The River of Doubt

Theodore Roosevelt had carried the lethal dose of morphine with him for years. He had taken it to the American West, to the African savanna and, finally, down the River of Doubt–a twisting tributary deep in the Amazon rain forest. The glass vial was small enough to tuck into a leather satchel or slip into his luggage, nearly invisible beside his books, his socks and his eight extra pairs of eyeglasses. Easily overlooked, it was perhaps the most private possession of one of the world’s most public men.

In December 1913, Roosevelt, then 55, and a small group of men embarked on a journey to explore and map Brazil’s River of Doubt. Almost from the start, the expedition went disastrously wrong. Just three months later, as Roosevelt lay on a rusting cot inside his expedition’s last remaining tent listening to the roar of the river, he clutched the vial that he had carried for so long. Shivering violently, his body wracked with fever, he concluded that the time had come to take his own life.

In the span of a few days, Roosevelt, once America’s youngest President and among its most vigorous, had become a feverish, at times delirious, invalid. He was suffering from malaria and had developed a potentially deadly bacterial infection after slicing his leg on a boulder. In the sweltering rain forest, the cut had quickly become infected, causing his leg to redden and swell and sending his temperature soaring to 105°F. At the same time, the expedition had reached a set of seemingly impassable rapids. Roosevelt’s Brazilian co-commander, Colonel Cândido Rondon, had announced that they would have to abandon their canoes and strike out into the jungle–every man for himself. “To all of us,” one of them wrote, “his report was practically a sentence of death.” For Roosevelt, who could barely sit up, much less fight his way through the rain forest, the plan was simply an impossibility.

He made his decision that night. Before the first rays of sunlight seeped through the thin tent walls, he summoned his remaining strength and called out to George Cherrie, a naturalist who, along with Roosevelt’s son Kermit, had been keeping a vigil over the feverish ex-President. Turning to his friend and his son, Roosevelt said, “Boys, I realize that some of us are not going to finish this journey. Cherrie, I want you and Kermit to go on. You can get out. I will stop here.”

Roosevelt had set sail for South America in the fall of 1913, not quite a year after his failed attempt to regain the presidency. As a third-party candidate vying for a third term, he had split the Republican vote, putting a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, in the White House for the first time in 16 years. After the election, Roosevelt found himself a pariah, ridiculed by his enemies and hated by many of his old Republican friends and backers. Hunkered down at Sagamore Hill, his secluded home in Oyster Bay, N.Y., he fought to stave off depression and despair.

Escape came in the form of an invitation to speak in South America. It was a chance to leave New York; to see Kermit, who was working in Brazil; and to take a quiet collecting trip into the Amazon. When Roosevelt reached Brazil, the country’s Foreign Minister abruptly offered him a rare opportunity: a chance to explore an unmapped river in the heart of the rain forest. So mysterious was this tributary that even the man who had discovered its headwaters five years earlier had no idea where it went and so had named it Rio da Dúvida–the River of Doubt.

For Roosevelt, the opportunity was irresistible. Not only did it appeal to him as a naturalist and would-be explorer, but it was also precisely the difficult adventure he was longing for. Throughout his life, he had battled depression and loss by seeking out dangerous physical challenges and pushing himself to the limit of his endurance. This expedition was a chance to prove his strength and reclaim his sense of purpose. It was a chance for redemption.

Just to reach the banks of the River of Doubt, however, Roosevelt and his men had to endure a grueling monthlong journey across the Brazilian Highlands. They lost dozens of pack mules and oxen to starvation and exhaustion and were forced to abandon crates filled with provisions. At the river’s edge, Roosevelt had taken stock of what was left and realized that he and his men would have to cut their provisions in half before they launched a single boat.

Once on the water, the men were quickly confronted by their worst fears. The seven battered and leaking dugout canoes that they had bought from local tribesmen sat just inches above the water and proved lethally difficult to maneuver. Below them swam 15-ft.-long black caimans and razor-toothed piranhas. Each time the men were forced to portage their massive dugouts or hack a campsite out of the thick vegetation on the riverbanks, they were attacked by stinging, biting, disease-carrying insects. Nearly all the men, including Kermit and Roosevelt, fell prey to the suffocating fevers and bone-grinding chills of malaria. The jungle was also home to poisonous snakes. One night a coral snake slithered from under a fallen tree and sank its fangs into Roosevelt’s foot. But for his thick leather boots, he would have died an agonizing death.

Also hidden in the rain forest was a group of indigenous tribesmen later known as the Cinta Larga, or Wide Belts. Sophisticated hunters and fierce warriors, they shadowed Roosevelt and his men yet never allowed themselves to be seen. They attacked Colonel Rondon when he was hunting alone and killed his dog. Rondon, who had spent nearly half his life exploring the Amazon and making contact with its most isolated tribes, responded to the attack by leaving the Indians gifts, signs of friendship and respect. As commander of his own regiment, he had ordered his troops when dealing with indigenous tribes, “Die if you must, but never kill.” His kindness toward the Cinta Larga had probably averted a massacre.

Even with Rondon’s help, the expedition had already lost one man, and the others were at constant risk. Kermit’s paddler had drowned in one of the many deadly rapids that studded the river. Kermit, 24, had nearly died in the same accident, and Roosevelt lived in constant fear that he would lose not his own life on this expedition but his son’s. Time and again, the men also lost canoes and precious provisions to the rapids. Game and fish eluded them, and they were reduced to searching, often in vain, for Brazil nuts, hearts of palm and the sweet, white sap of milk trees. One of the porters, roundly despised for his laziness and violent temper, had begun to steal food. Out of desperation and rage, he eventually murdered another man on the expedition.

By the time the expedition reached what appeared to be an impassable set of rapids–a series of six waterfalls, the last of which was more than 30 ft. high–Roosevelt was gravely ill, and his men were beaten down by exhaustion, hunger and fear. The only man among them who believed that they could get their dugouts through the rapids was Kermit. Having spent much of the past year building bridges, he was extremely skilled with ropes, a talent that had already saved the expedition countless times as it encountered series after series of rapids.

With Cherrie at his side, Kermit went to Rondon and argued that he could use ropes to lower the dugouts over the falls. Rondon considered it a hopeless effort, but because the other men supported Kermit, he agreed to let him try. That was all Kermit needed to stay his father’s hand. Roosevelt understood that the best way to ensure Kermit’s survival was not to spare him the burden of carrying his father but to give him the chance to do just that. To save his son, Roosevelt realized, he would have to let his son save him. In the end, Roosevelt, Kermit and all but three men would survive to place the river–renamed the Rio Roosevelt–on the map of South America. Roosevelt never fully recovered his health, but he refused any regret. “I am always willing to pay the piper,” he once wrote, “when I have had a good dance.”

•Millard’s account of this journey, The River of Doubt, was published by Doubleday last year