SO SICK was the former president that, when Raymundo José Marques paddled over to the expedition, Roosevelt could not lift himself out of his canoe to meet him. His condition, however, did not diminish the old seringueiro’s awe when he learned that the ragged and stricken man he saw lying in the roughest sort of dugout canoe had once been the president of the United States. Astonished, Marques said to Rondon, “But is he really a President?” Rondon explained that Roosevelt was not president any longer but had once been. “Ah,” Marques replied. “He who has once been a king has always the right of
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