Through the Brazilian Wilderness

Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated] thus. Trade paperback. Good. Frontis illustration. Foreword by Tweed Roosevelt. Illustrations. Maps. Appendices. Index. This is one of the Classics of American Sport series. The Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition was a survey expedition in 1913-14 to follow the path of the Rio da Dúvida ("River of Doubt") in the Amazon basin. The expedition was jointly led by Theodore Roosevelt, the former President of the United States, and Colonel Cândido Rondon, the Brazilian explorer who had discovered its headwaters in 1909. Sponsored in part by the American Museum of Natural History, they also collected many new animal and insect specimens. The river was eventually named "Rio Roosevelt" for the former president, who nearly died during the voyage. In 1992 a modern expedition was organized and sponsored in part by the Theodore Roosevelt Association. It reported that his expedition "found spots chronicled by the original team, saw plants and insects they described, and went down the rapids that crushed the dugout canoes of 1914". Tweed Roosevelt (born February 28, 1942) is the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt via Roosevelt's son Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt, and his son Archibald (Jr.). He is Chairman of Roosevelt China Investments, a Boston firm. He occasionally lectures and writes on the topic of his great-grandfather. He is the President of the Board of Trustees of the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) wrote this firsthand account of his experiences as coleader of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition during its trek through unknown regions of Paraguay and Brazil from the late fall of 1913 to the spring of 1914. Instigated at the request of the American Museum of Natural History and the Brazilian government itself, the expedition was charged with mapping the 950-mile River of Doubt - a previously unexplored tributary to the Amazon River - but the scientific mission swiftly became a harrowing test of endurance from which Roosevelt was lucky to escape alive.