Colonel Roosevelt (75 page)

Every morning he took a swim, careless of piranhas. He was usually the first man in the water.
When he floated on his back, he reminded Rondon of “a great, fat fish which had come to the surface.”

Immersion in no way affected Roosevelt’s cheerful volubility. “
I never saw a man who talked so much,” Rondon marveled. “I used to love to watch him think … for he always gesticulated. He would be alone, not saying a word, yet his hands would be moving, and he would be waving his arms and nodding his head with the greatest determination, as though arguing with somebody else.”

The best that could be said for portages was that each of them represented a further, if slight,
descent into the Amazon basin. And the Dúvida’s steady trend a little east of the sixtieth meridian (every sigmoid curve to the left counterbalanced by another to the right) was heartening: straight toward Manáos, exactly the destination all the principals dreamed of. This was of small consolation to the
canoeiros
, who had to paddle ten, sometimes twenty kilometers for every five of actual advance. So far, that amounted to less than half a degree of latitude, and a drop of not quite fifteen meters from José Bonifácio.

By midday on 14 March the yellow dugout was ready, and the expedition managed a four-hour run to its tenth camp. On the following morning, calamity struck. Kermit was leading the way as usual in his small, rather wobbly canoe, ballasted with a week’s supply of tinned rations and paddled by two strong black men, João and Simplício. His hunting dog, Trig, rode along. Rondon and Lyra trailed a few lengths behind, preparing for the first survey of the day. Roosevelt came next in the new boat. The only triangulation that interested him was that of the leaves of rubber trees onshore, which he noted grew in fans of three.

A bend in the river disclosed yet another stretch of roaring water, with an island dividing it. The two lead canoes swerved and came to rest on the left bank.
Rondon ordered Kermit to wait while he and Lyra walked down to see how far the rapids extended. After a while Kermit lost patience and told his men he wanted to look for a channel on the right side of the island. João, the helmsman, warned him that could be risky. The flow of water above the break looked gentle, but if they were caught in a rogue whirlpool, they might not have time to steer out of it. Kermit insisted on crossing over regardless. They reached the island with no difficulty. On their return, however, they were swept away, just as João had feared. Simplício, paddling frantically, aligned the canoe with the current before it hit the first fall.

The three men managed to stay aboard while it crashed all the way down, filling with water. Then another whirlpool engulfed them, and they were thrown out, along with Trig. The canoe spun into midstream and capsized. João swam ashore.
Kermit and Simplício clambered onto the slippery keel,
but seconds later, a further set of rapids dragged them under, with such force that Kermit’s helmet was beaten over his face. When he at last found himself in deep water, after six hundred yards of spins and somersaults, he was at the point of drowning. A branch overhanging from the left bank saved him, although he was almost too weak to pull himself ashore. To his amazement, Trig scuttled up after him. Simplício was nowhere to be seen.

All of this had happened below the sightline of the other principals. Rondon was first to encounter a saturated Kermit coming back upriver. “
Well, you have had a splendid bath, eh?”

He no longer made light of the situation when the two
canoeiros
failed to appear. Kermit said both men had swum to safety. Rondon was not reassured, and went with Lyra to the foot of the second rapid. They found João recovering, and unable to say where Simplício might be. Anguished, they searched for the rest of the day, but in vain.

It was clear to the Brazilians that Kermit could, or should, be prosecuted for manslaughter. Roosevelt’s main emotion seemed to be relief at not having to communicate the loss of his son to Edith and Belle Willard. Rondon saw no point in a potentially ruinous recrimination. The expedition was too deep in the wilderness to go back, yet not so far advanced as to expect to encounter any outpost of civilization for several more weeks. There was nothing to be done but adjust to what had happened.

After a night of grief and foreboding, Rondon erected a cross by the falls inscribed,

AQUI PERECEU O INFELIZ SIMPLÍCIO

To him, it said “Here perished the unfortunate Simplício.” Roosevelt thought it translated as “In these rapids died poor Simplício.” Taking what comfort they could in the nuances of their languages, the two colonels set to work on another portage.

BY
NOW THE LOST
canoe was either miles down the Dúvida, or more likely sunk somewhere out of sight. Kermit went in search of it and found just one floating food tin and a paddle. He swam out to reclaim them, as the expedition was critically short of necessities. It had already consumed a third of its provisions, and game was as scarce as ever (although, tantalizingly, a tapir was seen surfing the rapids, moving too fast to shoot).

The portage began in blinding rain. While it was going on, Rondon reconnoitered the right bank with his own dog, Lobo. A strange howling, not quite animal, came from the jungle. Lobo ran to investigate, and was no sooner out of sight than Rondon heard him yelping with pain. Then the grotesque duet
was cut off. Rondon guessed that the howling had come from Indians trying to lure prey, probably a
coatá
monkey. He fired a cautionary shot in the air, and went forward to find Lobo dead, perforated by two long arrows.

Rondon examined one protruding point. It was of a type new to him, indicating that the local Indians were not Nhambiquaras. They had probably never seen white men before. He left beads to signal peaceful intent, and returned to the portage even sadder than he had been earlier in the day.

Later that “dark and gloomy” morning, as Roosevelt described it, misfortune struck again. The lower rapids were deemed runnable by unloaded canoes, if they were steadied from the right bank with ropes. But the big new dugout proved so heavy that it broke away and sank in the turbulence, almost drowning Luiz and taking its tackle with it.

Roosevelt and Rondon assessed the state of the expedition. In eighteen days, they had registered one death and two near drownings. They had lost four canoes, dropped only sixty-four meters below the rise of the Dúvida, and had at least five times as much river still to explore before they could hope to see the Amazon. Lobo’s invisible killers must be counted as extremely dangerous. That alone precluded the carving of another canoe, which would take three or four days and use up more food. Yet the two pontoons remaining could not carry the stores that were left.

All hands not needed on the river were going to have to make way for cargo and hack along the bank. The sole exceptions were Roosevelt and Dr. Cajazeira, who were considered too old and unfit to trek far. (Rondon, at forty-eight, remained as tough and stringy as a liana vine.)
Every dispensable possession had to be abandoned. The hope was that safer country lay ahead, where the expedition could regroup, cut as many new canoes as needed, and hunt for meat.

On 17 March it began its bifurcated journey downstream, leaving behind for the mystification of the Indians a detritus including tents, clothes and shoes, a box of topographical instruments, and the waterside cross.

WHAT WITH SURVEY
stops and the inclination of the
camaradas
to march barefoot, or sandaled, through the fly-infested jungle (resulting in three invalids, who had to be taken aboard the canoes), the expedition proceeded more slowly than ever. Another set of rapids necessitated a four-hundred-meter portage. Roosevelt and Cajazeira had no sooner reembarked than they were drawn, like Kermit earlier, into a second fall. Their lead pontoon very nearly capsized as it crashed around some boulders hiding a serious stretch of broken water. The second pontoon came down more carefully, but now fear was added to Roosevelt’s sense of mounting frustration. “
Our position is really a very serious one,” Cherrie wrote in his diary.

Rondon decided to issue a morale-boosting order the following morning. It was his habit to address the expedition at the start of every day, stern and rigid in military khaki, trying to impose discipline on the polyglot, often quarreling assembly. Despite his small size, he was a formidable figure, austere to the point of monkishness, never ill, never tired, taciturn and unsmiling. The men had little affection for him, yet it was he, not the American commander (genial, tolerant, regularly handing out candy) whom they respected most.

When Roosevelt and Kermit attended the general assembly, they found the Brazilians standing at attention by the river. In the background, a small but strong stream flowed in from the west. Rondon cited it as hydrological evidence that the Dúvida was not an affluent of the Gi-Paraná. No matter where the larger stream led, it had come to dominate its own basin, and therefore could no longer be called a “River of Doubt.”

On behalf of Minister Lauro Müller, Rondon announced, he was renaming the Dúvida “Rio Roosevelt.” Its tributary here would henceforth be known as “Rio Kermit.” He then called for cheers for the two honorees, and a general cheer for the United States.

Roosevelt was taken aback by this extravagant double gesture. The renaming struck him as premature. He liked the romantic concept of a river shrouded in mystery. But he could not help being touched, and relieved that Kermit had been forgiven. He dutifully led an American cheer for Brazil, followed by another for Rondon, Lyra, and Cajazeira, and one more for the
camaradas
. Lyra asked why nobody had yet cheered Cherrie. So the naturalist got the loudest roar of all, “and the meeting,” Roosevelt wrote later, “broke up in high good humor.”

There was little to cheer about in the days that followed. Kermit fell sick with fever. Indians were again heard in the forest, and smelled in small dark huts that showed signs of hasty flight. Rondon was so uneasy about them that he could not sleep past two in the morning. Two more dugouts were carved out of light, red
araputanga
wood, but they hardly sped progress as the number of portages proliferated. Nor, during spells afloat, did Rondon and Lyra moderate their incessant demands upon Kermit to paddle ahead with his sighting rod.

One morning, Roosevelt lost patience and drew Rondon aside.

“
First of all, Kermit was extraordinarily lucky to have escaped with his life from that accident which killed Simplício. I’m not saying that with these Indians around, he’s in more danger now than other members of the expedition, just because he sits in the lead canoe. But it’s not right to continue mapping the Dúvida the way we have been. We must limit ourselves to a quick survey. Leaders of a big enterprise like this should just focus on establishing the principal points.”

“Personally, I can’t accept that,” Rondon replied.

They were speaking French, the language of diplomacy. Even as he objected, Rondon recalled that he was in the presence of a distinguished guest of the Brazilian government, and backed down.

“However, I stand ready to escort you on through this wilderness as you wish, reducing the length of the expedition to a minimum.”

“Important men,” Roosevelt said, “do not bother themselves with details.…”

Rondon deflected the pomposity. “I am not an important man, nor do I consider details bothersome. Some sort of survey of the river is essential. As far as I am concerned, the expedition will be entirely worthless without it.”

After discussion, they agreed on a less laborious method of procedure. But Roosevelt made one thing clear. “
Senhor
Kermit no longer rides up front.”