From the time they launched their canoes into the headwaters of the Dúvida, the group repeatedly encountered rapids and waterfalls that forced them back onto the banks. Each set of cataracts necessitated a painstaking portage of cargo along trails that had to be hacked out of the jungle by hand (usually the hands of the two dozen Brazilian rivermen, but often supplemented by a Roosevelt arm or two). On the majority of the rapids the boatmen would then run the empty boats down the chutes; if the craft capsized, they could be righted with no loss of foodstuffs or other supplies. The most daunting of the rapids required a portage of the canoes as well, which was an even more exhausting operation. The frequent portages slowed the pace of the expedition annoyingly at first, and then alarmingly, with the alarm arising from the fact that they carried a limited supply of food and medicine. In the dry season they might have lived off the land, but this was the rainy season, and the rising waters had driven most game animals far back from the river.
Fish were equally scarce, having been liberated from their normal channels to swim across hundreds of square miles of flooded valleys and plains. The one semi-reliable source of sustenance was the palm tops that grew in the trees along the river; but although these filled the belly, they didn’t provide much strength. After the first few weeks, the alarm over dwindling supplies transmuted into grave fear that the party might run out of food before it ran out of river. To make matters worse, they lost a couple of the canoes to the rapids; these could be replaced only by the primitive application of ax to tree. Roosevelt marveled at the facility of the Brazilian woods-men, who put even Bill Sewall to shame with their blades; but each day devoted to hewing canoes was a day lost to travel downstream.
The strains of the portaging and canoe-making, exacerbated by the increasingly necessary rationing of food, laid the explorers open to disease, which in that climate required scant opening.
The expedition’s doctor dosed everyone with quinine; this worked, but not perfectly. Roosevelt managed to avoid serious illness until one day when two of the canoes escaped the boatmen and were dashed down a cataract to a whirlpool at the bottom. There they were pinned by the current against some rocks. Roosevelt leaped into the water to rescue the boats, and with help and great difficulty accomplished his pur-pose. In the process, however, he badly bruised his leg-the same one that had been injured in the [streetcar crash](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/Ar3bclCFlE) in 1902 and become infected afterward. The wound quickly gave rise to fever, which prostrated him for forty-eight hours and came close to carrying him off. Kermit subsequently related the critical period:
“There was one particularly black night…. We had been working through a series of rapids that seemed interminable. There would be a long carry, a mile or so clear going, and then more rapids. The fever was high and father was out of his head. Doctor Cajazeira, who was one of the three Brazilians with us, divided with me the watch during the night. The scene is vivid before me. The black rushing river with the great trees towering high above along the bank; the sodden earth under foot; for a few moments the stars would be shining, and then the sky would cloud over and the rain would fall in torrents, shutting out the sky and trees and river. Father first began with poetry; over and over again he repeated “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,” then he started talking at random, but gradually he centred down to the question of supplies, which was, of course, occupying every one’s mind. Part of the time he knew that I was there, and he would then ask me if I thought Cherrie had had enough to eat to keep going. Then he would forget my presence and keep saying to himself: “I can’t work now, so I don’t need much food, but he and Cherrie have worked all day with the canoes, they must have part of mine.”
Source: T.R., The Last Romantic, pages 740-742
maxicz1234 on
Holy shit it’s JoJo!
Efficient-Orchid-594 on
Roosevelt doesn’t feels like a normal human at this point
TheGreatJaceyGee on
The River of Doubt by Candace Millard does a brilliant job of recounting that entire expedition. We almost certainly would’ve had Teddy for a few more years if not for it.
GCN_09 on
This is a personal account of mine when I was serving the Brazilian Air Force and I went to the Brazilian Army’s CIGS (Centro de Instrução de Guerra na Selva / Jungle Warfare Instruction Center) to do the jungle warfare course of theirs.
I’m from Rio de Janeiro, so before this, my only reference for “jungle” was the Mata Atlântica. And to be honest, it’s but a pale shadow of what you find in the Amazon Rainforest. I had zero experience with anything that extreme.
We were operating out of the CIGS, outside Manaus. By that stage, we’d already been in the field for several days. No real rest, constant humidity, everything soaked.
Our patrol had been inserted near a small tributary feeding into the Rio Negro, tributary of the great Amazon River. Terrain was brutal, thick vegetation, uneven ground, visibility sometimes down to just a couple of meters.
We were moving in file formation, proper spacing, each man covering his sector. No talking. Just hand signals. Radios only if absolutely necessary. And that silence, it messes with you.
The jungle is never really quiet, but it’s unpredictable. You hear insects, birds, branches moving, and every now and then something different cuts through it, and your brain instantly goes on alert.
Our patrol leader signaled a halt. We were setting up a temporary observation point. I was assigned a position slightly offset from the main element, covering a narrow approach through thicker vegetation. Not fully isolated, but enough that I couldn’t see the others, just knew roughly where they were.
I got into position, low, scanning. Then I felt it. Something on my leg. Normal, I thought. Happens all the time out there.
I looked down, it was a large ant. I brushed it off. Then another. Then several. And in a matter of seconds, it escalated fast. I had stopped almost right on top of a saúva anthill.
The ground itself looked like it was moving. They were everywhere. Climbing up my boots, inside my pants, under my sleeves, reaching my neck. And they don’t just crawl, they bite.
At CIGS, you’re trained to maintain discipline at all times. No sudden movement, no noise, no breaking position unless ordered. But there’s a point where training meets instinct.
I pulled back fast, trying to keep noise to a minimum, but already brushing them off aggressively. You don’t think, you just react.
By the time I cleared the spot, I had dozens of bites. Burning, sharp, constant. Your focus is gone, completely disrupted. And that’s when things got tense.
While I was still dealing with the ants, I heard movement in the brush ahead of me, heavier than anything I’d heard so far. Not insects. Not wind. Something pushing through vegetation. I froze immediately.
Your brain starts working fast. It is friendly? another element? civilian? animal? There was no visual confirmation. Just sound. Branches cracking. Slow, deliberate movement.
I held position, trying to control my breathing, listening. My heart was already racing from the bites, now it was pounding hard enough that I felt like it could give me away.
For a few seconds, felt like several minutes, I genuinely didn’t know what I was about to be facing. Then I caught movement through the foliage.
It was an animal, looked like a porco-do-mato. They’re common in that region, but not something you want to startle, especially not alone. It kept moving. The thing didn’t notice me. Eventually, the sound faded. But that moment stuck with me.
Because coming from Rio, and then being dropped into the Amazon… it’s a completely different world. The density, the humidity, the constant pressure, it wears you down fast.
It’s not one big dramatic threat. It’s a series of small things, fatigue, insects, terrain, isolation, stacking up until you slip.
And out there, if you slip once, that’s all it takes.
That’s part of what Rondon and Roosevelt expedition must have felt.
5 Comments
From the time they launched their canoes into the headwaters of the Dúvida, the group repeatedly encountered rapids and waterfalls that forced them back onto the banks. Each set of cataracts necessitated a painstaking portage of cargo along trails that had to be hacked out of the jungle by hand (usually the hands of the two dozen Brazilian rivermen, but often supplemented by a Roosevelt arm or two). On the majority of the rapids the boatmen would then run the empty boats down the chutes; if the craft capsized, they could be righted with no loss of foodstuffs or other supplies. The most daunting of the rapids required a portage of the canoes as well, which was an even more exhausting operation. The frequent portages slowed the pace of the expedition annoyingly at first, and then alarmingly, with the alarm arising from the fact that they carried a limited supply of food and medicine. In the dry season they might have lived off the land, but this was the rainy season, and the rising waters had driven most game animals far back from the river.
Fish were equally scarce, having been liberated from their normal channels to swim across hundreds of square miles of flooded valleys and plains. The one semi-reliable source of sustenance was the palm tops that grew in the trees along the river; but although these filled the belly, they didn’t provide much strength. After the first few weeks, the alarm over dwindling supplies transmuted into grave fear that the party might run out of food before it ran out of river. To make matters worse, they lost a couple of the canoes to the rapids; these could be replaced only by the primitive application of ax to tree. Roosevelt marveled at the facility of the Brazilian woods-men, who put even Bill Sewall to shame with their blades; but each day devoted to hewing canoes was a day lost to travel downstream.
The strains of the portaging and canoe-making, exacerbated by the increasingly necessary rationing of food, laid the explorers open to disease, which in that climate required scant opening.
The expedition’s doctor dosed everyone with quinine; this worked, but not perfectly. Roosevelt managed to avoid serious illness until one day when two of the canoes escaped the boatmen and were dashed down a cataract to a whirlpool at the bottom. There they were pinned by the current against some rocks. Roosevelt leaped into the water to rescue the boats, and with help and great difficulty accomplished his pur-pose. In the process, however, he badly bruised his leg-the same one that had been injured in the [streetcar crash](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/Ar3bclCFlE) in 1902 and become infected afterward. The wound quickly gave rise to fever, which prostrated him for forty-eight hours and came close to carrying him off. Kermit subsequently related the critical period:
“There was one particularly black night…. We had been working through a series of rapids that seemed interminable. There would be a long carry, a mile or so clear going, and then more rapids. The fever was high and father was out of his head. Doctor Cajazeira, who was one of the three Brazilians with us, divided with me the watch during the night. The scene is vivid before me. The black rushing river with the great trees towering high above along the bank; the sodden earth under foot; for a few moments the stars would be shining, and then the sky would cloud over and the rain would fall in torrents, shutting out the sky and trees and river. Father first began with poetry; over and over again he repeated “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,” then he started talking at random, but gradually he centred down to the question of supplies, which was, of course, occupying every one’s mind. Part of the time he knew that I was there, and he would then ask me if I thought Cherrie had had enough to eat to keep going. Then he would forget my presence and keep saying to himself: “I can’t work now, so I don’t need much food, but he and Cherrie have worked all day with the canoes, they must have part of mine.”
Source: T.R., The Last Romantic, pages 740-742
Holy shit it’s JoJo!
Roosevelt doesn’t feels like a normal human at this point
The River of Doubt by Candace Millard does a brilliant job of recounting that entire expedition. We almost certainly would’ve had Teddy for a few more years if not for it.
This is a personal account of mine when I was serving the Brazilian Air Force and I went to the Brazilian Army’s CIGS (Centro de Instrução de Guerra na Selva / Jungle Warfare Instruction Center) to do the jungle warfare course of theirs.
I’m from Rio de Janeiro, so before this, my only reference for “jungle” was the Mata Atlântica. And to be honest, it’s but a pale shadow of what you find in the Amazon Rainforest. I had zero experience with anything that extreme.
We were operating out of the CIGS, outside Manaus. By that stage, we’d already been in the field for several days. No real rest, constant humidity, everything soaked.
Our patrol had been inserted near a small tributary feeding into the Rio Negro, tributary of the great Amazon River. Terrain was brutal, thick vegetation, uneven ground, visibility sometimes down to just a couple of meters.
We were moving in file formation, proper spacing, each man covering his sector. No talking. Just hand signals. Radios only if absolutely necessary. And that silence, it messes with you.
The jungle is never really quiet, but it’s unpredictable. You hear insects, birds, branches moving, and every now and then something different cuts through it, and your brain instantly goes on alert.
Our patrol leader signaled a halt. We were setting up a temporary observation point. I was assigned a position slightly offset from the main element, covering a narrow approach through thicker vegetation. Not fully isolated, but enough that I couldn’t see the others, just knew roughly where they were.
I got into position, low, scanning. Then I felt it. Something on my leg. Normal, I thought. Happens all the time out there.
I looked down, it was a large ant. I brushed it off. Then another. Then several. And in a matter of seconds, it escalated fast. I had stopped almost right on top of a saúva anthill.
The ground itself looked like it was moving. They were everywhere. Climbing up my boots, inside my pants, under my sleeves, reaching my neck. And they don’t just crawl, they bite.
At CIGS, you’re trained to maintain discipline at all times. No sudden movement, no noise, no breaking position unless ordered. But there’s a point where training meets instinct.
I pulled back fast, trying to keep noise to a minimum, but already brushing them off aggressively. You don’t think, you just react.
By the time I cleared the spot, I had dozens of bites. Burning, sharp, constant. Your focus is gone, completely disrupted. And that’s when things got tense.
While I was still dealing with the ants, I heard movement in the brush ahead of me, heavier than anything I’d heard so far. Not insects. Not wind. Something pushing through vegetation. I froze immediately.
Your brain starts working fast. It is friendly? another element? civilian? animal? There was no visual confirmation. Just sound. Branches cracking. Slow, deliberate movement.
I held position, trying to control my breathing, listening. My heart was already racing from the bites, now it was pounding hard enough that I felt like it could give me away.
For a few seconds, felt like several minutes, I genuinely didn’t know what I was about to be facing. Then I caught movement through the foliage.
It was an animal, looked like a porco-do-mato. They’re common in that region, but not something you want to startle, especially not alone. It kept moving. The thing didn’t notice me. Eventually, the sound faded. But that moment stuck with me.
Because coming from Rio, and then being dropped into the Amazon… it’s a completely different world. The density, the humidity, the constant pressure, it wears you down fast.
It’s not one big dramatic threat. It’s a series of small things, fatigue, insects, terrain, isolation, stacking up until you slip.
And out there, if you slip once, that’s all it takes.
That’s part of what Rondon and Roosevelt expedition must have felt.