Colonel Roosevelt (71 page)

Father Zahm was sorry not to continue cruising along the less arduous itinerary he had originally planned. It had involved a minimum of marching, and a powered descent of the Tapajoz in the steel motorboats he had commissioned in Pennsylvania, with gay pennants conjoining the initials
R
and
Z
. Roosevelt had abandoned these expensive purchases after hearing that they were too heavy to be hauled across the
sertão
. Fiala’s sleek Canadian canoes were light enough, but they lacked the seating and storage space for a long river trip. Rondon, accordingly, had requisitioned some extra Indian-style dugouts to be held ready near José Bonifácio.

Roosevelt spent his last evening in civilization shopping and strolling around Cáceres. It was as Cubist a composition as anything he had seen at the Armory Show, with the added charm of being unpremeditated. The white-and-blue houses with their red tile roofs and latticed windows (through which an occasional pretty face could be seen, dark or pale), had probably not changed much since colonial days. They harked back architecturally even further, through Christian and Moorish Portugal to the thick-walled quadrangles of North Africa. On doorsteps and benches under the trees of the plaza, women spread skirts of red, blue, and green. Stringed instruments tinkled in the gathering darkness.

A GASOLINE LAUNCH
and two
pranchas
, or roofed cargo boats, were supposed to be available next morning to ferry the expedition up the Sepotuba. Then a message came that they were waiting at Porto Campo, a hundred kilometers north. So the
Nioac
had to be crammed to the gunwales with equipment amassed in Cáceres by Rondon’s local deputy, Lieutenant João Lyra. The size of the tents the Brazilians seemed to think necessary for survival on the uplands gave Roosevelt pause. With extra
camaradas
being recruited by the hour, he saw logistical problems looming. He had learned in Africa that the bigger a safari, the slower it moved, and the faster it depleted its resources.

As things were, the
Nioac
sailed so late that it did not reach Porto Campo until just before dawn on 7 January. This was as far up the narrowing stream as its flat bottom would take it. A portion of its cargo was transferred to the
pranchas
for advance shipment upriver. It was lashed to the side of the launch, and it labored off late in the day, straining against the current. Meanwhile, the
Expediçào Cíentífica Roosevelt-Rondon
established itself in a cattle pasture. Bilateral proprieties were observed.
The two commanders camped side by side, behind a pair of flagpoles flying their national colors. Kermit roomed with his father, and the tents of the other principals extended in a line left and right. About a dozen
camaradas
and kitchen staff bivouacked along a second row. Every sunrise and sunset a bugle sounded and the two flags rose and fell, while all personnel stood at attention.

Despite this show of equivalence, the professional disparity between the Brazilian and American outfits was obvious.
Rondon’s “commission,” as he called it, consisted of eleven superbly trained men. Lieutenant Lyra was an astronomer and surveyor; Captain Amílcar de Magalhães, a logistics expert; and Dr. José Cajazeira, an army physician. There was also a field detail comprising a geologist, a zoologist, an entomologist, a taxidermist, and a botanist—not to mention two general-duty officers and a cinematographer, equipped with miles of film.

Roosevelt’s team of seven was, with the exception of Cherrie and Miller, amateurish. Fiala had spent four years in the Arctic, but the skills he acquired there were unlikely to be of much use in the Amazonian jungle. Kermit had some, but not much, experience of the Brazilian wilderness, and was fluent in Portuguese. Harper was out of his element and looking for an excuse to go home. Zahm contributed nothing, although
his Swiss servant, Jacob Sigg, had a capable pair of hands.

The absence of the launch gave Roosevelt
an opportunity to hunt for the tapir he had promised his naturalists. He soon secured a big specimen, drilling
it through the brain as it swam. On 10 January, going out after peccaries, he outscored Rondon three to one. “I have gotten specimens of all the mammals I was most eager to have,” he told Zahm, “and am now perfectly satisfied if I do not get a shot at another animal.”

After dinner that night, he and the priest had another of their moonlight colloquies. Promenading like the Walrus and the Carpenter under silver-edged storm clouds, they talked, in Roosevelt’s words, “of many things, from Dante, and our own plans for the future, to the deeds and the wanderings of the old-time Spanish
conquistadores
in their search for the gilded King, and of the Portuguese adventurers who then divided with them the mastery of the oceans and of the unknown continents beyond.”

Map of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition, 1914.
(photo credit i15.2)

IT TOOK ANOTHER
six days for the entire expedition to be shuttled to Tapírapoan, the main telegraph station in Mato Grosso. From here, Rondon’s still-raw wires ran north to Utiariti, then east to José Bonifácio, delineating the route the two colonels would now have to pursue. But first they had to organize, discipline, and mount a caravan much more cumbersome than Roosevelt’s African safari.

At first sight on 16 January, Tapírapoan looked like a stock fairground, jostling with beef cattle, milch cows, oxen, and mules. Barefooted cowboys in fringed leather aprons were attempting to tame some of the pack animals, who gave no sign of having ever carried anything. The noise of bleats and brays and snapping lassos, intermixed with curses in several languages, was discordant. Flags of all the American republics flapped around the plaza. Dozens of wagons were standing by ready to load. But they remained empty while various factions of the expedition squabbled over stowage space.

It did not look as if there could be any general departure for days. Fiala and Sigg pitched in to help. Harper seized on the astonishing quantity of specimens already bagged by Cherrie and Miller—totaling about a thousand birds and 250 mammals—to volunteer to take them to New York for delivery to the American Museum. He left two days later in the launch, laden with skulls, skins, and alcohol jars. This lightened at least some of the baggage Fiala was responsible for. But a vast amount of extra equipment still crammed Tapírapoan’s storerooms. The Brazilians insisted every item was necessary. They had even shipped a giant land turtle, either as potential soup or as a spare, if unreliable, bench.

Roosevelt had begun to notice a Latin need for “splendor” among Rondon and his officers, and seating seemed to be an important part of it. He was embarrassed by the gift of a silver-mounted saddle and bridle that would have looked pretentious on his best horse at Sagamore Hill, but was especially so on a mule. Courtesy required that it be accepted with appropriate
obrigado
s. But when he saw that the enormously heavy tents Lauro Müller had provided were going to displace vital provisions, he insisted half of them be left behind. He still thought the expedition was burdened with a ridiculous amount of canvas.

Rondon and Lyra, in turn, looked askance at the American food store. Both of them were small, wiry men, trained to march for months on minimal sustenance. They saw the value of a hundred tins of emergency rations that Fiala had brought from New York. Such luxuries, however, as pancake mix, malted milk, chocolate bars, two varieties of marmalade, and a spice chest full of paprika, cinnamon, chutney, and other exotic seasonings did not seem necessary for survival in the wilderness. Rondon felt it would be undiplomatic
to protest, and asked his colleagues to pack and eat less, so the
norte-americanos
could “enjoy the abundance to which they were accustomed.”

This was too much for the Brazilian field detail, four of whom threatened to resign. They believed themselves to be better qualified to explore and report on their own country than a gang of foreigners. Rondon was sympathetic, but had to remember the constraints placed on him by Minister Müller. He reasoned that Roosevelt was an amateur naturalist only by default. Cherrie had been on twenty-five South American expeditions, and young Miller was a born collector, alive even to the near-inaudible squeaking of bats in a rotten log. The unhappy scientists were dismissed.

On 19 January, Captain Amílcar led the bulk of hoofed and rolling stock out of Tapírapoan. His biggest wagon, hauled by six oxen, carried the two Canadian power canoes and a sloshing supply of kerosene.
Sixty-four other
bois cargueiros
and about a hundred pack mules followed, many of them resentful of their burdens. A much smaller rear guard consisting of Roosevelt, Rondon, and the other exhibition principals left town two days later. They were accompanied by their servants, five hunting dogs, and enough carts and mules to keep them supplied all the way to José Bonifácio. Together, the two detachments comprised 159 men, moving 360 sacks and cases.

The plan was to reunite the expedition at, or near, the headwaters of the Dúvida, then immediately divide it again. Only a select few members were to go down the unknown river—about as many as could fit into one Canadian canoe and half a dozen support dugouts. The rest would redivide, and survey two other north-flowing streams, already partially explored. One of these was the Gi-Paraná, rising near the Dúvida. Rondon wanted Amílcar to plot its long curve into the Rio Madeira. Miller unselfishly volunteered to go on that trip, saying that Cherrie, as the senior naturalist, deserved to stay with Roosevelt. The other unmapped river, assigned to Lieutenant Alcides Lauriodó and Anthony Fiala, was the Rio Papagaio, a tributary of the Tapajoz.
If the Dúvida did indeed flow into the Amazon, a general rendezvous might be possible somewhere along the great river’s right bank. Otherwise they would all have to swap stories in Manáos.

It went without saying that the two colonels would have to stick together, as co-commanders, with Kermit and Lyra assisting them. The fate of Father Zahm (serenely unconcerned with anything but his own comfort) was left, for the time being, to Providence.