Colonel Roosevelt (73 page)

Hunting might have worked off some of Kermit’s frustration, but the grasslands were lacking in game.
He took what consolation he could find in reading Camões’s
Os Lusíadas
, that great Portuguese epic of other yearning wanderers, filled with a bittersweet sense of loss.

The rain thinned next day, enough for Roosevelt to spend most of the afternoon contemplating the Utiariti falls. He too was restless, but only Rondon—busying himself with preparations for Lauriodó’s trip down the Papagaio—knew what the reason was. Speaking as colonel to colonel, Roosevelt had confided that he was tormented by the possibility of the United States going to war with Mexico. President Wilson (whose health he had toasted on Christmas Eve, at dinner aboard the
Nioac)
had not, at last report, done anything to arrest the rapid deterioration in relations between the two countries. If hostilities broke out, Roosevelt wanted to be back in uniform and fighting for his flag, not lost to the world in a wilderness where the only armies were ropes of ants.

And where, after all, was the Rio da Dúvida? To the American team, it seemed to recede like a mirage westward, no matter how long each day’s trek. At their current rate of advance, slowed by storms, recalcitrant pack animals, and Rondon’s weighty marquees, they would not reach José Bonifácio for another three weeks.
Meanwhile the Papagaio confronted him, running north in the direction he really wanted to go. Flecked and whitish-green, it accelerated toward its straight line of collapse. Lauriodó and Fiala would be enjoying that exhilarating momentum very soon.

Father Zahm salvaged some dignity, and saved himself and Sigg many days on muleback, by wangling two
caminhão
seats back to Tapírapoan. But the Americans were not around to bid him Godspeed. They set out for José Bonifácio on 4 February, leaving Rondon to dispatch his Papagaio crew and catch up with them later. Roosevelt began a new chapter of his book:
From this point we were to enter a still wilder region, the land of the naked Nhambiquaras
.

There followed three days of semi-progress as deluge after deluge turned the trail into a slough that eventually sucked the oxen to a halt. Browsable forage was scarce, and nine mules starved to death. The sodden plateau gave forth a myriad of bloodthirsty
pium
flies. They were about as easy to swat away as fog, and their bites left black spots that refused to fade. In order to continue writing, Roosevelt had to drape a cheesecloth over his helmet and wield his pencil with gloved fingers. “I must make good to Scribner,” he kept saying.

Kermit, Cherrie, and Miller agreed with him that the expedition was bogging down in more ways than one. It must convert to mule transport only. Roosevelt hiked back to make this recommendation to Rondon, in tones that brooked no disagreement. The last Brazilian tents must be abandoned. Rain or no rain, principals would have to sleep forthwith under the lightest possible covering, and the
camaradas
left to devise their own shelters. There was no question of carrying the big Canadian canoes any farther. Rondon’s requisitioned dugouts would have to do when they got to the Dúvida.

The carts were emptied and pack animals loaded only with essential equipment. Travel resumed at an improved pace (the telegraph lines undulating ahead on their numbered poles, eleven spans to the kilometer, each rise and fall counterpointed, lower down, by giant spiderwebs). After a couple of dry and bracing days the sky turned black. “It’s raining mournfully, dismally, and ceaselessly; in a sort of hopeless insistent way,” Kermit wrote his mother, in a letter unlikely to be mailed anytime soon.

Groups of Nhambiquaras materialized often, nude and gleaming in the downpour. They had quills jabbed through their septums and upper lips, and carried bows taller than themselves. Even the arrows were five feet long. Rondon gave them goodwill gifts while posting a constant armed guard. He said
that they had killed some of his men in the early days of his pacification campaign. Generally they held aloof, but the detachment’s nightly halts drew them. They were fascinated by the sight of Roosevelt at work on his manuscript, crowding so close that he had to push them gently away.

HARD
RAIN. MUD SLIDING
IN SHEETS
. Ominous telegraph at next station. Lauriodó and Fiala overturned on a rough stretch of the Papagaio. Half their provisions swept away.
Fiala nearly drowned. Rio dos Formigas. Well named: local ants small, black, carnivorous. Big blue-and-yellow macaws. Rio do Calor. Two expedition dogs stolen by Indians. Rio Juiná.
Balsa
ferry. Sand. Skeletons. Blinding sun. Most lethal part of Nhambiquara nation. Rio Primavera. Rain. Kermit plagued with boils.
Pium
flies by day.
Polvora
(“powder”) flies by night, floating freely through mosquito nets. Baking heat. More rain. More rivers. Roosevelt reading Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall
. Rio Festa da Bandeira. Rio Iké. Wooded country now: sparse, scrubby
chapadão
. Mules starving. Vampire bats. Bullocks streaming with blood. Rio Nicolao Bureno. Indian hunting party. Pineapple wine. Campfire. Naked dancers under the moon. Wailing pipes. Former President of United States clapping to beat of stomping feet. Fragrant jungle. No game. Rain falling
torrencialmente
. Landscape opening out. Government research farm. Melons, milk, fresh eggs.
Mais canja. Mais
nudity. Nhambiquara girls around here even pluck pubic hair. For extra allure, one maiden wears a small, live, scalp-hugging monkey. Weather clearing. Telegraph line ends in a clutch of thatched cabins. José Bonifácio station at last.

IT WAS 23 FEBRUARY 1914
. The Americans had been away from home for more than three and a half months. They had taken thirty-three days just to cross the
sertão
from Tapírapoan, and their most arduous challenge still loomed. Impatient to proceed, they spent only one night in José Bonifácio before shifting to the advance camp that Amílcar had established closer to the Dúvida. It took three more days for Roosevelt and Rondon to organize the Gi-Paraná and Dúvida expeditions.

Both teams were fitted out with the barest portable minimum of provisions, ammunition, and equipment necessary to sustain them for seven weeks.
Books were classified as essential cargo. Roosevelt packed the last two volumes of his Gibbon, as well as works by Sophocles and Epictetus, the
Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius, and Thomas More’s
Utopia
. Kermit chose Camões and some other Portuguese works; Rondon, Thomas à Kempis’s
Imitation of Christ;
Lyra, miniature editions of Goethe and Schiller in German.

The three Brazilian officers were persuaded to share one tent, and the three Americans a balloon-silk fly that kept out vertical rain, but little else. Roosevelt thought it wise to stow a one-cot medical tent, “for any one who might fall sick.” He finished the seventh chapter of his book for dispatch back to Cáceres, added an appendix and illustrations list, with sample photographs enclosed, and even
sketched out a title page:

“C
ROWDING SO CLOSE THAT HE HAD TO PUSH THEM GENTLY AWAY
.”
TR writing, surrounded by Nhambiquaras
.
(photo credit i15.4)

On the morning of 27 February, Roosevelt, Kermit, Cherrie, Rondon, Lyra, and Dr. Cajazeira had a bountiful Brazilian breakfast. Then
their Gi-Paraná colleagues escorted them to the spot where Rondon’s telegraph engineers had thrown a rough wooden bridge across the Dúvida.
Seven shovel-nosed dugouts awaited them, already loaded with stores. The vessels lay so low in the water that they needed sidefloats to hold them stable. Most of them looked strong and sound, but two were old and leaky, dragging heavily on their ropes. Someone had caulked them as best he could. Sixteen strong
canoeiros
stood ready with paddles.

The inscrutable river coursed northward into the jungle, sixty-five feet wide, swift, deep, black, and silent.
Goodbyes were exchanged. Roosevelt, Cherrie, and Dr. Cajazeira took their places in the biggest canoe. It displaced one and a half tons and was manned by a bowman, steersman, and midship paddler. Rondon’s and Lyra’s smaller craft rode ahead, with Kermit’s, the smallest of all, in vanguard position. Both were two-paddlers. The rest of the team distributed themselves among the cargo canoes, which were lashed together in pairs, or pontoons. For a moment, all twenty-two men, white, black, and bronze, were concentrated in a tight flotilla.

Leo Miller was aware of the drama of the moment. As an experienced field naturalist, he had seen many departures, but none to compare with this, involving one of the most valuable men in the world.

“T
HE VESSELS LAY SO LOW IN THE WATER THAT THEY NEEDED SIDE-FLOATS
.”
Roosevelt prepares to descend the Dúvida, 27 February 1913
.
(photo credit i15.5)

Then with a parting “Good luck!” their dugouts swung into the current and were whisked away. For several minutes we stood on the fragile structure that bridged the unexplored river and stared at the dark forest that shut our erstwhile leader and his Brazilian companions from view; and then, filled with misgivings as to whether or not we should ever see them again, we turned our thoughts to the task before us.