Book Description

At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, Ipromised some friends to write up my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have beenslow in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute leisure and peace of theWhite House, wrote his account of the trip nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of mylife at "Slabsides,"-administering the affairs of so many of the wild creatures of the woods aboutme, -I have not till this blessed season (fall of 1905) found the time to put on record an account ofthe most interesting thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the President himself.When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the journey I should be in a storm centremost of the time, which is not always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. ThePresident himself is a good deal of a storm, -a man of such abounding energy and ceaseless activitythat he sets everything in motion around him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty welloccupied on his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving personal and politicalhomage in the towns and cities we were to pass through. But when all this was over, and I foundmyself with him in the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few attendants tohelp take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it likely to fare with a non-strenuous personlike myself? I asked. I had visions of snow six and seven feet deep, where traveling could be doneonly upon snow-shoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my life. If the infernal firesbeneath, that keep the pot boiling so furiously in the Park, should melt the snows, I could see theparty tearing along on horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not been ona horse's back since the President was born, how would it be likely to fare with me then?I had known the President several years before he became famous, and we had had somecorrespondence on subjects of natural history. His interest in such themes is always very fresh andkeen, and the main motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in its semidomesticated condition the great game which he had so often hunted during his ranch days; and hewas 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 withwhom I should so like to see it as Roosevelt.Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in the Park. A woman inVermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, and hoped I would teach the President to lovethe animals as much as I did, -as if he did not love them much more, because his love is foundedupon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life. She did not know that I was thencherishing the secret hope that I might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did notcome to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; then I shall have no explanationsto make." Yet once I did hear him say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp inmeat. I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasi