Through the Brazilian Wilderness Book

Theodore Roosevelt was the manliest of men.
There's no doubt about it.
This book documents his exploration of hundreds of miles of an unknown river in the middle of the Amazon river over the course of 2 months.

First of all, can you even imagine a contemporary American president taking on such a task? Like, if George Bush finished his time and office and said, "You know what? I'm going to the middle of the Amazon rainforest for a few months with nothing but a gun and a canoe I carved from a tree... see ya."

Roosevelt and his crew lived off birds and monkey meat as many of their food rations were lost in the rapids. He encountered and celebrated with the friendly indigenous tribes, and was shot at by the aggressive ones. There are stories of men getting stripped to the bone by piranas, bit by venomous snakes, and mauled by jaguars. Some of his men died on the trip.

He knew it would be a dangerous and life-threatening adventure, but he stated that he would rather be buried in a coffin in the Amazon than live out a sedentary life in the U.S. It's ironic because it's this voyage that highly contributed to his premature death, as he left a hardy adventurer, but returned a frail and weakened man.

The purpose of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition was to accurately document and explore a large tributary river that had not previously been on any maps. He also had members along of the American Museum of Natural History that caught hundreds of species from the land, many of which were new to science. It was a painstaking task and progress was slow. He and his men wondered if they would even make it out alive. It's written like Roosevelt's own journal and it's a fascinating piece of adventure literature that I highly recommend.

I'll end my review with my favorite line of the book. I love the phrase "hauntingly beautiful" and I rarely get to use it. But I find the following example a more than appropriate use, as its quite possibly one of the greatest quotes in contemporary American literature especially considering the context:

"It was a strange and interesting sight to see these utterly wild, friendly savages circling in their slow dance, and chanting their immemorial melodies, in the brilliant tropical moonlight, with the river rushing by in the background, through the lonely heart of the wilderness.
The indians stayed with us, feasting, dancing, and singing until the early hours of the morning. Then they suddenly and silently disappeared into the darkness, and did not return."- Theodore Roosevelt.