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Party.” Although the real expedition had yet to begin, the Rooseveltian therapy of adventure and danger in a strange land was already working. Roosevelt had put the Progressive Party and his failed campaign behind him, and his thoughts and energy were focused on achieving something significant, something important in the Amazon. “If we have reasonably good luck we shall accomplish something worth accomplishing,” he wrote to his daughter Ethel. “But of course there is enough chance in it to make me reluctant to prophesy.”
    Zahm, on the other hand, not only confidently predicted the expedition’s success, he was already busy trying to negotiate a potentially lucrative little deal with one of the country’s best-respected and best-funded institutions: The National Geographic Society. “Ask [Gilbert] Grosvenor [the editor-in-chief of
National Geographic
magazine] if he would like a series of first-class photographs—with a suitable description—of the heart of South America,” he instructed his brother, Albert. “They will be the best and rarest ever taken and will possess a special value for his magazine. Try, diplomatically, to learn what he would give for a good, illustrated article with absolutely new and unique photographs. But do not let him know that I have written you about the matter. Act as if you were doing it spontaneously and in his interest.”
    In her suite on the
Vandyck’s
B deck, which had been reserved for the Roosevelts’ private use, Edith pursued rest and relaxation. Most days she did not even get dressed until the afternoon, when she would pull on long white gloves and a veil and sit on the ship’s deck to listen to her cousin Margaret Roosevelt, who had volunteered to accompany her to South America, read aloud. Margaret, the daughter of Theodore’s cousin Emlen, was a vibrant young woman who radiated health and enthusiasm. Twenty-five years old, she was an athlete—equally skilled at golf, tennis, and riding—and she loved adventure. Lately, she had become one of Edith’s favorite companions.
    Theodore also approved of Margaret and was prepared to let his young cousin and his wife have an adventure of their own. “Margaret has proved a delightful companion,” he wrote to Ethel. “I am now quite at ease about having Mother and her go up the West Coast from Chile together.” Margaret and Edith had planned to make a trip to Panama after Roosevelt set off for the Brazilian interior. Margaret was looking forward to it, but there were plenty of distractions on board the
Vandyck
to keep her amused until they reached South America, including the flattering attentions of a fellow passenger, a man named Henry Hunt.
    The men of the Roosevelt South American Scientific Expedition—newly christened during a last-minute meeting at the Harvard Club in New York City—spent most of their time thinking about and planning for the Amazon. Fiala could usually be found hunched over his sextant and theodolite, examining the surveying tools he had used ten years earlier in the Arctic. Cherrie busied himself with his collecting equipment, and Frank Harper studied his new Kodak camera—an invention that was fast becoming a national craze—which he had bought for the trip.
    Six days out of New York, the
Vandyck
picked up the young naturalist Leo Miller in Barbados. It was too early to tell what kind of camp companion he would be, but Roosevelt liked what he saw in Miller, and in all of his men. “I am pleased with the entire personnel of the trip,” he wrote to Chapman. “Evidently Cherrie and Miller will more than justify your choice of them.” Roosevelt’s men were equally pleased with their commander. Most of them had known Roosevelt only as a remote and exalted president of the United States, but he soon put them at ease with his tales of hunting grizzlies and stalking lions and his sincere interest in their own lives. “The Colonel’s friendly interest in each member of the party and his