The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

by Candice Millard

the priest was deeply offended that he had had to ride “beside the driver, a black man—which [he] never forgave.”

whatever his intellectual and theoretical opinions about racial integration, he clearly believed that the United States was not ready to take such a drastic step—and neither was he.

Father Zahm, on the other hand, had no problem voicing his complaints about the “ignorant and careless negro” who, as a favor to Rondon, had driven him to Utiarity. And he thereafter, Rondon wrote, referred to that truck ride as a “measure of how much he had suffered during the expedition.”

The priest made a point of baptizing both Brazilian settlers and Indians at several stops along the way on both their river journey up the Paraguay and Sepotuba Rivers and their mule ride through the highlands. While he bristled at the implication that Zahm was saving savage souls, Rondon never tried to stop him.

“Of our whole expedition every one works hard except good little Father Zahm,”

Given the discomforts of traveling, the priest explained, the best solution would be for him to ride in a divan chair on the shoulders of four strong Indians. This suggestion seemed straightforward and practical to Zahm. But Roosevelt and Rondon must have been rendered almost speechless by the image of Father Zahm riding across the highlands like Montezuma on the bent backs of his subjects.

Zahm appealed to Roosevelt, a decision that proved to be his undoing. “Indians are meant to carry priests,” he explained to his old friend, “and I have resorted to such transportation several times.”

Rondon had won the Indians over, by first wooing them with gifts and then luring them to his campsite by playing a phonograph at night,

Roosevelt had barked, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

Perhaps the most frequently cited factor in the species richness of the Amazon is the region’s latitude, which has for millions of years produced generally stable temperatures and moist environmental conditions that have favored the uninterrupted development of the jungle and its inhabitants.

As terrifying as the piranha were, many of those who lived in the settled areas of the Amazon would have preferred them to the tiny, almost transparent catfish known as the candiru. This sharp-spined fish is the only other animal besides the vampire bat that is known to survive solely on blood. Most species of candiru are only about an inch long, and they usually make their living by swimming into the gill chambers of larger fish.

the Cinta Larga’s consumption of human flesh was born not out of necessity but out of vengeance and an adherence to tribal traditions and ceremony. The tribe had very strict rules for cannibalism. They could eat another man only in celebration of a war victory, and that celebration had to take place in the early evening.

If the men were massacred, the former president would make the best ceremonial meal.

Having seen countless cases of malaria, Dr. Cajazeira did everything he could to protect Roosevelt, Rondon, and their men from the potentially deadly disease. He had only one effective drug in his medicine bag, however: quinine. Made from the bark of the flowering cinchona tree,

The Brazilian doctor made sure that each of the men under his charge received half a gram of quinine each day and a double dose every third or fourth day, but neither the drug’s potency nor the doctor’s devotion to his patients was enough. The men kept getting sick. To be truly effective as a prophylactic, quinine would have to be administered more frequently than the members of the expedition were taking it.

In extreme cases, quinine even caused deafness.

ROOSEVELT COULD understand the continent’s appeal to his naturalist. He himself had begun to develop a deep-seated admiration for South Americans, especially the expedition’s own camaradas. The former president, who had himself once believed that the white race was superior to others, had been deeply impressed by the camaradas’ endurance and good cheer on this dangerous and dispiriting journey.

An entire day had been lost to searching for Kermit’s pet. The camaradas must have wondered what kind of people go to such lengths to rescue a dog but intentionally abandon a man to certain death in the wilderness.