But the Army knew, and the American Public knew, that Roosevelt had saved multitudes of lives. At Montauk Point, he was the most popular man in America.
This concluded Roosevelt’s career as a soldier. The experience introduced to the Public those virile qualities of his, with which his friends were familiar.
William Roscoe Thayer (Arranged)
THE RIVER OF DOUBT
Roosevelt decided to make one more trip for hunting and exploration. As he could not go to the North Pole, he said, because that would be poaching on Peary’s field, he selected South America.
He had long wished to visit the Southern Continent, and invitations to speak at Rio Janeiro and at Buenos Aires, gave him an excuse for setting out.
He started with the distinct purpose of collecting animal and botanical specimens, this time for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which provided two trained naturalists to accompany him. His son Kermit, toughened by the previous adventure, went also.
Having paid his visits and seen the civilized parts of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, he ascended the Paraguay River, and then struck across the plateau which divides its watershed from that of the tributaries of the Amazon. For he proposed to make his way through an unexplored region in Central Brazil, and reach the outposts of civilization on the Great River.
The Brazilian Government had informed him that by the route he had chosen, he would meet a large river—the River of Doubt—by which he could descend to the Amazon.
There were some twenty persons, including a dozen or fifteen native rowers and pack-bearers, in his party. They had canoes and dugouts, supplies of food for about forty days, and a carefully chosen outfit.