FOREIGN PARTS

R AYMOND S EITZ

A PRESIDENTIAL TREK

T HE R IVEROF D OUBT : I NTOTHE U NKNOWN A MAZON

★By Candice Millard (Little, Brown 430pp £18.99)

O N 27 F EBRUARY , 1914, former president Theodore Roosevelt and a party of twenty-one set off in canoes from the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida – the River of Doubt – in the jungles of the great Amazon Basin. The waters of the river twist and tumble northwards from the Brazilian Highlands along a course which eventually pours into the western branch of the Aripuanã, and then on to the mighty Amazon itself. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Amazon Basin was the largest swath of terra incognitaon the planet. Africa by comparison was an open book. The richness and diversity of Amazonian flora and fauna had barely been revealed, and Indian tribes in the dark interior of the jungles were Stone Age cultures scratching out a harsh life in virtual isolation. The ‘doubt’ about the Rio da Duvida was where it flowed and whether it existed at all. No one had ever travelled its course from one end to the other. It’s not the sort of thing that former American presidents usually do. But Roosevelt was an exception to almost every rule. The naturalist John Burroughs once commented that when Roosevelt came into a room, ‘it was as if a strong wind had blown the door open’. His forceful, ‘bully’ personality, his energetic and determined character, his boundless curiosity and his restless energy regularly sought adventure as a testing outlet. And it was the pattern of his life that he coped with bouts of disappointment or sorrow by stretching his physical endurance to the limit. In 1914, Roosevelt was indeed disappointed. A year and a half earlier he had lost his bid for the presidency, having left it only four years earlier. In the process, he had bolted from the Republican Party, formed his own Progressive Party, and skewed the election by splitting the conservative vote. The result was to open the door of the White House to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. Many Republicans saw Roosevelt as a wrecker, and in 1914 the indomitable Rough Rider was a wounded man. Another adventure was in order. When Roosevelt and his entourage of friends, associ

Holiday planning

ates and scientists arrived in Brazil, he had only the vaguest notion of where an expedition might take him, and he had paid scant attention to the preparations (when dockworkers had finished unloading the supplies, one of them commented, ‘Nothing lacking but the piano’). The American Museum of Natural History had endorsed his journey and funded some of it, but the exact destination remained undecided. It was another extraordinary character who excited Roosevelt’s imagination by proposing an exploration of the River of Doubt. This was the diminutive Brazilian colonel, Cândido Rondon. Rondon had traversed more of the Amazon Basin than anyone had even dreamed. A stern disciplinarian and resolute leader who personally exceeded all he asked of his men, Rondon was in charge of building Brazil’s ‘Strategic Telegraph’ across the vast country (when completed, this colossal project was immediately overtaken by wireless communication). In the process he had filled in many cartographical blanks and come to know the jungle intimately. He was also Brazil’s first great advocate for the protection of his country’s Indian population. His men operated under his strict dictum: ‘Die if you must, but never kill.’ Concerned for the ex-president’s welfare, the Brazilian authorities assigned Rondon to accompany Roosevelt, and together the two men became joint leaders of the expedition. As soon as their trek started across the Brazilian Highlands, it became obvious that the procession was much too unwieldy. Mules and oxen died in their dozens, and the party gradually sloughed off provisions, equipment – including, to their later regret, the sturdy lightweight Canadian canoes – and people. By the time they reached the Duvida’s headwaters, the Roosevelt-Rondon subordinates had been cut back to Roosevelt’s son Kermit, Rondon’s adjutant Lt Lyra, the American ornithologist George Cherrie, a Brazilian doctor named Cajazeira and sixteen camaradas– leather-tough porters and paddlers. From the beginning the journey downriver proved arduous, hazardous and downright hair-raising. The seven native dugouts weighed more than a ton each and barely rose above the water line. Worse, the river threw up one set of roiling rapids after another, and some form of portage through the fetid jungle was necessary almost every day. Three boats were lost against the rocks and provisions quickly ran low. One camaradadrowned in the tumultuous waters. In the entire month of March, the party covered a mere sixty-eight miles. Other threats abounded: venomous snakes, poisonous

LITERARY REVIEW Dec 2005 / Jan 2006

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