The River of Doubt (52 page)

In 1897, George Boulenger
Ibid.

Instances of candirus parasitizing
Ibid.

On the morning of March 1
George Cherrie,
Diary
, March 1, 1914, AMNH.

As they moved
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

Around another bend
Ibid.

The village
Kermit Roosevelt,
Diary
, March 1, 1914, KBRP.

In fact, Rondon speculated
Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon,
Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915
(Rio de Janeiro, 1916).

Moments later, a monkey
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

In 1931, Clodomiro Picado
Harry W. Greene,
Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature
(Berkeley, Calif., 1997).

No antivenom existed
The problem was so serious that one of Brazil’s scientific research centers was devoted to venom research. A few months earlier, soon after his arrival in Brazil, Roosevelt had been given a tour of this center, the Instituto Serumthérapico. The institute, which was situated just outside of São Paulo, had been founded twelve years earlier in response to an outbreak of bubonic plague, but snakebites had become such an overwhelming national problem—at that time, roughly twenty thousand Brazilians were bitten by venomous snakes each year, and five thousand died from their wounds—that much of its scientists’ time was now devoted to producing snakebite serum. The institute had successfully developed an antivenom for the bite of the fer-de-lance, a particularly powerful and dangerous species of pit viper, but despite its best efforts, it had yet to find a formula that would fend off death after a coral-snake bite. (TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.)

While the camaradas noisily
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“Despite his two hundred”
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

When Roosevelt’s foot
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“The number of twists”
George Cherrie,
Dark Trails
(New York, 1930).

When they set off
George Cherrie,
Diary
, March 2, 1914, AMNH.

Scientists have divided
Milky rivers are also frequently referred to as “white-water” rivers, a potentially confusing terminology that has nothing to do with the more colloquial use of that adjective to refer to churning, rapids-filled rivers. To avoid confusion, the term “whitewater” will be used in this book only in the latter, layman’s meaning.

Alfred Russel Wallace
Michael Goulding, Ronaldo Barthem, and Efrem Ferreira,
The Smithsonian Atlas of the Amazon
(Washington, D.C., 2003).

“Instead of finding”
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

Stretching before them
Theodore Roosevelt,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
(New York, 1914).

“with enormous velocity”
Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon,
Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915
(Rio de Janeiro, 1916).

“the last stronghold”
Ibid.

The water channel
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“It seemed extraordinary”
Ibid.

“No canoe could”
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

Even Kermit Kermit
Roosevelt,
Diary
, March 2, 1914, KBRP.

The camaradas had already
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“bumping and sliding”
Ibid., 254.

The tent-making bat
Louise H. Emmons,
Neotropical Rainforest Mammals
(Chicago, 1997); Ronald M. Nowak,
Walker’s Bats of the World
(Baltimore, 1994).

The lumbering armadillo
Emmons,
Neotropical Rainforest Mammals
.

Aspredinidae and Anabantidae
Author’s interview with Marcelo de Carvalho, ichthyologist with the American Museum of Natural History and the University of São Paulo.

The three-toed sloth
Emmons,
Neotropical Rainforest Mammals
.

The mere fact
Ibid.

So perfectly has the sloth
Ibid.

The caterpillar of certain sphinx moths
Adrian Forsyth and Kenneth Miyata,
Tropical Nature
(New York, 1984).

After killing an ant
William Agosta,
Thieves, Deceivers and Killers: Tales of
Chemistry in Nature
(Princeton, 2001).

Certain orchids
Forsyth and Miyata,
Tropical Nature
.

Some of the most
Erica Lynn Hardy, Online article, “Phyllobates Terribilis,” University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Animal Diversity Web; Chris Harman, “Frogs with a Toxic Taste,”
Americas
, Jan. 2000.

Although the reasons
Jared Diamond,
Guns, Germs, and Steel
(New York, 1999).

“Few people have heard”
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

“utterly trivial”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

So important and ubiquitous
Edward O. Wilson,
The Diversity of Life
(Cambridge, Mass., 1992).

giant six-inch
Mark W. Moffett,
The High Frontier
(Cambridge, 1993).

biting with pincerlike
John Kricher,
A Neotropical Companion
(Princeton, 1997).

The Brazilian wasp
William Agosta,
Bombadier Beetles and Fever Trees
(Reading, Penn., 1996).

Ants of the neotropical genus
Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson,
The Ants
(Cambridge, Mass., 1990).

Acting in concert
Ibid.

Many tropical trees
Forsyth and Miyata,
Tropical Nature
. For
more on the symbiotic relationship between plants and ants, see Hölldobler and Wilson,
The Ants
.

As a result of such
Kricher,
Neotropical Companion
.

On the morning of March 4
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

The mass swarming
Kricher,
Neotropical Companion
.

The termites ate
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

One night near Utiarity
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“Our hands”
Ibid.

Each night when
Ibid.

“I had never before”
Ibid.

In their hunt for food
Forsyth and Miyata,
Tropical Nature

Some of the hawk moths
Ibid.

The leaf-cutting ants
Hölldobler and Wilson,
The Ants
.

Pink-faced capuchin
Moffett,
High Frontier
; Emmons,
Neotropical Rainforest Mammals
.

Millions of bats
Emmons,
Neotropical Rainforest Mammals
.

Snakes, spiders
Wilson,
Diversity of Life
.

The rubber tree
Kricher,
Neotropical Companion
.

The army ants
Hölldobler and Wilson,
The Ants
; Wilson,
Diversity of Life
.

“and therefore more picturesque”
Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon,
Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915
(Rio de Janeiro, 1916).

“We held endless discussions”
Theodore Roosevelt,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
(New York, 1914).

It could swing
Rondon,
Lectures
.

“We did not know”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

Around three o’clock
Ibid.

What they saw
Rondon,
Lectures
.

During the first portage
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

Kermit had gone
Kermit Roosevelt,
Diary
, March 7, 1914, KBRP.

“very good eating”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

Lyra and Kermit divided
Ibid.

One group
George Cherrie,
Diary
, March 10, 1914, AMNH. 188. Desperate not to Ibid.

In the process
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“dressed substantially like”
Ibid.

After twelve days
Rondon,
Lectures
.

Slowly, inch by inch
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

At some point
Rondon,
Lectures
; TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“Rolling over the bowlders”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“That means time”
George Cherrie,
Diary
, March 11, 1914, AMNH.

Each tin box
Anthony Fiala, Appendix B, in Theodore Roosevelt,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
(New York, 1914).

“There were sufficient”
George Cherrie, “The Birds of Matto Grosso, Brazil,”
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History
, vol. 60 (1930).

Not only had they
Kermit Roosevelt,
Diary
, March 2, 1914, KBRP.

“it had some special”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“No one of us”
Ibid.

As the rain fell
Ibid.

It was a species
Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon,
Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915
(Rio de Janeiro, 1916); TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

The men measured
George Cherrie,
Dark Trails
(New York, 1930).

They worked in shifts
Cherrie, “Birds of Matto Grosso”.

The toll on the camaradas
Ibid.

Even after the sun set
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“Looking at the way”
Ibid.

“utterly worthless”
Ibid.

“When we were able”
Rondon,
Lectures
.

“In the Expedition”
Ibid.

“inborn, lazy shirk”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

But Rondon was determined
Rondon,
Lectures
.

Twenty years earlier
Todd A. Diacon,
Stringing Together a Nation
(Durham, N.C., 2004).

Such punishment
Donald F. O’Reilly, “Rondon: Biography of a Brazilian Republican Army Commander,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1969.

Although Rondon deeply
Rondon was put on trial in Rio de Janeiro for the caning incident, but the case was ultimately filed (ibid.).

Six years earlier
Ibid.

Kermit shot
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
. KR,
Diary
, March 13, 1914, KBRP.

“I spent the day”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“He was always alone”
Rondon,
Lectures
.

“Quite unknown”
Theodore Roosevelt,
An Autobiography
(New York, 1913).

“It was a continual”
Kermit Roosevelt,
The Long Trail
(New York, 1921).

On March 13
Cherrie,
Diary
, March 12, 1914, AMNH.

It took all twenty-two men
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

“Of the two hazards”
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“one set of big ripples”
Ibid.

It began to fill
Cherrie,
Dark Trails
.

“We had already met”
Ibid.

When they climbed aboard
Theodore Roosevelt,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
(New York, 1914).

Like the first set
Ibid.

Pushing past the island
Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon,
Lectures Delivered on the 5th, 7th, and 9th of October, 1915
(Rio de Janeiro, 1916)

Rondon quickly ordered
Ibid.

Sitting in his cramped
TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.

“rather one of them”
Quoted in Kathleen Dalton,
Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
(New York, 2002).

Most of these tests
Theodore Roosevelt Jr.,
All in the Family
(New York, 1929).

“a state of intense”
Theodore Roosevelt,
An Autobiography
(New York, 1913).