APPENDIX C 



MY LETTER OF MAY i TO GENERAL LAURO MULLER 



The first report on the expedition, made by me immediately after 

 my arrival at Manaos, and published in Rio Janeiro upon its receipt, 



is as follows: 



May 1st, 1914. 

 To His Excellency The Minister of 

 Foreign Affairs, 

 Rio-de-Janeiro. 

 My dear General Lauro MiJller: 



I wish first to express my profound acknowledgments to you per- 

 sonally and to the other members of the Brazilian Government whose 

 generous courtesy alone rendered possible the Expedicao Scientifica 

 Roosevelt-Rondon. I wish also to express my high admiration and 

 regard for Colonel Rondon and his associates who have been my col- 

 leagues in this work of exploration. In the third place I wish to point 

 out that what we have just done was rendered possible only by the 

 hard and perilous labor of the Brazilian Telegraphic Commission in the 

 unexplored western wilderness of Matto Grosso during the last seven 

 years. We have had a hard and somewhat dangerous but very suc- 

 cessful trip. No less than six weeks were spent in slowly and with peril 

 and exhausting labor forcing our way down through what seemed a 

 literally endless succession of rapids and cataracts. For forty-eight 

 days we saw no human being. In passing these rapids we lost five of 

 the seven canoes with which we started and had to build others. One 

 of our best men lost his life in the rapids. Under the strain one of the 

 men went completely bad, shirked all his work, stole his comrades' food 

 and when punished by the sergeant he with cold-blooded deliberation 

 murdered the sergeant and fled into the wilderness. Colonel Rondon's 

 dog running ahead of him while hunting, was shot by two Indians; by 

 his death he in all probability saved the life of his master. We have 

 put on the map a river about 1500 kilometers in length running from 

 just south of the 13th. degree to north of the 5th. degree and the big- 



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