Etext prepared by John Bickers and Dagny
THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS
By Theodore Roosevelt
Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
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
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 Zahmand I had been cronies for some time, because we were both of us fondof Dante and of history and of science—I had always commended totheologians his book, "Evolution and Dogma." He was an Ohio boy, andhis early schooling had been obtained in old-time American fashion ina little log school; where, by the way, one of the other boys wasJanuarius Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous war correspondentand friend of Skobeloff. Father Zahm told me that MacGahan even atthat time added an utter fearlessness to chivalric tenderness for theweak, and was the defender of any small boy who was oppressed by alarger one. Later Father Zahm was at Notre Dame University, inIndiana, with Maurice Egan, whom, when I was President, I appointedminister to Denmark.
On the occasion in question Father Zahm had just returned from a tripacross the Andes and down the Amazon, and came in to propose thatafter I left the presidency he and I should go up the Paraguay intothe 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 wetalked it over. Five years later, in the spring of 1913, I acceptedinvitations conveyed through the governments of Argentina and Brazilto address certain learned bodies in these countries. Then it occurredto me that, instead of making the conventional tourist trip purely bysea round South America, after I had finished my lectures I would comenorth through the middle of the continent into the valley of theAmazon; and I decided to write Father Zahm and tell him my int