Theodore Roosevelt River of Doubt

When Theodore Roosevelt was defeated in an election in 1913, he got invited to make a speech in South America. He decided that he would stay there with his son Kermit. Once he reached Brazil, the country’s Foreign Minister offered him a chance to explore an unmapped river in the heart of the rain forest. Theodore, Kermit, and their crew took off on an adventure down the River of Doubt. They teamed forces with Brazil’s most famous explorer, Canidido Rondon.
Roosevelt had taken his morphine with him on the journey. It came in handy because along the way, he began to suffer from malaria and he had developed a potentially deadly bacterial infection in his leg after he sliced it on a boulder. This caused his body temperature to rise up to 105 degrees. He had to tell Kermit and Cherrie to go on without him.
Kermit’s paddler had drowned in one of the many deadly rapids in the river. This same thing almost happened to Kermit. This put Roosevelt in constant fear of losing his son. Roosevelt had already had to deal with himself getting sick, and now he has to watch out and make sure that nothing happens to his son.
Once the expedition started to appear impassable, Roosevelt was very sick. The rest of the men in the group were becoming sick too because they were so exhausted and hungry. The only man among them who believed that they could get their dugouts through the rapids was Kermit. Having spent much of the past year building bridges, he was extremely skilled with ropes. Everyone but Rondon supported Kermit. Roosevelt understood that the best way to ensure Kermit's survival was not to spare him the burden of carrying his father but to give him the chance to do just that. To save his son, Roosevelt realized, he would have to let his son save him.
When the expedition was over, all but 3 men survived and was able to place the river on the map of South America. Roosevelt never fully recovered from his sicknesses, but he didn’t regret anything about the expedition. "I am always willing to pay the piper," he once wrote, "when I have had a good dance." After the expedition took place, the river was renamed Rio Roosevelt.