The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

by Candice Millard

One of the Amazon’s earliest explorers, the first nonnative to descend the Amazon River, Francisco de Orellana, suffered more than most. Orellana, who had lost one of his eyes during the conquest of the Incas in Peru, plunged into the Amazon rain forest in 1541, in the hope of discovering the legendary kingdom of El Dorado, whose ruler was said to coat his body in gold dust and then wash it off in a sacred lake. Orellana’s expedition, however, soon changed from a search for gold to a battle for survival. According to a friar who traveled with the expedition and chronicled its journey, before the men even reached the Amazon River, they were reduced to “eating nothing but leather, belts and soles of shoes, cooked with certain herbs.” Once on the river, they fought nearly every Indian tribe they encountered, eventually losing roughly a dozen men to starvation and three others to poisonous arrows. Incredibly, Orellana survived to repeat the ordeal just three years later, this time losing 172 men to starvation and Indian attacks before himself succumbing to disease and, some said, heartbreak at the disastrous collapse of his ambitions.