth Ibid.
The caterpillar of certain sphinx moths Adrian Forsyth and Kenneth Miyata, Tropical Nature (New York, 1984).
After killing an ant William Agosta, Thieves, Deceivers and
Killers: Tales of Chemistry in Nature (Princeton, 2001).
Certain orchids Forsyth and Miyata, Tropical Nature.
Some of the most Erica Lynn Hardy, Online article, “Phyllobates Terribilis,” University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Animal Diversity Web; Chris Harman, “Frogs with a Toxic Taste,” Americas, Jan. 2000.
Although the reasons Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York, 1999).
“Few people have heard” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
“utterly trivial” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
So important and ubiquitous Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
giant six-inch Mark W. Moffett, The High Frontier (Cambridge, 1993).
biting with pincerlike John Kricher, A Neotropical Companion (Princeton, 1997).
The Brazilian wasp William Agosta, Bombadier Beetles and Fever Trees (Reading, Penn., 1996).
Ants of the neotropical genus Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, The Ants (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
Acting in concert Ibid.
Many tropical trees Forsyth and Miyata, Tropical Nature. For more on the symbiotic relationship between plants and ants, see Hölldobler and Wilson, The Ants.
As a result of such Kricher, Neotropical Companion.
On the morning of March 4 Cherrie, Dark Trails.
The mass swarming Kricher, Neotropical Companion.
The termites ate Cherrie, Dark Trails.
One night near Utiarity TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“Our hands” Ibid.
Each night when Ibid.
“I had never before” Ibid.
In their hunt for food Forsyth and Miyata, Tropical Nature
Some of the hawk moths Ibid.
The leaf-cutting ants Hölldobler and Wilson, The Ants.
Pink-faced capuchin Moffett, High Frontier; Emmons, Neotropical Rainforest Mammals.
Millions of bats Emmons, Neotropical Rainforest Mammals.
Snakes, spiders Wilson, Diversity of Life.
The rubber tree Kricher, Neotropical Companion.
The army ants Hölldobler and Wilson, The Ants; Wilson, Diversity of Life.
CHAPTER 15: The Wild Water
“and therefore more picturesque” Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916).
“We held endless discussions” Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
It could swing Rondon, Lectures.
“We did not know” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Around three o’clock Ibid.
What they saw Rondon, Lectures.
During the first portage TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Kermit had gone Kermit Roosevelt, Diary, March 7, 1914, KBRP.
“very good eating” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Lyra and Kermit divided Ibid.
One group George Cherrie, Diary, March 10, 1914, AMNH. 188. Desperate not to Ibid.
In the process TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“dressed substantially like” Ibid.
After twelve days Rondon, Lectures.
Slowly, inch by inch TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
At some point Rondon, Lectures; TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“Rolling over the bowlders” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
CHAPTER 16: Danger Afloat, Danger Ashore
“That means time” George Cherrie, Diary, March 11, 1914, AMNH.
Each tin box Anthony Fiala, Appendix B, in Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
“There were sufficient” George Cherrie, “The Birds of Matto Grosso, Brazil,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 60 (1930).
Not only had they Kermit Roosevelt, Diary, March 2, 1914, KBRP.
“it had some special” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“No one of us” Ibid.
As the rain fell Ibid.
It was a species Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916); TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
The men measured George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930).
They worked in shifts Cherrie, “Birds of Matto Grosso”.
The toll on the camaradas Ibid.
Even after the sun set TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“Looking at the way” Ibid.
“utterly worthless” Ibid.
“When we were able” Rondon, Lectures.
“In the Expedition” Ibid.
“inborn, lazy shirk” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
But Rondon was determined Rondon, Lectures.
Twenty years earlier Todd A. Diacon, Stringing Together a Nation (Durham, N.C., 2004).
Such punishment Donald F. O’Reilly, “Rondon: Biography of a Brazilian Republican Army Commander,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1969.
Although Rondon deeply Rondon was put on trial in Rio de Janeiro for the caning incident, but the case was ultimately filed (ibid.).
Six years earlier Ibid.
Kermit shot TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness. KR, Diary, March 13, 1914, KBRP.
“I spent the day” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“He was always alone” Rondon, Lectures.
“Quite unknown” Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York, 1913).
“It was a continual” Kermit Roosevelt, The Long Trail (New York, 1921).
On March 13 Cherrie, Diary, March 12, 1914, AMNH.
It took all twenty-two men Cherrie, Dark Trails.
“Of the two hazards” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“one set of big ripples” Ibid.
It began to fill Cherrie, Dark Trails.
“We had already met” Ibid.
CHAPTER 17: Death in the Rapids
When they climbed aboard Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
Like the first set Ibid.
Pushing past the island Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916)
Rondon quickly ordered Ibid.
Sitting in his cramped TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
“rather one of them” Quoted in Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York, 2002).
Most of these tests Theodore Roosevelt Jr., All in the Family (New York, 1929).
“a state of intense” Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York, 1913).
On one occasion Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill (New York, 1954).
“Dive, Alice!” Ibid.
“Kermit is a great pleasure” TR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, June 21, 1909, in Letters, vol. 7.
He had disappeared TR to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, Oct. 17, 1909, in Letters, vol. 7.
“Since I have been” TR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, July 27, 1909, in Letters, vol. 7.
“great comfort and help” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
The three men successfully rode Rondon, Lectures.
“exceptionally good men” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness; see also Rondon, Lectures.
“the least seaworthy of all” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Realizing that their only Ibid.
Fighting to save Rondon, Lectures.
From their canoe above George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930).
CHAPTER 18: Attack
When his dugout was swept Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York, 1914).
“beaten out on the bowlders” Ibid.
As he approached Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916).
Furious, and worried Ibid.
After he was driven TR, Thro
ugh the Brazilian Wilderness.
As valuable as George Cherrie, Diary, March 15, 1914, AMNH.
No sooner had Rondon, Lectures.
“one hope left” Ibid.
After a frantic search George Cherrie, Dark Trails (New York, 1930); Kermit Roosevelt, Diary, March 15, 1914, KBRP.
“Unfortunately the moment” Rondon, Lectures.
“very narrow escape” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness
Although Kermit had joined Ibid.
“Simplicio was drowned” KR, Diary, March 15, 1914, KBRP.
“The loss of a human life” Cherrie, Dark Trails.
“We may reach New York” George Cherrie to Stella Cherrie, Feb. 26, 1914, AMNH.
“Certainly no one” Rondon, Lectures.
“lets his soldiers die” Quoted in Todd A. Diacon, “Are the Good Guys Always Bad?” Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Alabama, 1998.
“Death and dangers” Esther de Viveiros, Rondon: Conta Sua Vida (Rio de Janeiro, 1958).
“perpetuated the name” Rondon, Lectures.
“In these rapids” TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
The day before Cherrie, Dark Trails.
At 7:00 a.m. TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Having satisfied himself Rondon, Lectures.
She had been raised Donald F. O’Reilly, “Rondon: Biography of a Brazilian Republican Army Commander,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1969.
She finally taught herself Author’s interview with Rondon’s grandchildren, March 25, 2003.
“This day brings us” O’Reilly, “Rondon”.
At times he had Todd A. Diacon, Stringing Together a Nation (Durham, N.C., 2004).
Now, contentedly walking Rondon, Lectures.
The forest was Ibid.
Certain that Lobo Ibid.
Suddenly Lobo reappeared Ibid. In retrospect, Rondon concluded that the whinny he had heard had been not a spider monkey but an Indian imitating its call. He also realized that, by running ahead of him, Lobo had saved his life. (TR, Address to National Geographic Society, May 26, 1914, NGS.)
He found the rest Cherrie, Dark Trails.
While Rondon was gone TR, Through the Brazilian Wilderness.
Rondon was deeply concerned Rondon, Lectures.