Before becoming president, Theodore Roosevelt had a reputation for being a man of adventure, from leading the charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, to trying his hand as a rancher and hunter out in the wild western states. But this American icon is least known for what this writer assures you was his greatest adventure, exploring an uncharted tributary of the Amazon River in 1914.
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, one in which he survived an assassins bullet at a campaign stop in Milwaukee (even with the shell still lodged in his chest, he gave the speech declaring, “it takes more than that to kill a bull moose”) Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of a tributary of the Amazon. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.
Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. He survived to tell the story of course, the bull moose that he was.
