Although this [initial crisis](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/kw00RidT2c) passed, the former president was a sick man for the rest of the journey. Against Kermit’s urging, he did indeed shorten his own rations so that the boatmen could have more. This marginally strengthened them but substantially weakened him. Kermit had to watch his father lest he weaken himself beyond recovery. At one point Roosevelt-according to his later recounting- considered telling Kermit and the rest to leave him behind and save themselves. But he realized that Kermit would insist on transporting his body out of the jungle, and he reckoned that a dead man would be even more of a burden than a sick man. By this time the entire group was in bad shape. One man had been drowned in the rapids; another was murdered by one of his fellows, who apparently went insane from the unrelenting heat, humidity, hunger, and fatigue. After shooting his companion, the murderer fled into the bush, where he most likely fell victim to the arrows of hostile indigenes; in any event, he was never heard from again.
Kermit earlier had fallen ill with fever; now he came close to drowning—a fate that would have been rendered all the more tragic by the circumstance that he had recently become engaged to be married, with the wedding set for shortly after he and his father were expected to complete their journey. The party had put into the Dúvida on February 27, 1914. They were still struggling downstream on April 15. Of late the fishing had improved: For Easter Sunday dinner they feasted on piranha, a species that had the saving grace of being almost as good eating was it was at eating. Roosevelt was still feeling the effects of his injury and the ensuing infection, despite a drainage tube that the expedition’s doctor had inserted into the wound. Then, finally, in the late morning of April 15 they came upon a small hut, evidently the recent lodging of a rubber tapper. An hour farther on they encountered some tappers themselves, who initially fled at the approach of the expeditionary party, mistaking them for tribal raiders—the only people they had ever seen coming down the river.
At this point Roosevelt and the others knew that the expedition as a whole wouldn’t fail. They wouldn’t all starve in the jungle even though there might be more difficulties ahead. There certainly were for Roosevelt, whose fever returned with a vengeance. As he explained to Scribner’s readers: “It is not ideal for a sick man to spend the hottest hours of the day stretched on the boxes in the bottom of a small open dugout, under the well-nigh intolerable heat of the torrid sun of the mid-tropics, varied by blinding, drenching downpours of rain.” But Kermit and the doctor looked after him, and he and the rest of the party made it safely back to civilization. By the time they happily forsook their canoes for a local milk-run steamboat, they had covered nearly five hundred river miles in sixty days and mapped a river larger than all but a handful of streams in the United States. The Brazilian government commemorated the expedition by renaming the Rio Dúvida the Rio Roosevelt.
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Although this [initial crisis](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/kw00RidT2c) passed, the former president was a sick man for the rest of the journey. Against Kermit’s urging, he did indeed shorten his own rations so that the boatmen could have more. This marginally strengthened them but substantially weakened him. Kermit had to watch his father lest he weaken himself beyond recovery. At one point Roosevelt-according to his later recounting- considered telling Kermit and the rest to leave him behind and save themselves. But he realized that Kermit would insist on transporting his body out of the jungle, and he reckoned that a dead man would be even more of a burden than a sick man. By this time the entire group was in bad shape. One man had been drowned in the rapids; another was murdered by one of his fellows, who apparently went insane from the unrelenting heat, humidity, hunger, and fatigue. After shooting his companion, the murderer fled into the bush, where he most likely fell victim to the arrows of hostile indigenes; in any event, he was never heard from again.
Kermit earlier had fallen ill with fever; now he came close to drowning—a fate that would have been rendered all the more tragic by the circumstance that he had recently become engaged to be married, with the wedding set for shortly after he and his father were expected to complete their journey. The party had put into the Dúvida on February 27, 1914. They were still struggling downstream on April 15. Of late the fishing had improved: For Easter Sunday dinner they feasted on piranha, a species that had the saving grace of being almost as good eating was it was at eating. Roosevelt was still feeling the effects of his injury and the ensuing infection, despite a drainage tube that the expedition’s doctor had inserted into the wound. Then, finally, in the late morning of April 15 they came upon a small hut, evidently the recent lodging of a rubber tapper. An hour farther on they encountered some tappers themselves, who initially fled at the approach of the expeditionary party, mistaking them for tribal raiders—the only people they had ever seen coming down the river.
At this point Roosevelt and the others knew that the expedition as a whole wouldn’t fail. They wouldn’t all starve in the jungle even though there might be more difficulties ahead. There certainly were for Roosevelt, whose fever returned with a vengeance. As he explained to Scribner’s readers: “It is not ideal for a sick man to spend the hottest hours of the day stretched on the boxes in the bottom of a small open dugout, under the well-nigh intolerable heat of the torrid sun of the mid-tropics, varied by blinding, drenching downpours of rain.” But Kermit and the doctor looked after him, and he and the rest of the party made it safely back to civilization. By the time they happily forsook their canoes for a local milk-run steamboat, they had covered nearly five hundred river miles in sixty days and mapped a river larger than all but a handful of streams in the United States. The Brazilian government commemorated the expedition by renaming the Rio Dúvida the Rio Roosevelt.
Source: T.R., The Last Romantic, pages 742-743
https://g1.globo.com/sp/campinas-regiao/terra-da-gente/noticia/2025/04/04/expedicao-roosevelt-tg-refaz-caminho-de-desbravadores-do-inicio-do-seculo-xx.ghtml
Bro, imagine just chilling with your rubber and suddenly presidential cameo
The *nearly dead 26th President of the United States
Read The River of Doubt, so good
Is it fair to say that Roosevelt is the coolest President of all time? Obviously that doesn’t mean that he was perfect or anything.
Piarana: almost as good eating as it is at eating.
🤣
I love competition!