Roosevelt's African trip : the story of his life, the voyage from New York to Mombasa, and the route through the heart of Africa, including the big game and other ferocious animals, strange peoples and countries found in the course of his travels

Front matter

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From the

RUSSELL E. TRAIN AFRICANA COLLECTION

Chapter I

IT is a difficult matter to follow the path of Theodore Roosevelt. Not that it is in any sense a crooked path. It is, on the contrary, remarkable for its undeviating straightness. But the hero of our work has cut so wide a swath in his course through modern history, has found interest in such a multitude of subjects, has taken a prominent part in so many fields of human endeavor, that one stands almost appalled before the varied panorama of his career.

It is a fact of striking signifi¬ cance, yet one thoroughly character¬ istic of the man, that, after filling for years one of the highest places in the civilized world, as ruler of the great¬ est of modern nations, he should leap at one plunge into the heart of un¬ adulterated nature, the realm of native savagery, and exchange his gladiatorial struggle in the arena of politics for as strenuous a one with the savage denizens of the African wilds.

While proposing here to deal with the whole story of his life, we seem drawn at the start to a late episode in his life’s story as it became developed, that having to do with his career as a modern Nimrod, a fearless hunter of fearless beasts. The figure of the hunter has ever stood prominent in history. In fact, history almost begins with it, for the image of Nimrod, “a mighty hunter before the Lord,” stands out in clear outlines before our eyes on the misty border line of history. And here, at history’s end, so far as the present day is concerned,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT stands forth as prominently before us another mighty hunter, pitting his strength and boldness against the greatest and most savage beasts the world knows.

The country in which Theodore Roosevelt was long lost to sight is one that less than half of a century ago was as unknown to us as the mountains of the moon, the depths of that “dark continent” in whose interior civilized man had scarcely set foot. Where Roosevelt and his son Kermit hunted dwelt groups of warlike tribes, some of them the most bloodthirsty of all the African natives. Slowly the pioneers of discovery penetrated to their haunts, and slowly the vanguard of civilization marched into this wild realm, subduing the natives, forcing them to submit to the beneficent bonds of civilization, bringing peace and order to their land, and finally bridging it with that greatest agent of civilization, the railroad. To-day men may ride in luxurious ease where Stanley and the other daring African travelers trudged with endless toil so short a time ago.

Then came the hunter, for the land through which this railroad runs — from Mombasa, on the ocean border, to the waters of the Vic¬ toria Nyanza — was one of the greatest game preserves on the face of the earth. Here roamed in multitudes the lordly African elephant, the savage and nearly invulnerable rhinoceros, the lion, that terrifying desert lord, the stately giraffe, the ferocious buffalo, antelopes in pro¬ fusion and variety, and many other animals, some of which were unknown to civilized man.

And latest of these hunters went thither that Nimrod of the Far West, Theodore Roosevelt, to share the perils and taste the excitement of the fight for life with these wildest and most savage beasts. Thus we introduce our hero into the African wilds, that Paradise of the hunter whose delight lies in tlie pursuit of great game and the thrill of perilous adventure.

A skilled, trained, alert hunter was he whose course we are now tracing. Many years before he had served his apprenticeship in this field of effort, when he exchanged his, early legislative career for a period of life on a western ranch and the enjoyment of hunting the big game of the Rocky Mountains. During his later years this love of the wild clung to him. At every convenient interval he threw off the fettering bonds of public duties and sought the haunts of animal life, not so much for the pleasure of killing as for the delight of escaping for a time from the trammels of civilization.

In that critical interval when President McKinley lay between life and death, his strenuous Vice-President broke away and lost himself in the breezy depths of the Adirondacks, where a long hunt was needed to find him when tidings came of the President's dying state. In this instance, for once in his life, the hunter became the hunted, and proved as hard to find as the shyest of wild creatures. At a later date, when the cares of the Presidency lay heavy on his shoulders, we find him again breaking away and burying himself in the canebrakes of the Mississippi in ardent pursuit of the elusive bear.

For a hunter of this calibre, trained and ardent, a man of steady nerves and deadly aim, a fearless soldier who had charged up San Juan Hill through a rain of plunging bullets, we can well understand the refusal to accept again the bonds of the Presidency, the schoolboy delight in winning a period of freedom from work, and the gleeful enthusiam with which he sought a new field of hunting adventure, the one fullest of the spice of danger and promise of thrilling experience of any upon the face of the earth.

Can we justly appreciate the feelings of Theodore Roosevelt when he finally set foot on African soil; made his way inland from the sea¬ shore to that crowded domain of wild life where roamed in freedom wild animals which hitherto he had only seen behind the bars of strong cages ; saw from the train as it plunged onward into the depths of the land the graceful giraffe, the crouching lion, the lumbering rhinoceros, the various other wild animals which had learned to disregard the speeding engine and its rattling cars, having found it a place of safety rather than danger, since no bullets came from it to decimate the trust¬ ing herd?

The world of civilization lay behind him. Before him opened a world of savagery. Men there were as savage as beasts, all alike scions of open nature, free to give way to instinct, destitute of training and education except that which adapted them to the needs of wild life. Here for ages the struggle for existence had gone on in its primitive phase, Now1 civilization, armed with new weapons and new laws, had made its way into this homestead of savagery ; and while the stern rule of the whites forced the warlike natives to take up the arts of peace, the death-dealing rifle began to decimate the crowding multi¬ tude of wild beasts.

Among them had now come a hunter from the West, one who had tried every phase of adventure to be found in the hills and forests of America, and who came eager for the fresh hunting experiences offered by Africa. He came in good time. The slaughter of the herd had begun, but wild animals roamed there still in vast abundance, and the enthusiastic hunter could not fail to find opportunities for the most nerve-straining experiences.

It is not our purpose here to follow Roosevelt step by step through these primitive scenes, to describe how animal after animal fell before his unerring rifle, to tell how he faced the lion in his lair or the fero¬ cious rhinoceros or buffalo in his charge, and laid him a victim before his victorious feet. Later on the reader will be regaled with adven¬ turous feats of this kind, but here we are concerned only with the gen¬ eral phases of the hunter’s life, the preliminary topic of our work.

And here it may be said that it was not the bloodthirst pure and simple that animated the hunter. He had another object in his jour¬ ney, that of aiding the cause of science, of furnishing the galleries of the Smithsonian Institution with specimens of the varied animal life of Africa, before this should perish in the general battle which had begun.

This done, and it had been largely completed by mid July, his mission in Africa would be at an end and he would be ready to return to civilized lands. At the date named he was rapidly nearing a stage after which only rare specimens were to be shot, the collection for the Smithsonian having been in great part completed. And civiliza¬ tion was beginning to lay its grasp again upon the hunter, for we are told that he had stopped hunting to write a book — another of the favorite occupations of his leisure hours ; one of his relaxations, if we may call it such. And his request to a correspondent to “give the news” shows that his cutting loose from the civilized world was not complete, that a touch of homesickness at times disturbed his nerves.

Yet with this tidings came to us incidents of thrilling adventure.

We were told of the arrival at Naivasha of a member of the expedition, who came to the town in unloitering haste, being chased in by five lions. Roosevelt at the same time had his most threatening experience. He had set out on a hippopotamus hunt on the waters of Lake Naivasha in a small boat with two native attendants, and unexpectedly found himself assailed by a dozen of these huge water monsters. The situ¬ ation was one of extreme peril and the natives were thrown into a panic, especially when some of the brutes dove under the boat and sought to lift it on their clumsy heads.

Coolness and nerve were needed at this moment of peril and they did not fail Colonel Roosevelt. He shot two of the largest of the hip¬ popotami, scared away the others, and came triumphantly ashore, towing in his prizes. Rut if the United States was to have the benefit1 of his future services it was very desirable that he should not repeat such experiences. A!s for his son Kermit, it was said that this youth¬ ful hunter had shown more enthusiasm than caution in the pursuit of African game, some of his animal encounters approaching reckless¬ ness and calling for caution from his experienced father.

We may conclude this chapter with a few remarks on a co-ordi¬ nate topic, that of the ethical bearing of a hunter's life. It cannot be denied that, aside from all purposes of scientific reward from the use of his rifle, our hunter was largely moved by the desire for pure sport, the bloodthirst that has animated the hunter in all ages.

Yet is this as reprehensible as it is held to be by many? Is the life of one of these brute tenants of the African wilds a matter of ethical moment? “They toil not, neither do they spin." They live mainly to eat and reproduce their kind. No useful powers of thought animate their undeveloped brains, no provision for the morrow dis¬ turbs their narrow intellects ; when they fall before the hunter's bullet it is with as little disturbance of the economy of nature as when a huge oak falls before the forester's axe. To destroy an entire forest may be a serious injury. To annihilate an animal species may disturb the balance of nature. Yet to fell an individual tree or rhinoceros can have no such effect, and aside from the passing spasm of pain in the latter instance it does not appear to have any ethical significance. That is, so far as the animal is concerned, since it may be saved by the bullet from greater suffering in its after life. So far, however, as the man is concerned it has a different significance. To kill for pure sport cannot but dull the finer elements of human feeling and develop the sentiment of destruction. Yet while there are wild animals there will be hunters. The active, adventurous spirit of man leads him inevitably in this direction, and Roosevelt, in his hunting expedition, aside from the scientific purpose involved, had been yielding to the native instinct derived from primeval man and from which few of us wholly escape.

Chapter II

THEODORE ROOSEVELT comes to us from good old Amer¬ ican stock, the family of the Roosevelts tracing their career on this continent to the days of the sturdy old Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant. Klass Martenson Van Roosevelt, the first of the name in this country, landed in New Amsterdam in 1649. From that time on the family occupied a position of prominence in New York City, taking an active part in the war for independence, and later on becom¬ ing energetic and wealthy members of the mercantile community.

Born in New York City October 27, 1858, Theodore Roosevelt was given his father's name and inherited some of his father's char¬ acteristics, especially his love of outdoor life and his interest in the doings of the “common people."

A thin, pale, delicate lad, weak and short-sighted, he did not seem a hopeful case for the building of a strong man. Indeed, to keep him from the rough play of the public schools, which he seemed unfit to bear, he was taught at home and in private schools. Yet the boy had under this pale exterior the inborn energy from which strong men are made. Determined to be the equal of his fellows, “to make a man of himself," as he has said, he took part in all sorts of boyish sports and exercises. He learned to swim, to row, to ride; he tramped over hill and dale. In this way the delicate child grew up to be a hardy boy and developed into a man with muscles of steel and indomitable vim and endurance.

Stories of animals and adventure interested him from early boy¬ hood. The favorite pursuits of the man began to declare themselves in the child when he was but six years of age. And his love for a good, hard fight in later life manifested itself as early. There are several stories extant of his boyhood contests, one of which may be worth telling,

(*5)

One day he came home from school with muddy clothes and scratched and bleeding face and hands.

“What is the matter, Teddy*?” asked his father.

“Why, a boy up the street made a face at me and said: 'Your father’s a fakir.’ He was a good deal bigger than me, but I couldn’t stand that; so I just pitched in. I had a pretty hard time, but I licked him.”

“That’s right, I am glad you licked him,” said the older Theodore, who evidently was born with fighting blood, like his combative son.

We may quote from the younger Theodore a statement which lets in a good deal of light upon the character of the father and upon the inheritance and training of the son. He tells us this :

“My father, all my people, held that no one had a right to merely cumber the earth ; that the most contemptible of created beings is the man who does nothing. I imbibed the idea that I must work hard, whether at making money or whatever. The whole family training taught me that I must be doing, must be working — and at decent work. I made my health what it is. I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard College I was able to take my part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred and ran a great deal while in college, and though I never came in first, I got more good out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself.”

Such was the training of the boy Roosevelt. We have had abun¬ dant examples of its result in the career of the man Roosevelt.

The daring spirit which he has manifested in later life seems to have been born in him. His boyish escapades were many and often perilous. A woman who lived next door to the Roosevelt house once saw young Theodore hanging from a second-story window and ran in alarm to warn his mother.

“If the Lord,” she said, “had not taken care of Theodore, he would have been killed long ago.”

The boy’s life was an active one throughout, but his time was not wasted. He was taking in knowledge as well as winning hardi¬ hood. In his tramps through the woods his eyes were kept busy, and he grew especially to know the birds, their songs, their nests, their plumage. He thus cultivated the habit of observation and study, while his active outdoor life gave strength to his muscles and tough¬ ened his frame.

And in these early days that love of the wild which has become a marked element of his character began to develop. He read stories of the great Western plains and began to long to set foot in the wilderness. Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales fell into his hands and these he devoured with a strong appetite. His friend Jacob Riis asked him once if he liked them.

“Like them!” he exclaimed, with kindling eyes. “Like them! Why, man, there is nothing like them. I could pass an examination in the whole of them to-day. Deer slayer with his long rifle, Jasper and Hurry Harry, Ishmael Bush with his seven stalwart sons — do I not know them ? I have bunked with them and eaten with them, and I know their strength and their weakness. They were narrow and hard, but they did the work of their day and opened the way for ours. Do I like them? Cooper is unique in American literature, and he will grow upon us as we get farther away from his day, let the critics say what they will.”

Roosevelt as a boy was a busy reader, as he has managed to be a busy reader amid the absorbing labors of his later life. But he was a true boy, one of the type which he has since laid down for the genuine American boy.

“The chances are strong,” he says of young hopeful, “that he won’t be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. In life, as in football, the principle to follow is : Hit the line hard; don’t foul and don’t shirk, but hit the line hard.” He seems here speaking of himself.

The time came when the active, energetic, somewhat strenuous lad with whose life story we are concerned entered Harvard College to complete his education. He was then eighteen years of age. It was an education of the type of that of his earlier years, one of much physical exercise and a fair share of mental discipline. He did his best to “hit the line hard/' We are not told that he shone as a student or graduated amid acclamations, but during his years within college walls he added much to the strength of his physical and mental fibre.

The anecdotes extant of his college career are evidence of this. He lived the life strong, took active part in all that was going on, and became quickly a favorite with his class. They laughed at his odd ways and at his enthusiasm, voted him “more or less crazy,” but respected him for his scholarship and found themselves falling into his ways.

There was an instance of this when he began the child-like exercise of skipping the rope, claiming that it was excellent for strengthening the leg muscles. Soon his classmates, convinced by his arguments, were following in his track, and rope-skipping became a pastime of the class. In the gymnasium they wore red stockings with their exercise suits. Roosevelt donned a pair of patriotic red-andwhite striped ones, and did not know at first at what his fellows were laughing. When he was told he laughed, too, but kept them on.

There were none of the college games in which he did not take part. He did not shine in any of them, but they gave him strength and vigor, which was what he was after, rather than victory. He played polo, he wrestled and ran with his fellows, he drove a two¬ wheeled gig — badly enough, but he enjoyed it. His first bout with the boxing gloves was with the champion of the class, a man twice his size and weight, with whom he instinctively matched himself. The pummel ing that followed he took with good will, and though his glasses fell off, leaving him half blind, he grimly refused to cry quarter, and pressed the fight home with all the vim of a berserker. Never since has he learned how to cry quarter or to acknowledge in any fight that he has been whipped.

There is one story told of him worth repeating, though it may be a college fable. In one of his boxing bouts his antagonist took a mean advantage, and struck him, drawing blood, while Roosevelt was still adjusting his glove. “Foul!” cried the bystanders, but Roosevelt merely smiled grimly.

“I guess you have made a mistake. That is not our way here,” he said, offering his hand to the fellow as a sign to begin hostilities.

Instantly his right hand shot out, taking the man on the point of the jaw. The left followed. Down went the culprit with a crash. The unfair blow had stirred up all the Roosevelt fighting blood, and it is a hot grade of blood when it is up.

Other things than games and exercise attracted the college boy s attention. His father had been active in the work of public aid. He died while the boy was at college, and young Theodore sought to walk in his footsteps. He became Secretary of the Prison Reform Associa¬ tion and acted on several committees. In addition he became a teacher in a Sunday-school. His family faith was the Dutch Reformed, but he found no church of that denomination at Cambridge, and drifted into a mission school of the high church Episcopalian faith.

He did not stay there long. One day a boy came to his class with a black eye. When questioned, he acknowledged that he got it in a fight, and that, too, on Sunday. The class was scandalized and the teacher questioned him sternly. The fact came out that “Jim/' the other boy, had sat beside the lad's sister and had pinched her all through the school hour. A fight followed, in which Jim got soundly punched, the avenger of his sister coming out with a black eye.

“You did just right," was Roosevelt's verdict, and he gave the young champion a dollar.

This pleased the class highly. It appealed to them as justice. But when it got out among the school officers they were scandalized. And Roosevelt was a black sheep among them in other ways. He did not observe the formalities of the high church service as they thought he should. They asked if he had any objection to them. None in the world, but — he was Dutch Reformed. This was too much. Some words followed and Roosevelt got out and entered a Congregational Sunday-school near by, where he taught during the remainder of his college term. Just what he taught we are not aware, but it seems rather amusing to think of Theodore Roosevelt as a Sunday-school teacher.

What now about the real work for which one goes to college, the studies, the diligent pursuit of knowledge? That he was an earnest student of those subjects which especially interested him we may be sure from what we know of the man. His tastes turned toward the study of living things, men and animals. As the years went on he grew deeply interested in the study of human life, history and institu¬ tions. Political principles attracted him and he read the “Federalist” with deep absorption. To become lost in a book, indeed, was common with him. The story goes that, when visiting a fellow-student, he would be apt to pick up a volume, and immediately become so buried in its contents that a cannon would hardly have awakened him to the social duty of the hour.

Before leaving college he had gone beyond reading to the task of writing a book. Reading the extant histories of naval battles in the War of 1812, he found them unfairly partisan. William James's history, an English work, was full of one-sided statements. The American histories he examined seemed as much on the other side. An impartial history appeared to be needed, and he set out to write one. He studied the official files, and “The Naval History of 1812,” his first work, is an acknowledged authority. Its fairness led to his being complimented by an invitation to write the chapter on this war for the monumental British work, “The Royal Navy.”

We cannot go further into the details of Roosevelt's college life. It must suffice to say that when, in 1880, graduation day arrived, he stood among the first twenty of the one hundred and forty of his class ; not at the top, but at a very respectable distance from the bottom.

His college career ended, he went abroad to get a glimpse of the world outside America. But he did not stay long. His love of walking led him to take a tramp afoot through Germany. The sight of the Alps inspired him to climb the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn. He halted for a period of study at Dresden. His journey reached as far east as Asia. But he was back in New York in the year after his graduation, prepared to take his part in the battle of life.

Chapter III

THE career of a lawyer, which was the first idea of the college graduate, did not long hold the ambitious young man. Engag¬ ing in legal study in the office of his uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt, at the age of twenty-three, he at once took part in the political affairs of his district, and with such energy and effect that he was elected as a State representative before the year ended. It happened, as he tells us, in this way :

“After leaving college I went to the local political headquarters, attended all the meetings and took my part in whatever came up. There arose a revolt against the member of Assembly from that dis¬ trict, and I was nominated to succeed him and elected/’

A rapid beginning this for so young a man. His innate power must have been very evident to meet with the sudden recognition. His legal studies ended then and there, for from that time on he was too deeply engaged in public duties to be able to devote time to so exhausting a pursuit as the law.

It was in the fall of 1881 that he was elected, and when he entered the State House at Albany in 1882 he was the youngest member of the Assembly. Yet he was full of ideas, overflowing with energy, and instead of keeping in the background, as such youthful legislators are expected to do, he soon made himself a storm center in the House.

Beginning with a study of his colleagues, within two. months he had classified them all, dividing them into two classes— the good and the bad. The former were decidedly in the minority, but the young Assemblyman lost no time in identifying himself with them, and this with such force and ability that he was soon their undisputed leader. There was corruption, abundance of it, deep and intrenched, corrup¬ tion much of which had slept serene and undisturbed for years, and it was against this that he couched his lance.

Some of the veterans were at first amused at the precocious assaults of the young member from the Twenty-first District, and rather inclined to laugh at his undisciplined energy. But they soon found that he was a fighter who could not be kept under. He was a ready and attractive speaker, good-natured yet hard-hitting, and could be savagely sarcastic when he had some piece of rascality to expose. His good clothes and eye-glasses made some of the members think him effeminate, but they were not long in learning that he had plenty of courage, both mental and physical, and public opinion outside of the legislative halls was quickly in his favor.

Thus from the start young Roosevelt made his mark in that career upon which he had now definitely launched himself. He was a born reformer and strongly backed all measures for the public good that came before the House. A new and reformed charter was badly needed for New York City and for several years attempts had been vainly made to enact one. It was this for which he most ardently fought. The corrupt city departments had found strength in union, and intrenched in this they defied the reformers. Roosevelt attacked them separately and one by one he overthrew them. He was twice re¬ elected and during his three terms in the Legislature he saved the people hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, which would other¬ wise have gone into the “grab-bag” of the grafters.

Shall we give some of the particulars of his legislative career? One of the most significant came early in his first session, one in which he took his stand and made his mark as a born foe of corruption. He was new then to the ways of legislators. He was soon to learn some¬ thing of them and to teach his fellow-members something of his own ways and ideas.