Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [422]
His formal lectures at the universities of Rio and São Paulo (24, 27 Oct.), the Museo Sociale Argentino in Buenos Aires (7, 10, 12 Nov.), and the university in Santiago (22 Nov.) amounted to repetitions of the political and moral points he had been making for the past several years. They were reprinted in The Outlook.
After TR’s momentous change of plan in Rio for his Amazon expedition, described in this chapter, and his visit to that city’s Theatro Municipal on 22 Oct. to see the Ballets Russes in Swan Lake, his travels were without important incident. He left Cherrie and the rest of his scientific team behind to prepare for the expedition, and continued south with EKR and KR to São Paulo on 26 Oct. The family party proceeded via Montevideo (4 Nov.) to Buenos Aires (5–14 Nov.), before crossing the Andes by rail, via Tucumán and Mendoza to Santiago (21–25 Nov.). EKR sailed home from Valparaiso on 26 Nov. TR and KR recrossed the Andes from Puerto Varas via Lakes Esmeralda and Fria into the plains of northern Patagonia on 29–30 Nov., riding some of the way on horseback and also traveling by steamboat, ox railway, and automobile. On the shore of Nahuel Huapi, one of the world’s remotest bodies of water, TR was accosted by an English peer who said, “You won’t remember me; when I last saw you, you were romping with little Prince [Olaf of Norway] in Buckingham Palace.” (TR, Works, 4.100.)
He returned to Buenos Aires on 4 Dec., and left next day for Asunción, Paraguay, whence, on 9 Dec., he sailed up the River Paraguay, heading back into Brazil. For TR’s serialized account of these travels, see The Outlook, 24 Jan.–6 June 1914.
3 For a week Unless otherwise indicated, the narrative, scenic, and atmospheric details in this and the following chapter come from TR’s and Father Zahm’s respective travel books, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (TR, Works, 6) and Through South America’s Southland. The chronology is based on two expedition diaries: those of George K. Cherrie, 1913–1914 (AMNH), and Kermit Roosevelt, 1914 (KRP). Other firsthand accounts (cited when used) are those of Cândido M. Rondon, Lectures Delivered by Colonel Cândido Mariana da Silva Rondon … On the 5th, 7th and 9th of October 1915 at the Phenix Theatre of Rio de Janeiro, on the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition, trans. R. G. Reidy and Ed. Murray (Rio de Janeiro, 1916; New York, 1969); Esther de Vivieros, Rondon conta sua vida (Rio de Janeiro, 1958), an “as told to” biography largely dictated by Rondon; Leo E. Miller, In the Wilds of South America (New York, 1918), chaps. 13–16; George K. Cherrie, Dark Trails: Adventures of a Naturalist (New York, 1930), Part Six; and Kermit Roosevelt, Happy Hunting Grounds, chap. 1. The fullest account of the expedition, apart from TR’s, is Millard, The River of Doubt.
4 Roosevelt stoked himself TR, Works, 6.110; Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 416; TR to ERD, 8 Oct. 1913 (ERDP). Nicholas Roosevelt had noticed in Arizona that “his waist was larger than his chest.” TR, 13.
5 He had come north TR’s social and hunting activities between 12 and 31 Dec. 1913 are fully described in TR, Works, 6.47–110. See also Zahm, Through South America’s Southland, 419–41; Miller, In the Wilds, 214–29; and Rondon, Lectures, 16–30.
6 He had already Zahm, Through South America’s Southland, 438. For a detailed account of this hunt, see TR, Works, 6.63–92.
7 He had not found