English, Audiobook, River of Doubt by Candice Millard, Prologue Readin
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I don't believe he can live through the night. George Cherry wrote in his diary in the spring of 1914, a tough and highly respected naturalist who had spent 25 years exploring the Amazon Cherry too often had watched helplessly as his companions succumbed to the lethal dangers of the jungle deep in the Brazilian rainforest. He recognized the approach of death when he saw it and it now hung unmistakably over Theodore. Roosevelt less than 18 months after Roosevelt's dramatic failed campaign for an unprecedented third term in the White House. The sweat soaked figure before Cherry in the jungle, darkness could not have been further removed from the power and privilege of his former office, hundreds of miles from help or even any outside awareness of his ordeal. Roosevelt hovered agonizingly on the brink of death, suffering from disease and near starvation and shuddering uncontrollably from fever. The man who had been the youngest and most energetic president in his nation's history drifted in and out of delirium. Too weak to sit up or even to lift his head throughout his life. Roosevelt had turned to intense physical exertion as a means of overcoming setbacks and sorrows and he had come to the Amazon in search of that same hard absolution, deeply frustrated by the bitterness and betrayals of the election contest. He had sought to purge his disappointment by throwing himself headlong against the cruelest trials that nature could offer him with only a handful of men. He had set out on a self imposed journey to explore the river of doubt, a churning ink black tributary of the Amazon that winds nearly 1000 miles through the dense Brazilian rainforest. In a lifetime of remarkable achievement, Roosevelt had shaped his own character and that of his country through sheer force of will relentlessly choosing action over inaction and championing what he famously termed the strength life. From his earliest childhood that energetic credo had served as his compass and salvation, compelling him to the forefront of public life and lifting him above a succession of personal tragedies and disappointments. Each time he encountered an obstacle, he responded with more vigor, more energy, more raw determination. Each time he faced personal tragedy or weakness, he found his strength, not in the sympathy of others but in the harsh ordeal of unfamiliar new challenges and lonely adventure on the banks of the river of doubt. The same unyielding will and thirst for achievement brought him face to face with the absolute limits of his strength. The exotic splendor of the unexplored jungle had captivated, Roosevelt and his men as the journey began, no civilized man. No white man had ever gone down or up this river or seen the country through which we were passing. He wrote the lofty and matted forest rose like a green wall. On either hand, the trees were stately and beautiful. The looped and twisted vines hung from them like great ropes. After months in the wilderness, however harsh jungle conditions in the river's punishing rapids had left the expedition on the verge of disaster. Roosevelt and his men had already lost five of their seven canoes and most of their provisions and one man had perished. What lay around the next bend was anyone's guess even Colonel Candido Rondo, the expedition's Brazilian co commander who had explored more of the Amazon than any other man alive, had no idea where the uncharted river would take them for Roosevelt's men. Fears for their own survival were eclipsed only by despair about the fate of their leader as Roosevelt's fever soared to 105 degrees. Cherry and Kermit Roosevelt's second son were certain that they were witnessing his final hours. The scene is vivid before me. Kermit would later recall the black Russian river with the great trees towering high above along the bank, the sodden earth underfoot for a few moments, the stars would be shining and then the sky would cloud over and the rain would fall in torrents, shutting out the sky and trees and river as the fever racked former president drifted in and out of consciousness he slipped into a trance like delirium reciting over and over again. The opening lines to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan in Xanadu, did Kubla Khan a stately Pleasure Dome decree in Xanadu. Did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure Dome decree in Xanadu.