Theodore Roosevelt - Through the Brazilian Wilderness

First published 1914 by Charles Scribners Sons

Special Contents Copyright 1999 by Palladium Press

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2014

All rights to any and all materials in copyright owned by the publisher are strictly reserved by the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Victoria Bellavia

Cover photo courtesy of the public domain

Print ISBN: 978-1-62873-802-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-054-4

Printed in the United States of America

TO

H. E. LAURO MLLER

SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS FOR BRAZIL, AND TO HIS GOVERNMENTAL COLLEAGUES

AND TO

COLONEL RONDON

GALLANT OFFICER, HIGH-MINDED GENTLEMAN, AND INTREPID EXPLORER

AND TO HIS ASSISTANTS

CAPTAIN AMILCAR, LIEUTENANT LYRA, LIEUTENANT MELLO, LIEUTENANT LAURIAD, AND DOCTOR CAJAZEIRA, OF THE BRAZILIAN ARMY, AND EUSEBIO OLIVEIRA

OUR COMPANIONS IN SCIENTIFIC WORK AND IN THE EXPLORATION OF THE WILDERNESS

THIS BOOK

IS INSCRIBED, WITH ESTEEM, REGARD, AND AFFECTION BY THEIR FRIEND

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Map showing the entire South American journey of Colonel Roosevelt and members of the expedition

PREFACE

T HIS is an account of a zoogeographic reconnoissance through the Brazilian hinterland.

The official and proper title of the expedition is that given it by the Brazilian Government: Expedico Scientifica Roosevelt-Rondon. When I started from the United States, it was to make an expedition, primarily concerned with mammalogy and ornithology, for the American Museum of Natural History of New York. This was undertaken under the auspices of Messrs. Osborn and Chapman, acting on behalf of the Museum. In the body of this work I describe how the scope of the expedition was enlarged, and how it was given a geographic as well as a zoological character, in consequence of the kind proposal of the Brazilian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, General Lauro Mller. In its altered and enlarged form the expedition was rendered possible only by the generous assistance of the Brazilian Government. Throughout the body of the work will be found reference after reference to my colleagues and companions of the expedition, whose services to science I have endeavored to set forth, and for whom I shall always feel the most cordial friendship and regard.

T HEODORE R OOSEVELT.

S AGAMORE H ILL,

September 1, 1914.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon at Navat on the River of Doubt

Photogravure from a photograph by Cherrie.

We passed an Indian fishing village on the edge of the river, with huts, scaffoldings for drying the fish, hammocks, and rude tables.

Mixed flocks of scores of cormorants and darters covered certain trees, both at sunset and after sunrise.

We hung the buck in a tree.

Tapir, white-lipped peccary, and bush deer.

The prancha was towed at the end of a hawser and her crew poled.

The ground was sandy, covered with grass and with a sparse growth of stunted, twisted trees, never more than a few feet high.

There is a sheer drop of forty or fifty yards, and a breadth perhaps three times as great.

The kick-off: a player runs forward, throws himself flat on the ground, and butts the ball toward the opposite side. Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times, from head to head until finally it rises.

I doubt whether, excepting, of course, Niagara, there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this if both volume and beauty are considered.

A number carried pipes through which they blew a kind of deep stifled whistle in time to the dancing.

In mid-afternoon we came to the mouth of a big and swift affluent. It was undoubtedly the Bandeira.

There were many curls, and one or two regular falls.

At one point it was less than two yards across.

We spent March 3 and 4 and the morning of the 5th in portaging around the rapids.

MAPS

THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS

CHAPTER I

THE START

O NE day in 1908, when my presidential term was coming to a close, Father Zahm, a priest whom I knew, came in to call on me. Father Zahm and I had been cronies for some time, because we were both of us fond of Dante and of history and of scienceI had always commended to theologians his book, Evolution and Dogma. He was an Ohio boy, and his early schooling had been obtained in old-time American fashion in a little log school; where, by the way, one of the other boys was Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous war correspondent and friend of Skobeloff. Father Zahm told me that MacGahan even at that time added an utter fearlessness to chivalric tenderness for the weak, and was the defender of any small boy who was oppressed by a larger one. Later Father Zahm was at Notre Dame University, in Indiana, with Maurice Egan, whom, when I was President, I appointed minister to Denmark.

On the occasion in question Father Zahm had just returned from a trip across the Andes and down the Amazon, and came in to propose that after I left the presidency he and I should go up the Paraguay into the interior of South America. At the time I wished to go to Africa, and so the subject was dropped; but from time to time afterward we talked it over. Five years later, in the spring of 1913; I accepted invitations conveyed through the governments of Argentina and Brazil to address certain learned bodies in these countries. Then it occurred to me that, instead of making the conventional tourist trip purely by sea round South America, after I had finished my lectures I would come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon; and I decided to write Father Zahm and tell him my intentions. Before doing so, however, I desired to see the authorities of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, to find out whether they cared to have me take a couple of naturalists with me into Brazil and make a collecting trip for the museum.

Accordingly, I wrote to Frank Chapman, the curator of ornithology of the museum, and accepted his invitation to lunch at the museum one day early in June. At the lunch, in addition to various naturalists, to my astonishment I also found Father Zahm; and as soon as I saw him I told him I was now intending to make the South American trip. It appeared that he had made up his mind that he would take it himself, and had actually come on to see Mr. Chapman to find out if the latter could recommend a naturalist to go with him; and he at once said he would accompany me. Chapman was pleased when he found out that we intended to go up the Paraguay and across into the valley of the Amazon, because much of the ground over which we were to pass had not been covered by collectors. He saw Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of the museum, who wrote me that the museum would be pleased to send under me a couple of naturalists, whom, with my approval, Chapman would choose.