Navigating The Amazon: Jungle Expedition – Theodore Roosevelt, right, and Candido Rondo, second from right, lead the fateful mission to map an uncharted waterway and record natural wonders.
It is considered one of the best surveys of our time. For five months beginning in mid-December 1913, a group of over 100 men, Brazilians and Americans, traveled across the great heartland of South America by land and river, on foot and horseback, by mule, truck, steamboat, boat, boat, launch and canoe, moving supplies; Pack animals and boats over 2,500 miles.
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Rondo has already spent 25 years exploring; building roads, bridges and telegraph lines; and peaceful engagement with marginalized indigenous communities. Library of Congress
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Two men from very different backgrounds spearheaded this extraordinary endeavor. Theodore Roosevelt, only a few years removed from the presidency of the United States, was one of the most famous people in the world. But throughout his time in the desert, he moved his more experienced Brazilian counterpart, a 48-year-old Brazilian army colonel named Candido Mariano da Silva Rondo.
By any measure – number of voyages, distances traversed, level of difficulty, data collected – Rondon is the greatest explorer of the tropics on record, a list that includes the likes of Henry Stanley or Richard Francis. Burton. He participated in more than a dozen expeditions through Brazil’s northern desert, exploring the country’s still-uncharted territory, mapping its borders, building roads and bridges, establishing settlements, and making the first peaceful contacts with dozens of indigenous peoples.
That Rondon was a native himself, an orphan from the state of Mato Grosso (Portuguese for “thick forest”) rose to become a Brazilian army chief, fluent in four European and six indigenous languages, making him feel comfortable in cafes. Rio de Janeiro is one of the remote corners of the Amazon that can easily move between the worlds of science and shamanism.
Roosevelt “allowed no opportunity for knowledge to pass him by,” said Rondon, and was a true naturalist who “loved books.” Library of Congress
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Trained as an astronomer and engineer, Rondon was determined to promote scientific understanding of the Amazon and its peoples. The National Commission named after him has published more than 100 scientific articles in various fields such as anthropology, astronomy, biology, botany, ecology, ecology, geology, herpetology, ichthyology, linguistics, meteorology, mineralogy, ornithology and zoology. Scientists under Rondon’s leadership discovered and released many new species of animals, plants, and minerals. Many of his scientific papers have documented indigenous languages or attempted to explain their cultures, cosmology, systems, social structure, and religion.
As a founder, Scholars and political leaders openly called for the destruction of “scientific” reasons.
During his travels, Rondón followed a policy of absolute non-violence in his dealings with tribal groups, many of whom he had never met before: the SPI motto was “Die if forced, but never kill”. In the year When Albert Einstein visited Brazil in early 1925, he was hailed by the press as a “pacifist general” and nominated Rondon for the Nobel Peace Prize, and upon Rondon’s death the International Red Cross hailed him as an apostle of nonviolence. His life and work “like Gandhi” has been a triumph for the “forces of peace”.
The construction of Rondo’s telegraph line through Brazil’s vast and rugged interior, often with the help of indigenous peoples, played a central role in the country’s transition from an arbitrarily organized empire to a modern republic, and reverberates in the nation’s psyche to this day. In the United States the transcontinental railroad was celebrated as a form of national integration.
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So in the year Rondon wrote in his memoirs that he agreed to take Roosevelt through the Amazon “so that his activities would not be limited to a series of excursions to hunt big game” and that he would do serious scientific work.
Of the five itineraries Rondo proposed, it was the descent of the Rio da Duvida – River of Doubt – which he had first encountered during his 1909 expedition and which he had wanted to explore ever since. No one knew how long the river would last, the type of land it would flow through, where the water would come from – hence its temporary name.
Roosevelt immediately chose the itinerary, which, in Rondon’s understated assessment, “presented the greatest number of unexpected difficulties.” Descending the river, Roosevelt said, “much scientific value may be made, and by it “a great increase may be made in geographical knowledge.
What Rondo planned was exploration in a pure, highly challenging manner. Its main focus will be cartography, the work on land that is not defined by science or geography.
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When his friends at the American Museum of Natural History wrote urgently to Roosevelt in Brazil to warn him of the plan before he left for the jungle, he coldly replied: “I have lived and enjoyed as much life as nine other men I have ever known.” . I have had my full share and if it is necessary to leave my bones in South America I am ready to do so.
The descent down the river began on Friday, February 27, 1914, following a grueling two-and-a-half month journey through the Pantanal, Brazil’s vast inland swamp and mountainous region of Mato Grosso. Breakfast was stupid, strong and coffee. Then the last items are loaded on the tanks. “One was small, one was rough, and two were old, waterlogged and leaky,” Roosevelt wrote. “The other three were good.”
The smallest, most maneuverable dugout was first lined up, with Roosevelt’s 24-year-old son, Kermit, volunteering as standby and two skilled oarsmen, Joao and Simplicio. Kermit in 1998 Rondon and Lieutenant João Salustiano Lira, the second in command, followed the next boat. For safety, Roosevelt was accompanied by the expedition’s doctor, José Antonio Cajazira – along with the American naturalist George Cherry, who was the last and largest in the canoe, 25 feet and weighing more than a ton. Three oars are given. Sandwiched between Rondon’s and Roosevelt’s canoes were two jury-rigged rafts loaded with cargo, each assigned four boats.
“Buddies” who paddled and did the most demanding work as they went down the river. Like Rondon, they were individuals of mixed European, Native American, and African descent, as well as hardy backwoods people. But the Americans marveled at the uncomplaining endurance of the men, most of whom went without shoes or shirts, slept in haphazardly equipped huts, and worked long hours with little food. Roosevelt wrote: “The experts were rivermen and forestmen, veterans of the wilderness. “At home they were equal with pole and oar, ax and machete.” He also continued, “They were hard working, willing and happy.” “Good people around camp.”
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The first day goes uneventfully as Rondon and Lyra begin to plan the upper reaches of the River of Doubt. Such work today will be quick and easy. But a century ago, without GPS or meaningful aerial mapping, Rondon and his men did everything by hand, using a cumbersome method called “fixed position” with a compass and solar observation. When a suitable spot is found, the surveyor jumps ashore, clears the brush with his machete, and raises a red and white sight pole until surveyors in a separate boat measure the angle and distance between his position and the sight pole. Then the spotter is extended back into the tank, and the process is repeated at the next stop.
A fascinating biography of the Brazilian explorer, scientist, statesman and conservationist who guided Theodore Roosevelt on his voyage down the River of Doubt.
Food on the Go, January 1914. Rondon is seated second from left; Roosevelt is second from right. Library of Congress
Rondo, in the second canoe, meticulously recorded measurements in notebooks custom-made in Rio de Janeiro. Lyra used a modern theodolite, a precision instrument that calculated angles in both horizontal and vertical planes, while Rondon had a compass and barometer to measure the height of the river above sea level.
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But making frequent stops to calculate distance soon became tiresome: according to Rondon’s field journal, the expedition stopped 114 times that day and barely covered seven kilometers. The river of doubt was a confusing and unpredictable stream, winding in all directions. Rondon’s logs show that on that first afternoon the course of the river flowed in the direction of each of the four cardinal points.
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