When Theodore Roosevelt   lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1912 against William Howard Taft, he sought distraction and new motivation by organising an expedition along one of the tributaries of the Amazon River. The initial expedition was planned to be adventurous yet relatively safe by going along the well-mapped and safely navigable Paraguay River and crossing over into the Amazon valley. Joined in Brazil by the famous explorer Cândido Rondon   , they made the decision to instead explore and chart the unknown River of Doubt from its recently discovered source. The ill-prepared expedition set off in December 1913 and encountered many dangers on their journey. Insects and malaria were causing sickness, their canoes were unsuitable for the river rapids and had to be replaced with newly built ones, and they were running low on food supplies. The biggest danger however was the Indigenous Cinta Larga   tribe, that shadowed the expedition and that could have easily killed them had they chosen to. Fortunately, due to Rondon’s long experience with Indigenous tribes they managed to avoid confrontation. After 4 months, the party finally made it through the unknown parts of the rainforest and reunited with a relief party on the Aripuana River. Roosevelt, badly suffering from an infected leg, could have not held out much longer. Of the 19 men that travelled along the River of Doubt, only 16 made it out alive.

What was planned as a tourist adventure, turned into a genuine expedition and discovery of the river’s location, now called Rio Roosevelt   . While there was initial doubt about the expedition’s account, the British explorer George Miller Dyott confirmed the discovery on a second trip in 1927.

The book is very engaging and besides the main story of the expedition describes the Amazon Rainforest as a living organism similar to an ocean. As a place of constant survival among its species it is a place unsuitable for humans without modern equipment. I also learned a lot about Brazil’s and Rondon’s quest to connect the country with telegraph lines and how that caused tensions with more than a million Indigenous peoples that lived in the uncharted parts of the rainforest. In the process of building the telegraph lines, Rondon encountered many, often uncontacted, tribes and developed and promoted a peaceful approach (“die if need be, never kill”) towards them. He later founded the Indian Protection Service.