 Section 6, the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Boutros. The Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission. By Candido Mariano da Silva-Rondon. Translated by Richard George Reedy and Edwin Douglas Murray. First lecture, Part 5. The morning of the 30th was still employed in visiting the Indian Village and the surroundings of Saltobello Falls where we breakfasted. We then proceeded on our journey to Utility. Here Mr. Roosevelt was met with a festive reception by the Parises under the lead of the Amur Major Libiano Caluso Rossi. Utility on the River Papageo or Sawayunia, an affluent of the right bank of the Giroena is a name which since 1907 designates one of the most wonderful waterfalls of the world. I referred to it in my public lectures of 1911 delivered in this capital and in São Paulo. When I alluded to the marvel with which I was struck on seeing this enormous mass of water plunge itself into space in one gigantic fall of 80 meters. I shall not dwell therefore on the recollection of the impressions which remained stamped in my mind from the moment in which still far off I commenced to hear the deafening roar of this furious mass of water up to the moment in which I set foot on the trembling soil on the border of the abyss whence huge clouds of eternal mist are thrown up. I shall only say that in seeing it Mr. Roosevelt was filled with admiration and declared that it was one of the most beautifully complete creations of nature only surpassed perhaps by the Niagara Falls. Close by those falls a telegraph station exists since 1910 and also a village of one of the three groups of Parisi Indians which I managed to dislodge from their old dwelling place at the headwaters of the river Verde and others and settle in the neighborhood of this and other telegraph stations established on the road from there to Diamantina. In their new settlements the Indians hold the legal possession of the land which they use for their plantations and live under the direct protection of the government represented by the Telegraph Lines Commission. Besides these advantages of a general nature the dwellers of the Uttarati village as also those of Ponte de Pedra have also the benefit of schools where their children learn reading, writing and arithmetic. These schools comprise two divisions one for boys and the other for girls respectively conducted by the local telegraph clerk and his wife. Among the festivities arranged for the reception of Mr. Roosevelt at Uttarati there was one prepared by the little girls of the school to which I have just referred. Unfortunately however sad news awaited us here. The niece of our honored guest who together with Mrs. Roosevelt had accompanied him on his excursion to South America and had returned to New York from Valparaiso died shortly after reaching the United States. I therefore ordered all the festivities which the people of Uttarati were preparing to cease. Here we met Father Zahm and his companions who had traveled in the motor car. His reverence was very much astonished at the great difference which he found between our Indians and those of Peru. The latter he had occasion to study during the course of a journey he had undertaken some years back when passing through the Pacific coast to the Amazon basin across the Andes. It even seems that this journey brought him certain renown as a fearless and resourceful traveler. Because at the fazenda de Sao Joao and at Sao Luis de Caseros some Franciscan friars referred to it in a conversation with Mr. Roosevelt and foretold the most complete success for the expedition which was about to be undertaken in as much as it could rely on the advice dictated by Father Zahm's wide experience. Before our arrival at Uttarati the American priest had been told by the inspector in charge of the maintenance of one of the sections of the telegraph line that it would be quite impossible to get the Parisi Indians to submit to carrying anyone across the wilderness on a chair fastened to two long rods which would serve to keep it upright and at the same time rest on the shoulders of four men. I confirmed this and added that except in cases of sickness or disablement where it might be necessary to assist anyone by this method of transport no one in Brazil could obtain such a mode of conveyance in as much as it was entirely against our habits and character. Father Zahm called our attention to the noteworthy fact that such a great difference should exist in the natures of men of an almost identical degree of civilization as in the case of Brazilian and Peruvian Indians. For among the latter he had occasion to see that for a man to submit to such a task was an honor worth disputing and it was a question of conveying any representative of the Roman Catholic clergy. We, however, did not share in our friends' astonishment in as much as we consider this and other differences as natural consequences of the methods adopted for the education of the Indians which vary according to the object one has in view. If we propose to educate men so that they may incorporate themselves into our midst and become our co-citizens we have nothing more to do than to persevere in applying the methods up to the present adopted in Brazil. If, however, our intention is to create servants of a restricted and special society the best road to follow would be the one opened by the Jesuit teachings. Whatever may be the nature of the people submitted to the system peculiar to this method the result obtained will always be the same as is proved by the fact which some time ago was related to me by Father Malan these that the Indians of Tierra del Fuego were as much attached to the Silesian mission in our days as were those of Paraguay to the Jesuits in olden times. They have not, as the Guarani's had not, any other thought beyond attributing everything to God to whom they consider they are indebted for everything which they possess and all the work they are able to do. Mr. Roosevelt, entirely in accordance with this reasoning said that he considered that the Indians are wards of the nation whilst they do not attain the grade of civilization which would permit them to intermingle with the rest of the population and be absorbed by it it cannot be an ideal of modern politics to promote or simply to consent that associations religious or civil should propose shutting them up in the ambit of their interests and of their special point of view with these opinions it was natural the American statesmen should agree and approve the action which in the last few years the governments of the Republic have wished to systematize amongst us so as to solve the great problem clearly formulated by José Bonifacio namely the establishment of the ethnic unity of the Brazilian people seeing what we were doing in this direction Mr. Roosevelt found similarity between our action and that which exists in the United States under the name of Indian service dependent on the department of the interior and with visible satisfaction he mentioned facts which prove the spirit of justice with which that government acts in relation to their Indian tribes there since 1837 the Indians rights of property over the lands which they occupy is recognized and if for whatever motive the government considers the disoccupation of any of these lands of public interest negotiations are opened up with the Indians and plots of land in some other part of the country are offered them in exchange and an indemnity in money is paid for this reason there are tribes who possess deposits of considerable sums of money in the North American public treasury and on which the nation pays in interest alone close on two million dollars the Osages tribe for instance figures as a creditor of the national treasury for the sum of eight million dollars unfortunately in regard to this question of ownership of lands we are in Brazil not only very backward but also in a more than lamentable position I may even say shameful the backwards of Brazil where no civilized man ever trod already appear on the books of the public registries as belonging to such and such citizens sooner or later according to the convenience of their personal interests these proprietors will expel the Indians who by a monstrous inversion of facts reason and morality will be from then considered and treated as intruders bandits and robbers these and other matters relative to the Indian problem in Brazil and in the whole of America came back often and often to our minds and however interesting they might be we could not allow ourselves to be absorbed by them there were other matters more urgent and necessary to be solved immediately in the first place we had to arrange the means for carrying out Mr. Roosevelt's resolution to send Father Zahm with his attendant SIG back from mutarity both were detached from the American commission and in the second place we had to organize with the resources of the Roosevelt Rondon expedition a new party to reconnoiter and explore the course of the river Papageo leaving the point where we were up to its mouth in the Juroana with regard to the American priest I arranged for all necessary means of transport to be afforded him on the rivers Seputuba and Paraguay until he should reach Coramba where he would take passage on a Lloyd Brasileiro boat from Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro from mutarity he left on the 4th of February embarking in a motor car belonging to the Telegraph Lines commission which took him to Tepira Pão for the river Papageo expedition we had at our disposal the canoes which I had ordered to be built in October the exploring party was organized with two chiefs one a member of the American commission as honorary chief and the other as an effective chief in order to fill the first named post Mr. Roosevelt appointed Captain Antonio Fiala and the duties of the second fell upon Lieutenant Alcides Loredio de Santana a member of the Brazilian commission for the convenience of the present exposition I will here anticipate the details which I would have to give later on in regard to the principal events during the voyage of the Fiala Loriodo party the descent of the river Papageo was commenced on the 7th of February on the same day the members of the expedition arrived at the rapids which became known as the Fiala Rapids where they capsized Captain Fiala could hardly swim and struggled desperately in the stormy waters now he would submerge under the eyes of his companions then he would reappear on the surface further on to disappear again in the midst of the current for a moment it appeared to the party that the expedition would there have a sad and lamentable ending at this moment someone was seen resolutely swimming in the direction of the drowning man on reaching him he extends him his vigorous arm but he had hardly terminated this generous movement when the other one laid hold of him in a convulsive and deathly embrace they seemed to form one body disappearing in the depths of the waters and whilst they were drowning they struggled one to free his robust limbs and recover their liberty of action the other to continue fixed to the hope of living a hope which is the outcome not of the dead in mind but only of the muscular sensation of being attached to something solid the swimmer reappears from the bottom of the river free from the fatal embrace he takes breath and again throws himself into the waters to defy death for the sake of saving a life whose worth to him consisted in the mere fact of its being that of a man for the second time he is subjugated and obliged to recommend the desperate struggle he overpowers him and persists in his first intent behold them at last on land both alive Captain Fiala and his saviour the canoe man, Agostinho Ferres de Lima a man from the state of Goya's an inhabitant of the wilderness an obscure hero as fearless and devoted a camarada as generally are the representatives of our strong race of caboclos so incessantly abused by national and foreign writers to exceed one another in criticizing all that is Brazilian and in destroying in the minds of all the confidence in the future of our nationality underrating the value of its men their honor and their character after this wreck the Fiala Loroido expedition returned to Utility in order to take in fresh provisions and other material in lieu of those that had been lost and also to substitute the canoe which had been carried away by the rapids by a Canadian canoe which we had taken there we recommend the voyage on the 11th next day the members of the expedition passed through the mouth of a river on the right bank which they recognized to be the Sacre below and on the left bank they discovered another on the 13th which they identified as being the Bureti and this that of the Sao Iunia also on the left bank proceeding they penetrated into the Juroana and from this river into the Tapayós whose grandfall called Santo Augusto they passed on the 24th of February continuing down the Tapayós they arrived at Sao Luís embarking in a steamer of the regular line between this port and the city of Santarém in the state of Pará from there they went up the Amazon to Manejos where they arrived on the 26th of March without further trouble beyond that of bringing down Lieutenant Loriado and the soldier both in a sick condition after the organization of the column whose journey we have alluded to above the Roosevelt Rondon exhibition was divided into three parties with independent routes but all working on the same plan and equal resources so that at the end the respective work of each could be considered as constituting the elements of one soul undertaking of the geographical exploration of the entire region studied by them of these three parties one was headed by Captain Fiala and Lieutenant Loriado the other had been organized at Tepiro Poen under Captain Amalcar A. Botelho del Magajés assisted by Lieutenant Joaquim Vieira de Melo Vilho and having as his technical staff the naturalist Leo Miller of the American Commission the geologist Dr. Yusabeo Paolo de Oliveira the taxidermist Henryc Reynish and also a botanist a physician and another taxidermist who tendered their resignations and returned to Rio de Janeiro on the first day they explored the wilderness this second party was destined to explore the rivers Camemro Ocao de Floriano, Pimenta Bueno and the Gui Parana in order to arrive in the Amazon by the Madeira but before reaching the first of these rivers on leaving the Juroena they became the vanguard of the party under Mr. Roosevelt personally assisted by me the other members were Mr. Kermit George Cherry the physician, Dr. Antonio Cajazera and Lieutenant Salustriano Lira the first party being thus reconstituted proceeded on the way to the river Duvida leaving Eutiarrity on the 3rd of February five days later we arrived at the telegraph station of the Juroena where there is a military detachment there we met a group of 25 Nambiquara Indians who manifested great rejoicing and surrounded us before we could get off our horses on another occasion I hope to be able to dwell a little longer in exposing some of the characteristic traces of this nation of Indians of which before the work of the telegraph lines commission nothing precise or of any worth was known for the present I will limit myself to say that the general impression of Mr. Roosevelt is that the Nambiquaras are a people of a much milder and gentler nature and more sociable than the great number of others belonging to a degree of civilization approximating theirs the essential difference existing between this tribe and the Australians in reference to their methods of treating their women did not escape the penetrating eye of the American statesmen as a matter of fact the Nambiquaras almost all the Indians of Brazil are not brutal to their women or to their children on the contrary they are kind and show a great deal of attention to them they supply the wants for their subsistence and give them the same food which they eat themselves obtained from their hunting, fishing and their plantations another fact at once observed by our guest was the modest behavior and the simplicity of their attitudes and attitudes not only of the men but also of the women in spite of the fact that they wear no garments and present themselves to the eyes of all just as they were born no one discovers in them an attitude a look or a simple movement which reveal malice and one might say with great appearance of truth that their habit of nudity close them more than the garments we left the Juroena on the 10th the region which we traversed under the telegraph line from this river as far as the Camemoracal de Floriano is all occupied by the great Nambiquara nation for this reason we encountered everywhere fresh groups of these Indians who being advised of our passage came to meet us on the road to all of them we gave presence to the remembrance of this meeting with some we exchanged strings of beads and other odds and ends which we had brought for caps of Jaguar skin, pottery, feather ornaments and other articles of their primitive and curious industry to describe in this march all the hardship we went through would be to repeat and enumerate the same fatigues and annoyances of all big journeys on horseback in the forest and wild uncultured open country with all if you remember that the expedition started in December and that we were now coming into the month of February it will then be understood that besides all the unavoidable discomforts of such journeys we had still to overcome the effects of our summer and the heavy rains which fell incessantly night and day but it must not be supposed as it would appear from print and hearsay that all these things were full of tedium in seeing them we cannot even think them monotonous owing to the different aspects in which the same episodes present themselves to us and the interest which we attached to them at the moment moreover with the march the landscape goes on changing and as we do not go very fast we have time to dwell upon the sites which arise and occupy our minds with one or other conjecture on some topographical problem the aspect of the flowers and even the color or the song of a bird here and there a tree which throws to the sides and above it its long fronted branches casting a wide dark shadow onto the middle of the isolated camp to the extent of which one's eyes can extend their vision as far as the long and undecisive curve of the horizon beyond an eminence in which a beautiful perspective is displayed in a succession of planes which appear to go to the infinite some covered with the light green of the grasses others with the dark tone of the woods winding according to the course of the rivers which they hide and shade and far off the dark blue of the massive mountains which gradually fades towards the north until it is mingled into the bluish white we took 18 days on these marches at last on the 25th of February we arrived at the point where a cutting belonging to the telegraph line crosses the river Duvida the canoes were now ready it was only necessary to make the last arrangements embark the baggage brought some by the pack mules of the first party and the rest by Captain Amalkar's party and finally we who formed part of the expedition for the survey and scientific exploration of the river Duvida all embarked end of section 6 section 7 of the Roosevelt Rondon scientific expedition and the telegraph line commission this is a Libervox recording all Libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libervox.org recording by Rita Butros the Roosevelt Rondon scientific expedition and the telegraph line commission by Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon translation by Richard George Reedy and Edwin Douglas Murray second lecture part one Rio da Duvida the river of doubt as an indispensable preliminary for the entire comprehension of the importance and originality of the work done by the Roosevelt Rondon expedition in the part relative to the reconnaissance and exploration of the river Duvida it is necessary for us to stop a few moments in the examination of the scientific problem which it proposed to solve and in order to obtain this result we require to refer to the state of our geographical knowledge of this region where in it was about to operate we will not be able to arrive at however a more perfect understanding of the importance or the raison d'etre of the problems which were then being ventilated unless we go back to a former epoch that is to say to the expeditions of 1907 and 1909 for the laying of the telegraph line from Cuiabá to the Madeira river which gave rise to the formulation of this problem not only in reference to the river Duvida but also to 11 other rivers discovered conjointly with it on that occasion between the meridian of 16 degrees and 17 degrees west of Rio de Janeiro some of them being cut by the parallel of 13 degrees and the others by parallel 12 degrees south of the equator the region which we have just mentioned is wedged in the interior of the great wilderness which generally one can describe as enclosed on the north side by a stretch of the course of the Amazon river on the northwest and southwest by the entire courses of the rivers in Madeira and Guapore on the south by the Jaurú Cabasal, Upper Paraguay and the source of the Cuiabá and on the east by the Arinos, the Lower Juroena and the Tapayós the enormous fluvial periphery of these wilds was known since the colonial days in 1746 the certainista Joao de Sousa Azavido passed from the river Cepotuba to the river Sumeduro by which he went to the river Arinos which took him to the river Juroena and from this river to the Amazon river by means of the river Tapayós discovered 20 years previously by Captain Pedro Diejiera the navigation between the city of Belem, Pará and Vila Bella now Mato Grosso going up or descending the rivers Amazon, Madeira and Guapore was equally known already in the 18th century the geographical exploration of these rivers was carried out at the end of the same century and in the beginning of the next by Colonel Ricardo Franco de Almeda Serra of the Royal Engineers the result of these surveys made to verify the practicability from a commercial point of view of the route indicated by Sousa Azavido appeared in a pamphlet 1798 entitled Ennavigaseo do Tapayós Para o Pará Navigation of the Tapayós to Pará which is to be found in one of the volumes of the Revista do Instituto Histórico on another expedition of much greater proportion than the above Ricardo Franco with the assistance of two astronomers Silva Pantes and La Serda e Almeda made a survey of the whole route which in those days one could follow through the interior of the country to come from Belém, Pará to São Paulo in order to arrive at this result the Portuguese geographer left the capital of Pará went up the Amazon river entered the river Madiera then into the river's Mamoré and the Guapore which he ascended as far as Villabela from this town he went by land to the waters of the river Paraguay which he reached in the valley of the Guaru he descended this river as far as Caceres entered the river Paraguay which took him downstream to the mouth of the river Tokari he went up this river and then the Kohim as far as the waters would allow navigation by canoe he traversed a stretch of land extending for about three kilometers immediately meeting the river which is navigable by this kind of craft carried down this river he penetrated into the river Paraná which he ascended afterwards he entered the river Tietê navigating upstream as far as the port of Aráre Taguaba once he went to the city of Itú and then to São Paulo in the course of this journey Ricardo Franco and his two assistants were engaged in marking out such geographical features as merited annotation thus the mouths of all the rivers which descend to the explored stretch of the Amazon to the river Madeira, Memore and the Guapore were determined by geographical coordinates after the chart of these rivers was made and having drawn therein the features of which they had taken the necessary data an outline of the general configuration nature over the whole area traversed was obtained later on this chart in combination with the reconnaissance of the river Tapaiós to which I have referred above formed the outline contour of the region which we have now before our minds the work subsequently affected by all the geographers of the 19th century consisted in figuring in this chart the courses of the rivers of which the mouths had been fixed an example of this mode of procedure had already been laid by Ricardo Franco it consisted in utilizing with more or less ability information obtained by the new cartographer with regard to any part of the river corresponding to this or that estuary the stretch resulting from this information was drawn in and by means of haphazard deductions the entire course of the river was traced almost always based on the hypothesis that it would be a watershed of another corresponding to such and such mouths we do not wish to say that such method was absolutely discretionary and capricious experts on these subjects know that I am not here examining all the elements and material which the cartographers could make use of to guide themselves by a well thought out comparison of the different hypotheses resulting from each of these data to accept that which appeared to them the more exact I will simply indicate on general lines the method which has served up to quite lately in drawing up maps of great extensions of our territory not with the idea of censuring and much less condemning such system but simply to place within reach of all the possibility of understanding why there were in the charts of Brazil so many great errors and numberless omissions as were brought to light by the surveys of 1907 and 1909 with all however benevolent one may wish to be in the appreciation of these systems one cannot fail to acknowledge that they were more apt to lead to error than to the truth who for instance simply from his knowledge of the mouth of the river Parahiba the origin of its course up to Barado Pirahi or even up to a much higher point such as Rezende or Geluz could foresee that this river in the height of the Serra do Guararema mountain takes a turn so familiar to us all after which it continues ascending parallel to itself as far as Serra da Boquena mountain however it was on the basis of such guesswork but on a much larger scale that they had to make the charts of the northwest of Mata Grosso starting from the periphery to the interior it is not surprising therefore that the charts which were held to be the best and most modern contained mistakes and omissions so great that comparing them now with the real aspect of the area purporting to be represented by those charts it is impossible to admit any similarity between one and the other to give you a more concrete example of what I am stating I will take for instance two rivers the river Gui Paraná and the river Yamari and I will compare the real elements of these rivers with those which were attributed to them in the charts made by Pimenta Bueno the most renowned of our geographers with regard to matters relative to Mata Grosso and in those more recently published by Barandario Branco and H. Williams the latter of which bears the pompous inscription Borders of Brazil with Bolivia according to the treaty of Petropolis as far as the river Gui is concerned its headwaters are shown to lay in lateral south below parallel 12 degrees 43 minutes 21 seconds whilst of the three cartographers above named the first places same above this parallel the second figures it as one of the branches of the fork which he imagined to represent the formation of the river and the last one although he closely follows the work of the first places same further north than he does besides confusing the name of the river which we are considering with the Pirahara as far as the Yamari is concerned between the parallels 10 degrees and 11 degrees one almost on the meridian of 20 degrees west of Rio de Janeiro and the others more or less symmetrically distributed on one side and the other of this meridian of which not one is more than one half degree distant however Pimenta Bueno who of the three cartographers already cited least exaggerates places one of them below the parallel 12 degrees and does not advance with the eastern one beyond 30 minutes to east of the meridian 17 degrees not less important than the incorrections where the gaps presented in these charts for the whole region contained in the interior of the fluvial circuit explored by the Portuguese geographer after having crossed the river Jorwenna to the west of the meridian 16 degrees as far as 17 degrees the expeditions of 1908 and 1909 successively encountered the rivers Inambiquaris 12 day Otubro Toloiri, Ike, Duvida and Peraculuina besides others which I will not mention the problem which then arose for each of these rivers was to discover the hydrographic basin to which it belonged and if for some of them we did not meet with difficulties in formulating and hypothesis which might entirely satisfy us as in the case of the Inambiquaris which we attributed to the basin Jorwenna Tapaiós for others on the contrary opinions were divided hypotheses which subsequently were found to be false had also at one time been admitted as being correct this was the case for example with the 12 day Otubro and Toloiri which we supposed constituted the headwaters of the river Canuma when in reality both belong to the basin of the Tapaiós but of all these rivers no one occasioned more numerous and continued doubts than the one corresponding to a source which we discovered on the 16th of July 1909 in the parallel of 12 degrees 39 minutes south and to which we gave the name of headwaters of the Urú the exploring column was composed of lieutenants Lira and Amarante, Dr. Maranda Rebiero, zoologist of the National Museum and myself to some of us it appeared that these headwaters flowed into the Guapare river others were of opinion that they were from the Madiera the problem which thus arose was worth studying and being solved not only on account of the interest which it awakened from the potomographic point of view but also its importance in furthering the work relative to the laying of the telegraph line we therefore decided to make a close examination of same and for this purpose we constituted three parties one under the direction of lieutenant Amarante who was in charge of prolonging the reconnaissance furtherly direction the second with lieutenant Lira went westward and mine which left first for the south and then for the northwest with less than two days march I discovered a new river which appeared to me to be the first water flowing from the plateau Chapadeo to the valley of the Guapare into which river it enters probably by the mouth called the Corambiara on the other hand the reconnaissance made by lieutenant Lira articulated itself so well with mine that the result of the two combined was to completely exclude the hypothesis of the headwaters of the Uru running into the river Guapare the first doubt occasioned by the course of the river which might correspond to the headwaters of the Uru was thus solved but on the 26th when my party having joined lieutenant Lira's return to the east there appeared before us a stream about 12 meters wide running in a north northwest direction new controversies arose whence came the stream from the source to which we gave the name of Uru or from the Toloroyenaza as it was impossible on that occasion to conciliate the two opinions I resolved to take note of those waters under the name of Duvida because it was my opinion that they were the same as those which gave us so much trouble in the discrimination of the basins of the river Madiera and of the river Gapore following up the march of the exploring column in a north westerly direction we had a few days afterwards to cross the course of these waters a second time again fresh motives appeared justifying the name which I had and which was finally forced upon me in as much as in my opinion we were still in the river Duvida but my distinguished assistant lieutenant Lira was of opinion that it was another river when the 1909 expedition terminated and it was thought necessary to put together in one and the same map all the geographical data collected by the expedition in the wilderness explored it appeared to us only natural that the river Duvida should figure as the affluent of the commemoracio de floriano which with the pimento bueno whose headwaters we designated under the name of Pero Quiluina form the Gui Paraná this map subsisted until 1913 in this year Lieutenant Amarante having been entrusted to proceed with a complete survey of the commemoracio de floriano he concluded that the hypothesis of the Duvida a figuring as part of this river was incorrect on receiving notice of this result on the 25th of June my mind was made up that in this case the river Duvida could only be the upper part of some river whose mouth on the river Madeira was already known under the name of Arapuana in spite of this supposition necessitating in order to be accepted that a much longer course should be attributed to the river suggested then that marked out on the charts and also that the position given by Kudro to the river Canumá should be dislocated in an easterly direction closing it between the meridians of 15 degrees and 16 degrees west of Rio de Janeiro I did not hesitate in accepting it as the only one probable and also as the only one possible taking into consideration the mass of data already established on the western region of the Tapajós Basin and the whole valley of the river Gee under the name of Arapuana the charts designated an affluent on the right bank of the river Madeira closed up in a trapezium which sides were on the east the course attributed by Kudro to the Canumá to the south the Gee Paraná to the west the river Dos Marmelos to the northwest the portion of the Madeira from the mouth of this river to that of the Canumá above named thus evolved the Arapuana could not extend itself below the parallel of nine degrees to which it did not reach neither could it get out of the section corresponding to the meridian 17 to 18 degrees west of Rio de Janeiro it was known that in passing from the Madeira to this river and ascending same one always navigated in the general direction of a meridian up to a point in which it divided into branches one of which inclined towards the east and continued with the same denomination of the mainstream that is to say Arapuana and the other deviated to the west and received the name of Castanja consequently it will immediately be seen that the hypothesis of the river being one of the feeders of this river brought about considerable modifications in the cartography of this vast region we would have to admit that the Arapuana not only went over the parallel nine degrees but also that it also reached latitude 12 degrees 29 minutes south but if this were the case it would be necessary to open a passage for it between the Canumaa and the Marmellos of which the one figured as extending itself too much westward and the other so much eastward that no space would be left for the branches of the Arapuana to expand between the two the exploration and survey of the river Duvidá could alone furnish the indispensable data for the solution of these controversies besides as we have seen it was already known that the Arapuana at a certain height divides itself into two branches one could not beforehand assert which of these would correspond to the river discovered in 1909 and this was one of the questions that would have to be decided by the Roosevelt Rondon expedition moreover the region which we were about to traverse would give room to collect a great number of other interesting facts for the geography of the northwest of Mato Grosso everything there was new and unknown from the rivers which flow into that which we were about to discover to the geological constitution of its soil the richness of its forests its population in short everything which existed there the motives which I had in June 1913 to formulate the hypothesis that the river Duvidá was one of the feeders of the Arapuana were in my opinion so valid and decisive that they authorized me to propose to the minister of foreign affairs the organization of a subsidiary party entrusted to await the arrival of Mr. Roosevelt at the highest point on the Duvidá where it would be possible to get to by steamer from Manaos and entering that river at Diera the object which this party had to bear in mind was to receive the members of this expedition on their arrival at the point already known and where therefore they would consider their work terminated there they would find the necessaries to make up for whatever losses they might have sustained during the navigation of an unknown river and they would also besides this find rapid and comfortable transportation for the termination of their voyage from this point to Manaos my proposal having met with the approval of the minister of foreign affairs I picked out Lieutenant Antonio Peroneos to organize and direct the work of that party giving him instructions to go up the river with the steamer as far as possible and afterwards in canoes so as to await us and as much as this was the only point where we were certain to meet him whether the duvita might correspond to the one or to the other of the two branches above mentioned but just as if destiny persisted in justifying up to the last moment the denomination which I had given on the 16th of August 1909 to the headwaters of the Urus the reasons which appeared to me so categoricals to exclude any other hypothesis with regard to the course of the duvita than this one which I was now admitting they did not arrive at entirely convincing Mr. Roosevelt Lieutenant Lyra presented strong and numerous arguments in favor of the former opinion that this river was only a contributor of the gi if this were the case its course would be run in a few days and to effect same work of insignificant value which would not be worth appearing as the principal object of an enterprise to be carried out by the American statesmen for this possibility Mr. Roosevelt would prefer making the sacrifice of remaining absent from the United States for a longer period provided he might terminate the exploration of some river whose importance would justify the idea of giving it his name it was his wish however that necessary steps should be taken at once to initiate the new exploration as soon as the hypothesis established by Lieutenant Lyra should be found correct because in either case it was his earnest desire to terminate in as short a period as possible the undertaking which had brought him to these wilds so that he might return to the United States in time to assist at the closing of the Mexican dispute it was not difficult for me to satisfy the wish of the American statesmen because there near the duvida was the river Anánez also discovered by the telegraph commission but with regard to which we did not know whether it belonged to the basin of the Taparios or to that of the Madeira in either of these cases however the Amazon would only be reached traveling along this river after a journey worthy of being mentioned as a strenuous and energetic feat I therefore ordered that dugouts should be built on the river Anánez they would probably not be used by Mr. Roosevelt but they would serve for the solution of the problems which were connected with the name of this river after this occurrence we commenced to descend the river duvida reconnoitering and making the necessary surveys to place us on firm ground and once having arrived at this that name disappeared extinguishing itself at the same moment when the last motives which still existed for its existence ceased end of section 7 section 8 of the Roosevelt Randon scientific expedition and the telegraph line commission this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rita Butros the Roosevelt Randon scientific expedition and the telegraph line commission by Candido Mariano da Silva Randon translated by Richard George Reedy and Edwin Douglas Murray second lecture part 2 the expedition for the reconnaissance of the river duvida was supplied with 7 canoes recently built the larger of which with a cargo capacity of 80 adobas about 1.25 tons one of these canoes was set aside for the personal use of Mr. Roosevelt two others for the services of the topographical survey which I took under my charge together with Lieutenant Leera and Mr. Kermit as sign bearer the remaining four were brought together in pairs forming a kind of raft besides the persons whose names I have just mentioned the expedition was increased by the American naturalist cherry the physician captain Dr. Cajazera two soldiers eight regional volunteers and six civilian laborers the members of the expedition were therefore 22 in all having completed the last mission we commenced to descend the river duvida shortly after mid-day on the 27th of February the river swollen with the waters from the rain for we were in the rainy season had where we were a width of 20 meters the flood was so great that the current as it pushed by touched the lower surface of the platform of the bridge which the telegraph lines commission had built there this flood great advantage to the expedition in as much as we were thus enabled to float over the many obstacles which would for this reason be submerged numbers of fallen trees lying across the river from one bank to another many dry patches of land some of which perhaps rocky would certainly hamper our navigation if we were to undertake it during the dry months now they would not ever be seen and would therefore give us no trouble whatsoever on that day we traveled 9.314 meters at times through thick woods where the Javier Brasiliensis already appeared in different parts and again through low and swampy lands the soil was constituted of Parísis Aranite the course of the river took the mean route northwards and the survey was made with 14 stations we spent the night at our first resting place on the right bank and proceeded from there on the following morning at 8 o'clock after traveling 14.778 meters we found on the right bank the mouth of a river measuring 21 meters wide by a depth of 4 meters which we recognized as being the Festa de Bandiera a name under which since 1912 we have known the waters of a source called Karumicharu by the Nambecuaras we concluded that day's work at a place 1.750 meters below this bar or say at 25.842 meters from the bridge called Ponte de Alinha on the following day the first of March we covered and surveyed a length of 20.377 meters notwithstanding that we were seriously annoyed with very heavy rain which poured in torrents from 11 o'clock up to 1 o'clock in the afternoon in this section we found first the mouth of another river with a width of 15 meters and soon after numerous signs of the Nambecuara Indians probably of the group called Navete among these signs I would like to mention a dam for fish built across that river which for this reason became known as Rebiero da Tapagem Thickets of former clearances for plantations a landing place with a few small huts and a pinguela footbridge of considerable length along which was stretched a sepo or liana in such a way as to serve as a handrail on the following day the second of March we were only able to navigate from 8am up to 3.30pm making a run of 20.013 meters there we were obliged to stop the march and encamp because right ahead of us the river formed rapids which made it impossible for the canoes to cross a little before this incident had already announced itself because the waters began to run and when we found ourselves in the midst of them it became difficult to prevent the swapping of the craft belonging to the surveying party for this reason we called this place Corridiera do Apuro as soon as we set foot on land we went ahead by the river's bank to a point where it was possible to examine the obstruction which had made us stop we saw the river in a distance flowing with enormous velocity between rocks of pharyogenis aeronite which appeared there and everywhere deeply cut out smashed two pieces and thrown one on the top of the other by the rushing force of the waters which precipitate themselves in violent gulfs then appears an island the last stronghold of resistance which that ruined ground offered against the current but the two portions into which this current appears to be divided reunite themselves again and penetrate in a funnel-like corridor dug out by them in the rock and throw themselves into the lower part of the bed of the river and continue to rush in revolted bubblings through a channel cut into the massive aeronite in this way that portion of the river where the navigation was stopped continued for a length of more than 1,000 meters below where we had encamped we had therefore to portage our canoes for this purpose we had to cut a road across the woods joining up the point where we were to the nearest point below the rapids where navigation could be recommended then the men of the expedition would with the aid of ropes could replace them in the river and would carry on their shoulders all the cargo in order to pass it also from the upper to the lower part of the rapids this work is evidently extremely tiresome not only in view of the exertion it requires to drag along the canoes but also and chiefly owing to the necessity of felling numerous trees in the woods which border the river fortunately the place where we were was a site which the Nambuquara Navite Indians were in the habit of frequenting this we found out by a trail very much trodden running across the place where we had set our encampment and which went on along the bank of the river until it crossed same by a pinguella footbridge near the place where the river was reduced to a width of 1 meter 60 centimeters but for the position in which we were placed the best signs of these visits were the camps opened up by the Indians and some even recently burnt our work for portaging was thus greatly simplified in as much as it was not necessary to cut down a great number of trees the third was entirely spent in the preparation of the new encampment which was already the fifth during this expedition and in the transportation to it of our baggage from our previous camp the portaging of the canoes was commenced at dawn on the following morning and by the evening was almost concluded while Lieutenant Lyra super intended this work I took with me two dogs which we had with us in our expedition and crossed over from the right bank to the left by utilizing the bridge built by the Navites I followed the trail of these Indians and entered their lands and the forest for the purpose of making a small reconnaissance I saw three headwaters of a river and several thickets of former plantations I did not however find any signs of a settlement I returned from this short excursion still in time to effect the survey of the portion occupied by the rapids and which I found to measure 1.310 meters I gave the name of Salto Navite to the fall which exists at this spot the outcrop of the rock which occasioned this fall corresponds entirely to that which determined the cascade called Paraiso except in regard to the direction it takes for here it goes from southwest to northeast while in the former case it runs northwards and terminates at the Paraiso de Melgaso station the rock is of a ferruginous sandstone with hard encrustation which has in many places resisted the shock of the enormous current produced by the sudden change of level of the bed of the river all the naked surface is being decomposed by erosion which is slow but increasing in many places there is a certain quantity of thick gravel quartzite pebbles and pure quartzite which indicate the former beds of the river the fall itself is formed in the shape of an elliptic curve which causes the waters to converge as if they were about to enter a funnel the fall to which we have just referred is the largest but there are two others one above and the other below it after we had concluded on the morning of the fifth we proceeded on our journey downstream the river on both sides continues to appear to us rich in rubber trees its forests grow rapidly denser and denser and therefore more picturesque the Canela Rebiereña appears everywhere and also some specimens of the Mauritia Venefera are to be seen on the evening of that day we pitched our sixth camp called the Cana on the left bank on ground covered with tall woods we had traveled 11.890 meters and were therefore at 74.120 meters from the point of departure of the expedition at the place where we had our present camp the Duvidon was 45 meters wide or say 5 meters more than at the position of our fifth camp from this place we descended on the sixth a distance of 19.420 meters further down we halted shortly below the bar of a river to which we gave the name of Figuera and pitched our seventh camp called the Asahi because we could already hear from there the roaring of a second waterfall which required exploring we noted on one side and the other of the river 18 sources or headwaters and 5 rivers we also found another Pinguela footbridge with Sipo Leana handrail made by the Indians from the stations 745 and 746 of the topographical survey we could see in the direction of the south a high range of mountains which apparently had a distance of some 4 kilometers from the left bank of the Duvidon from that moment we went on meeting from time to time some of its slopes which almost reached the river the removal from the seventh camp to the eighth had to be conducted over land along a road of 490 meters cut out in the woods which wound around the waterfall this removal of the secondary arrangements for the portaging of the canoes were effected on the seventh the waterfall comprised two main falls 100 meters apart preceded and followed up by dangerous rapids the terraces of these falls were formed by a rock of red porphyrite which lay across the river in the normal direction of its course on the following day I found out that below the point selected for coming out of that portage road it was necessary to cut through another one 180 meters in length notwithstanding all the goodwill of Lieutenant Leera and Mr. Kermit in executing this service it was not possible to conclude same before the tenth these developments caused a great deal of annoyance to Mr. Roosevelt who feared lest all this should result in delaying still more the termination of the journey and consequently in upsetting to a certain extent his plans of an early return to the United States he repeatedly inspected the plan which we went on making of each day's march and endeavour to foretell the end of these and other contrarities but in spite of all this he did not change even in the slightest measure his habit of writing down every day the notes of his impressions of each moment and a few more pages of the book whereby he intended to divulge the things which he saw and the facts that were occurring during his travel across the Brazilian wilderness besides this he still set aside a certain amount of leisure time every day to go into the forest taking his gun with him he was always alone on these excursions and most frequently he returned without any game whatever as being short-sighted he did not always succeed in seeing the game from afar and the latter in its turn was scared and fled when it heard his footsteps as he approached it finally on the tenth we were able to proceed on our reconnaissance of the duvida below those falls the larger of which took the name of César de Marcos did not succeed in traveling 732 meters completely unhindered we soon after came up to another cataract fortunately in this one there was a channel which permitted us to pass the canoes over unloaded the baggage and the men had to descend overland and cover a distance of 403 meters before they were able to re-embark even thus our march was delayed for three hours which was the time required to affect the passage to this cataract we gave the name of Jacaré because it was at this place where we saw for the first time in the duvida one of these amphibians some 607 meters below this waterfall we came across another one which we crossed without any trouble beyond unloading the canoes and descending them through the channels with a pilot and a prowlman as it was already very late Mr. Roosevelt suggested that we should halt and camp there our survey registered for that day the insignificant march of 1.847 meters we were thus more than 120 kilometers away from the starting point of the expedition the river here showed a width of 100 meters and flowed through a soil with an outcrop of diabetes diorites greenstone at first I had given the name of Jacutinga Atirada to our 9th camp set out in this place on the following day however I had to alter it and call it Cuebra Canoes the reason of this change of names was that during the night one of the pontoons had broken its tackle and having remained at the mercy of the current rapids went to pieces against the rocks we lost two canoes in this way and in order to replace them we ordered the men to fell and dig out a large tree belonging to Euphorbaia C.S. species the timber of which is called Tata Juba and is of a yellowish color the new boat was ready and launched on the 14th we recommend our navigation at one o'clock in the afternoon and continued until 5 p.m. covering a distance of 14.671 meters we established our 10th camp at a point on the left bank where there was a giant Tukum, Astrocarum Tukuman cut by stone axes naturally by the Indians settled in the vicinity besides this lieutenant Lira killed and offered to Mr. Cherry the naturalist for his collection a graalhaio, a bird of the falcony de species which gave its name to our camp ever since we left Cuebra Canoes we had found the river with an appearance of a continuous series of rapids rushing over a bed of diabetes for this reason we were obliged to abandon the method previously used in the survey of fixed stations and to adopt instead of siding with the front canoe in motion. The forests likewise change we now see on both sides of the river numerous rubber trees and also Brazil nut trees which are here called para nuts and as the ground is mountainous the caucho is to be found in abundance among the hardwoods characteristic of the Amazon region we still find many others which are peculiar to the sub-basin of the Paraguay in regard to the palm trees the Buriti, the Asahi and the Patua appear frequently and in large numbers the Inaha, the Bacaba and the Tucuman and others are scarcer we left the graalhaio camp at 7 o'clock on the morning of the 15th and as the course of the river below this place appear to us to be calm we again adopted our method of surveying by fixed stations this calm was however of a short duration after traveling a distance of 4.184 meters the waters commenced once again to flow impetuously and rushed through a dangerous channel of a new waterfall into which they emerged in furious bubblings having ascertained the true importance of the obstacle and the impossibility of crossing it I directed my canoe towards the left bank and ordered the leading canoe which was carrying the sighting staff to do the same as soon as we set foot on shore I went with Lt. Lyra and the Promen Wachim to survey the root of a road which should take us to the end of the falls where we desired to camp on concluding this work we returned to the place where my canoe appeared in order to make arrangements for the transportation of the baggage on arriving there we did not find Mr. Kermit nor did I see his canoe I inquired of the pilot Antonio Correa what had happened and he replied that Mr. Kermit having paid no attention to my order to come alongside had descended the rapids we thereupon retraced our steps towards the falls we thereupon running towards us I saw our dog Triguero who had been traveling in the leading canoe our anxiety became greater and greater for the dog showed signs of having been drenched in the current we hastened our pace and as we were about to reach a slope at the end of the road we saw Mr. Kermit coming up same dripping wet the relief which we then felt gave rise in spite of ourselves to our chafing remark well you have had a splendid bath eh? our friend replied that he had escaped from drowning and that the other men who had capsized with him the Canoeros, Hueo and Simplicio were on the opposite bank where they swam for safety the canoe together with its load had disappeared in the whirlpool end of section 8 section 9 the Roosevelt Rondon Scientific Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rita Butros the Roosevelt Rondon Scientific Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission by Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon translation by Richard George Reedy and Edwin Douglas Murray lecture 2 part 3 now relieved of our apprehensions as to the fate of the shipwrecked crew we could listen to Mr. Kermit's narrative he told us that attempting to reconnoiter the channel he found his canoe suddenly caught by the current and carried over the fall which was there and over a second one which followed thus rushing along from fall to fall impossible to be steered the canoe had finally become filled with water and submerged thus there was a second fall we directed our steps towards it and decided to examine same carefully on arriving there all our searching in the hopes of finding something to save was fruitless on the waters and along the banks of the river we did not see the slightest trace of the wreck which had occurred but a few moments previously Lieutenant Lyra and I commenced to study the portage road which was to connect the second fall to the first Mr. Kermit continued his search along the bank downstream after some time and on the road which we were following we met the canoe man, Hueyo who had finally managed to cross the river he told us that Mr. Kermit after examining the fall had ordered the descent by the channel and taking no notice of the information given to him that the passage was impracticable he insisted on his purpose and repeated the order in view of this the canoe man had thought himself obliged to obey although he well knew that this was most rash the canoe impelled by the current and unable to stand up against it made water and was flooded Hueyo who was in charge of this steering in his attempt to save it jumped into the river and tried to hold it by the hoser which was fixed to the bow all his efforts were however in vain the canoe carried away by the racing torrent capsized after this he had seen it drifting down the river bottom upwards and sitting on same were Mr. Kermit and Simplicio this narrative left us disconsolate poor Simplicio had not saved himself either with Hueyo or with Mr. Kermit there was only one hope left and that was the result of the search which was being made below the last fall but this was very uncertain still we sent Hueyo to help Mr. Kermit unfortunately the moment arrived when it was impossible to deceive ourselves Simplicio was drowned this sad certainty broke upon the members of the expedition as a painful mishap in which everyone shared certainly no one commences an enterprise of the kind in which we were engaged without having previously become acquainted with the idea of the danger which same may offer and of the innumerous occasions in which one has to face death it was not therefore its unforeseen arrival which shocked us but it was the pain of having lost a companion to whom we were attached in brotherly affection by the communion of past work and of the privations and hopes tried in the realization of an object which now belong to all our wishes and our hearts wishing to give expression to these sentiments we perpetuated the name of the unfortunate Simplicio at this fall and on the kilometer mark raised in the camp we placed the following inscription in these rapids poor Simplicio met his death the sorrow and preoccupation which such an accident had left in us did not succeed however in weakening our efforts the work of portaging the canoes around the fall by a road of 520 meters in extension terminated in time to enable us to commence the voyage at 7 o'clock on the following morning the 16th of March and to proceed with the topographical survey by the process known as movable sightings as we had not a canoe sufficiently light to work with a sighting rod in this way we were enabled to make 1.612 meters a new waterfall now made us stop and obliged us to explore and open up another portage road about 910 meters in length once this service was arranged and whilst the canoe men were transporting the cargo from the upper part of the fall to the lower level where we established our 12th encampment I took my gun and interned myself in the wood to find some game and some Tokari nuts Kastanhas Tokari as usual I was accompanied by one of my dogs first I went in a westerly direction climbing a hill behind the camp I then turned to the north arriving again at the bank of the river which course I accompanied downstream having walked about 1500 meters I arrived at the point where the waters divided themselves between the principal bed and a small canal forming in this way a fair sized island I was on the side of the canal which I was accompanying when suddenly I heard in front of me the characteristic sounds of the voice of the koeta the biggest of the monkeys of the Mato Grosso and Amazon Forest it was good game and convenient to bring it down with a thousand precautions to avoid frightening it crouching between the tufts of the vegetation I advanced in the direction of the sounds closely examining the branches of the trees all of a sudden my dog Lobo who had gone ahead of me broke the solitude with yelping of pain it was evident that he had just been attacked and was wounded most certainly by a jaguar or a peccary I thought but almost immediately I heard other voices these were well known to me they were short exclamations energetic and repeated in a kind of chorus with a certain cadence peculiar to Indians who when they are ready for the fight commenced the attack on the enemy my dog Lobo had already come to my side the Indians had chased him and for the second time had wounded him with an arrow my first move was to assist the dog I fired one of the barrels of my gun I waited a few moments and as it appeared to me that the pursuit was continuing for I only heard voices and could not see the Indians I therefore fired the other barrel afterwards I reflected that it would be imprudent to persist in helping the animal I could not do this without exposing myself to be seen by the Indians and this might give occasion for a struggle between them and myself I decided therefore to return to the camp but before arriving there I already repented having abandoned my poor Lobo and also not having attempted to get close up to the Indians on arriving at the camp bad news awaited me whilst the party were occupied in passing the canoe Arapuana a name we had given to same when we launched it on the river two days previously the hauser which served to sustain same and directed in the current had broken and the canoe had disappeared in the surf but what most worried me were the Indians and my poor wounded and abandoned dog I related what had happened to Mr. Roosevelt and our other companions and invited Lieutenant Lyra and Mr. Kermit to return to that place with me taking axes and beads if we should not meet the Indians we would leave these presents at a place where they could be easily discovered this would reveal to them the intentions of those who had left them there we set out therefore taking with us the Parisi Indian Antonio who formed part of the expeditionary column we arrived without any difficulty at the place where the Indians had been it was at the brink of the channel to which I referred above there we came across a long rod at the end of which was tied a bekite or small basket full of the entrails of game this was evidently some fishing implement and the motive using it was to merge same into the water to attract and collect the fish these would follow the bait as the operator lifted it up slowly until they could be seen by another fisherman armed with bow and arrows they would then be shot and easily caught we procured other traces but could only detect the trail of the fugitives which followed in the direction of the Igapo existing a little further on we however did not cross same and returned to the fishing place where we left our presents by the side of the road guided by the blood stains of Lobo we found him dead, fallen on the road to the camp 300 meters away from the point where he had been attacked two arrows had struck him one traversing his stomach below his heart the other had torn away the muscle of his right leg we found the point of the first arrow a piece of bamboo in the form of a barbed lance and from which we verified that these Indians did not belong to the Nambikwara Nation we thus confirmed the supposition which had been suggested to us by the tree which had been cut with a stone axe that the river Dhuvidha from a certain point was inhabited by a new tribe of Indians with regard to which we possessed no information we returned to the camp the wreck of the canoe Aripwana left us seriously embarrassed at this place there was no wood which could be used for building a new canoe and the four which still remained were insufficient for the transportation of the members of the expedition and the baggage the alternative of making a raft was remembered and rejected at last we adopted the decision of loading the canoes with the baggage and in which besides the men strictly necessary for the service of the navigation Mr. Roosevelt and Dr. Kajosera would embark we in all 13 persons would go by land following the course of the river and during the journey would take the necessary precautions to avoid that the two parts of the expedition should deviate too much one from the other so we advanced until we found some wood which might serve to build the canoes which we required while Mr. Roosevelt did not entirely agree to this plan it appeared to him to be very risky whilst we were traversing the zone inhabited by unknown Indians it was in this way that we proceeded on the 17th having previously joined the two canoes together which up to then had been navigating separately the surveying canoe and that belonging to Mr. Roosevelt so as to form a kind of ferry analogous to that formed by the other two during this journey we met a first waterfall with a length of 312 meters to which we gave the name of Boa Passagem and then a second fall, Sete Ilihas which necessitated a portage road of 408 meters immediately below same we came across on the left bank a river with a width of 21 meters running with an average velocity of 60 centimeters per second and discharging its waters from my mouth the traverse section of which gave an area of 339.760 square centimeters the volume of water furnished per second corresponded to 20.385 liters I gave the name of Kermit to this river in honor of Mr. Roosevelt this survey gave 6.460 meters in relation to our previous camp and therefore 123.230 counting from the zero stake at the bridge belonging to the telegraph line up to this point it was still possible to give way to the existing doubts in the mind of Mr. Roosevelt and of some of the other members of the expedition relative to the importance of the river which we had been exploring since the 27th of February but now there was no motive whatever for hesitation which for so long had held our judgment in suspense and divided our opinions in as much as all of them arose from the hypothesis which we saw could not be verified namely that the river Duvida was a simple affluent of the Guy Paraná and that which peremptorily excluded this hypothesis was the fact that the river did not possess such a big tributary as that which we had just discovered the Guy was well known and all of us of the telegraph lines commission knew that this river had not on its right bank any feeder comparable in size and volume of water to that which we were navigating it was therefore recognized that the Duvida was the principal collector of a great hydrographical basin it was certainly my opinion for some time back that this river flowed direct into the Madeira but even if it flowed into the Tapajós or into the Amazon this could in no way affect its importance to bring it down to the level of some tributary or other of secondary order the condition on which depended the compliance of the resolution taken by our government and communicated to me by the minister of foreign affairs namely to perpetrate in the map of Brazil the memory of the journey of Mr. Roosevelt's geographical discoveries by adopting his name to designate the river explored was therefore carried out and complied with consequently on the morning of the 18th before we left our 13th camp I issued an order of the day making known to the Brazilian and American commissions that from that day onward the river which we had since 1909 called Duvida would henceforth be known as the Roosevelt this ceremony with which we gave execution to the wish of the government of our country this to render once again homage to the United States of America in the person of its ex-president took place with all the solemnity in keeping with the place and the conditions under which we were on the same occasion we inaugurated at the mouth of the recently discovered tributary a wooden mark with the inscription Rio Kermit besides the number of kilometers the number of the camp the initials of the expedition the value of the geographical coordinates which we found to be latitude south 11 degrees 27 minutes 20 seconds longitude of Rio 17 degrees 17 minutes 2 seconds after this ceremony we commenced our march once again divided into two parties one going by the river on the two ferries and the other by land the ground which since we left the fall of Boa Pesa gem showed that its formation was of a diabetes rock now commenced from the mouth of the river Kermit to be granite first this was the subject which most occupied our minds as usual we would pick up samples of stones here and there destined to be afterwards examined and classified by Dr. Eusebio Paolo de Alaviera the geologist of the Brazilian commission but soon afterwards we commenced to find recent signs of Indians first a tapiri made according to this style used by the Yurhumis and Pauetes tribes of the Guiparana then three huts close together small and low and arch shaped entirely covered and closed by palm leaves each one possessed but one opening or door very small in size which was disguised underneath the leaves of the roof purposely left hanging over it as was to be expected from such a mode of construction the interior of these huts was completely dark the most interesting feature however was the arrangement of the lot of the three huts two were placed parallel to one another and slanting the third one was perpendicular to these resting itself laterally at the extremity of one and leaning on the other almost at the commencement of its inner wall in this way if they were to be attacked from one side or another one at least would be covered by the other two and in this way being invisible to the assailants could serve as a refuge for the women and children from the examination of all these things however what most interested me was the indication that the Indians of the river Roosevelt were in touch with the tribes of the Guiparana because this would facilitate in the future my work of reaching, pacifying and protecting them we continued our march and after having traveled 5.280 meters counted from the mouth of the Kermit found a second river which flows into the Roosevelt from the right side by a waterfall two meters in height and 30 in width we could only make a small reconnaissance of this new tributary along its bank as it was necessary to attend to the wish of the chief of the American commission relative to accelerating our voyage however seeing it descend from southeast in northwesterly direction we presumed it corresponded to the headwaters designated by us on the highland by the name of Marciano Avila we still descended along the river Roosevelt another 3.060 meters at the end of which a new waterfall forced us to transport our baggage by a portage road of 640 meters in length we decided to install our 14th camp here to which we gave the name of Dues Canoas in view of having discovered two Araputangas of good size from which we were to obtain the craft which we required having commenced the building of same on the 19th the two canoes called Esbelda and Chanfrada were launched on the afternoon of the 21st and these permitted us to recommend our work of reconnaissance on the following morning the topographical survey by fixed staves was also re-established using as before the Flurier's telemetre we thus traversed 9.970 meters crossing first with little trouble a waterfall formed by the outcrop of porphyritic quartz and arriving afterwards at another one much larger composed of two walls of diabetes which had to be got round by a portage road of 850 meters the latter we named Keshawera da Felicidad and there we established our 15th camp having pitched our tents Mr. Roosevelt asked me for a chat as he wished to give me his opinion as to how we should conduct the work of the expedition his view was that the chiefs of undertakings of certain importance should not occupy themselves with the details of the work to be carried out but only with the determining of the principle points and even this only to an extent necessary to characterize it in its general lines opening up and clearing the way for the specialists who would not be long in coming up and filling in the details of same in this way he was inclined to think that it would be convenient to again adopt the rapid survey I replied that we were there to accompany him and take him across the wilderness and that therefore we would execute the services in accordance with his wishes we would employ our greatest efforts to give him the satisfaction of seeing reduced to a possible minimum the time which he had still to spend on this expedition for this reason the topographical survey proceeded without our being able to obtain all the benefit of the technical resources which we had at our disposal and with which we had carried out a sufficiently exact and correct work we left the Felicidad waterfall at 7 o'clock in the morning of the 23rd but right ahead of us we had to suspend our march because the river forming rapids was enclosed in a canyon opened through a rock of quartzite which runs from the right bank to the left from southeast to northeast on all sides could be seen huge boulders hurled one over the other by the tearing force of the current and although the aspect was very picturesque it increased however the difficulty of discovering the canal by which the unloaded canoes could be passed the first reconnaissance made along the left bank gave us no other result beyond the finding of fresh signs of Indians we therefore passed over to the right bank and there we found the convenient canal the baggage was transported by land over a distance of 1.096 meters and the work only terminated in the afternoon at almost 4 o'clock in spite of this we proceeded on our journey we passed by a sharp pointed rock of diabetes 2 meters above the level of the river and we established our 16th camp at a place where the dim murmur of the waters rushing between the rocks could be heard on this day when we worked from 7 o'clock in the morning until about 5 o'clock in the afternoon we did not succeed in advancing more than 12.600 meters were it not for the obstacles we had encountered we would have covered more than 38 kilometers in 8 hours alone for the survey was going at the rate of 81 meters per second on the dawn of the 24th after having chased with no result a tapir which had made its appearance in the river for this reason we named our 16th camp Anta Perdida lost tapir we got into our canoes and went to reconnoiter the rapids to announce themselves by the roar of the fall 33 minutes afterwards we arrived close by and commenced to explore it from the right side by land we walked the length of its course more than 1 kilometer at the end of which there exists an enormous basin 400 meters in length however we convinced ourselves that it would be impossible to descend the canoes over it as the waters rush impetuously over the bed of diabetes which is here and there cut in terraces forming a series of falls Lieutenant Lyra, Mr. Kermit, the canoe man Antonio Correa and myself passed over to the other bank to see whether we would be more fortunate there we had not advanced very far with the new reconnaissance when we were surprised at seeing another river which flowed into the Roosevelt with a width of 40 meters and a much larger volume of water than any of the other tributaries previously noted although we could not go further ahead with our exploration we were quite satisfied with the work done because we discovered a canal through which we could pass the smaller canoes the others would be dragged over land however I did not wish to deviate from the recently discovered river before choosing the name most appropriate to designate it taking into consideration the greatness of its waters the poetical and charming aspect of its banks and bar as also the richness of its lands most adequate to the cultivation of sugarcane, coffee and all kinds of cereals by the side of many brazil nut trees and numbers of specimens of heavier braziliances rubber, we saw the euercari palms the water sepos lianas and many other varieties of vegetation which attest to the excellence of the soil where they grow and flourish this was unquestionably the most remarkable and the most important of all the geographical discoveries which we had made since the 27th of February and as it belonged to the territory of Mato Grosso only the name of some person to whom the gratitude of Mato Grosso was due owing to the love and dedication with which he had served his people and his country could merit being remembered to receive the homage of remaining to commemorate same in it under these conditions who would not immediately remember the eminently pleasing figure dear to all Brazilians and to the hearts of the sons of Mato Grosso of the soldier who gave them the strength of his arm on the sad occasion of the Paraguayan invasion the engineer who lent the concourse of his technical knowledge in the study of the marshland region of the rivers Negro, Takuko and Aqueduana and of the writer who best knew how to evoke the ephemeral greatness of the near past of Villa Bella and depict same enhancing the beauty and grandeur of those lands and of those skies in which he saw, collected and cultivated lovingly the sweet flower of the soul of the forest which opened out and expanded in the charms of Inocencia I could not therefore hesitate I cut out the bark of a tree full of sap and life and in its lasting wood we cut the following inscription Riotone in front of the waterfall of the same name homage of the Roosevelt Rondon expedition at 156.280 meters from Paso da Linja Telegrafica March 24, 1914 End of section 9