Through the Brazilian Wilderness

Through the Brazilian
Wilderness

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Title: Through the Brazilian Wilderness
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: March 28, 2004 [EBook #11746]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH
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Etext prepared by John Bickers and Dagny

THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS By Theodore
Roosevelt
Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
[email protected]

THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

PREFACE
This is an account of a zoo-geographic reconnaissance through the
Brazilian hinterland.
The official and proper title of the expedition is that given it by the
Brazilian Government: Expedicao Scientifica Roosevelt- Rondon.
When I started from the United States, it was to make an expedition,
primarily concerned with mammalogy and ornithology, for the
American Museum of Natural History of New York. This was
undertaken under the auspices of Messrs. Osborn and Chapman, acting
on behalf of the Museum. In the body of this work I describe how the
scope of the expedition was enlarged, and how it was given a
geographic as well as a zoological character, in consequence of the
kind proposal of the Brazilian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
General Lauro Muller. In its altered and enlarged form the expedition
was rendered possible only by the generous assistance of the Brazilian
Government. Throughout the body of the work will be found reference
after reference to my colleagues and companions of the expedition,
whose services to science I have endeavored to set forth, and for whom
I shall always feel the most cordial friendship and regard.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT. SAGAMORE HILL, September 1, 1914

THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS

I. THE START
One day in 1908, when my presidential term was coming to a close,
Father Zahm, a priest whom I knew, came in to call on me. Father
Zahm and I had been cronies for some time, because we were both of
us fond of Dante and of history and of science--I had always
commended to theologians his book, "Evolution and Dogma." He was
an Ohio boy, and his early schooling had been obtained in old-time
American fashion in a little log school; where, by the way, one of the
other boys was Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous
war correspondent and friend of Skobeloff. Father Zahm told me that
MacGahan even at that time added an utter fearlessness to chivalric
tenderness for the weak, and was the defender of any small boy who
was oppressed by a larger one. Later Father Zahm was at Notre Dame
University, in Indiana, with Maurice Egan, whom, when I was

President, I appointed minister to Denmark.
On the occasion in question Father Zahm had just returned from a trip
across the Andes 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 of South America. At the time I wished to go to Africa, and so
the subject was dropped; but from time to time afterward we talked it
over. Five years later, in the spring of 1913, I accepted invitations
conveyed through the governments of Argentina and Brazil to address
certain learned bodies in these countries. Then it occurred to me that,
instead of making the conventional tourist trip purely by sea round
South America, after I had finished my lectures I would come north
through the middle 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.
Accordingly, I wrote to Frank Chapman, the curator of ornithology of
the museum, and accepted his invitation to lunch at the museum one
day early in June. At the lunch, in addition to various naturalists, to my
astonishment I also found Father Zahm; and as soon as I saw him I told
him I was now intending to make the South American 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