Camping with President Roosevelt

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John Burroughs. Camping with President Roosevelt

A STORM CENTRE

THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY

HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS

MEETING THE PEOPLE

A PRETTY INCIDENT

GRATIFYING THE CHILDREN

COWBOY FRIENDS

RANCH LIFE THE MAKING OF HIM

OLD NEIGHBORS

BAD LANDS AND BAD MEN

THE PRESIDENT'S CORDIALITY

THE MULE-TEAM

SIDETRACKING THE PRESIDENT

HUGE BOILING SPRINGS

THE STYGIAN CAVES

DEER FEEDING IN THE STREETS

VISIT TO THE GEYSER REGION

THE FIRST CAMP

THE PRESIDENT ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS

A STRANGE BIRD SONG

THE SOLITAIRE

THE "SINGING GOPHER"

THE SECOND CAMP

TREEING AN OWL

ROOSEVELT THE NATURALIST

WILD ELK

TOWER FALLS

MOUNTAIN SHEEP

WATCHING THE "STUNT"

TROUT FISHING

RETURN TO FORT YELLOWSTONE

AROUND THE CAMP FIRE

THE PRESIDENT TELLING STORIES

FLOORING A RUFFIAN

RARE COMBINATION OF QUALITIES

SLEIGHING AMONG THE GEYSERS

OLD FAITHFUL

CAPTURING A MOUSE

THE MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD

TRAVELING ON SKIS

HOMEWARD BOUND

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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?

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.

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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.

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