Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [182]
All he wanted now was a tapir, and maybe a white-lipped peccary, to present to George Cherrie and Leo Miller for preservation. Then he would be free to embark on a inland journey quite different from the one he had originally planned—for that matter, the most antipodean contrast to his African safari imaginable. It was a Brazil-backed venture, focusing on geography rather than mammalogy or ornithology, called the “Expediçào Cíentifica Roosevelt-Rondon.”
THE LAST NAME belonged to Colonel Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, a tiny man with a sun-bleached mustache, also preparing for today’s hunt. Roosevelt had met up with him only twenty days before, in a Livingstone-Stanley encounter downriver. The two colonels had bonded at once, with a mutual sense that fate had brought them together. Their common language was French, which each spoke as well, or as badly, as the other.
Dr. Lauro Müller, Brazil’s courtly minister for foreign affairs, was the authority behind their joint mission. It had been he who, welcoming Roosevelt to Rio last October, had persuaded him to abandon Father Zahm’s idea of going down the Tapajoz and up into Venezuela. The Tapajoz was well mapped, and the dry, stony hills beyond were of little interest to anybody but collectors of cacti. Müller suggested that the American expedition might more profitably divert itself inland to Utiariti, the virtual center point of Brazil. From there, it could march eastward along the rim of the Amazonian drainage basin, to the threshold of—quem sabe?—thrilling discoveries.
So deep a venture into Mato Grosso, passing through dangerous Indian country, would require the services of an expert guide. Happily, Müller knew an army engineer who hailed from that region and was part Indian himself. Cândido Rondon was not only “an officer and a gentleman,” but also “a hardy and competent explorer, a good field naturalist and scientific man, a student and a philosopher.” For years he had been on assignment for the national telegraphic commission, laying lines across some of the remotest parts of the Brazilian interior. In the course of his duties, which included surveying, he had made many findings of geographical and cartographical interest.
One such, Müller said, was the source of a mysterious river on the high western slope of Mato Grosso. It was assumed to flow north, possibly into the Rio Madeira, a major tributary of the Amazon. If so, it might be more than a thousand kilometers long. Rondon could not guess any more than that, and had named it Rio da Dúvida, the River of Doubt.
Perhaps Roosevelt would like to go down this river with him, for the mutual benefit of the American Museum and the Brazilian government, which was eager to develop the resources of Amazonas. There were vast stands of rubber trees in that province, but until all its rivers were mapped, it would be difficult for prospectors to stake valid claims. Perhaps, also, Roosevelt would advertise the open spaces of Mato Grosso as ideal for European settlement, as he had those of British East Africa in African Game Trails. In return, the two colonels could count on the support of a team of Brazilian army officers, all trained in field specialties, and as many camaradas—muleteers, porters, guards, and tent-raisers—as they needed to back up their descent of the Dúvida.
Short of throwing in an unlimited supply of canned peaches, Roosevelt’s favorite dessert, Müller could not have more shrewdly sabotaged the itinerary Father Zahm had worked on for so long. His scheme was that of a master politician, whom many expected to be president of Brazil one day. It made sense at many levels, promising a rich harvest of specimens and topographical information, while increasing the commercial potential of Roosevelt’s book, and almost literally putting Mato Grosso on the map. (Müller