East of the River of Doubt

At smoky, industrial Sao Paulo, the Chicago of South America, divine protection was invoked last week for a band of 100 men. A Brazilian flag was blessed at Mass and the 100 shoved off for the wilder ness. Northwest toward an uncharted, un spoiled piece of the earth went flashy Colonel Flaviano Mattos Vanique with 30 technical experts, 70 roustabouts and science's most modern equipment. Their object: to open for colonization the Mato Grosso (Big Woods) province, half again the size of Texas; to map topography, explore for gold, diamonds, rubber and platinum.

The Stops. At Leopoldina, outpost base for operations, an airfield has been cleared for the expedition's three planes. Two are for supply and reconnaissance, one for emergencies.

Half the party will trek far to the north west to the upper reaches of the Rio Tapajoz. The other will work among the tributaries of the Rio Xingu. Later they plan a rendezvous on the water divide. The final round will take them down off the grassy plateau and forest country, then farther north through snake, armadillo and alligator-infested jungles to Santarem, 125 miles south of the equator on the steaming Amazon.

Stocky Vanique (he looks like a young John Garner) is prepared to spend two years among the Moriegos, Cara Preta and Chavantes Indians, some savage and hos tile, some half-civilized. His frontiersmen must chop out clearings for future Brazilian towns, must fight pumas, oncas (panthers) and the tamandua, a giant ant-eating bear with a head and neck like a horse. They must convince Indians that an influx of settlers will be good. Be cause Brazil has a law prohibiting the use of firearms against Indians (TIME, Dec. 15, 1941), only the party's official hunters will carry guns.

The Props. No Boy Scout outing, the expedition has the best of scientific experts and equipment. Two-way radios will keep it in touch with the world. To record and report are geographers, botanists, mining engineers, meteorologists, agriculturists, physicians, photographers, a news reporter. To combat pestilence, the doctors will take 70,000 pills, anesthetics, analgesics, insect and snakebite remedies, and parasite exterminators.

The world first became conscious of the Big Woods province 30 years ago when toothsome Teddy Roosevelt, Son Kermit and Brazil's great pioneer explorer, General Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon (now 78), floated down and mapped the Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt). The river was later named Rio Roosevelt. Flaviano Van-ique's sphere of action is a section neglected by Roosevelt and Rondon, east of T.R.'s treacherous River of Doubt.

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