edge was a surprise to all of those who were thrown in close contact with him. Time after time have I seen this illustrated, and never more strikingly than at my home at Pass Christian, where we found twenty-seven different varieties of bird nests in the yard, among which was that of a crested flycatcher. This bird had already hatched and with its young was in the yard. The Colonel asked whether I had ever made a careful examination of the nest of this bird, as he had never failed to find a snake skin in the hollow which they invariably select for their nest. My reply was, "No, but let's look at this one and see what's in it," and to his great delight when I pulled out the straws and feather, there were two snake skins. When he made his trip around the various bird islands, men who were naturalists and who had known bird life for years were amazed at his intimate knowledge, not only of every species of birds which we found, but as to their nests, their habits, and even the number of eggs they laid. He was a splendid woodsman, had an excellent knowledge of direction and was at his best in camp. There was not a single trip on which he did not endear himself to every one, and his thoroughly democratic manner made these trips a pleasure to him and a delight to those who had the privilege of being a member of the party. In every sense of the word he was one of the cleanest men I ever knew. He was utterly incapable of a dishonest thought; he was an American to the core, and his splendid patriotic life should be an inspiration for generations to come. T CHAPTER XVII HERCULES CONTINUED-HUNTER EXPLORER-PROGRESSIVE HE ninth miracle of Theodore Roosevelt was his record as a mighty hunter. Hercules excelled in the chase; he put an arrow through the heart of a deer, and killed a lion with his club now and then; but as a hunter of big game he was an amateur when compared with Roosevelt. It is a rule of human nature and of history that the greatest workers have also been the most enthusiastic at play. Roosevelt's hunting trips were both a rest and a tonic to him in his great achievements. The magnitude of the hunting spirit in him can be seen in the fact that eight books, or almost one-fourth of all that he wrote, are devoted to hunting or game. How proud he was as a boy at Harvard when he killed his first deer in the Adirondacks, and of its head which he put up in his room as a trophy. He tells this story of the killing of his first grizzly as recorded by Halstead in his life of Roosevelt: When in the middle of the thicket we crossed what was almost a breastwork of fallen logs, and Merrifield, who was leading, passed by the upright stem of a great pine. As soon as he was by it, he sank suddenly on one knee, turning half-round, his face fairly aflame with excitement; and as I strode past him, with my rifle at the ready, there, not ten steps off, was the great bear, slowly rising from his bed among the great spruces. He had heard us, but apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we were, for he reared up on his haunches sideways to us. Then he saw us and dropped down again on all fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders seemed to bristle as he turned toward us. As he sank down on his forefeet I had raised the rifle; his head was bent slightly down, and when I saw the top of the white head fairly between his small glittering evil eyes I pulled the trigger. Half rising up, the huge beast fell over on his side in the death throes, the ball having gone into his brain, striking fairly between the eyes as if the distance had been measured by a carpenter's rule. The whole thing was over in twenty seconds from the time I caught sight of the game; indeed, it was over so quickly that the grizzly did not have time to show fight at all or come a step toward us. It was the first I had ever seen, and I felt not a little proud, as I stood over the great brindled bulk, which lay stretched out at length in the cool shade of the evergreens. He was a monstrous fellow, much larger than any I have seen since, whether alive or brought in dead by the hunters. As near as we could estimate (for of course we had nothing with which to weigh more than very small portions) he must have weighed about twelve hundred pounds. After this he had more tragical experiences and narrow escapes, in one of which an angry beast rushed upon him so suddenly that, catching the limb of a tree, he swung over the back of the grizzly and thus saved his life. In his African Game Trails he gives this account of his killing of the first and second lions in one day: Right in front of me, thirty yards off, there appeared from behind the bushes which had first screened him from my eyes, the tawny, galloping form of a big maneless lion. Crack! the Winchester spoke; and as the soft-nosed bullet ploughed forward through his flank the lion swerved so that I missed him with the second shot; but my third bullet |