So a couple years back my wife read Candice Millard’s excellent nonfiction book The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (2005). She raved about it and I put it on my reading list, but somehow or other I ended up reading another more recently published Candace Millard book first, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile (2022).
In our era of satellite GPS coordinates and Google maps it’s hard to imagine the quest to discover the origin of the Nile (and particularly the White Nile) that consumed the Royal Geographical Society and British explorers in the 19th century. Millard’s book focuses on two fascinating men, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, who joined forces for a time and helped solve the mystery. (Ultimately it’s revealed that the White Nile originates flowing out from Africa’s Lake Victoria—or in waters of the Kagera River: it’s complicated.) Both men seem brilliant in their own ways and slightly mad for even attempting travel in eastern Africa. Their journey ends up taking several years and both explorers are close to death more than once. They battle disease, bizarre, hostile tribes, tropical heat, snakes and insects and a daunting landscape, all just to identify where the waters first start flowing that eventually become the mighty Nile River. For a somewhat romanticized (and charming) version of the story, see the film Mountains of the Moon (1990), starring Patrick Bergin and Iain Glen, who do a good job of bringing these daring explorers to life. It’s a story of heartbreak and suffering, marred by egos and the acclaim fought over by these 19th century figures.
If I were to quibble about their exploits I might note that they were so infirm from various diseases and injuries that at times they had to be carried by African porters. The notion of their “discovering” the Nile is a bit suspect, of course, but they did travel—with quite a bit of assistance—to deepest, darkest Africa and trace its source . . . kind of. (They still weren’t quite sure even when they returned to England.) But as difficult as their journey was, Teddy Roosevelt’s expedition of 1912 to map an Amazon tributary known as Rio Duida or “The River of Doubt” matches it at every level, with less assistance and more foolish chutzpah. (An odd note of thematic and historical intersection, their Amazon journey unfolds in 1912-13, soon after Hubert Darrell’s disappearance in far northern Canada, circa 1910-11. See post below.)
As an enthusiastic backcountry paddler (mainly kayaks and inflatable rafts) their preparation for this expedition to the Amazon seems laughable and perilous. The man in charge of organizing it had never been to the Amazon and knew little about float trips. Teddy Roosevelt thought it would be something of a lark. He had recently lost a reelection campaign for President and was looking to distract himself from that sense of failure and disappointment. It wasn’t until they were already in the Amazon that he got the idea to float the River of Doubt from its source to another tributary of the Amazon, where it was known to flow. They quickly and somewhat haphazardly changed their plans and embarked on a tortuous trip into the jungle. The descriptions of their misery are impressive: Insects bothered them constantly, they ran short on food, their boats were left behind due to transportation problems, so they had to rely on dugout canoes. These are fine for flat-water rivers or lakes but the River of Doubt was frenzied with waterfalls and rapids. By the end of their months-long journey Teddy Roosevelt is very near death. Teddy’s son, Kermit, is also a major character in the story. Of the two books I found River of Doubt to be a more enjoyable read. Although I knew bits and pieces of Teddy Roosevelt’s biography, I learned much more about the man, and found him to be fascinating and even inspirational. He’s a pillar of strength, honor, nobility and wisdom compared to the venal creature whom we now call President.