THE FATEFUL JOURNEY THROUGH BRAZIL

One day in 1908, when Roosevelt’s Presidential term was drawing to a close, Father Zahm, a priest, called on him. The priest had just returned from a trip across the Andes and down the Amazon. He proposed that when Roosevelt left the Presidency he should take a trip with him into the interior of South America.

Roosevelt’s African trip was then uppermost in his mind, so the subject was dropped. Five years later, however, Roosevelt accepted invitations from Argentina and Brazil to address certain societies. It occurred to him then that after making this tour he could come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon. His plans for the trip were soon under way. Frank Chapman, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, gladly appointed the naturalists George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller to accompany the party. Both were veterans of the tropical American forests. Father Zahm also agreed to go. Kermit Roosevelt joined the party.

On December 9 of the same year, as the party left Asuncion to ascend the Paraguay, Colonel Rondo and other Brazilians joined the expedition as representatives of the Brazilian government.

In the latter part of the next February the party started their long descent of the Duvida—“The River of Doubt.” Colonel Roosevelt describes this voyage interestingly in his book “Through the Brazilian Wilderness.” Many dangers confronted them. The descent of the rapids was perilous to men and boats. They were in danger of being slain through encounters with Indians. They faced the necessity of long, wearing portages or contact with impassable swamps. Fever and dysentery were ills that haunted that region. Starvation, caused by the loss of supplies, was not beyond the bounds of possibility.

On they went, however, enduring the dangers and hardships they encountered like the true explorers they were. They had to wade through water for days at a time. Their shoes were never dry. Insect bites became festering wounds in their bodies. Poisonous ants, biting flies, ticks, wasps and bees never ceased to torment them.

Under these circumstances the temper of the men was sorely tried. At last came a tragedy. Julio, one of their attendants, a powerful fellow but a rogue, shot Paishon, a good-natured negro sergeant. The murderer escaped into the wilderness and was never found.

At last, exhausted and almost broken by their terrible hardships, they reached their destination. They had put on the map a river of some 1,500 kilometers’ length from its highest source to its confluence with the Amazon.

Some of his statements on the subject of his explorations and discoveries were twisted and ridiculed by the press. The fact remains that he rendered a great service to geographers by locating the mouth of this river exactly. Other explorers had discovered its source but they possessed neither the courage nor endurance to follow it to its mouth. It was a real River of Doubt, because nobody knew where it led until Colonel Roosevelt cleared away the mystery.

Colonel Rondo, chief of the Brazilian mission which had accompanied the Colonel’s party, told later how the Colonel’s leg had become infected. While the party was shooting the rapids in the River of Doubt, he said, the boat came near being capsized, and in trying to save it Colonel Roosevelt received a wound in the leg. Poison spread from this to the blood and impeded the Colonel’s walking.

When he returned to New York, highly honored by the Brazilian government and praised for his achievements by explorers who knew the greatness of his undertaking, he was a sick man. Fever burned within him. His constitution was undermined. He admitted now that he had waited too long to undertake the hardest and most perilous task of his life.

These facts lead inevitably to the conclusion that the trip to South America marked the beginning of the end for the Colonel. Friends and physicians point to the fact that from that time began the series of maladies that attacked him recurrently until his death. Viewing the terrible hardships Roosevelt experienced on this journey of exploration it is not going wide of the mark to say that he laid on the altar of science a score of what would have been his most fruitful years.

XVII
Roosevelt’s Part in the World War

When America entered the world war Theodore Roosevelt stood among the first of those who volunteered their services. He had dealt with the grasping Prussian spirit in the Venezuelan incident in 1902, and made the sword-clanking junkers back down. He was fervently anxious to help do it again.

The Colonel announced that he had asked the War Department for permission to raise a body of troops. “In such event, I and my four sons will go,” he said, and added: “I don’t want to be put in the position of saying to my fellow countrymen, ‘Go to war.’ I want to be in the position of saying: ‘Come to the war; I am going with you.’”

Then, after a period of suspense in which the Colonel was a veritable Paul Revere in urging the nation to prepare, war actually came. On this momentous day the former President of the United States received the news in about the same spirit that Bill Jones and Henry Brown and the rest of his Oyster Bay neighbors greeted it. Colonel Roosevelt forgot that he had been twice President of the United States. He remembered only that America wanted men.

The Colonel felt himself to be fully equipped. Aside from the fact that he was a retired Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, in the Santiago campaign he had served in the first fight as commander, had earned promotion to the rank of colonel in his regiment and had ended the campaign in command of the brigade.

The Colonel followed up his previous application to the Secretary of War, with the telegram from which these words are quoted:

“To the Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.

“In view of the fact that Germany is now actually engaged in war with us, I again earnestly ask permission to raise a division for immediate service at the front. My purpose would be, after some six weeks’ preliminary training here, to take it direct to France for intensive training, so that it could be sent to the front in the shortest possible time to whatever point was desired. I should, of course, ask no favors of any kind, except that the division be put in the fighting line at the earliest possible moment.

“Theodore Roosevelt.”

Meanwhile, while Colonel Roosevelt waited with the ardor of a boy the answer to this appeal, applications for military service abroad under him were pouring in from all sections of the country. News of his desire to fight in France had spread like wildfire, and every man who had served with the Colonel at Santiago, as well as every man who wished that he had served with him, wired, wrote and telephoned his application to serve now. Authors, artists, engineers, cowboys, clerks, lawyers, ministers, wanted to go to France with “Teddy.” “Battling” Nelson and “Kid” McCoy were among the applicants. North Carolina offered to send a company. This evidence of the loyalty of the red-blooded men who had fought his civic and military battles with him touched the Colonel deeply and very naturally increased the anxiety with which he awaited the answer from the War Department.

Interesting and enthusiastic was this comment of Colonel Henry Watterson, the famous editor of “The Louisville Courier-Journal”:

“The proposal of Theodore Roosevelt to enlist in the world’s army of freedom and to go to one of the fronts in Europe leading a body of American soldiers may not be whistled lightly down the wind as a man who has a positive genius for the spectacular. It should be considered very seriously. Men are reached equally through their imagination and their patriotism, and except for the sympathetic and emotional in man there would be no armies. The appearance of an ex-President of the United States carrying the Star-Spangled Banner over a body of American soldiers to the battlefront would glorify us as will nothing else. It will electrify the world.”

After further correspondence by letter and wire, through which the Colonel pleaded with all the fervor of his patriotism and all the strength of his convictions that he be allowed to muster for service the older men of the country, who would not otherwise be called, the Secretary of War forwarded him, with assurances of appreciation of the Colonel’s patriotic spirit, the recommendation of the War College Division of the General Staff to the effect that no American troops be employed in active service in any European theatre until after an adequate period of training and that only regular officers be put in command of them.

Colonel Roosevelt’s unsuccessful effort to go to France with his proposed volunteer division was undoubtedly the keenest disappointment of his life. President Wilson, in his statement declining the offer of the Roosevelt division, did not fail to pay tribute to the patriotism and courage of the great volunteer.

The President said in part:

“I shall not avail myself, at any rate at the present stage of the war, of the authority conferred by the act to organize volunteer divisions. I understand that this section was added with a view to providing an independent military command for Mr. Roosevelt and giving the military authorities an opportunity to use his fine vigor and enthusiasm in recruiting.”

Remarking further that it would be “very agreeable” to him to confer this honor on the ex-President, the President added that “to do so would seriously interfere with the carrying out of the chief and most important purpose contemplated by this legislation, the prompt creation and early use of an effective army, and would contribute practically nothing to the effective strength of the armies now engaged against Germany.”