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Roosevelt’s Own Story of His Journey Through Brazil's Jungles
The First of a Series of Articles by
the Former President Describing
His Discoveries and Dangers in the
South American Wilderness.
By Theodore Roosevelt
Published by sgeoul u-nnfiement with Serib
g;;‘;lgkgtnno through the McClure Newspaptr
Copyright, 1814, by Charles Soribner's Sons,
Newpgori.tb. S. k. fm r!?:rhz: reserved, includ
ing that of translation into forelgn languages,
lncludlnf the Scandinavian.
Special Notice.—These articles u’ fully pro
tected under the copf'rlght law, which imposes
a severe penalty for infringement.
The Personnel of the Expedition
and the Start.
NP day in 1908, when my Presidential
term was coming to a close, Father
Zahm, a priest whom I knew, camse in
to call on me.
On the occasion in question Father Zahm
had just returned from a trip across the Anles
and down the Amazon, and came in to propose
that after I left the Presidency, he and I
should go up the Paraguay into the interior ot
South America. At the time I wished to go td
Africa, and so the subject was dropped; but
trom time to time afterward we talked it over.
Five years later, in the Spring of 1913, I ac
cepted invitations conveyed throu_ the Gov
ernments of Argentina, Brazil and Chile to ad
dress certain learned bodies in these countries.
Then it occurred to me that, instead of makirg
the conventional tourist trip purely by sea
round South America, after I had finished my
lectures, I would come North through the mid
dle of the continent into the valley of the
Amazon; and I decided to write Father Zahm
and tell him my intentions. Before doing so,
however, I desired to see the authorities of the
American Museum of Natural History, in New
York City, to find out whether they cared to
have me take a couple of naturalists with me
into Brazil and make a collecting trip for the
museum. . :
An Agreeable Surprise.
Accordingly, I wrote to Frank Chapman, the
curator of ornithology of the museum, and ac
cepted his invitation to lunch at the museum
one day early in June.
At the lunch, in addition to various natural
{sts, to my astonishment I also found Father
Zahm; and as soon as | saw him I told him I
was now intending to make the South Ameri
can trip. It appeared that he had made up his
mind that he would take it himself, and had
actually come on to see Mr. Chapman to find
out if the latter could recommend a naturalist
to go with him; and he at once said he would
accompany me, Chapman was pleased when
he found out that we intended to go up the
Paraguay and across into the valley of the
Amazon, because much of the ground over
which we were to pass had not been covered
by coliectors. IHe saw Henry Fairfield Osborn,
the president of the museum, who wrote me
that the museum would be glad to send under
me a couple of naturalists, whe, with my ap
proval, Chapman would choose.
The men whom Chapman recommended were
Messrs. George K. Cherrie and Leo C. Miller.
I gladly accepted both. The former was to at
tend chiefly to the ornithology and the latter
to the mammalogy of the expedition; but each
was to help out the other.
Veterans of Tropical Forests.
No two better men for such a trip could have
been found. Both were veterans of the tropical
American forests. Miller was a young man,
born in Indiana, an enthusiastic naturalist, with
good literary as well as scientific training. He
was at the time in the Guiana forests, and
joined us at Barbados. Cherrie was an older
man, born in lowa, and at the time a citizen
of Vermont. He had a wife and six children.
Mrs. Cherrie had accompanied him during two
or three years of their early married life in his
collecting trips along the Orinoco. Their sec
ond child was born when they were in camp
a couple of hundred miles from any white man
or woman. One night a few weeks later they
were obliged to leave a camping-place where
they had intended to spend the night, because
the baby was fretful and its cries attracted
a jaguar, which growled nearer and nearer in
the twilight until they thought it safest once
more to put out into the open river and seek
a new resting place.
Cherrie had spent about twenty-two years col
lecting in the American tropics. Like most of
the field naturalists I have met, he is an un
usually efficient and fearless man; and willy
nilly he had been forced at times to vary his
career by taking part in insurrections. Twice
he had: been behind the bars in consequence,
on one occasion spending three months in a
prison of a certain South American State, ex
pecting each day to be taken out and shot.
In Anthony Fiala, a former Arctic explorer,
we found an equally good man for assembling
equipment and taking charge of the actual
handling of the expedition. At the time Fiala
was with a New York mercantile house. In
addition to his four years in the Arctic regions,
Fiala had served in the New York Squadron
{n Porto Rico during the Spanish War, and
through his service, in the squadron had been
brought into contact with his little Tennessee
wife.
My secretary, Mr. Frank Harper, went with
us, and Jacob Sigg, who had gerved three yvears
in the United States Army, and was both a
hospital nurse and a cook, as well as having a
natural taste for adventure. In southern Brazil
my son Kermit joined me.
A Typical American Expedition.
In its composition ours was a typical Ameri
can expedition. Cherrie and Kermit and I were
of the old Revolutionary stock, Cherrie being of
seotch-Irish and Huguenot descent, and we not
only of Dutch, but of about every other strain
of blood that there was on this side of the
water during colonial times. Father Zahm's
father was an Alsatian immigrant, and his
mother wes partly of Irish and partly of old
American stock, a descendant of a niece of
General Braddock. Miller’s father came from
{#fe*many, ard his mother from France. Fiala's
fattrer ana mother were both from Bohemia,
being Czechs, and his father had served four
vears in the Civil War in the Union Army—
his Tennessee wife was of old Revolutionary
stock. Harper was born in England, and Sigz
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in Switzerland. We were as varied in religious
as in ethnic origin.
For arms the naturalists took 16-bore shot
guns, one of Cherrie’s having a rifie barrel
underneath. The firearms for the rest of the
party were supplied by Kermit and myself, in
cluding my Springfield rifle, Kermit's two Win
chegters, a 405 and 30-40, the Fox 12-gauge shot
gun, and another 16-gauge gun, and a couple
of revolvers, a Colt and a Smith & Wesson.
We took from New York a couple of canvas
canoes, tents, mosquito bars, plenty of cheese
cloth, including nets for the hats, and both light
cots and hammocks. FEach equipped himself
with the clothing he fancied. Mine consisted of
khaki such as I wore in Africa, with a couple
of United States Army flannel shirts and &
couple of silk shirts, one pair of hob-nailed
shoes with leggings, and one pair of laced
leather boots coming nearly to the knee. Both
the naturalists told me that it was well to have
either the boots or leggings as a protection
against snake bites, and I also had gauntlets
because of the mosquitoes and sand flies. We
intended where possible to live on what we
could get from time to time in the country, but
we took some United States Army emergency
rations, and also ninety cans, each containing
a day's provisions for six men, made up by
Fiala.
A Preparatory Word.
The trip I proposed to take can be under
stood only if there is a slight knowledge of
South American topography. The great moun
tain chain of the Andes extends down the entire
length of the western coast, 0 close to the
Pacific Ocean that no rivers of any importance
enter it. All the rivers of Sonth Amcrica drain
into the Atlantic. Southernmost South America,
including over half of the territory of the Ar
gentine Republic, consists chiefly of a cool, opea
plains country. Northward of this country, and
eastward of the Andes, lies the great bulk of
the South American continent, which is in
cluded in the tropical and the subtropical re
gions. :
Most of this territory is Brazillan. Aside
from certain relatively small stretches drained
by coast rivers, this immense region of tropical
and subtropical Ameriga east of the Andes is
drained by the three great river systems of the
Plate, the Amazon and the Orinoco. At their
head waters, the Amazon and the Orinoco sys
tems are actually counected by a sluggish
natural canal. The head waters of the northern
affluents of the Paraguay and the southern
affluents of the Amazon are sundered by a
stretch of high land, which toward the east
broadens out into the central plateau of Brazil.
Geologically this is a very ancient region,
having appeared above the waters before the
dawning of the age of reptiles, or, indeed, of
any true land vertebrates on the globe. This
plateau is a region partly of healthy, rather
dry and sandy, open prairie, partly of forest.
The great and low-lying basin of the Paraguay,
which borders it on the south, is one of the
largest, and the still greater basin of the Ama
zon, which borders it on the north, is the very
largest of all the river basins of the earth.
In these bagins, but especially in the basin of
the Amazon, and thence in most places north
ward to the Caribbean Sea, lie the most exten
sive stretches of tropical forest to be found any
where. The forests of tropical West Africa, and
Above is the virlle face of
ex-President Roosevelt as
he appeared just before
starting for Brazil. Below
Is how he appeared upon
his return, after the perils
and hardships he encoun
tered, the interesting de
tails of which he will re
late in these articles.
of portions of the Farther-lnd\qn region, are the
only ones that can be compared with them.
The Great Prazilian Forests.
Much difficulty has been experienced in ex
ploring these forests, because under the tor
rential rains and steaming heat the rank
growth of vegetation becomes almost impene
trable, and the streams difficult of navigation;
while white men suffer much from the terrible
insect scourges and the deadly diseases which
modern science has discovered to be due very
largely to insect bites. The fauna and flora,
however, are of great interest. The American
museum was particularly anxious to obtain
collections from the divide between the head
waters of the Paraguay and the Amazon, and
from the southern affluents of the Amazon.
Our purpose was to ascend the Paraguay as
nearly as possible to the head of navigation,
thence across to the sources of one of the
affluents of the Amazon, and if possible de
scend it in eanoes built on the spot. The Para
guay is regularly navigated as high as boats
can go. The starting point for our trip was to
be Asuncion, in the State of Paraguay.
My exact plan of operation was necessarily
a little indefinite, but on reaching Rio de Ja
neiro the minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Lauro
Muller, wnho had been kind enough to take great
personal interest in my trip, informed me that
he had arranged that on the head waters of
the Paraguay, at the town of Caceres, I would
be met by a Brazilian army colonel, himself
chiefly Indian by blood, Colonel Rondon.
01d and New Feathered Friends.
During the two months before starting from
Asuncion, in Paraguay, for our journey into
the interior, I was kept so busy that 1 had
scant time to think of natural history. But in
a strange land a man who cares for wild birds
and wild beasts always sees and hears some
thing that is new to him and interests him. In
the dense tropical woods near Rio Janeiro I
heard in late October-—springtime, near the
southern tropic—the songs of many birds that
I could not identify. But the most beautiful
music was from a shy woodland thrush, som
bre-colored, which lived near the ground in the
thick timber, but gang high among the
branches. At a great distance we could hear
the ringing, musical, bell-like note, long-drawn
and of piercing sweetness, which occurs at in
tervals in the song; at first I thought this was
the song, but when it was possible to approach
the singer I found that these far-sounding notes
were scattered through a tontinuous song of
great melody.
Most of the birds I thus notlced while hur
riedly passing through the country were, of
course, the conspicuous ones. The spurred
lapwing. big, tame, boldly marked plover, were
everywhere; they were very noisy and active
and both inquisitive and daring, and they have
a very curious dance custom. No man need
look for them. They will look for him, and
when they find him they will fairly yell the
discovery to the universe.
In the marshes of the lower Parana I eaw
flocks of scarlet-headed blackbirds on the tops
of the reeds; the females are as strikingly
colored as the males, and their jet-hlack bodies
and brilliant red heads make it impossible’ for
them to escape observation among their nat
ural surroundings. On the plains to the west
I saw flocks of the beautiful rose-breasted
starlings; unlike the red-headed biackbirds,
which seemed fairly to court attention, these
starlings sought to escape ohservation by
crouching on the ground so that their red
breasts were hidden. There were yellow-
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QOSEVELT
Graveyard, with Mausoleums, at Fort Coimbia, Brazil.
Photo by Kermit Roosevelt.
shouldered blackbirds in wet places, and cow
buntings abounded.
But the most conspicuous birds I saw were
members of the family of Tyrant Flycatchers,
of ‘which our own kingbird is the most familiar
example. This family is very numerously rep
resented in Argentina, both in specles and in
dividuals. Some of the species are so striking,
both in color and habits, and in one case also
in shape, as to attract the attention of even
the unobservant. The least conspicuous, and
nevertheless very conspicuous, among those
that I saw was the Bientevido, which is brown
above, yellow beneath, with a boldly marked
black and white head, and a yellow crest. It
is very noisy, is common in the neighborhood
of houses, and builds a big domed nest. It is
really a big, heavy kingbird, fiercer and more
powerful than any Northern kingbird.
Two of these tyrants which 1 observed are
like two with which I grew fairly familiar in
Texas. The scissortail is common throughout
the open country, and the long tail feathers,
which seem at times to hamper its flight, at
tract attention whether the bird is in flight or
perched on a tree, and it has a habit of occa
sionally goaring into the air and descending in
loops and spirals. The scarlet tyrant I saw in
the orchards and gardens. The male is a fas
G.K. Chesterton Discusses Tight Skirts and True Femininity ||
By G. K. CHESTERTON.
The Famous English Essaylst.
OME ladies who have been asking that
the platforms at railway stations may
be raised, ‘for the convenience of those
wearing very tight skirts, are a very repre
sentative group—much more representative
than the Suffragettes.
The situation is a quaint little working
model of that inversion and disproportion
which is the tréck of our time. Note that it
{s always the comparatively permanent thing
that is sacrificed to the obviously ephemeral
thing, and the serfsible thing that is sacrificed
to the silly thing. Railway stations may not
wbide with the Pyramids and behold the Day
of Judgment, but they will last longer than
the fashion of tight ciothes. Huston Station
may not look quite so fine as the Parthenon,
but it looks prettier than a hobble skirt. And
a man might as well redecorate his house to
match the lather on his face when he was
shaving, or the froth on his ale before he
drank it, as gconsent to reconstruct a public
building to match things so fluffy, so fugitive,
and so soon swept away as the feminine fash
fons among the rich.
Then observe the other typical trait—the in
sensibility to the question of on whom the
responsibility lies. No one seems sufficiently
surprised at the mere impudence of the claim
—the claim of people who put on clothes in
which travelling is impossible, and then want
all travelling altered to suit them. People
might just as well insist on an entirely new
hundred-fold heating apparatus because they
chose to come out in their pajamas.
For my part, I propose to call together nine
faithful friends, and we will agree to wear
The native canoe in which former President Roosevelt began his
journey into the Brazilian wilderness. (Photo by Anthony
Fiala, the intrepid explorer, who accompanied the ;
Roosevelt party.) i
yrnithology I never dreamed that he belonged to
this family. He—for only the male is so brightly
colored—is coal-black with & dull red back, I
gaw these birds on December 1 near Barillode,
out on the bare Patagonia planes. They be
haved like pipits or longspurs, running active
ly over the ground in the same manner and
showing the same restlessness.
The gllver-bill tyrant, however, {s much mors
conspicuous; I saw it in the same neighbor
hood as the red-back and also in many other
places. The male is jet-black, with white bill
and wings. He runs about on the ground like
a pipit, but also frequently perches on some
bush to go through a strange filight-song per
formance. He perches motionless, bolt up
right, and even then his black coloring adver
tises him for a quarter of a mile round about.
But every few minutes he springs up into the
air to the height of twenty or thirty feet, the
white wings flashing in contrast to the black
body, screams and gyrates, and then instantly
returns to hig former post and resumes his
erect pose of walting.
A Point for the Scientists,
These common Argentine birds, most of them
ot the open country, and all of them with &
coat-talls trailing on the ground to the length
of four hundred yards. We will then request
(nay, command) the authorities at St. Pancras
Station to build ten separate and gpacious
passages or covered avenues of the requisite
length, so that each of us can march up his
own vestibuie in comfort, dignity and solitude.
Or perhaps I will go to Victoria on Bank
Holiday in a palr of flat snow-shoes of the size
and circumference of two small Margate fish
ing-boats, and loudly demand to have the plat
forms widened while I wait. I can occupy a
good deal of Victoria Station as it is; but I
see even larger possibilities opening from the
new doctrine, Or I will put on one large
trouser instead of two, like a competitor in a
sack-race, having previously rung up the rail
way company and told them to erect cranes
and pulleys all along the route to the station.
1 cannot feel any of these things as more fool
{sh than the latest fashion; but I fear I am
not fashionable.
There is another respect in which the tight
skirt i{s something of a symbol, another re
gpect in which it is like many other strange
elements in our soclety. It is like Progress,
and the Party System, and the Union, and
Social Reform, and Evolution, and Empire
Day, and all sorts of things. The®'ght skirt
is like all these large ideas in this interesting
particular: that nobody really likes it. It
seems to llke them-—to capture and control
them like puppets in a sort of sartorial night
mare.
One cannot say that the woman has got her
skirt tight: rather the skirt has got her tight.
She presents the painful appearance of having
fallen waist-deep in a man-trap, or being par
tially digested by a dragon. She does not
geem to enjoy it a bit; and it must prevent
her doing many things which women of that
gort, to do them justice, really enjoy doing.
As for travelling in svch & seek. rou misbi s
oinating lttle Dbird,
coal biack above,
while its crested head
and the body be
neath are brilliant
scarlet. He utters
his rapld, low-voiced
musical trill in the
alr, rising with flut
tering wings to a
height of a hundred
teet, hovering while
he sings, and then faii
ng back to earth.
The color ot the bird
and the character of
his performance at
tract the attention of
every observer, beast
or man, within reach
of vision.
The red-backed ty
rant is utterly unlike
any of his kind in the
Dnited States, and un
til I.looked him up in
Sclater and Hudson's
PN T RSO T e e SRS eol
etrikingly advertising coloration, are interest.
ing because of their beauty and their habits.
They are also interesting because they offer
such {lluminating examples of the truth that
many of the most common and successful
birds not merely lack a concealing coloration,
but possess a coloration which is in the highest
degree revealing. The coloration and the
habits of most of these birds are such that
every hawk or other foe that can see at all
must have its attention attracted to them, Ewvi.
dently in thelr cases neither the coloration nor
any habit of concealment based on the colora
tion is a gurvival factor, and this although they
Hve in a land teeming with bird-eating hawks.
Among the higher vertebrates there are
many known factors which have infiusnce,
some In one set of cases, some in another set
of cases, in the development and preservation
of species. Courage, intelligence, adaptability,
prowess, bodily vigor, speed, alertness, ability
to hide, ability to build structures which will
protect the young while they are helpless,
fecundity—all, and many more like them, have
their several places; and behind all these visi
ble causes there are at work other and often
more potent causes of which as yet science can
say nothing. Some specles owe much to a
given attribute which may be wholly lacking
in influence on other species; and every one
of the attributes above enumerated i{s a sur
vival factor in some species, while in others it
has no survival value whatever, and In yet
others, although of benefit, it i not of suffi
cient benefit to offset the benefit conferred on
foes or rivals by totally different attributes.
Intelligence, for instance, is of course a sur
vival factor; but to-day there exist multitudes
of animals with very little intelligence which
have persisted through immense periods of
geologic time either unchanged or else without
any change in the direction of increased intel
ligence; and during thelr species-life they haw
witnessed the death of countless other species
of far greater intelligence, but in other ways
less adapted to succeed in the environmental
complex. The same statement can be made of
all the many, many other known factors in de
velopment, from fecundity to concealing ocolor
atlon.
In the next article Colonel Rooseveit will tell
how he and his party boarded the comfortable
gunboatryacht of the President of Paraguay
and steamed steadily ur the mighty river to
ward the Troplc of Capricorn, through the lideal
cattle country of the continent.
well make the Grand Tour with an egs and
spoon.
But the baffling business is in this really
reluctant acceptance everywhere of some
thing that comes from nowhere. Who makes
people wear hobble skirts? Would they wear
handcuffs if It told them to? One hardly ever
hears the thing praised. Though hammers
swing as in a smithy and platforms are torn
up as in a revolution, the thing for which such
sacrifices are made s scarcely liked, is barely
tolerated, by its own possessors. That is
where it is so like the insipid and {mpersonal
ideas for which modern men are expected to
make sacrifices. Think of the amount of
thrift and thought and unconquered activity
often put into the maintenance of some mori
bund sect, whose special doctrines have long
died in the dense individualistic darkness of
the seventeenth century; of the amount of
eloquence and energy put into the passing of
some bill which evervone knows will never
pass, or which most people know will do no
good if it does; of all the flery cross sub
seriptions for testimonials nobody wants or
statues nobody likes to look at.
I almost tremble as I write the wox;gs, but
who wants a memorial to Shakespeare? Ido
not mean who would help if somebody else
wanted it very much—l would do that myself,
But who and where is the man who really does
want & very much? Who is the man who
starts up in the night, suddenly remembering
that there is no memorial to Shakespeare?
Yet for that, and similar patriotic projects,
subscriptions large and small are often pain
fully raised. Platforms are also painfully
raised, as the fashionable ladies wish them to
be at Cannon Street or Clapham Junction.
Those who urge on us, as does Mr. H. G.
Wells, that it is easier to destroy than to con
struct should point out to such ladies that it
is easler to destroy a bad skirt than to con-
Jruct a good platform.