THE EXPLORER
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,--cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. ...
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Tennyson's _Ulysses_.
Mr. Roosevelt took his defeat without whimpering. When he was in a
fight he gave blows and expected to receive them. His enemies often hit
foul blows, and this his friends resented, especially when the attacks
actually provoked an attempt at murder. When his private character was
assailed he defended himself, promptly and successfully. But neither
he nor any of his friends asked that he should be sacred from all
criticism; nor feebly protested that he was above ordinary mortals, and
only to be mentioned with a sort of trembling reverence. He was too
much of a man to be kept wrapped in wool.
In 1913 he traveled through South American countries to speak before
learned bodies which had invited him to come before them. Afterwards,
with his son Kermit, some American naturalists, and Colonel Rondon, a
brave and distinguished Brazilian officer, he made a long trip through
the wilderness of Brazil, to hunt and explore. Some of the country
through which they traveled was little known to white men; some of it
absolutely unknown. They hunted and killed specimens of the jaguar,
tapir, peccary, and nearly all of the other strange South American
animals.
In February 1914, they set out upon an unknown stream called the River
of Doubt. They did not know whether the exploration of this river would
take them weeks or months; whether they might have to face starvation,
or savage tribes, or worse than either, disease. They surveyed the
river as they went, so as to be able to map its course, and add to
geographical knowledge. Strange birds haunted the river, and vicious
stinging insects annoyed the travelers. They constantly had to carry
the canoes around rapids or waterfalls, so that progress was slow. Some
of the canoes were damaged and others had to be built. Large birds,
like the curassow, and also monkeys, were shot for food. The pest
of stinging insects grew constantly worse,--bees, mosquitoes, large
blood-sucking flies and enormous ants tormented them. The flies were
called piums and borashudas. Some of them bit like scorpions.
Kermit Roosevelt's canoe was caught in the rapids, smashed and sunk,
and one of the men drowned. Once they saw signs of some unknown tribe
of Indians, when, one of the dogs belonging to the party was killed in
the forest, almost within sight of Colonel Rondon, and found with two
arrows in his body. The river was dangerous for bathing, because of a
peculiar fish--the piranha--a savage little beast which attacks men
and animals with its razor-like teeth, inflicts fearful wounds and may
even kill any unfortunate creature which is caught by a school in deep
water. Some members of the party were badly bitten by the piranhas.
As their long and difficult course down the river continued, and as
their hardships increased, one of the native helpers murdered another
native--a sergeant--and fled. Roosevelt, while in the water helping to
right an upset canoe, bruised his leg against a boulder. Inflammation
set in, as it usually does with wounds in the tropics. For forty-eight
days they saw no human being outside their own party. They were all
weak with fever and troubled with wounds received in the river. Colonel
Roosevelt (who was nearly fifty-six years old) wrote of his own
condition:
The after effects of the fever still hung on; and the leg which had
been hurt while working in the rapids with the sunken canoe had taken
a turn for the bad and developed an abscess. The good doctor, to
whose unwearied care and kindness I owe much, had cut it open and
inserted a drainage tube; an added charm being given the operation,
and the subsequent dressings, by the enthusiasm with which the piums
and boroshudas took part therein. I could hardly hobble, and was
pretty well laid up. "But there aren't no 'stop conductor,' while a
battery's changing ground." No man has any business to go on such
a trip as ours unless he will refuse to jeopardize the welfare of
his associates by any delay caused by a weakness or ailment of his.
It is his duty to go forward, if necessary on all fours, until he
drops. Fortunately, I was put to no such test. I remained in good
shape until we had passed the last of the rapids of the chasms. When
my serious trouble came we had only canoe-riding ahead of us. It
is not ideal for a sick man to spend the hottest hours of the day
stretched on the boxes in the bottom of a small open dugout, under
the well-nigh intolerable heat of the torrid sun of the mid-tropics,
varied by blinding, drenching downpours of rain, but I could not be
sufficiently grateful for the chance. Kermit and Cherrie took care of
me as if they had been trained nurses; and Colonel Rondon and Lyra
were no less thoughtful.[21]
[21] "Through the Brazilian Wilderness," p. 319.
It is known that his illness was more serious, and his conduct much
more unselfish than he told in his book. When he could not be moved, he
asked the others to go forward for their own safety and leave him. They
refused, naturally, and he secretly resolved to shoot himself if his
condition did not soon improve, rather than be a drag on the party. In
his report to the Brazilian Government, which had made the expedition
possible by its aid, Mr. Roosevelt was able to say:
"We have put on the map a river about 1500 kilometers in length running
from just south of the 13th degree to north of the 5th degree and the
biggest affluent of the Madeira. Until now its upper course has been
utterly unknown to every one, and its lower course, although known for
years to the rubber men, utterly unknown to cartographers."
The Brazilian Government renamed the river in his honor, first the Rio
Roosevelt, later the Rio Teodoro. Branches of it were named in honor of
other members of the party, the Rio Kermit and the Rio Cherrie,--the
latter for the American naturalist, Mr. George K. Cherrie.