Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Through the Brazilian Wilderness. 1914.
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| white. In the dazzling light, under the brilliant blue of the sky, every detail of the magnificent forest was vivid to the eye: the great trees, the network of bush ropes, the caverns of greenery, where thickleaved vines covered all things else. Wherever there was a hidden bowlder the surface of the current was broken by waves. In one place, in midstream, a pyramidal rock thrust itself six feet above the surface of the river. On the banks we found fresh Indian sign. |
| At home in Vermont Cherrie is a farmer, with a farm of six hundred acres, most of it woodland. As we sat at the foot of the rapids, watching for the last dugouts with their naked paddlers to swing into sight round the bend through the white water, we talked of the northern spring that was just beginning. He sells cream, eggs, poultry, potatoes, honey, occasionally pork and veal; but at this season it was the time for the maplesugar crop. He has a sugar orchard, where he taps twelve hundred trees and hopes soon to tap as many more in addition. Said Cherrie: “It’s a busy time now for Fred Rice” —Fred Rice is the hired man, and in sugar time the Cherrie boys help him with enthusiasm, and, moreover, are paid with exact justice for the work they do. There is much wild life about the farm, although it is near Brattleboro. One night in early spring a bear left his tracks near the sugar house; and now and then in summer Cherrie has had to sleep in the garden to keep the deer away from the beans, cabbages, and beets. |
| There was not much bird life in the forest, but Cherrie kept getting species new to the collection. At this camp he shot an interesting little antthrush. It was the size |