remembered that Washington was swept by a blizzard which seriously interfered with the ceremonies of the day. The usual preparations had been made for the delivery of the inaugural address on the east portico of the Capitol. The snow forbade and at the last moment it was decided that it should be delivered in the Senate Chamber where all of the dignitaries assembled. In accordance with custom, President Roosevelt had driven from the White House to the Capitol with his successor, but contrary to custom he did not return with him. Immediately after President Taft delivered his address, the ex-President left the Chamber and went directly to the railway station. The man, who for seven years had been the most prominent and talked-about person in the world, became a private citizen. There was a hush over the Chamber as he left, and one could almost hear the unexpressed but common thought of that great assemblage, "He has gone."

A

CHAPTER IV

THE AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN TRIPS

FTER a few days spent at Oyster Bay,

Roosevelt, on March 23, 1909, sailed from New York for Africa in charge of a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, and plants, but especially specimens of big game, for the National Museum at Washington. Speaking of this approaching trip, he said that "nothing will be shot unless for food or for preservation as a specimen, or unless the animal is of a noxious kind. There will be no wanton destruction whatever." And writing at a later time while on the expedition, he wrote:

As a matter of fact, every animal I have shot, with the exception of six or eight for food, has been carefully preserved for the National Museum. I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoölogical collections are to be condemned.

It is not my purpose to speak in detail of this expedition. I may, perhaps, take the space to

say that the achievements are recorded in a most interesting book called "African Game Trails." The foreword is dated Khartoum, March 15, 1910, and every sentence suggests Roosevelt's love for nature and the open. These are the closing lines:

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm. There is delight in the hardy life of the open, in long rides, rifle in hand, in Y the thrill of the fight with dangerous game. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.

In these lines both the hunter and the poet speak. This book is not only full of interest to the sportsman, but to the naturalist as well. At the end is a list of game shot with the rifle by Roosevelt and his son Kermit, with the following note:

Kermit and I kept about a dozen trophies for ourselves, otherwise we shot nothing that was not used either as a museum specimen or for meat usually for both purposes. We were in hunting grounds practically as good as any that have ever existed;

but we did not kill a tenth, not a hundredth part of what we might have killed had we been willing. The mere size of the bag indicates little as to a man's prowess as a hunter, and almost nothing as to the interest or value of his achievement.

One of the appendices contains a list of animals killed and of the species to which they belong, of great interest and value to the scientist. Another contains an elaborate argument by Roosevelt upon "protective coloration" in which he takes issue with some of the extreme members of the protective coloration school. Another contains the original list of the "Pigskin Library."

Speaking of his books, Roosevelt says:

Where possible, I had them bound in pigskin. They were for use, not ornament. I almost always had some volume with me, either in my saddlepocket or in the cartridge-bag which one of my gunbearers carried to hold odds and ends. Often my reading would be done while resting under a tree at noon, perhaps beside the carcass of a beast I had killed, or else while waiting for camp to be pitched; and in either case it might be impossible to get water for washing. In consequence the books were stained with blood, sweat, gun-oil, dust, and ashes; ordinary bindings either vanished or became loathsome; whereas pigskin merely grew to look as a wellused saddle looks.

His discussion of these books and of others, his reasons for selecting them, and his comments upon President Eliot's "five-foot library" are full of interest and suggest the fact that Roosevelt had always been a most omnivorous reader. The word is apt, because he was literally a devourer of books. This book of travel alone, with its notes and appendices, might well embody the full measure of accomplishment of a hunter and naturalist, but is merely one among the many of his prodigious activities.

It was just the sort of trip which would attract him, and was full of thrilling incidents, all of which appealed to some craving of his. He ran the whole gamut of experiences common to the hunter and explorer who never spared himself. Some idea of the variety of his activities may be gained from the following programme for a single day:

Colonel Roosevelt, after an antelope hunt this morning, called upon Mother Paul, the American superior of the convent here, visited the Catholic mission, helped to dedicate a wing recently added to the Church Mission Society's hospital, and took luncheon with Bishop Hanlon. This afternoon he received the King of Uganda, and with him attended a dinner.