At Gondokoro, Uganda, Roosevelt ended his African hunts. He came through his many perilous situations unharmed. Kermit was also in the best of health. The latter was praised by Scout Cunninghame as one of the best shots and most daring hunters he had ever seen.
The Colonel on his journey back to civilization, visited first the Congo Free State, where the Belgian officers in charge of that colony gave him a warm welcome.
The journey was then continued by way of the Nile to Khartum, where the first newspaper men Roosevelt had seen for months raced up the Nile to greet him. Here Mrs. Roosevelt and her daughter met Kermit and him, and there was an affectionate family reunion. The party then traveled through Egypt.
In a speech at Cairo the Colonel referred jokingly to Wall Street’s attitude toward him by saying that when he left America to hunt in Africa “Wall Street expected every lion to do its duty.”
ROOSEVELT’S HOME, SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY
From Alexandria the Colonel took a steamer for Italy and, on landing in Naples, found a mountain of letters and cablegrams from America awaiting him. After a tour of Austria Roosevelt went to France. Ambassador Jusserand was the first to greet him. In an address in Paris Roosevelt spoke these prophetic words:
“Made to understand and love each other, our two countries have been friends from the beginning, and no doubt will always remain friends in the future. Every civilized man who comes to France learns something, because France is the cradle of modern civilization.”
The Colonel then visited Belgium, Holland—the home of his ancestors—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and England.
Roosevelt arrived in London while Britain was mourning the death of King Edward. He took part in the great ceremonial funeral procession, made a sensational speech in regard to England’s rule in Egypt, became the guest of Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, and left England for home with this remark:
“My day in New Forest with Sir Edward Grey was the crowning experience of the whole three months.”
His landing in Manhattan was marked by one of the greatest ovations an American citizen had ever received in New York City.
One day in 1908, when Roosevelt’s Presidential term was drawing to a close, Father Zahm, a priest, called on him. The priest had just returned from a trip across the Andes and down the Amazon. He proposed that when Roosevelt left the Presidency he should take a trip with him into the interior of South America.
Roosevelt’s African trip was then uppermost in his mind, so the subject was dropped. Five years later, however, Roosevelt accepted invitations from Argentina and Brazil to address certain societies. It occurred to him then that after making this tour he could come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon. His plans for the trip were soon under way. Frank Chapman, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, gladly appointed the naturalists George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller to accompany the party. Both were veterans of the tropical American forests. Father Zahm also agreed to go. Kermit Roosevelt joined the party.
On December 9 of the same year, as the party left Asuncion to ascend the Paraguay, Colonel Rondo and other Brazilians joined the expedition as representatives of the Brazilian government.
In the latter part of the next February the party started their long descent of the Duvida—“The River of Doubt.” Colonel Roosevelt describes this voyage interestingly in his book “Through the Brazilian Wilderness.” Many dangers confronted them. The descent of the rapids was perilous to men and boats. They were in danger of being slain through encounters with Indians. They faced the necessity of long, wearing portages or contact with impassable swamps. Fever and dysentery were ills that haunted that region. Starvation, caused by the loss of supplies, was not beyond the bounds of possibility.
On they went, however, enduring the dangers and hardships they encountered like the true explorers they were. They had to wade through water for days at a time. Their shoes were never dry. Insect bites became festering wounds in their bodies. Poisonous ants, biting flies, ticks, wasps and bees never ceased to torment them.
Under these circumstances the temper of the men was sorely tried. At last came a tragedy. Julio, one of their attendants, a powerful fellow but a rogue, shot Paishon, a good-natured negro sergeant. The murderer escaped into the wilderness and was never found.
At last, exhausted and almost broken by their terrible hardships, they reached their destination. They had put on the map a river of some 1,500 kilometers’ length from its highest source to its confluence with the Amazon.
Some of his statements on the subject of his explorations and discoveries were twisted and ridiculed by the press. The fact remains that he rendered a great service to geographers by locating the mouth of this river exactly. Other explorers had discovered its source but they possessed neither the courage nor endurance to follow it to its mouth. It was a real River of Doubt, because nobody knew where it led until Colonel Roosevelt cleared away the mystery.
Colonel Rondo, chief of the Brazilian mission which had accompanied the Colonel’s party, told later how the Colonel’s leg had become infected. While the party was shooting the rapids in the River of Doubt, he said, the boat came near being capsized, and in trying to save it Colonel Roosevelt received a wound in the leg. Poison spread from this to the blood and impeded the Colonel’s walking.
When he returned to New York, highly honored by the Brazilian government and praised for his achievements by explorers who knew the greatness of his undertaking, he was a sick man. Fever burned within him. His constitution was undermined. He admitted now that he had waited too long to undertake the hardest and most perilous task of his life.
These facts lead inevitably to the conclusion that the trip to South America marked the beginning of the end for the Colonel. Friends and physicians point to the fact that from that time began the series of maladies that attacked him recurrently until his death. Viewing the terrible hardships Roosevelt experienced on this journey of exploration it is not going wide of the mark to say that he laid on the altar of science a score of what would have been his most fruitful years.