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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/29312-8.txt b/29312-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd25d06 --- /dev/null +++ b/29312-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1612 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Camping with President Roosevelt, by John Burroughs + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Camping with President Roosevelt + +Author: John Burroughs + +Release Date: July 4, 2009 [EBook #29312] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive) + + + + + +[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this +text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant +spellings and other inconsistencies.] + + +[Illustration: ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT. + +(ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.)] + + + + + CAMPING WITH + PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT + + + By JOHN BURROUGHS + + + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY + + COPYRIGHT, 1906 + BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. + + _Reprinted from + The Atlantic Monthly + May, 1906_ + + + + +CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT + +BY JOHN BURROUGHS + + +At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President +Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write up +my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slow +in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute +leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the trip +nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at +"Slabsides,"--administering the affairs of so many of the wild +creatures of the woods about me,--I have not till this blessed season +found the time to put on record an account of the most interesting +thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the +President himself. + + +A STORM CENTRE + +When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the +journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not +always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The +President himself is a good deal of a storm,--a man of such abounding +energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around +him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied on +his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving +personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass +through. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in +the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few +attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it +likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I had +visions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be done +only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my +life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so out +there, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on +horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not +been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be +likely to fare with me there? + + +THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY + +I had known the President several years before he became famous, and +we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His +interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main +motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in +its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often +hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would +be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself. +For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was +no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as +Roosevelt. + + +HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS + +Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in +the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, +and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I +did,--as if he did not love them much more, because his love is +founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life. +She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I +might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not +come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; +then I shall have no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him +say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp in meat. +I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasion. + +I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to +such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs,--men who +regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from +that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who +share with the world the delight they experience in the chase. Such a +hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is +from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"--bears, cougars, +and bobcats,--the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful +and beautiful game. + +The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. +The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain +nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged its +body across the trail. Of course, the President would not now on his +hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in +meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or +a steer for the table at home. + +We left Washington on April 1, and strung several of the larger +Western cities on our thread of travel,--Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, +St. Paul, Minneapolis,--as well as many lesser towns, in each of which +the President made an address, sometimes brief, on a few occasions of +an hour or more. + + +MEETING THE PEOPLE + +He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he +went. He could easily match their Western cordiality and +good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or +had already gathered, to welcome him. His advent made a holiday in +each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme +was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to +receive him,--they usually boarded his private car, and were one by +one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse +of carriages; then to the hall or open air platform, where he spoke to +the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the +train, and off for the next stop--a round of hand-shaking, +carriage-driving, speech-making each day. He usually spoke from eight +to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes +from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or +more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, +elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion +he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved +the policy of his administration. The throng that greeted him in the +vast Auditorium in Chicago--that rose and waved and waved again--was +one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed. + +In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled +the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any +speaker, but it did not seem to choke the President, though he does +not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy +about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the +trusts. + + +A PRETTY INCIDENT + +In St. Paul the city was inundated with humanity,--a vast human tide +that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages +moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and +prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty and +happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on +the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title +of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen +anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their +backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed their way through +the throng, and threw a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think +it would be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or myself. +It was the first time I had ever had flowers showered upon me in +public; and then, maybe, I felt that on such an occasion I was only a +minor side issue, and public recognition was not called for. But the +incident pleased the President. "I saw that banner and those flowers," +he said afterwards; "and I was delighted to see you honored that way." +But I fear I have not to this day thanked the Monroe School of St. +Paul for that pretty attention. + +[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT WITH MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB +JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE PARK. + +From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] + + +GRATIFYING THE CHILDREN + +The time of the passing of the presidential train seemed well known, +even on the Dakota prairies. At one point I remember a little brown +schoolhouse stood not far off, and near the track the school-ma'am, +with her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but the +President caught a glimpse ahead through the window, and quickly took +in the situation. With napkin in hand, he rushed out on the platform +and waved to them. "Those children," he said, as he came back, "wanted +to see the President of the United States, and I could not disappoint +them. They may never have another chance. What a deep impression such +things make when we are young!" + + +COWBOY FRIENDS + +At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his +ranch, and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with +the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy +with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with +delight all over. The life which those men represented, and of which +he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had +entered into the very marrow of his being, and I could see the joy of +it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again +with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The +men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his open-handed +cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget +the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch +days,--that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It all came +back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes +of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was, +and how much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was constantly +recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the +names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life, +instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have +made it more vivid by contrast. + +When they had gone, I said to him, "I think your affection for those +men very beautiful." + +"How could I help it?" he said. + +"Still, few men in your station could or would go back and renew such +friendships." + +"Then I pity them," he replied. + + +RANCH LIFE THE MAKING OF HIM + +He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It +had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his +eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and +cattlemen. + +Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough +Riders Regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the +Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had +not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his +rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that +he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events +above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid. + +Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening +twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car, +gazing wistfully upon the scene. "I know all this country like a +book," he said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and +tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to +me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which was +my station." It was plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking +landscape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoralized and +gone to the bad,--flayed, fantastic, treeless, a riot of naked clay +slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry coulees,--was in his eyes a land +of almost pathetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage here +and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the +pronghorn used to linger. + + +OLD NEIGHBORS + +When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour, +it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned +out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the +committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President +stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing +crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken +by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down, +and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man, +woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting +them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose +hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember +you! You once mended my gunlock for me,--put on a new hammer." "Yes," +said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was +among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was +very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they +were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay +and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his +train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I +thought of the incident in his "Ranch Life," in which he says he once +opened a cowboy ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had +recently shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite. He says the +scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down +the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee." + +Before reaching Medora he had told me many anecdotes of "Hell Roaring +Bill Jones," and had said I should see him. But it turned out that +Hell Roaring Bill had begun to celebrate the coming of the President +too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a +presentable condition. I forget now how he had earned his name, but no +doubt he had come honestly by it; it was a part of his history, as was +that of "The Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and other +classic heroes of the frontier. + + +BAD LANDS AND BAD MEN + +It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a +certain proportion of them,--bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And +it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,--land +that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping +and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads +to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, +resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to +kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by +shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who +ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old +plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint +very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind of satanic element in +men and animals--an underlying devilishness--crops out, and we have +the border ruffian and the bucking broncho. + +The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West, +who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned the idea that he could +not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking +broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could +speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, _but 'e 'ides +'is 'ead_." + + +THE PRESIDENT'S CORDIALITY + +At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were +at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet +them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the +crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now." +Still he did not come. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and +another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see +what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking +hands with the whole lot of them. Some one had reached up to shake +his hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by +such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, +that the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the +secret service men known it, they would have been in a pickle. We +probably have never had a President who responded more freely and +heartily to the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd +always seem to be in love with him the moment they see him and hear +his voice. And it is not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm +of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and +his genuine manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda +last winter I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at +some place in New England very near the President while he was +speaking, and who said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I +loved him, and had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him +to pieces." It is the quality in the man that instantly inspires such +a liking as this in strangers that will, I am sure, safeguard him in +all public places. + +I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His +Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me His +Transparency, for all I care." It is this transparency, this direct, +out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of his +popularity. The people do love transparency,--all of them but the +politicians. + +A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made +in one of his appointments. "My dear sir," replied the President, +"where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such +candor must make the politicians shiver! + + +THE MULE-TEAM + +I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in +the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we +reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp +April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops, +and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad +of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an +ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I +experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might +have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered +the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting. + +The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the +rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close, +and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping +the seat with my hands. "Well," I said to myself, "they are giving me +a regular Western send-off;" and I thought, as the ambulance swayed +from side to side, that it would suit me just as well if my driver +did not try to keep up with the presidential procession. The driver +and his mules were shut off from me by a curtain, but, looking ahead +out of the sides of the vehicle, I saw two good-sized logs lying +across our course. Surely, I thought (and barely had time to think), +he will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over them I was +nearly thrown through the top of the ambulance. "This _is_ a lively +send-off," I said, rubbing my bruises with one hand, while I clung to +the seat with the other. Presently I saw the cowboys scrambling up the +bank as if to get out of our way; then the President on his fine gray +stallion scrambling up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously +in my direction, as we thundered by. + + +SIDETRACKING THE PRESIDENT + +"Well," I said, "this is indeed a novel ride; for once in my life I +have sidetracked the President of the United States! I am given the +right of way over all." On we tore, along the smooth, hard road, and +did not slacken our pace till, at the end of a mile or two, we began +to mount the hill toward Fort Yellowstone. And not till we reached the +fort did I learn that our mules had run away. They had been excited +beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the driver, finding +he could not hold them, had aimed only to keep them in the road, and +we very soon had the road all to ourselves. + + +HUGE BOILING SPRINGS + +Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where one gets his first +view of the characteristic scenery of the Park,--huge, boiling springs +with their columns of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which +suggest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as the boiling +and steaming water does. One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied +air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on +a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves +up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side +of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting +some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored +precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's +frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the +suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether +regions,--a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements. + +With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills +and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear, +cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit. The water seemed as +unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that +held it. + +[Illustration: FORT YELLOWSTONE. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York.] + + +THE STYGIAN CAVES + +The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,--little pockets +in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with +deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of +them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking +shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the +bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was +extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave +or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a +steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of +mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,--the cool end. +When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As +they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter, and the ducks' +discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned toward us, +half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we +please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and +disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the +pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner. + + +DEER FEEDING IN THE STREETS + +Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer +came down from the hills into the streets, and ate hay a few yards +from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic +sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till +May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the +government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of +hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their +feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown +bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way. + +The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in +the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even +the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were +left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was +evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,--a hunger that seems +to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth +on his hunting trips for big game in the West. + +We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp +days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three +camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the +northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner +River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on +horseback. + + +VISIT TO THE GEYSER REGION + +The second week we visited the geyser region, which lies a thousand +feet or more higher, and where the snow was still five or six feet +deep. This part of the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by +two span of horses. + +On the horseback excursion, which involved only about fifty miles of +riding, we had a mule pack train, and Sibley tents and stoves, with +quite a retinue of camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two, +and a guide, Billy Hofer. + + +THE FIRST CAMP + +The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque gorge on the +Yellowstone, about ten miles from the fort. A slight indisposition, +the result of luxurious living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no +hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till +the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a +buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three +soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him +confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail +toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain +Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, +and I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during my youth. +That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful animal beneath you, at +whose mercy you are,--you, a pedestrian all your days,--with gullies +and rocks and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close beside you, +is not a little disturbing. But my big bay did his part well, and I +did not lose my head or my nerve, as we cautiously made our way along +the narrow path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming torrent +rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded the rocky and rapid +Yellowstone. A misstep or a stumble on the part of my steed, and +probably the first bubble of my confidence would have been shivered at +once; but this did not happen, and in due time we reached the group of +tents that formed the President's camp. + + +THE PRESIDENT ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS + +The situation was delightful,--no snow, scattered pine trees, a +secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of +the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had +stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very +naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly +with him. + +"No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I +will surely come back." + +And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came +briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he +had tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The +day before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk +on a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk, +and creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And +this he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He +came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting +before the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his +usual emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds +he had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him. +From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire, +a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India +solitaire,--one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,--and I +wished to compare our Western form with it. + + +A STRANGE BIRD SONG + +The next morning we set out for our second camp, ten or a dozen miles +away, and in reaching it passed over much of the ground the President +had traversed the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place above +a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered pine trees, the +President said, "It was right here that I heard that strange bird +song." We paused a moment. "And there it is now," he exclaimed. + + +THE SOLITAIRE + +Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from the top of a small +cedar,--a bright, animated, eloquent song, but without the richness +and magic of the song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, +and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President +was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we +only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its +West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we +pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of +the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the +encomiums that have been pronounced upon it. + +At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain +woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue +grouse,--a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we +would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the +bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch +the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them +without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of +the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had +probably died a natural death. + +[Illustration: THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York.] + + +THE "SINGING GOPHER" + +In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President +and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack +train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep +grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume, +"Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was +attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the +grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the +President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of +grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this +sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a +species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific +name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher. + +Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell +Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad, +open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to +our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the +plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our +party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell +Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some +unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way part +of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and +bearing. After conversing a few moments with the President and Major +Pitcher, he rode rapidly away. + + +THE SECOND CAMP + +Our second camp, which we reached in mid-afternoon, was in the edge of +the woods on the banks of a fine, large trout stream, where ice and +snow still lingered in patches. I tried for trout in the head of a +large, partly open pool, but did not get a rise; too much ice in the +stream, I concluded. Very soon my attention was attracted by a strange +note, or call, in the spruce woods. The President had also noticed it, +and, with me, wondered what made it. Was it bird or beast? Billy Hofer +said he thought it was an owl, but it in no way suggested an owl, and +the sun was shining brightly. It was a sound such as a boy might make +by blowing in the neck of an empty bottle. Presently we heard it +beyond us on the other side of the creek, which was pretty good proof +that the creature had wings. + +"Let's go run that bird down," said the President to me. + +So off we started across a small, open, snow-streaked plain, toward +the woods beyond it. We soon decided that the bird was on the top of +one of a group of tall spruces. After much skipping about over logs +and rocks, and much craning of our necks, we made him out on the peak +of a spruce. I imitated his call, when he turned his head down toward +us, but we could not make out what he was. + +"Why did we not think to bring the glasses?" said the President. + +"I will run and get them," I replied. + + +TREEING AN OWL + +"No," said he, "you stay here and keep that bird treed, and I will +fetch them." + +So off he went like a boy, and was very soon back with the glasses. We +quickly made out that it was indeed an owl,--the pigmy owl, as it +turned out,--not much larger than a bluebird. I think the President +was as pleased as if we had bagged some big game. He had never seen +the bird before. + +Throughout the trip I found his interest in bird life very keen, and +his eye and ear remarkably quick. He usually saw the bird or heard its +note as quickly as I did,--and I had nothing else to think about, and +had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for over fifty years. +Of course, his training as a big-game hunter stood him in good stead, +but back of that were his naturalist's instincts, and his genuine love +of all forms of wild life. + + +ROOSEVELT THE NATURALIST + +I have been told that his ambition up to the time he went to Harvard +had been to be a naturalist, but that there they seem to have +convinced him that all the out-of-door worlds of natural history had +been conquered, and that the only worlds remaining were in the +laboratory, and to be won with the microscope and the scalpel. But +Roosevelt was a man made for action in a wide field, and laboratory +conquests could not satisfy him. His instincts as a naturalist, +however, lie back of all his hunting expeditions, and, in a large +measure, I think, prompt them. Certain it is that his hunting records +contain more live natural history than any similar records known +to me, unless it be those of Charles St. John, the Scotch +naturalist-sportsman. + +The Canada jays, or camp-robbers, as they are often called, soon found +out our camp that afternoon, and no sooner had the cook begun to throw +out peelings and scraps and crusts than the jays began to carry them +off, not to eat, as I observed, but to hide them in the thicker +branches of the spruce trees. How tame they were, coming within three +or four yards of one! Why this species of jay should everywhere be so +familiar, and all other kinds so wild, is a puzzle. + +In the morning, as we rode down the valley toward our next +camping-place, at Tower Falls, a band of elk containing a hundred or +more started along the side of the hill a few hundred yards away. I +was some distance behind the rest of the party, as usual, when I saw +the President wheel his horse off to the left, and, beckoning to me +to follow, start at a tearing pace on the trail of the fleeing elk. He +afterwards told me that he wanted me to get a good view of those elk +at close range, and he was afraid that if he sent the major or Hofer +to lead me, I would not get it. I hurried along as fast as I could, +which was not fast; the way was rough,--logs, rocks, spring runs, and +a tenderfoot rider. + + +WILD ELK + +Now and then the President, looking back and seeing what slow progress +I was making, would beckon to me impatiently, and I could fancy him +saying, "If I had a rope around him, he would come faster than that!" +Once or twice I lost sight of both him and the elk; the altitude was +great, and the horse was laboring like a steam-engine on an upgrade. +Still I urged him on. Presently, as I broke over a hill, I saw the +President pressing the elk up the opposite slope. At the brow of the +hill he stopped, and I soon joined him. There on the top, not fifty +yards away, stood the elk in a mass, their heads toward us and their +tongues hanging out. They could run no farther. The President laughed +like a boy. The spectacle meant much more to him than it did to me. I +had never seen a wild elk till on this trip, but they had been among +the notable game that he had hunted. He had traveled hundreds of +miles, and undergone great hardships, to get within rifle range of +these creatures. Now here stood scores of them, with lolling tongues, +begging for mercy. + +After gazing at them to our hearts' content, we turned away to look up +our companions, who were nowhere within sight. We finally spied them a +mile or more away, and, joining them, all made our way to an elevated +plateau that commanded an open landscape three or four miles across. +It was high noon, and the sun shone clear and warm. From this lookout +we saw herds upon herds of elk scattered over the slopes and gentle +valleys in front of us. Some were grazing, some were standing or lying +upon the ground, or upon the patches of snow. Through our glasses we +counted the separate bands, and then the numbers of some of the bands +or groups, and estimated that three thousand elk were in full view in +the landscape around us. It was a notable spectacle. Afterward, in +Montana, I attended a council of Indian chiefs at one of the Indian +agencies, and told them, through their interpreter, that I had been +with the Great Chief in the Park, and of the game we had seen. When I +told them of these three thousand elk all in view at once, they +grunted loudly, whether with satisfaction or with incredulity, I could +not tell. + +In the midst of this great game amphitheatre we dismounted and enjoyed +the prospect. And the President did an unusual thing, he loafed for +nearly an hour,--stretched himself out in the sunshine upon a flat +rock, as did the rest of us, and, I hope, got a few winks of sleep. I +am sure I did. Little, slender, striped chipmunks, about half the size +of ours, were scurrying about; but I recall no other wild thing save +the elk. + + +TOWER FALLS + +From here we rode down the valley to our third camp, at Tower Falls, +stopping on the way to eat our luncheon on a washed boulder beside a +creek. On this ride I saw my first and only badger; he stuck his +striped head out of his hole in the ground only a few yards away from +us as we passed. + +Our camp at Tower Falls was amid the spruces above a caņon of the +Yellowstone, five or six hundred feet deep. It was a beautiful and +impressive situation,--shelter, snugness, even cosiness,--looking over +the brink of the awful and the terrifying. With a run and a jump I +think one might have landed in the river at the bottom of the great +abyss, and in doing so might have scaled one of those natural obelisks +or needles of rock that stand up out of the depths two or three +hundred feet high. Nature shows you what an enormous furrow her plough +can open through the strata when mowing horizontally, at the same time +that she shows you what delicate and graceful columns her slower and +gentler aerial forces can carve out of the piled strata. At the Falls +there were two or three of these columns, like the picket-pins of the +elder gods. + + +MOUNTAIN SHEEP + +Across the caņon in front of our camp, upon a grassy plateau which was +faced by a wall of trap rock, apparently thirty or forty feet high, a +band of mountain sheep soon attracted our attention. They were within +long rifle range, but were not at all disturbed by our presence, nor +had they been disturbed by the road-builders who, under Captain +Chittenden, were constructing a government road along the brink of the +caņon. We speculated as to whether or not the sheep could get down the +almost perpendicular face of the chasm to the river to drink. It +seemed to me impossible. Would they try it while we were there to see? +We all hoped so; and sure enough, late in the afternoon the word came +to our tents that the sheep were coming down. The President, with coat +off and a towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his face was +half shaved, and the other side lathered. Hofer and I started for a +point on the brink of the caņon where we could have a better view. + +"By Jove," said the President, "I must see that. The shaving can wait, +and the sheep won't." + + +WATCHING THE "STUNT" + +So on he came, accoutred as he was,--coatless, hatless, but not +latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was +to see those sheep do their "stunt." With glasses in hand, we +watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to +point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening +fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now poised upon some +narrow shelf and preparing for the next leap, zigzagging or plunging +straight down till the bottom was reached, and not one accident or +misstep amid all that insecure footing. I think the President was the +most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite +forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them. + +[Illustration: MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME. + +By kind permission of Forest and Stream.] + +In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise +of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see +some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all +were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do, +however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing, +and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks. +Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and +crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead. + + +TROUT FISHING + +The next day, while the rest of us went fishing for trout in the +Yellowstone, three or four miles above camp, over the roughest trail +that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never +fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch +in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to +feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do +this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge +and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the +sheep, and was back in camp before we were. + +We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the +yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a +black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, +mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at +once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very +singular spectacle. + + +RETURN TO FORT YELLOWSTONE + +We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the +third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at +Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old +frontiersman, who died a few weeks later. + + +AROUND THE CAMP FIRE + +While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the +tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened +to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what +a varied and picturesque stream!--anecdote, history, science, +politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman, +hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, Civil Service commissioner, police +commissioner, governor, president,--the frankest confessions, the most +telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political +leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always +surprising by his candor, astonishing by his memory, and diverting by +his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type +of memory which retains details as well as mass and generalities. One +night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have +thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the +dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed +palæontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the +main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day. +He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes +easy to him. + +At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the +expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,--an officer of the +British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety +of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of +the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British +major on his mettle to keep pace with him. + + +THE PRESIDENT TELLING STORIES + +One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who +had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, +wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had +come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President, +and his letter ran something like this:-- + +"DEAR COLONEL,--I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did +not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife." + +And the presidential laughter rang out over the treetops. To another +Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned +two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise, +in due time the money came back. The Ex-Rough wrote that his trial +never came off. "_We elected our district attorney_;" and the laughter +again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by. + +On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by +any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in +contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with +the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few +real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only +was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a _bona fide_ +"bad man," but by a "broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and commonplace +type." He had been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier +hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in +consequence, the only place where the guests of the hotel, whether +drunk or sober, could sit. As he entered the room, he saw that every +man there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian who stood in +the middle of the floor with a revolver in each hand, compelling +different ones to treat. + + +FLOORING A RUFFIAN + +"I went and sat down behind the stove," said the President, "as far +from him as I could get; and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that +I wore glasses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, +apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with +impunity. He very soon approached me, flourishing his two guns, and +ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow +became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The crowd, +mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the +wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, +'Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the +bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched him as heavy a +blow on the chin-point as I could strike. He went down like a steer +before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I +jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest, disarmed him in a +hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him +and put him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this incident in +his "Ranch Life," but does not give the details. It brings out his +mettle very distinctly. + +He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his political opponents +at Albany, during his early career as a member of the Assembly, to +besmirch his character. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations had +become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap for him, but he was +not caught. His innate rectitude and instinct for the right course +saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that +in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right +course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. +His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy +course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder and +hesitate. + + +RARE COMBINATION OF QUALITIES + +The President unites in himself powers and qualities that rarely go +together. Thus, he has both physical and moral courage in a degree +rare in history. He can stand calm and unflinching in the path of a +charging grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and +determination the predaceous corporations and money powers of the +country. + +He unites the qualities of the man of action with those of the scholar +and writer,--another very rare combination. He unites the instincts +and accomplishments of the best breeding and culture with the broadest +democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is as happy with a +frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with a fellow Harvard man, and Seth +Bullock is happy, too. + +He unites great austerity with great good-nature. He unites great +sensibility with great force and will power. He loves solitude, and he +loves to be in the thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled +only by his love of the ways and marts of men. + +He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, if not on the +planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and every side throbs with his +tremendous life and energy; the pressure is equal all around. His +interests are as keen in natural history as in economics, in +literature as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier, +in preserving peace as in preparing for war. And he can turn all his +great power into the new channel on the instant. His interest in the +whole of life, and in the whole life of the nation, never flags for a +moment. His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs or +craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's fields, that only +need a rotation of crops. I once heard him say that all he cared +about being President was just "the big work." + +During this tour through the West, lasting over two months, he made +nearly three hundred speeches; and yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt +told me he looked as fresh and unworn as when he left home. + + +SLEIGHING AMONG THE GEYSERS + +We went up into the big geyser region with the big sleighs, each drawn +by four horses. A big snowbank had to be shoveled through for us +before we got to the Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot Springs. +Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight thousand feet, on a +fairly level course that led now through woods, and now through open +country, with the snow of a uniform depth of four or five feet, except +as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean warmth kept the +ground bare. The roads had been broken and the snow packed for us by +teams from the fort, otherwise the journey would have been impossible. + +The President always rode beside the driver. From his youth, he said, +this seat had always been the most desirable one to him. When the +sleigh would strike the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he +would bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all three of +us--Major Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself--would follow suit, +sometimes reluctantly on my part. Walking at that altitude is no +fun, especially if you try to keep pace with such a walker as the +President is. But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses +drag him in a sleigh over bare ground. When snow was reached, we would +again quickly resume our seats. + +[Illustration: SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] + +As one nears the geyser region, he gets the impression from the +columns of steam going up here and there in the distance--now from +behind a piece of woods, now from out a hidden valley--that he is +approaching a manufacturing centre, or a railroad terminus. And when +he begins to hear the hoarse snoring of "Roaring Mountain," the +illusion is still more complete. At Norris's there is a big vent where +the steam comes tearing out of a recent hole in the ground with +terrific force. Huge mounds of ice had formed from the congealed vapor +all around it, some of them very striking. + + +OLD FAITHFUL + +The novelty of the geyser region soon wears off. Steam and hot water +are steam and hot water the world over, and the exhibition of them +here did not differ, except in volume, from what one sees by his own +fireside. The "Growler" is only a boiling teakettle on a large scale, +and "Old Faithful" is as if the lid were to fly off, and the whole +contents of the kettle should be thrown high into the air. To be sure, +boiling lakes and steaming rivers are not common, but the new features +seemed, somehow, out of place, and as if nature had made a mistake. +One disliked to see so much good steam and hot water going to waste; +whole towns might be warmed by them, and big wheels made to go round. +I wondered that they had not piped them into the big hotels which they +opened for us, and which were warmed by wood fires. + +At Norris's the big room that the President and I occupied was on the +ground floor, and was heated by a huge box stove. As we entered it to +go to bed, the President said, "Oom John, don't you think it is too +hot here?" + +"I certainly do," I replied. + +"Shall I open the window?" + +"That will just suit me." And he threw the sash, which came down to +the floor, all the way up, making an opening like a doorway. The night +was cold, but neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh air. + +The caretaker of the building was a big Swede called Andy. In the +morning Andy said that beat him: "There was the President of the +United States sleeping in that room, with the window open to the +floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on guard." + +The President had counted much on seeing the bears that in summer +board at the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens. +We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. At +all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a +large area. I even saw a wild flower--an early buttercup, not an inch +high--in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the +Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know. + + +CAPTURING A MOUSE + +As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel, +the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield +to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground +near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be +a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the +President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to +Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would +have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the Park. +In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the +thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that _u_ to an _o_, and +makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is +it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse +into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to +that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should +have been, but a species new to the Park. + +I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steaming pools in the +Madison River, that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose +they found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they +did not compare with our Eastern brook trout. + +I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined +some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots. It +imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of +things satanic. + + +THE MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD + +One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took a walk to observe +the birds. In the grove about the barns there was a great number, the +most attractive to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we saw +in all parts of the Park, and at Norris's there was an unusual number +of them. How blue they were,--breast and all. In voice and manner they +were almost identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch was +abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds of sparrows, with an +occasional Western robin. A pair of wild geese were feeding in the +low, marshy ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when we +tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few geese and ducks seem to +winter in the Park. + +The second morning at Norris's, one of our teamsters, George Marvin, +suddenly dropped dead from some heart affection, just as he had +finished caring for his team. It was a great shock to us all. I never +saw a better man with a team than he was. I had ridden on the seat +beside him all the day previous. On one of the "formations" our teams +had got mired in the soft, putty-like mud, and at one time it looked +as if they could never extricate themselves, and I doubt if they could +have, had it not been for the skill with which Marvin managed them. We +started for the Grand Caņon up the Yellowstone that morning, and, in +order to give myself a walk over the crisp snow in the clear, frosty +air, I set out a little while in advance of the teams. As I did so, I +saw the President, accompanied by one of the teamsters, walking +hurriedly toward the barn to pay his last respects to the body of +Marvin. After we had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs, he made +inquiries for the young woman to whom he had been told that Marvin was +engaged to be married. He looked her up, and sat a long time with her +in her home, offering his sympathy, and speaking words of consolation. +The act shows the depth and breadth of his humanity. + + +TRAVELING ON SKIS + +At the Caņon Hotel the snow was very deep, and had become so soft from +the warmth of the earth beneath, as well as from the sun above, that +we could only reach the brink of the Caņon on skis. The President and +Major Pitcher had used skis before, but I had not, and, starting out +without the customary pole, I soon came to grief. The snow gave way +beneath me, and I was soon in an awkward predicament. The more I +struggled, the lower my head and shoulders went, till only my heels, +strapped to those long timbers, protruded above the snow. To reverse +my position was impossible till some one came, and reached me the end +of a pole, and pulled me upright. But I very soon got the hang of the +things, and the President and I quickly left the superintendent +behind. I think I could have passed the President, but my manners +forbade. He was heavier than I was, and broke in more. When one of his +feet would go down half a yard or more, I noted with admiration the +skilled diplomacy he displayed in extricating it. The tendency of my +skis was all the time to diverge, and each to go off at an acute angle +to my main course, and I had constantly to be on the alert to check +this tendency. + +Paths had been shoveled for us along the brink of the Caņon, so that +we got the usual views from the different points. The Caņon was nearly +free from snow, and was a grand spectacle, by far the grandest to be +seen in the Park. The President told us that once, when pressed for +meat, while returning through here from one of his hunting trips, he +had made his way down to the river that we saw rushing along beneath +us, and had caught some trout for dinner. Necessity alone could induce +him to fish. + +Across the head of the Falls there was a bridge of snow and ice, upon +which we were told that the coyotes passed. As the season progressed, +there would come a day when the bridge would not be safe. It would be +interesting to know if the coyotes knew when this time arrived. + +The only live thing we saw in the Caņon was an osprey perched upon a +rock opposite us. + +Near the falls of the Yellowstone, as at other places we had visited, +a squad of soldiers had their winter quarters. The President always +called on them, looked over the books they had to read, examined their +housekeeping arrangements, and conversed freely with them. + +In front of the hotel were some low hills separated by gentle valleys. +At the President's suggestion, he and I raced on our skis down those +inclines. We had only to stand up straight, and let gravity do the +rest. As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the hills, I +saw out of the corner of my eye the President taking a header into the +snow. The snow had given way beneath him, and nothing could save him +from taking the plunge. I don't know whether I called out, or only +thought, something about the downfall of the administration. At any +rate, the administration was down, and pretty well buried, but it was +quickly on its feet again, shaking off the snow with a boy's +laughter. I kept straight on, and very soon the laugh was on me, for +the treacherous snow sank beneath me, and I took a header, too. + +"Who is laughing now, Oom John?" called out the President. + +The spirit of the boy was in the air that day about the Caņon of the +Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of us all was President Roosevelt. + + +HOMEWARD BOUND + +The snow was getting so soft in the middle of the day that our return +to the Mammoth Hot Springs could no longer be delayed. Accordingly, we +were up in the morning, and ready to start on the home journey, a +distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow bore up the horses +well till mid-forenoon, when it began to give way beneath them. But by +very careful management we pulled through without serious delay, and +were back again at the house of Major Pitcher in time for luncheon, +being the only outsiders who had ever made the tour of the Park so +early in the season. + +A few days later I bade good-by to the President, who went on his way +to California, while I made a loop of travel to Spokane, and around +through Idaho and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimistic, +sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Camping with President Roosevelt, by John Burroughs + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT *** + +***** This file should be named 29312-8.txt or 29312-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/1/29312/ + +Produced by David Edwards, Richard J. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Camping with President Roosevelt + +Author: John Burroughs + +Release Date: July 4, 2009 [EBook #29312] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="trans-note"> +<p class="heading">Transcriber's Note</p> +<p>Every effort has been made to replicate this text as +faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies.</p> +</div> + + +<h1>CAMPING WITH<br /> +PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT</h1> + + +<h3 class="sc">By JOHN BURROUGHS</h3> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h4>HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY</h4> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<h5>COPYRIGHT, 1906<br /> +BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.</h5> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<h5><i>Reprinted from<br /> +The Atlantic Monthly<br /> +May, 1906</i></h5> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="500" height="377" alt="ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT. +(ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.)" title="" /> +<h4>ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT.<br /> +(ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.)</h4> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>CAMPING WITH<br /> +PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT</h2> + +<h3>BY JOHN BURROUGHS</h3> + + +<p>At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President +Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write up +my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slow +in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute +leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the trip +nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at +"Slabsides,"—administering the affairs of so many of the wild +creatures of the woods about me,—I have not till this blessed season +found the time to put on record an account of the most interesting +thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the +President himself.</p> + + +<h4>A STORM CENTRE</h4> + +<p>When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the +journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not +always a pleasant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The +President himself is a good deal of a storm,—a man of such abounding +energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around +him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied on +his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving +personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass +through. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in +the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few +attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it +likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I had +visions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be done +only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my +life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so out +there, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on +horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not +been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be +likely to fare with me there?</p> + + +<h4>THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY</h4> + +<p>I had known the President several years before he became famous, and +we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His +interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> and the main +motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in +its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often +hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would +be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself. +For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was +no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as +Roosevelt.</p> + + +<h4>HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS</h4> + +<p>Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in +the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, +and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I +did,—as if he did not love them much more, because his love is +founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life. +She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I +might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not +come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; +then I shall have no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him +say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp in meat. +I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasion.</p> + +<p>I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to +such men as he that the big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> game legitimately belongs,—men who +regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from +that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who +share with the world the delight they experience in the chase. Such a +hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is +from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"—bears, cougars, +and bobcats,—the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful +and beautiful game.</p> + +<p>The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. +The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain +nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged its +body across the trail. Of course, the President would not now on his +hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in +meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or +a steer for the table at home.</p> + +<p>We left Washington on April 1, and strung several of the larger +Western cities on our thread of travel,—Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, +St. Paul, Minneapolis,—as well as many lesser towns, in each of which +the President made an address, sometimes brief, on a few occasions of +an hour or more.</p> + + +<h4>MEETING THE PEOPLE</h4> + +<p>He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he +went. He could easily match<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> their Western cordiality and +good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or +had already gathered, to welcome him. His advent made a holiday in +each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme +was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to +receive him,—they usually boarded his private car, and were one by +one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse +of carriages; then to the hall or open air platform, where he spoke to +the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the +train, and off for the next stop—a round of hand-shaking, +carriage-driving, speech-making each day. He usually spoke from eight +to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes +from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or +more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, +elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion +he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved +the policy of his administration. The throng that greeted him in the +vast Auditorium in Chicago—that rose and waved and waved again—was +one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed.</p> + +<p>In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled +the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any +speaker, but it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> did not seem to choke the President, though he does +not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy +about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the +trusts.</p> + + +<h4>A PRETTY INCIDENT</h4> + +<p>In St. Paul the city was inundated with humanity,—a vast human tide +that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages +moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and +prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty and +happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on +the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title +of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen +anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their +backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed their way through +the throng, and threw a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think +it would be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or myself. +It was the first time I had ever had flowers showered upon me in +public; and then, maybe, I felt that on such an occasion I was only a +minor side issue, and public recognition was not called for. But the +incident pleased the President. "I saw that banner and those flowers," +he said afterwards; "and I was delighted to see you honored that way." +But I fear I have not to this day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> thanked the Monroe School of St. +Paul for that pretty attention.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/i002.jpg" width="500" height="364" alt="THE PRESIDENT WITH MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB +JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE PARK. + +From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York." title="" /> +<h4>THE PRESIDENT WITH MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB<br /> +JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE PARK.</h4> + +<h5>From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.</h5> +</div> + + +<h4>GRATIFYING THE CHILDREN</h4> + +<p>The time of the passing of the presidential train seemed well known, +even on the Dakota prairies. At one point I remember a little brown +schoolhouse stood not far off, and near the track the school-ma'am, +with her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but the +President caught a glimpse ahead through the window, and quickly took +in the situation. With napkin in hand, he rushed out on the platform +and waved to them. "Those children," he said, as he came back, "wanted +to see the President of the United States, and I could not disappoint +them. They may never have another chance. What a deep impression such +things make when we are young!"</p> + + +<h4>COWBOY FRIENDS</h4> + +<p>At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his +ranch, and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with +the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy +with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with +delight all over. The life which those men represented, and of which +he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had +entered into the very marrow of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> being, and I could see the joy of +it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again +with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The +men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his open-handed +cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget +the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch +days,—that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It all came +back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes +of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was, +and how much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was constantly +recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the +names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life, +instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have +made it more vivid by contrast.</p> + +<p>When they had gone, I said to him, "I think your affection for those +men very beautiful."</p> + +<p>"How could I help it?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Still, few men in your station could or would go back and renew such +friendships."</p> + +<p>"Then I pity them," he replied.</p> + + +<h4>RANCH LIFE THE MAKING OF HIM</h4> + +<p>He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It +had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his +eyes to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and +cattlemen.</p> + +<p>Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough +Riders Regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the +Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had +not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his +rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that +he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events +above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid.</p> + +<p>Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening +twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car, +gazing wistfully upon the scene. "I know all this country like a +book," he said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and +tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to +me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which was +my station." It was plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking +landscape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoralized and +gone to the bad,—flayed, fantastic, treeless, a riot of naked clay +slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry coulees,—was in his eyes a land +of almost pathetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage here +and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the +pronghorn used to linger.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>OLD NEIGHBORS</h4> + +<p>When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour, +it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned +out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the +committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President +stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing +crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken +by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down, +and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man, +woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting +them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose +hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember +you! You once mended my gunlock for me,—put on a new hammer." "Yes," +said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was +among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was +very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they +were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay +and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his +train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I +thought of the incident in his "Ranch Life," in which he says he once +opened a cowboy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had +recently shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite. He says the +scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down +the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee."</p> + +<p>Before reaching Medora he had told me many anecdotes of "Hell Roaring +Bill Jones," and had said I should see him. But it turned out that +Hell Roaring Bill had begun to celebrate the coming of the President +too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a +presentable condition. I forget now how he had earned his name, but no +doubt he had come honestly by it; it was a part of his history, as was +that of "The Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and other +classic heroes of the frontier.</p> + + +<h4>BAD LANDS AND BAD MEN</h4> + +<p>It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a +certain proportion of them,—bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And +it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,—land +that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping +and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads +to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, +resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to +kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by +shooting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who +ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old +plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint +very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind of satanic element in +men and animals—an underlying devilishness—crops out, and we have +the border ruffian and the bucking broncho.</p> + +<p>The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West, +who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned the idea that he could +not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking +broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could +speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, <i>but 'e 'ides +'is 'ead</i>."</p> + + +<h4>THE PRESIDENT'S CORDIALITY</h4> + +<p>At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were +at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet +them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the +crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now." +Still he did not come. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and +another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see +what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking +hands with the whole lot of them. Some one had reached up to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> shake +his hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by +such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, +that the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the +secret service men known it, they would have been in a pickle. We +probably have never had a President who responded more freely and +heartily to the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd +always seem to be in love with him the moment they see him and hear +his voice. And it is not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm +of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and +his genuine manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda +last winter I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at +some place in New England very near the President while he was +speaking, and who said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I +loved him, and had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him +to pieces." It is the quality in the man that instantly inspires such +a liking as this in strangers that will, I am sure, safeguard him in +all public places.</p> + +<p>I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His +Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me His +Transparency, for all I care." It is this transparency, this direct, +out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of his +popularity. The people do love transparency,—all of them but the +politicians.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> + +<p>A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made +in one of his appointments. "My dear sir," replied the President, +"where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such +candor must make the politicians shiver!</p> + + +<h4>THE MULE-TEAM</h4> + +<p>I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in +the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we +reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp +April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops, +and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad +of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an +ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I +experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might +have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered +the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting.</p> + +<p>The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the +rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close, +and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping +the seat with my hands. "Well," I said to myself, "they are giving me +a regular Western send-off;" and I thought, as the ambulance swayed +from side to side, that it would suit me just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> as well if my driver +did not try to keep up with the presidential procession. The driver +and his mules were shut off from me by a curtain, but, looking ahead +out of the sides of the vehicle, I saw two good-sized logs lying +across our course. Surely, I thought (and barely had time to think), +he will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over them I was +nearly thrown through the top of the ambulance. "This <i>is</i> a lively +send-off," I said, rubbing my bruises with one hand, while I clung to +the seat with the other. Presently I saw the cowboys scrambling up the +bank as if to get out of our way; then the President on his fine gray +stallion scrambling up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously +in my direction, as we thundered by.</p> + + +<h4>SIDETRACKING THE PRESIDENT</h4> + +<p>"Well," I said, "this is indeed a novel ride; for once in my life I +have sidetracked the President of the United States! I am given the +right of way over all." On we tore, along the smooth, hard road, and +did not slacken our pace till, at the end of a mile or two, we began +to mount the hill toward Fort Yellowstone. And not till we reached the +fort did I learn that our mules had run away. They had been excited +beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the driver, finding +he could not hold them, had aimed only to keep them in the road, and +we very soon had the road all to ourselves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>HUGE BOILING SPRINGS</h4> + +<p>Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where one gets his first +view of the characteristic scenery of the Park,—huge, boiling springs +with their columns of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which +suggest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as the boiling +and steaming water does. One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied +air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on +a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves +up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side +of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting +some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored +precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's +frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the +suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether +regions,—a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements.</p> + +<p>With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills +and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear, +cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit. The water seemed as +unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that +held it.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 385px;"> +<img src="images/i003.jpg" width="385" height="500" alt="FORT YELLOWSTONE. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York." title="" /> +<h4>FORT YELLOWSTONE.</h4> + +<h5>From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York.</h5> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>THE STYGIAN CAVES</h4> + +<p>The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,—little pockets +in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with +deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of +them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking +shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the +bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was +extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave +or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a +steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of +mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,—the cool end. +When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As +they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter, and the ducks' +discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned toward us, +half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we +please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and +disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the +pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner.</p> + + +<h4>DEER FEEDING IN THE STREETS</h4> + +<p>Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer +came down from the hills<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> into the streets, and ate hay a few yards +from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic +sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till +May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the +government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of +hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their +feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown +bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way.</p> + +<p>The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in +the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even +the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were +left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was +evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,—a hunger that seems +to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth +on his hunting trips for big game in the West.</p> + +<p>We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp +days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three +camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the +northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner +River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on +horseback.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>VISIT TO THE GEYSER REGION</h4> + +<p>The second week we visited the geyser region, which lies a thousand +feet or more higher, and where the snow was still five or six feet +deep. This part of the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by +two span of horses.</p> + +<p>On the horseback excursion, which involved only about fifty miles of +riding, we had a mule pack train, and Sibley tents and stoves, with +quite a retinue of camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two, +and a guide, Billy Hofer.</p> + + +<h4>THE FIRST CAMP</h4> + +<p>The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque gorge on the +Yellowstone, about ten miles from the fort. A slight indisposition, +the result of luxurious living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no +hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till +the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a +buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three +soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him +confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail +toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain +Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, +and I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> youth. +That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful animal beneath you, at +whose mercy you are,—you, a pedestrian all your days,—with gullies +and rocks and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close beside you, +is not a little disturbing. But my big bay did his part well, and I +did not lose my head or my nerve, as we cautiously made our way along +the narrow path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming torrent +rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded the rocky and rapid +Yellowstone. A misstep or a stumble on the part of my steed, and +probably the first bubble of my confidence would have been shivered at +once; but this did not happen, and in due time we reached the group of +tents that formed the President's camp.</p> + + +<h4>THE PRESIDENT ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS</h4> + +<p>The situation was delightful,—no snow, scattered pine trees, a +secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of +the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had +stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very +naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly +with him.</p> + +<p>"No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I +will surely come back."</p> + +<p>And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came +briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he +had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The +day before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk +on a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk, +and creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And +this he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He +came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting +before the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his +usual emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds +he had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him. +From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire, +a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India +solitaire,—one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,—and I +wished to compare our Western form with it.</p> + + +<h4>A STRANGE BIRD SONG</h4> + +<p>The next morning we set out for our second camp, ten or a dozen miles +away, and in reaching it passed over much of the ground the President +had traversed the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place above +a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered pine trees, the +President said, "It was right here that I heard that strange bird +song." We paused a moment. "And there it is now," he exclaimed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>THE SOLITAIRE</h4> + +<p>Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from the top of a small +cedar,—a bright, animated, eloquent song, but without the richness +and magic of the song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, +and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President +was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we +only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its +West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we +pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of +the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the +encomiums that have been pronounced upon it.</p> + +<p>At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain +woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue +grouse,—a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we +would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the +bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch +the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them +without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of +the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had +probably died a natural death.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 389px;"> +<img src="images/i004.jpg" width="389" height="500" alt="THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York." title="" /> +<h4>THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON.</h4> + +<h5>From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York.</h5> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>THE "SINGING GOPHER"</h4> + +<p>In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President +and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack +train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep +grassy slope,—a picture which he has preserved in his late volume, +"Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"—our attention was +attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the +grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the +President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of +grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this +sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a +species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific +name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher.</p> + +<p>Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell +Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad, +open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to +our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the +plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our +party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell +Roaring,"—an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some +unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> part +of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and +bearing. After conversing a few moments with the President and Major +Pitcher, he rode rapidly away.</p> + + +<h4>THE SECOND CAMP</h4> + +<p>Our second camp, which we reached in mid-afternoon, was in the edge of +the woods on the banks of a fine, large trout stream, where ice and +snow still lingered in patches. I tried for trout in the head of a +large, partly open pool, but did not get a rise; too much ice in the +stream, I concluded. Very soon my attention was attracted by a strange +note, or call, in the spruce woods. The President had also noticed it, +and, with me, wondered what made it. Was it bird or beast? Billy Hofer +said he thought it was an owl, but it in no way suggested an owl, and +the sun was shining brightly. It was a sound such as a boy might make +by blowing in the neck of an empty bottle. Presently we heard it +beyond us on the other side of the creek, which was pretty good proof +that the creature had wings.</p> + +<p>"Let's go run that bird down," said the President to me.</p> + +<p>So off we started across a small, open, snow-streaked plain, toward +the woods beyond it. We soon decided that the bird was on the top of +one of a group of tall spruces. After much skipping about over logs +and rocks, and much craning of our necks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> we made him out on the peak +of a spruce. I imitated his call, when he turned his head down toward +us, but we could not make out what he was.</p> + +<p>"Why did we not think to bring the glasses?" said the President.</p> + +<p>"I will run and get them," I replied.</p> + + +<h4>TREEING AN OWL</h4> + +<p>"No," said he, "you stay here and keep that bird treed, and I will +fetch them."</p> + +<p>So off he went like a boy, and was very soon back with the glasses. We +quickly made out that it was indeed an owl,—the pigmy owl, as it +turned out,—not much larger than a bluebird. I think the President +was as pleased as if we had bagged some big game. He had never seen +the bird before.</p> + +<p>Throughout the trip I found his interest in bird life very keen, and +his eye and ear remarkably quick. He usually saw the bird or heard its +note as quickly as I did,—and I had nothing else to think about, and +had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for over fifty years. +Of course, his training as a big-game hunter stood him in good stead, +but back of that were his naturalist's instincts, and his genuine love +of all forms of wild life.</p> + + +<h4>ROOSEVELT THE NATURALIST</h4> + +<p>I have been told that his ambition up to the time he went to Harvard +had been to be a naturalist, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> that there they seem to have +convinced him that all the out-of-door worlds of natural history had +been conquered, and that the only worlds remaining were in the +laboratory, and to be won with the microscope and the scalpel. But +Roosevelt was a man made for action in a wide field, and laboratory +conquests could not satisfy him. His instincts as a naturalist, +however, lie back of all his hunting expeditions, and, in a large +measure, I think, prompt them. Certain it is that his hunting records +contain more live natural history than any similar records known to +me, unless it be those of Charles St. John, the Scotch +naturalist-sportsman.</p> + +<p>The Canada jays, or camp-robbers, as they are often called, soon found +out our camp that afternoon, and no sooner had the cook begun to throw +out peelings and scraps and crusts than the jays began to carry them +off, not to eat, as I observed, but to hide them in the thicker +branches of the spruce trees. How tame they were, coming within three +or four yards of one! Why this species of jay should everywhere be so +familiar, and all other kinds so wild, is a puzzle.</p> + +<p>In the morning, as we rode down the valley toward our next +camping-place, at Tower Falls, a band of elk containing a hundred or +more started along the side of the hill a few hundred yards away. I +was some distance behind the rest of the party, as usual, when I saw +the President wheel his horse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> off to the left, and, beckoning to me +to follow, start at a tearing pace on the trail of the fleeing elk. He +afterwards told me that he wanted me to get a good view of those elk +at close range, and he was afraid that if he sent the major or Hofer +to lead me, I would not get it. I hurried along as fast as I could, +which was not fast; the way was rough,—logs, rocks, spring runs, and +a tenderfoot rider.</p> + + +<h4>WILD ELK</h4> + +<p>Now and then the President, looking back and seeing what slow progress +I was making, would beckon to me impatiently, and I could fancy him +saying, "If I had a rope around him, he would come faster than that!" +Once or twice I lost sight of both him and the elk; the altitude was +great, and the horse was laboring like a steam-engine on an upgrade. +Still I urged him on. Presently, as I broke over a hill, I saw the +President pressing the elk up the opposite slope. At the brow of the +hill he stopped, and I soon joined him. There on the top, not fifty +yards away, stood the elk in a mass, their heads toward us and their +tongues hanging out. They could run no farther. The President laughed +like a boy. The spectacle meant much more to him than it did to me. I +had never seen a wild elk till on this trip, but they had been among +the notable game that he had hunted. He had traveled hundreds of +miles, and undergone great hardships, to get within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> rifle range of +these creatures. Now here stood scores of them, with lolling tongues, +begging for mercy.</p> + +<p>After gazing at them to our hearts' content, we turned away to look up +our companions, who were nowhere within sight. We finally spied them a +mile or more away, and, joining them, all made our way to an elevated +plateau that commanded an open landscape three or four miles across. +It was high noon, and the sun shone clear and warm. From this lookout +we saw herds upon herds of elk scattered over the slopes and gentle +valleys in front of us. Some were grazing, some were standing or lying +upon the ground, or upon the patches of snow. Through our glasses we +counted the separate bands, and then the numbers of some of the bands +or groups, and estimated that three thousand elk were in full view in +the landscape around us. It was a notable spectacle. Afterward, in +Montana, I attended a council of Indian chiefs at one of the Indian +agencies, and told them, through their interpreter, that I had been +with the Great Chief in the Park, and of the game we had seen. When I +told them of these three thousand elk all in view at once, they +grunted loudly, whether with satisfaction or with incredulity, I could +not tell.</p> + +<p>In the midst of this great game amphitheatre we dismounted and enjoyed +the prospect. And the President did an unusual thing, he loafed for +nearly an hour,—stretched himself out in the sunshine upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> a flat +rock, as did the rest of us, and, I hope, got a few winks of sleep. I +am sure I did. Little, slender, striped chipmunks, about half the size +of ours, were scurrying about; but I recall no other wild thing save +the elk.</p> + + +<h4>TOWER FALLS</h4> + +<p>From here we rode down the valley to our third camp, at Tower Falls, +stopping on the way to eat our luncheon on a washed boulder beside a +creek. On this ride I saw my first and only badger; he stuck his +striped head out of his hole in the ground only a few yards away from +us as we passed.</p> + +<p>Our camp at Tower Falls was amid the spruces above a caņon of the +Yellowstone, five or six hundred feet deep. It was a beautiful and +impressive situation,—shelter, snugness, even cosiness,—looking over +the brink of the awful and the terrifying. With a run and a jump I +think one might have landed in the river at the bottom of the great +abyss, and in doing so might have scaled one of those natural obelisks +or needles of rock that stand up out of the depths two or three +hundred feet high. Nature shows you what an enormous furrow her plough +can open through the strata when mowing horizontally, at the same time +that she shows you what delicate and graceful columns her slower and +gentler aerial forces can carve out of the piled strata. At the Falls +there were two or three of these columns, like the picket-pins of the +elder gods.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>MOUNTAIN SHEEP</h4> + +<p>Across the caņon in front of our camp, upon a grassy plateau which was +faced by a wall of trap rock, apparently thirty or forty feet high, a +band of mountain sheep soon attracted our attention. They were within +long rifle range, but were not at all disturbed by our presence, nor +had they been disturbed by the road-builders who, under Captain +Chittenden, were constructing a government road along the brink of the +caņon. We speculated as to whether or not the sheep could get down the +almost perpendicular face of the chasm to the river to drink. It +seemed to me impossible. Would they try it while we were there to see? +We all hoped so; and sure enough, late in the afternoon the word came +to our tents that the sheep were coming down. The President, with coat +off and a towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his face was +half shaved, and the other side lathered. Hofer and I started for a +point on the brink of the caņon where we could have a better view.</p> + +<p>"By Jove," said the President, "I must see that. The shaving can wait, +and the sheep won't."</p> + + +<h4>WATCHING THE "STUNT"</h4> + +<p>So on he came, accoutred as he was,—coatless, hatless, but not +latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was +to see those sheep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> do their "stunt." With glasses in hand, we +watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to +point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening +fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now poised upon some +narrow shelf and preparing for the next leap, zigzagging or plunging +straight down till the bottom was reached, and not one accident or +misstep amid all that insecure footing. I think the President was the +most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite +forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/i005.jpg" width="500" height="368" alt="MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME. + +By kind permission of Forest and Stream." title="" /> +<h4>MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME.</h4> + +<h5>By kind permission of Forest and Stream.</h5> +</div> + +<p>In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise +of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see +some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all +were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do, +however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing, +and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks. +Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and +crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead.</p> + + +<h4>TROUT FISHING</h4> + +<p>The next day, while the rest of us went fishing for trout in the +Yellowstone, three or four miles above camp, over the roughest trail +that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch +in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to +feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do +this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge +and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the +sheep, and was back in camp before we were.</p> + +<p>We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the +yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a +black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, +mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at +once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very +singular spectacle.</p> + + +<h4>RETURN TO FORT YELLOWSTONE</h4> + +<p>We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the +third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at +Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old +frontiersman, who died a few weeks later.</p> + + +<h4>AROUND THE CAMP FIRE</h4> + +<p>While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the +tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened +to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what +a varied and picturesque stream!—anecdote,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> history, science, +politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman, +hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, Civil Service commissioner, police +commissioner, governor, president,—the frankest confessions, the most +telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political +leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always +surprising by his candor, astonishing by his memory, and diverting by +his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type +of memory which retains details as well as mass and generalities. One +night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have +thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the +dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed +palæontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the +main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day. +He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes +easy to him.</p> + +<p>At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the +expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,—an officer of the +British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety +of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of +the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British +major on his mettle to keep pace with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>THE PRESIDENT TELLING STORIES</h4> + +<p>One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who +had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, +wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had +come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President, +and his letter ran something like this:—</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Colonel</span>,—I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did +not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife."</p> + +<p>And the presidential laughter rang out over the treetops. To another +Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned +two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise, +in due time the money came back. The Ex-Rough wrote that his trial +never came off. "<i>We elected our district attorney</i>;" and the laughter +again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by.</p> + +<p>On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by +any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in +contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with +the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few +real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only +was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a <i>bona fide</i> +"bad man," but by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> "broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and commonplace +type." He had been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier +hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in +consequence, the only place where the guests of the hotel, whether +drunk or sober, could sit. As he entered the room, he saw that every +man there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian who stood in +the middle of the floor with a revolver in each hand, compelling +different ones to treat.</p> + + +<h4>FLOORING A RUFFIAN</h4> + +<p>"I went and sat down behind the stove," said the President, "as far +from him as I could get; and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that +I wore glasses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, +apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with +impunity. He very soon approached me, flourishing his two guns, and +ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow +became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The crowd, +mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the +wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, +'Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the +bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched him as heavy a +blow on the chin-point as I could strike. He went down like a steer +before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I +jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest, disarmed him in a +hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him +and put him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this incident in +his "Ranch Life," but does not give the details. It brings out his +mettle very distinctly.</p> + +<p>He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his political opponents +at Albany, during his early career as a member of the Assembly, to +besmirch his character. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations had +become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap for him, but he was +not caught. His innate rectitude and instinct for the right course +saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that +in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right +course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. +His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy +course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder and +hesitate.</p> + + +<h4>RARE COMBINATION OF QUALITIES</h4> + +<p>The President unites in himself powers and qualities that rarely go +together. Thus, he has both physical and moral courage in a degree +rare in history. He can stand calm and unflinching in the path of a +charging grizzly, and he can confront with equal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> coolness and +determination the predaceous corporations and money powers of the +country.</p> + +<p>He unites the qualities of the man of action with those of the scholar +and writer,—another very rare combination. He unites the instincts +and accomplishments of the best breeding and culture with the broadest +democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is as happy with a +frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with a fellow Harvard man, and Seth +Bullock is happy, too.</p> + +<p>He unites great austerity with great good-nature. He unites great +sensibility with great force and will power. He loves solitude, and he +loves to be in the thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled +only by his love of the ways and marts of men.</p> + +<p>He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, if not on the +planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and every side throbs with his +tremendous life and energy; the pressure is equal all around. His +interests are as keen in natural history as in economics, in +literature as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier, +in preserving peace as in preparing for war. And he can turn all his +great power into the new channel on the instant. His interest in the +whole of life, and in the whole life of the nation, never flags for a +moment. His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs or +craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's fields, that only +need a rotation of crops. I once heard him say that all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> he cared +about being President was just "the big work."</p> + +<p>During this tour through the West, lasting over two months, he made +nearly three hundred speeches; and yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt +told me he looked as fresh and unworn as when he left home.</p> + + +<h4>SLEIGHING AMONG THE GEYSERS</h4> + +<p>We went up into the big geyser region with the big sleighs, each drawn +by four horses. A big snowbank had to be shoveled through for us +before we got to the Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot Springs. +Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight thousand feet, on a +fairly level course that led now through woods, and now through open +country, with the snow of a uniform depth of four or five feet, except +as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean warmth kept the +ground bare. The roads had been broken and the snow packed for us by +teams from the fort, otherwise the journey would have been impossible.</p> + +<p>The President always rode beside the driver. From his youth, he said, +this seat had always been the most desirable one to him. When the +sleigh would strike the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he +would bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all three of +us—Major Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself—would follow suit, +sometimes reluctantly on my part. Walking at that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> altitude is no +fun, especially if you try to keep pace with such a walker as the +President is. But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses +drag him in a sleigh over bare ground. When snow was reached, we would +again quickly resume our seats.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 389px;"> +<img src="images/i006.jpg" width="389" height="500" alt="SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York." title="" /> +<h4>SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK.</h4> + +<h5>From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.</h5> +</div> + +<p>As one nears the geyser region, he gets the impression from the +columns of steam going up here and there in the distance—now from +behind a piece of woods, now from out a hidden valley—that he is +approaching a manufacturing centre, or a railroad terminus. And when +he begins to hear the hoarse snoring of "Roaring Mountain," the +illusion is still more complete. At Norris's there is a big vent where +the steam comes tearing out of a recent hole in the ground with +terrific force. Huge mounds of ice had formed from the congealed vapor +all around it, some of them very striking.</p> + + +<h4>OLD FAITHFUL</h4> + +<p>The novelty of the geyser region soon wears off. Steam and hot water +are steam and hot water the world over, and the exhibition of them +here did not differ, except in volume, from what one sees by his own +fireside. The "Growler" is only a boiling teakettle on a large scale, +and "Old Faithful" is as if the lid were to fly off, and the whole +contents of the kettle should be thrown high into the air. To be sure, +boiling lakes and steaming rivers are not common, but the new features +seemed, somehow, out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> of place, and as if nature had made a mistake. +One disliked to see so much good steam and hot water going to waste; +whole towns might be warmed by them, and big wheels made to go round. +I wondered that they had not piped them into the big hotels which they +opened for us, and which were warmed by wood fires.</p> + +<p>At Norris's the big room that the President and I occupied was on the +ground floor, and was heated by a huge box stove. As we entered it to +go to bed, the President said, "Oom John, don't you think it is too +hot here?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly do," I replied.</p> + +<p>"Shall I open the window?"</p> + +<p>"That will just suit me." And he threw the sash, which came down to +the floor, all the way up, making an opening like a doorway. The night +was cold, but neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh air.</p> + +<p>The caretaker of the building was a big Swede called Andy. In the +morning Andy said that beat him: "There was the President of the +United States sleeping in that room, with the window open to the +floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on guard."</p> + +<p>The President had counted much on seeing the bears that in summer +board at the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens. +We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> hotel. At +all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a +large area. I even saw a wild flower—an early buttercup, not an inch +high—in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the +Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know.</p> + + +<h4>CAPTURING A MOUSE</h4> + +<p>As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel, +the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield +to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground +near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be +a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the +President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to +Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would +have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the Park. +In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the +thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that <i>u</i> to an <i>o</i>, and +makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is +it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse +into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to +that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should +have been, but a species new to the Park.</p> + +<p>I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> steaming pools in the +Madison River, that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose +they found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they +did not compare with our Eastern brook trout.</p> + +<p>I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined +some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots. It +imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of +things satanic.</p> + + +<h4>THE MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD</h4> + +<p>One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took a walk to observe +the birds. In the grove about the barns there was a great number, the +most attractive to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we saw +in all parts of the Park, and at Norris's there was an unusual number +of them. How blue they were,—breast and all. In voice and manner they +were almost identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch was +abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds of sparrows, with an +occasional Western robin. A pair of wild geese were feeding in the +low, marshy ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when we +tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few geese and ducks seem to +winter in the Park.</p> + +<p>The second morning at Norris's, one of our teamsters, George Marvin, +suddenly dropped dead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> from some heart affection, just as he had +finished caring for his team. It was a great shock to us all. I never +saw a better man with a team than he was. I had ridden on the seat +beside him all the day previous. On one of the "formations" our teams +had got mired in the soft, putty-like mud, and at one time it looked +as if they could never extricate themselves, and I doubt if they could +have, had it not been for the skill with which Marvin managed them. We +started for the Grand Caņon up the Yellowstone that morning, and, in +order to give myself a walk over the crisp snow in the clear, frosty +air, I set out a little while in advance of the teams. As I did so, I +saw the President, accompanied by one of the teamsters, walking +hurriedly toward the barn to pay his last respects to the body of +Marvin. After we had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs, he made +inquiries for the young woman to whom he had been told that Marvin was +engaged to be married. He looked her up, and sat a long time with her +in her home, offering his sympathy, and speaking words of consolation. +The act shows the depth and breadth of his humanity.</p> + + +<h4>TRAVELING ON SKIS</h4> + +<p>At the Caņon Hotel the snow was very deep, and had become so soft from +the warmth of the earth beneath, as well as from the sun above, that +we could only reach the brink of the Caņon on skis.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> The President and +Major Pitcher had used skis before, but I had not, and, starting out +without the customary pole, I soon came to grief. The snow gave way +beneath me, and I was soon in an awkward predicament. The more I +struggled, the lower my head and shoulders went, till only my heels, +strapped to those long timbers, protruded above the snow. To reverse +my position was impossible till some one came, and reached me the end +of a pole, and pulled me upright. But I very soon got the hang of the +things, and the President and I quickly left the superintendent +behind. I think I could have passed the President, but my manners +forbade. He was heavier than I was, and broke in more. When one of his +feet would go down half a yard or more, I noted with admiration the +skilled diplomacy he displayed in extricating it. The tendency of my +skis was all the time to diverge, and each to go off at an acute angle +to my main course, and I had constantly to be on the alert to check +this tendency.</p> + +<p>Paths had been shoveled for us along the brink of the Caņon, so that +we got the usual views from the different points. The Caņon was nearly +free from snow, and was a grand spectacle, by far the grandest to be +seen in the Park. The President told us that once, when pressed for +meat, while returning through here from one of his hunting trips, he +had made his way down to the river that we saw rushing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> along beneath +us, and had caught some trout for dinner. Necessity alone could induce +him to fish.</p> + +<p>Across the head of the Falls there was a bridge of snow and ice, upon +which we were told that the coyotes passed. As the season progressed, +there would come a day when the bridge would not be safe. It would be +interesting to know if the coyotes knew when this time arrived.</p> + +<p>The only live thing we saw in the Caņon was an osprey perched upon a +rock opposite us.</p> + +<p>Near the falls of the Yellowstone, as at other places we had visited, +a squad of soldiers had their winter quarters. The President always +called on them, looked over the books they had to read, examined their +housekeeping arrangements, and conversed freely with them.</p> + +<p>In front of the hotel were some low hills separated by gentle valleys. +At the President's suggestion, he and I raced on our skis down those +inclines. We had only to stand up straight, and let gravity do the +rest. As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the hills, I +saw out of the corner of my eye the President taking a header into the +snow. The snow had given way beneath him, and nothing could save him +from taking the plunge. I don't know whether I called out, or only +thought, something about the downfall of the administration. At any +rate, the administration was down, and pretty well buried, but it was +quickly on its feet again, shaking off the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> snow with a boy's +laughter. I kept straight on, and very soon the laugh was on me, for +the treacherous snow sank beneath me, and I took a header, too.</p> + +<p>"Who is laughing now, Oom John?" called out the President.</p> + +<p>The spirit of the boy was in the air that day about the Caņon of the +Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of us all was President Roosevelt.</p> + + +<h4>HOMEWARD BOUND</h4> + +<p>The snow was getting so soft in the middle of the day that our return +to the Mammoth Hot Springs could no longer be delayed. Accordingly, we +were up in the morning, and ready to start on the home journey, a +distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow bore up the horses +well till mid-forenoon, when it began to give way beneath them. But by +very careful management we pulled through without serious delay, and +were back again at the house of Major Pitcher in time for luncheon, +being the only outsiders who had ever made the tour of the Park so +early in the season.</p> + +<p>A few days later I bade good-by to the President, who went on his way +to California, while I made a loop of travel to Spokane, and around +through Idaho and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimistic, +sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget.</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Camping with President Roosevelt, by John Burroughs + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT *** + +***** This file should be named 29312-h.htm or 29312-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/1/29312/ + +Produced by David Edwards, Richard J. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Camping with President Roosevelt + +Author: John Burroughs + +Release Date: July 4, 2009 [EBook #29312] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive) + + + + + +[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this +text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant +spellings and other inconsistencies.] + + +[Illustration: ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT. + +(ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.)] + + + + + CAMPING WITH + PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT + + + By JOHN BURROUGHS + + + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY + + COPYRIGHT, 1906 + BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. + + _Reprinted from + The Atlantic Monthly + May, 1906_ + + + + +CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT + +BY JOHN BURROUGHS + + +At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President +Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write up +my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slow +in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute +leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the trip +nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at +"Slabsides,"--administering the affairs of so many of the wild +creatures of the woods about me,--I have not till this blessed season +found the time to put on record an account of the most interesting +thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the +President himself. + + +A STORM CENTRE + +When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the +journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not +always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The +President himself is a good deal of a storm,--a man of such abounding +energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around +him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied on +his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving +personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass +through. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in +the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few +attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it +likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I had +visions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be done +only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my +life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so out +there, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on +horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not +been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be +likely to fare with me there? + + +THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY + +I had known the President several years before he became famous, and +we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His +interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main +motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in +its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often +hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would +be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself. +For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was +no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as +Roosevelt. + + +HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS + +Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in +the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, +and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I +did,--as if he did not love them much more, because his love is +founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life. +She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I +might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not +come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; +then I shall have no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him +say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp in meat. +I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasion. + +I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to +such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs,--men who +regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from +that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who +share with the world the delight they experience in the chase. Such a +hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is +from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"--bears, cougars, +and bobcats,--the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful +and beautiful game. + +The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. +The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain +nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged its +body across the trail. Of course, the President would not now on his +hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in +meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or +a steer for the table at home. + +We left Washington on April 1, and strung several of the larger +Western cities on our thread of travel,--Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, +St. Paul, Minneapolis,--as well as many lesser towns, in each of which +the President made an address, sometimes brief, on a few occasions of +an hour or more. + + +MEETING THE PEOPLE + +He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he +went. He could easily match their Western cordiality and +good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or +had already gathered, to welcome him. His advent made a holiday in +each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme +was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to +receive him,--they usually boarded his private car, and were one by +one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse +of carriages; then to the hall or open air platform, where he spoke to +the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the +train, and off for the next stop--a round of hand-shaking, +carriage-driving, speech-making each day. He usually spoke from eight +to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes +from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or +more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, +elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion +he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved +the policy of his administration. The throng that greeted him in the +vast Auditorium in Chicago--that rose and waved and waved again--was +one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed. + +In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled +the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any +speaker, but it did not seem to choke the President, though he does +not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy +about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the +trusts. + + +A PRETTY INCIDENT + +In St. Paul the city was inundated with humanity,--a vast human tide +that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages +moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and +prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty and +happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on +the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title +of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen +anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their +backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed their way through +the throng, and threw a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think +it would be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or myself. +It was the first time I had ever had flowers showered upon me in +public; and then, maybe, I felt that on such an occasion I was only a +minor side issue, and public recognition was not called for. But the +incident pleased the President. "I saw that banner and those flowers," +he said afterwards; "and I was delighted to see you honored that way." +But I fear I have not to this day thanked the Monroe School of St. +Paul for that pretty attention. + +[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT WITH MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB +JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE PARK. + +From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] + + +GRATIFYING THE CHILDREN + +The time of the passing of the presidential train seemed well known, +even on the Dakota prairies. At one point I remember a little brown +schoolhouse stood not far off, and near the track the school-ma'am, +with her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but the +President caught a glimpse ahead through the window, and quickly took +in the situation. With napkin in hand, he rushed out on the platform +and waved to them. "Those children," he said, as he came back, "wanted +to see the President of the United States, and I could not disappoint +them. They may never have another chance. What a deep impression such +things make when we are young!" + + +COWBOY FRIENDS + +At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his +ranch, and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with +the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy +with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with +delight all over. The life which those men represented, and of which +he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had +entered into the very marrow of his being, and I could see the joy of +it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again +with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The +men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his open-handed +cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget +the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch +days,--that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It all came +back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes +of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was, +and how much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was constantly +recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the +names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life, +instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have +made it more vivid by contrast. + +When they had gone, I said to him, "I think your affection for those +men very beautiful." + +"How could I help it?" he said. + +"Still, few men in your station could or would go back and renew such +friendships." + +"Then I pity them," he replied. + + +RANCH LIFE THE MAKING OF HIM + +He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It +had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his +eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and +cattlemen. + +Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough +Riders Regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the +Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had +not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his +rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that +he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events +above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid. + +Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening +twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car, +gazing wistfully upon the scene. "I know all this country like a +book," he said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and +tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to +me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which was +my station." It was plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking +landscape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoralized and +gone to the bad,--flayed, fantastic, treeless, a riot of naked clay +slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry coulees,--was in his eyes a land +of almost pathetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage here +and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the +pronghorn used to linger. + + +OLD NEIGHBORS + +When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour, +it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned +out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the +committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President +stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing +crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken +by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down, +and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man, +woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting +them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose +hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember +you! You once mended my gunlock for me,--put on a new hammer." "Yes," +said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was +among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was +very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they +were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay +and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his +train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I +thought of the incident in his "Ranch Life," in which he says he once +opened a cowboy ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had +recently shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite. He says the +scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down +the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee." + +Before reaching Medora he had told me many anecdotes of "Hell Roaring +Bill Jones," and had said I should see him. But it turned out that +Hell Roaring Bill had begun to celebrate the coming of the President +too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a +presentable condition. I forget now how he had earned his name, but no +doubt he had come honestly by it; it was a part of his history, as was +that of "The Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and other +classic heroes of the frontier. + + +BAD LANDS AND BAD MEN + +It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a +certain proportion of them,--bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And +it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,--land +that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping +and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads +to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, +resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to +kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by +shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who +ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old +plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint +very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind of satanic element in +men and animals--an underlying devilishness--crops out, and we have +the border ruffian and the bucking broncho. + +The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West, +who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned the idea that he could +not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking +broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could +speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, _but 'e 'ides +'is 'ead_." + + +THE PRESIDENT'S CORDIALITY + +At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were +at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet +them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the +crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now." +Still he did not come. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and +another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see +what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking +hands with the whole lot of them. Some one had reached up to shake +his hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by +such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, +that the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the +secret service men known it, they would have been in a pickle. We +probably have never had a President who responded more freely and +heartily to the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd +always seem to be in love with him the moment they see him and hear +his voice. And it is not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm +of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and +his genuine manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda +last winter I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at +some place in New England very near the President while he was +speaking, and who said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I +loved him, and had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him +to pieces." It is the quality in the man that instantly inspires such +a liking as this in strangers that will, I am sure, safeguard him in +all public places. + +I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His +Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me His +Transparency, for all I care." It is this transparency, this direct, +out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of his +popularity. The people do love transparency,--all of them but the +politicians. + +A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made +in one of his appointments. "My dear sir," replied the President, +"where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such +candor must make the politicians shiver! + + +THE MULE-TEAM + +I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in +the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we +reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp +April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops, +and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad +of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an +ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I +experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might +have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered +the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting. + +The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the +rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close, +and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping +the seat with my hands. "Well," I said to myself, "they are giving me +a regular Western send-off;" and I thought, as the ambulance swayed +from side to side, that it would suit me just as well if my driver +did not try to keep up with the presidential procession. The driver +and his mules were shut off from me by a curtain, but, looking ahead +out of the sides of the vehicle, I saw two good-sized logs lying +across our course. Surely, I thought (and barely had time to think), +he will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over them I was +nearly thrown through the top of the ambulance. "This _is_ a lively +send-off," I said, rubbing my bruises with one hand, while I clung to +the seat with the other. Presently I saw the cowboys scrambling up the +bank as if to get out of our way; then the President on his fine gray +stallion scrambling up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously +in my direction, as we thundered by. + + +SIDETRACKING THE PRESIDENT + +"Well," I said, "this is indeed a novel ride; for once in my life I +have sidetracked the President of the United States! I am given the +right of way over all." On we tore, along the smooth, hard road, and +did not slacken our pace till, at the end of a mile or two, we began +to mount the hill toward Fort Yellowstone. And not till we reached the +fort did I learn that our mules had run away. They had been excited +beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the driver, finding +he could not hold them, had aimed only to keep them in the road, and +we very soon had the road all to ourselves. + + +HUGE BOILING SPRINGS + +Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where one gets his first +view of the characteristic scenery of the Park,--huge, boiling springs +with their columns of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which +suggest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as the boiling +and steaming water does. One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied +air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on +a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves +up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side +of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting +some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored +precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's +frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the +suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether +regions,--a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements. + +With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills +and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear, +cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit. The water seemed as +unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that +held it. + +[Illustration: FORT YELLOWSTONE. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York.] + + +THE STYGIAN CAVES + +The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,--little pockets +in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with +deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of +them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking +shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the +bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was +extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave +or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a +steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of +mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,--the cool end. +When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As +they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter, and the ducks' +discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned toward us, +half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we +please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and +disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the +pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner. + + +DEER FEEDING IN THE STREETS + +Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer +came down from the hills into the streets, and ate hay a few yards +from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic +sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till +May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the +government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of +hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their +feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown +bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way. + +The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in +the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even +the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were +left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was +evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,--a hunger that seems +to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth +on his hunting trips for big game in the West. + +We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp +days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three +camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the +northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner +River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on +horseback. + + +VISIT TO THE GEYSER REGION + +The second week we visited the geyser region, which lies a thousand +feet or more higher, and where the snow was still five or six feet +deep. This part of the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by +two span of horses. + +On the horseback excursion, which involved only about fifty miles of +riding, we had a mule pack train, and Sibley tents and stoves, with +quite a retinue of camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two, +and a guide, Billy Hofer. + + +THE FIRST CAMP + +The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque gorge on the +Yellowstone, about ten miles from the fort. A slight indisposition, +the result of luxurious living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no +hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till +the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a +buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three +soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him +confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail +toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain +Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, +and I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during my youth. +That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful animal beneath you, at +whose mercy you are,--you, a pedestrian all your days,--with gullies +and rocks and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close beside you, +is not a little disturbing. But my big bay did his part well, and I +did not lose my head or my nerve, as we cautiously made our way along +the narrow path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming torrent +rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded the rocky and rapid +Yellowstone. A misstep or a stumble on the part of my steed, and +probably the first bubble of my confidence would have been shivered at +once; but this did not happen, and in due time we reached the group of +tents that formed the President's camp. + + +THE PRESIDENT ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS + +The situation was delightful,--no snow, scattered pine trees, a +secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of +the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had +stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very +naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly +with him. + +"No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I +will surely come back." + +And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came +briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he +had tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The +day before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk +on a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk, +and creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And +this he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He +came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting +before the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his +usual emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds +he had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him. +From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire, +a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India +solitaire,--one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,--and I +wished to compare our Western form with it. + + +A STRANGE BIRD SONG + +The next morning we set out for our second camp, ten or a dozen miles +away, and in reaching it passed over much of the ground the President +had traversed the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place above +a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered pine trees, the +President said, "It was right here that I heard that strange bird +song." We paused a moment. "And there it is now," he exclaimed. + + +THE SOLITAIRE + +Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from the top of a small +cedar,--a bright, animated, eloquent song, but without the richness +and magic of the song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, +and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President +was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we +only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its +West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we +pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of +the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the +encomiums that have been pronounced upon it. + +At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain +woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue +grouse,--a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we +would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the +bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch +the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them +without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of +the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had +probably died a natural death. + +[Illustration: THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New +York.] + + +THE "SINGING GOPHER" + +In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President +and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack +train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep +grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume, +"Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was +attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the +grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the +President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of +grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this +sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a +species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific +name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher. + +Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell +Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad, +open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to +our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the +plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our +party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell +Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some +unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way part +of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and +bearing. After conversing a few moments with the President and Major +Pitcher, he rode rapidly away. + + +THE SECOND CAMP + +Our second camp, which we reached in mid-afternoon, was in the edge of +the woods on the banks of a fine, large trout stream, where ice and +snow still lingered in patches. I tried for trout in the head of a +large, partly open pool, but did not get a rise; too much ice in the +stream, I concluded. Very soon my attention was attracted by a strange +note, or call, in the spruce woods. The President had also noticed it, +and, with me, wondered what made it. Was it bird or beast? Billy Hofer +said he thought it was an owl, but it in no way suggested an owl, and +the sun was shining brightly. It was a sound such as a boy might make +by blowing in the neck of an empty bottle. Presently we heard it +beyond us on the other side of the creek, which was pretty good proof +that the creature had wings. + +"Let's go run that bird down," said the President to me. + +So off we started across a small, open, snow-streaked plain, toward +the woods beyond it. We soon decided that the bird was on the top of +one of a group of tall spruces. After much skipping about over logs +and rocks, and much craning of our necks, we made him out on the peak +of a spruce. I imitated his call, when he turned his head down toward +us, but we could not make out what he was. + +"Why did we not think to bring the glasses?" said the President. + +"I will run and get them," I replied. + + +TREEING AN OWL + +"No," said he, "you stay here and keep that bird treed, and I will +fetch them." + +So off he went like a boy, and was very soon back with the glasses. We +quickly made out that it was indeed an owl,--the pigmy owl, as it +turned out,--not much larger than a bluebird. I think the President +was as pleased as if we had bagged some big game. He had never seen +the bird before. + +Throughout the trip I found his interest in bird life very keen, and +his eye and ear remarkably quick. He usually saw the bird or heard its +note as quickly as I did,--and I had nothing else to think about, and +had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for over fifty years. +Of course, his training as a big-game hunter stood him in good stead, +but back of that were his naturalist's instincts, and his genuine love +of all forms of wild life. + + +ROOSEVELT THE NATURALIST + +I have been told that his ambition up to the time he went to Harvard +had been to be a naturalist, but that there they seem to have +convinced him that all the out-of-door worlds of natural history had +been conquered, and that the only worlds remaining were in the +laboratory, and to be won with the microscope and the scalpel. But +Roosevelt was a man made for action in a wide field, and laboratory +conquests could not satisfy him. His instincts as a naturalist, +however, lie back of all his hunting expeditions, and, in a large +measure, I think, prompt them. Certain it is that his hunting records +contain more live natural history than any similar records known +to me, unless it be those of Charles St. John, the Scotch +naturalist-sportsman. + +The Canada jays, or camp-robbers, as they are often called, soon found +out our camp that afternoon, and no sooner had the cook begun to throw +out peelings and scraps and crusts than the jays began to carry them +off, not to eat, as I observed, but to hide them in the thicker +branches of the spruce trees. How tame they were, coming within three +or four yards of one! Why this species of jay should everywhere be so +familiar, and all other kinds so wild, is a puzzle. + +In the morning, as we rode down the valley toward our next +camping-place, at Tower Falls, a band of elk containing a hundred or +more started along the side of the hill a few hundred yards away. I +was some distance behind the rest of the party, as usual, when I saw +the President wheel his horse off to the left, and, beckoning to me +to follow, start at a tearing pace on the trail of the fleeing elk. He +afterwards told me that he wanted me to get a good view of those elk +at close range, and he was afraid that if he sent the major or Hofer +to lead me, I would not get it. I hurried along as fast as I could, +which was not fast; the way was rough,--logs, rocks, spring runs, and +a tenderfoot rider. + + +WILD ELK + +Now and then the President, looking back and seeing what slow progress +I was making, would beckon to me impatiently, and I could fancy him +saying, "If I had a rope around him, he would come faster than that!" +Once or twice I lost sight of both him and the elk; the altitude was +great, and the horse was laboring like a steam-engine on an upgrade. +Still I urged him on. Presently, as I broke over a hill, I saw the +President pressing the elk up the opposite slope. At the brow of the +hill he stopped, and I soon joined him. There on the top, not fifty +yards away, stood the elk in a mass, their heads toward us and their +tongues hanging out. They could run no farther. The President laughed +like a boy. The spectacle meant much more to him than it did to me. I +had never seen a wild elk till on this trip, but they had been among +the notable game that he had hunted. He had traveled hundreds of +miles, and undergone great hardships, to get within rifle range of +these creatures. Now here stood scores of them, with lolling tongues, +begging for mercy. + +After gazing at them to our hearts' content, we turned away to look up +our companions, who were nowhere within sight. We finally spied them a +mile or more away, and, joining them, all made our way to an elevated +plateau that commanded an open landscape three or four miles across. +It was high noon, and the sun shone clear and warm. From this lookout +we saw herds upon herds of elk scattered over the slopes and gentle +valleys in front of us. Some were grazing, some were standing or lying +upon the ground, or upon the patches of snow. Through our glasses we +counted the separate bands, and then the numbers of some of the bands +or groups, and estimated that three thousand elk were in full view in +the landscape around us. It was a notable spectacle. Afterward, in +Montana, I attended a council of Indian chiefs at one of the Indian +agencies, and told them, through their interpreter, that I had been +with the Great Chief in the Park, and of the game we had seen. When I +told them of these three thousand elk all in view at once, they +grunted loudly, whether with satisfaction or with incredulity, I could +not tell. + +In the midst of this great game amphitheatre we dismounted and enjoyed +the prospect. And the President did an unusual thing, he loafed for +nearly an hour,--stretched himself out in the sunshine upon a flat +rock, as did the rest of us, and, I hope, got a few winks of sleep. I +am sure I did. Little, slender, striped chipmunks, about half the size +of ours, were scurrying about; but I recall no other wild thing save +the elk. + + +TOWER FALLS + +From here we rode down the valley to our third camp, at Tower Falls, +stopping on the way to eat our luncheon on a washed boulder beside a +creek. On this ride I saw my first and only badger; he stuck his +striped head out of his hole in the ground only a few yards away from +us as we passed. + +Our camp at Tower Falls was amid the spruces above a canyon of the +Yellowstone, five or six hundred feet deep. It was a beautiful and +impressive situation,--shelter, snugness, even cosiness,--looking over +the brink of the awful and the terrifying. With a run and a jump I +think one might have landed in the river at the bottom of the great +abyss, and in doing so might have scaled one of those natural obelisks +or needles of rock that stand up out of the depths two or three +hundred feet high. Nature shows you what an enormous furrow her plough +can open through the strata when mowing horizontally, at the same time +that she shows you what delicate and graceful columns her slower and +gentler aerial forces can carve out of the piled strata. At the Falls +there were two or three of these columns, like the picket-pins of the +elder gods. + + +MOUNTAIN SHEEP + +Across the canyon in front of our camp, upon a grassy plateau which was +faced by a wall of trap rock, apparently thirty or forty feet high, a +band of mountain sheep soon attracted our attention. They were within +long rifle range, but were not at all disturbed by our presence, nor +had they been disturbed by the road-builders who, under Captain +Chittenden, were constructing a government road along the brink of the +canyon. We speculated as to whether or not the sheep could get down the +almost perpendicular face of the chasm to the river to drink. It +seemed to me impossible. Would they try it while we were there to see? +We all hoped so; and sure enough, late in the afternoon the word came +to our tents that the sheep were coming down. The President, with coat +off and a towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his face was +half shaved, and the other side lathered. Hofer and I started for a +point on the brink of the canyon where we could have a better view. + +"By Jove," said the President, "I must see that. The shaving can wait, +and the sheep won't." + + +WATCHING THE "STUNT" + +So on he came, accoutred as he was,--coatless, hatless, but not +latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was +to see those sheep do their "stunt." With glasses in hand, we +watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to +point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening +fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now poised upon some +narrow shelf and preparing for the next leap, zigzagging or plunging +straight down till the bottom was reached, and not one accident or +misstep amid all that insecure footing. I think the President was the +most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite +forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them. + +[Illustration: MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME. + +By kind permission of Forest and Stream.] + +In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise +of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see +some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all +were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do, +however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing, +and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks. +Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and +crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead. + + +TROUT FISHING + +The next day, while the rest of us went fishing for trout in the +Yellowstone, three or four miles above camp, over the roughest trail +that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never +fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch +in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to +feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do +this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge +and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the +sheep, and was back in camp before we were. + +We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the +yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a +black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, +mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at +once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very +singular spectacle. + + +RETURN TO FORT YELLOWSTONE + +We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the +third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at +Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old +frontiersman, who died a few weeks later. + + +AROUND THE CAMP FIRE + +While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the +tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened +to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what +a varied and picturesque stream!--anecdote, history, science, +politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman, +hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, Civil Service commissioner, police +commissioner, governor, president,--the frankest confessions, the most +telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political +leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always +surprising by his candor, astonishing by his memory, and diverting by +his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type +of memory which retains details as well as mass and generalities. One +night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have +thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the +dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed +palaeontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the +main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day. +He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes +easy to him. + +At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the +expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,--an officer of the +British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety +of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of +the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British +major on his mettle to keep pace with him. + + +THE PRESIDENT TELLING STORIES + +One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who +had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, +wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had +come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President, +and his letter ran something like this:-- + +"DEAR COLONEL,--I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did +not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife." + +And the presidential laughter rang out over the treetops. To another +Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned +two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise, +in due time the money came back. The Ex-Rough wrote that his trial +never came off. "_We elected our district attorney_;" and the laughter +again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by. + +On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by +any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in +contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with +the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few +real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only +was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a _bona fide_ +"bad man," but by a "broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and commonplace +type." He had been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier +hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in +consequence, the only place where the guests of the hotel, whether +drunk or sober, could sit. As he entered the room, he saw that every +man there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian who stood in +the middle of the floor with a revolver in each hand, compelling +different ones to treat. + + +FLOORING A RUFFIAN + +"I went and sat down behind the stove," said the President, "as far +from him as I could get; and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that +I wore glasses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, +apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with +impunity. He very soon approached me, flourishing his two guns, and +ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow +became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The crowd, +mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the +wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, +'Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the +bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched him as heavy a +blow on the chin-point as I could strike. He went down like a steer +before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I +jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest, disarmed him in a +hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him +and put him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this incident in +his "Ranch Life," but does not give the details. It brings out his +mettle very distinctly. + +He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his political opponents +at Albany, during his early career as a member of the Assembly, to +besmirch his character. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations had +become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap for him, but he was +not caught. His innate rectitude and instinct for the right course +saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that +in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right +course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. +His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy +course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder and +hesitate. + + +RARE COMBINATION OF QUALITIES + +The President unites in himself powers and qualities that rarely go +together. Thus, he has both physical and moral courage in a degree +rare in history. He can stand calm and unflinching in the path of a +charging grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and +determination the predaceous corporations and money powers of the +country. + +He unites the qualities of the man of action with those of the scholar +and writer,--another very rare combination. He unites the instincts +and accomplishments of the best breeding and culture with the broadest +democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is as happy with a +frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with a fellow Harvard man, and Seth +Bullock is happy, too. + +He unites great austerity with great good-nature. He unites great +sensibility with great force and will power. He loves solitude, and he +loves to be in the thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled +only by his love of the ways and marts of men. + +He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, if not on the +planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and every side throbs with his +tremendous life and energy; the pressure is equal all around. His +interests are as keen in natural history as in economics, in +literature as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier, +in preserving peace as in preparing for war. And he can turn all his +great power into the new channel on the instant. His interest in the +whole of life, and in the whole life of the nation, never flags for a +moment. His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs or +craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's fields, that only +need a rotation of crops. I once heard him say that all he cared +about being President was just "the big work." + +During this tour through the West, lasting over two months, he made +nearly three hundred speeches; and yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt +told me he looked as fresh and unworn as when he left home. + + +SLEIGHING AMONG THE GEYSERS + +We went up into the big geyser region with the big sleighs, each drawn +by four horses. A big snowbank had to be shoveled through for us +before we got to the Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot Springs. +Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight thousand feet, on a +fairly level course that led now through woods, and now through open +country, with the snow of a uniform depth of four or five feet, except +as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean warmth kept the +ground bare. The roads had been broken and the snow packed for us by +teams from the fort, otherwise the journey would have been impossible. + +The President always rode beside the driver. From his youth, he said, +this seat had always been the most desirable one to him. When the +sleigh would strike the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he +would bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all three of +us--Major Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself--would follow suit, +sometimes reluctantly on my part. Walking at that altitude is no +fun, especially if you try to keep pace with such a walker as the +President is. But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses +drag him in a sleigh over bare ground. When snow was reached, we would +again quickly resume our seats. + +[Illustration: SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK. + +From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] + +As one nears the geyser region, he gets the impression from the +columns of steam going up here and there in the distance--now from +behind a piece of woods, now from out a hidden valley--that he is +approaching a manufacturing centre, or a railroad terminus. And when +he begins to hear the hoarse snoring of "Roaring Mountain," the +illusion is still more complete. At Norris's there is a big vent where +the steam comes tearing out of a recent hole in the ground with +terrific force. Huge mounds of ice had formed from the congealed vapor +all around it, some of them very striking. + + +OLD FAITHFUL + +The novelty of the geyser region soon wears off. Steam and hot water +are steam and hot water the world over, and the exhibition of them +here did not differ, except in volume, from what one sees by his own +fireside. The "Growler" is only a boiling teakettle on a large scale, +and "Old Faithful" is as if the lid were to fly off, and the whole +contents of the kettle should be thrown high into the air. To be sure, +boiling lakes and steaming rivers are not common, but the new features +seemed, somehow, out of place, and as if nature had made a mistake. +One disliked to see so much good steam and hot water going to waste; +whole towns might be warmed by them, and big wheels made to go round. +I wondered that they had not piped them into the big hotels which they +opened for us, and which were warmed by wood fires. + +At Norris's the big room that the President and I occupied was on the +ground floor, and was heated by a huge box stove. As we entered it to +go to bed, the President said, "Oom John, don't you think it is too +hot here?" + +"I certainly do," I replied. + +"Shall I open the window?" + +"That will just suit me." And he threw the sash, which came down to +the floor, all the way up, making an opening like a doorway. The night +was cold, but neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh air. + +The caretaker of the building was a big Swede called Andy. In the +morning Andy said that beat him: "There was the President of the +United States sleeping in that room, with the window open to the +floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on guard." + +The President had counted much on seeing the bears that in summer +board at the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens. +We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. At +all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a +large area. I even saw a wild flower--an early buttercup, not an inch +high--in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the +Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know. + + +CAPTURING A MOUSE + +As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel, +the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield +to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground +near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be +a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the +President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to +Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would +have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the Park. +In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the +thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that _u_ to an _o_, and +makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is +it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse +into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to +that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should +have been, but a species new to the Park. + +I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steaming pools in the +Madison River, that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose +they found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they +did not compare with our Eastern brook trout. + +I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined +some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots. It +imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of +things satanic. + + +THE MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD + +One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took a walk to observe +the birds. In the grove about the barns there was a great number, the +most attractive to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we saw +in all parts of the Park, and at Norris's there was an unusual number +of them. How blue they were,--breast and all. In voice and manner they +were almost identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch was +abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds of sparrows, with an +occasional Western robin. A pair of wild geese were feeding in the +low, marshy ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when we +tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few geese and ducks seem to +winter in the Park. + +The second morning at Norris's, one of our teamsters, George Marvin, +suddenly dropped dead from some heart affection, just as he had +finished caring for his team. It was a great shock to us all. I never +saw a better man with a team than he was. I had ridden on the seat +beside him all the day previous. On one of the "formations" our teams +had got mired in the soft, putty-like mud, and at one time it looked +as if they could never extricate themselves, and I doubt if they could +have, had it not been for the skill with which Marvin managed them. We +started for the Grand Canyon up the Yellowstone that morning, and, in +order to give myself a walk over the crisp snow in the clear, frosty +air, I set out a little while in advance of the teams. As I did so, I +saw the President, accompanied by one of the teamsters, walking +hurriedly toward the barn to pay his last respects to the body of +Marvin. After we had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs, he made +inquiries for the young woman to whom he had been told that Marvin was +engaged to be married. He looked her up, and sat a long time with her +in her home, offering his sympathy, and speaking words of consolation. +The act shows the depth and breadth of his humanity. + + +TRAVELING ON SKIS + +At the Canyon Hotel the snow was very deep, and had become so soft from +the warmth of the earth beneath, as well as from the sun above, that +we could only reach the brink of the Canyon on skis. The President and +Major Pitcher had used skis before, but I had not, and, starting out +without the customary pole, I soon came to grief. The snow gave way +beneath me, and I was soon in an awkward predicament. The more I +struggled, the lower my head and shoulders went, till only my heels, +strapped to those long timbers, protruded above the snow. To reverse +my position was impossible till some one came, and reached me the end +of a pole, and pulled me upright. But I very soon got the hang of the +things, and the President and I quickly left the superintendent +behind. I think I could have passed the President, but my manners +forbade. He was heavier than I was, and broke in more. When one of his +feet would go down half a yard or more, I noted with admiration the +skilled diplomacy he displayed in extricating it. The tendency of my +skis was all the time to diverge, and each to go off at an acute angle +to my main course, and I had constantly to be on the alert to check +this tendency. + +Paths had been shoveled for us along the brink of the Canyon, so that +we got the usual views from the different points. The Canyon was nearly +free from snow, and was a grand spectacle, by far the grandest to be +seen in the Park. The President told us that once, when pressed for +meat, while returning through here from one of his hunting trips, he +had made his way down to the river that we saw rushing along beneath +us, and had caught some trout for dinner. Necessity alone could induce +him to fish. + +Across the head of the Falls there was a bridge of snow and ice, upon +which we were told that the coyotes passed. As the season progressed, +there would come a day when the bridge would not be safe. It would be +interesting to know if the coyotes knew when this time arrived. + +The only live thing we saw in the Canyon was an osprey perched upon a +rock opposite us. + +Near the falls of the Yellowstone, as at other places we had visited, +a squad of soldiers had their winter quarters. The President always +called on them, looked over the books they had to read, examined their +housekeeping arrangements, and conversed freely with them. + +In front of the hotel were some low hills separated by gentle valleys. +At the President's suggestion, he and I raced on our skis down those +inclines. We had only to stand up straight, and let gravity do the +rest. As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the hills, I +saw out of the corner of my eye the President taking a header into the +snow. The snow had given way beneath him, and nothing could save him +from taking the plunge. I don't know whether I called out, or only +thought, something about the downfall of the administration. At any +rate, the administration was down, and pretty well buried, but it was +quickly on its feet again, shaking off the snow with a boy's +laughter. I kept straight on, and very soon the laugh was on me, for +the treacherous snow sank beneath me, and I took a header, too. + +"Who is laughing now, Oom John?" called out the President. + +The spirit of the boy was in the air that day about the Canyon of the +Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of us all was President Roosevelt. + + +HOMEWARD BOUND + +The snow was getting so soft in the middle of the day that our return +to the Mammoth Hot Springs could no longer be delayed. Accordingly, we +were up in the morning, and ready to start on the home journey, a +distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow bore up the horses +well till mid-forenoon, when it began to give way beneath them. But by +very careful management we pulled through without serious delay, and +were back again at the house of Major Pitcher in time for luncheon, +being the only outsiders who had ever made the tour of the Park so +early in the season. + +A few days later I bade good-by to the President, who went on his way +to California, while I made a loop of travel to Spokane, and around +through Idaho and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimistic, +sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Camping with President Roosevelt, by John Burroughs + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT *** + +***** This file should be named 29312.txt or 29312.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/1/29312/ + +Produced by David Edwards, Richard J. 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