The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

by Candice Millard

“I know the American people,” he had said prophetically in 1910, upon returning to a hero’s welcome after an epic journey to Africa. “They have a way of erecting a triumphal arch, and after the Conquering Hero has passed beneath it he may expect to receive a shower of bricks on his back at any moment.” *

Throughout his adult life, Roosevelt would relish physical exertion, and he would use it not just as a way to keep his body fit and his mind sharp but as his most effective weapon against depression and despair.

“Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities, but the opportunities have to come,” he told an audience in Cambridge, England, in the spring of 1910. “If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not the great occasion, you don’t get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now.”

The world’s fifth-largest nation, Brazil encompasses 3.3 million square miles, making it more than two hundred and fifty thousand square miles larger than the contiguous United States.

less. “The ordinary traveller, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package,” Roosevelt sneered. “He does nothing; others do all the work, show all the forethought, take all the risk—and are entitled to all the credit. He and his valise are carried in practically the same fashion; and for each the achievement stands about on the same plane.”

“All for each, and each for all, is a good motto,” Roosevelt had once written, “but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others.”

Surely there was not a soldier in the Rondon Commission who could not recite by heart his colonel’s now famous command: “Die if you must, but never kill.” Rondon’s success in the Amazon had depended on this dictum. It was the only reason the Indians had ever dared to trust him.

When the Brazilian colonel invited him to join the descent of the River of Doubt, the cook had replied in horror, “Sir! I have done nothing to deserve such punishment!”

Orellana named these women the Amazons, after the famed women warriors of Greek mythology, who were said to have removed their right breast so that they could more effectively shoot a bow and arrow. It is from the Greek word a-mazos, or “no breast,” that the word “Amazon” is derived.

Roosevelt had never allowed himself to fear death, famously writing, “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.”