Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [423]
8 a tiny man Rondon was five foot three. Millard, The River of Doubt, 73.
9 Roosevelt had met up Rondon, Lectures, 15ff.; TR, Works, 6.50. In 1927, José Alves de Lima, a minor diplomat and memorialist, claimed to have “selected” Rondon as TR’s guide long before Müller did. (Alves de Lima, “Reminiscences of Roosevelt in Brazil.”) The boast is implausible. However, TR was certainly aware of Rondon’s existence, and value as a consultant, before arriving in Rio. TR to Lauro Müller, 14 Oct. 1914 (TRC).
10 It had been he TR, Works, 6.xiii–xvi, 10; Rondon, Lectures, 10–12. Several alternative expeditions, all plotted by Rondon, were offered to TR, in case he declined to explore the Dúvida.
11 Cândido Rondon was TR, Works, 6.xiv, 73.
12 a mysterious river Ibid., 6.xiv. Rondon discovered the Dúvida in 1909.
13 Roosevelt would advertise Ibid., 6.10.
14 Müller could not have Even before meeting Müller, TR praised him, on the basis of information supplied by Elihu Root, as “one of the men to whom this entire western hemisphere must look up.” Alves de Lima, “Reminiscences of Roosevelt in Brazil.”
15 Müller dreamed of building Armelle Enders, “Theodore Roosevelt explorateur: Positivisme et mythe de la frontière dans l’expediçào cíentífica Roosevelt-Rondon au Mato Grosso et en Amazonie,” Nuevo Mundo Mundo Nuevos (http://nuevomundo.revues.org/), 2 Feb. 2005, 3–5. Müller’s dream of an inland capital was realized in 1960 with the building of Brasília. For TR’s two major South American addresses on the Monroe Doctrine, see The Outlook, 14, 21 Mar. 1914.
16 “I want to be the first” Rondon interviewed by Douglas O. Naylor in The New York Times, 6 Jan. 1929.
17 “I have already” Osborn, “Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist,” Natural History, 19.1 (Jan. 1919). See also Osborn to TR, 26 Dec. 1913 (“I shall hear with the greatest relief of your arrival in Manaos”), AMNH.
18 his six colleagues TR may be seen posing with his colleagues en route to Rio in a contemporary documentary, Theodore Roosevelt—The River of Doubt, available online at http://www.loc.gov/. The movie, titled with extracts from Through the Brazilian Wilderness, includes footage of many of the episodes described in this and the following chapter.
19 Cherrie and Miller, in TR, Letters, 7.754. Their official employer, Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum, was considerably less enthusiastic. Millard, The River of Doubt, 60.
20 Roosevelt had told TR, Works, 6.xiv–xv.
21 Kermit, of course TR, Letters, 7.756; KR to Belle Willard, n.d. (KRP); Millard, The River of Doubt, 276–77. EKR, worried about her husband’s safety in the jungle, had been instrumental in persuading TR to take KR with him. KR to ERD, Nov. 1913 (ERDP).
22 At daybreak The following account of TR’s New Year hunt is based on TR, Works, 6.110–14.
23 Rondon was used For an excellent short biography of Rondon in English, see Todd A. Diacon, Stringing Together a Nation: Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon and the Construction of a Modern Brazil, 1906–1930 (Durham, N.C., 2004).
24 He was about TR, Works, 6.50–51.
25 not entirely believable Miller, In the Wilds, 196–97.
26 Roosevelt tried to Cherrie, Dark Trails, 282; TR, Works, 6.112.
27 He relaxed Zahm, Through South America’s Southland, 450.
28 The great river Rondon, Lectures, 33–34; TR, Works, 6.70.
29 Now that he saw TR, Works, 6 passim.
30 One evening this Rondon, Lectures, 33–44; Zahm, Through South America’s Southland, 449–50. Rondon and Zahm both mention TR’s rapturous reaction to this sunset, and agree that he observed it from the deck of the Nioac, a day or two after his São Lourenço hunt. Yet he, puzzlingly, dates it back to 14 Dec. 1913, when he was still aboard the Riquelme. (TR, Works, 6.58–59.) Possibly there were two such “evenings of extraordinary splendor and beauty.”
31 As far as Kermit KR to