Other important events of President Roosevelt's administration
will best be described farther on. For their importance increased
after he was out of office, and they had a great influence upon a
later campaign.
Here, it should be said that in 1904, as the term for which he was
acting as Mr. McKinley's successor, drew toward an end, he was
nominated by the Republican Party to succeed himself. There was
some talk of opposition within his party, especially from the
friends of "big business" who thought that he was not sufficiently
reverent and submissive to the moneyed interests. This opposition
took the form of a move to nominate Senator Hanna. But the Senator
died, and the talk of opposition which was mostly moonshine, faded
away.
When the campaign came in the autumn of 1904, his opponent was the
Democratic nominee, Judge Parker, also from New York. Mr.
Roosevelt was elected by a majority of more than two million and a
half votes,--the largest majority ever given to a President in our
history, either before or since that time.
On the night of election day he issued a statement in which he
said: "Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept
another nomination." Of this he writes:
The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used was
twofold. In the first place, many of my supporters were insisting
that, as I had served only three and a half years of my first
term, coming in from the Vice-Presidency when President McKinley
was killed, I had really had only one elective term, so that the
third term custom did not apply to me; and I wished to repudiate
this suggestion. I believed then (and I believe now) the third
term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and therefore, I was
determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble over the
words usually employed to express it. On the other hand I did not
wish simply and specifically to say that I would not be a
candidate for the nomination in 1908, because if I had specified
the year when I would not be a candidate, it would have been
widely accepted as meaning that I intended to be a candidate some
other year; and I had no such intention, and had no idea that I
would ever be a candidate again. Certain newspaper men did ask me
if I intended to apply my prohibition to 1912, and I answered that
I was not thinking of 1912, nor of 1920, nor of 1940, and that I
must decline to say anything whatever except what appeared in my
statement. [Footnote: "Autobiography," pp. 422-3.]
From March 4, 1905, until March 4, 1909, he was an elected
President, not a President who had succeeded to the office through
the death of another. When the end of his term approached he threw
his influence in favor of the nomination of Mr. William H. Taft,
Secretary of War in his Cabinet. He could have had the nomination
himself if he had wished it; indeed he had to take precautions
against being nominated. But Mr. Taft was nominated, and in
November, 1908, was elected over Mr. Bryan, who was then running
for the Presidency for the third time.
President Roosevelt and President-elect Taft drove up Pennsylvania
Avenue to the Capitol together, March 4, 1909, in a cold gale of
wind, which had followed a sudden blizzard. The weather was an
omen of the stormy change which was coming over the friendship of
these two men. An hour or two later it was President Taft who
drove back to the White House, while Mr. Roosevelt, once more a
private citizen, was hurrying to his home in Oyster Bay, to get
ready for his hunting trip to Africa.
This was the vacation to which he had been looking forward for
years. He had long been a friend of a number of famous hunters,
and had corresponded with and received visits from some of them.
Chief among these was Mr. Frederick Selous, one of the greatest of
African hunters. Those who have read any of Rider Haggard's fine
stories of adventure (especially "King Solomon's Mines" and "Allan
Quartermain") will be interested to know that Mr. Selous was the
original of Quartermain. Adventures like these of Selous, the
opportunity to see the marvelous African country, and the chance
to shoot the dangerous big game, made Roosevelt long to visit
Africa.
So he headed a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian
Institution to collect specimens for the National Museum at
Washington. With him went his son Kermit, a student at Harvard;
and three American naturalists. They left America only two or
three weeks after his term as President had ended, and they came
out of the African wilderness at Khartoum about a year later. With
friends whom they met in Africa, English and American hunters, and
a long train of native bearers and scouts, they visited the parts
of Africa richest in game, and killed lions, leopards, hyenas,
elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, zebra, giraffe, buffalo, and
dozens of other kinds of animals. Mr. Roosevelt and Kermit shot
about a dozen trophies for themselves; otherwise nothing was
killed which was not intended as a museum specimen or for meat. No
useless butchery of animals was allowed; often at great
inconvenience and even danger, animals were avoided or driven off
rather than let them be killed needlessly. Some of the finest
groups of mounted animals in the country are now standing in the
National Museum, as a result of this trip.
They saw many wonderful sights. They saw a band of Nandi warriors,
fierce savages, naked, and armed only with shields and long
spears, attack and kill a big lion. Kermit Roosevelt took
photographs of most of the large game, coming up to close quarters
in order to get his pictures. He took two or three photographs of
a herd of wild elephants in the forest, going at great risk within
twenty-five yards of the herd to be sure to get a good view.
One day's hunting, which Mr. Roosevelt describes, shows what the
country was like, how full it was of all kinds of animals. Leaving
camp at seven in the morning they were out altogether over fifteen
hours. They were after a lion, so did not look for other game.
They soon passed some zebra, and antelope, but left them alone.
The country was a dry, brown grassland, with few trees, and in
some places seems to have looked like our Western prairie. At noon
they sighted three rhinoceros, which they tried to avoid, as they
did not wish to shoot them. Of course, in such circumstances it is
necessary to do nothing to disturb the temper of the animals--
stupid, short-sighted beasts--or else in their anger or alarm,
they will blindly charge the hunter, who then is forced to shoot
to save himself from being tossed and gored on that great horn.
There was a hyena disturbing the other game, and as these are
savage nuisances, Mr. Roosevelt shot this one at three hundred and
fifty paces. While the porters were taking the skin, he could not
help laughing, he says, at finding their party in the center of a
great plain, stared at from all sides by enough wild animals to
stock a circus. Vultures were flying overhead. The three
rhinoceros were gazing at them, about half a mile away. Wildebeest
(sometimes called gnu) which look something like the American
buffalo or bison, and hartebeest, stood around in a ring, looking
on. Four or five antelope came in closer to see what was
happening, and a zebra trotted by, neighing and startling the
rhinoceros.
After a rest for luncheon, they went on, looking for lions. Two
wart-hogs jumped up, and Mr. Roosevelt shot the biggest of them.
By this time it was getting late in the afternoon; time for lions
to be about. At last they saw one; a big lioness. She ran along
the bed of a stream, crouching so as not to be seen in the failing
light. The two hunters rode past and would have missed her if one
of the native followers had not sighted her a second time. Then
Roosevelt and the other hunter left their horses, and came in
close on foot. This is perhaps as dangerous as any hunting in
Africa. A man must be cool and a good shot to go after lions;
sooner or later almost every lion hunter either gets badly hurt or
gets killed.
This time all went well; Roosevelt hit her with his first shot;
ran in close and finished her. She weighed over three hundred
pounds. The porters--much excited, as they always are at the
death of a lion--wished to carry the whole body without skinning
it, back to camp. While they were lashing it to a pole another
lion began to growl hungrily. The night was dark, without a moon,
and the work of getting back was hard for the porters, as well as
rather terrifying to them. Lions were grunting all about; twice
one of them kept alongside the men as they walked,--much to their
discomfort. Then a rhinoceros, nearby, let off a series of snorts,
like a locomotive. This did not cheer up the porters to any great
degree. Roosevelt and the other white hunter had trouble to keep
them together and to keep on the watch, with their rifles ready to
drive off any animals which might attack.
At last they came to the camp of a tribe of savages called Masai.
As they were still four miles from their own camp and as the
porters were about exhausted from carrying the lion, they decided
to go in there, skin the lion and rest for a while. There was some
trouble about this, as the Masai feared that the scent of the dead
lion would scare their cattle. They agreed at last, however,
admitted the white men and the porters, and stood about, in the
fire-light, leaning on their spears, and laughing, while the lion
was being skinned. They gave Roosevelt milk to drink and seemed
pleased to have a call from "Bwana Makuba," the Great Chief, as
the porters called him.
So here was an Ex-President of the United States, not many months
from his work as Chief Magistrate in the Capitol of a civilized
nation, talking to a group of savages, who in their dwellings,
weapons, clothing and customs had hardly changed in three thousand
years; the twentieth century A. D. meeting the tenth century B.C.
At ten o'clock they got back to their own camp, and after a hot
bath, sat down to a supper of eland venison and broiled spur
fowl,--"and surely no supper ever tasted more delicious."
Another day, when hunting with the same companion he had the
experience of being charged by a wounded lion. It was a big, male
lion, with a black and yellow mane. They chased him on horseback
for about two miles. Then he stopped and hid behind a bush. A shot
wounded him slightly and, Mr. Tarlton, Roosevelt's companion, an
experienced lion-hunter, told him that the lion was sure to
charge.
Again I knelt and fired; but the mass of hair on the lion made me
think he was nearer than he was, and I undershot, inflicting a
flesh wound that was neither crippling nor fatal. He was already
grunting savagely and tossing his tail erect, with his head held
low; and at the shot the great sinewy beast came toward us with
the speed of a greyhound. Tarlton then very properly fired, for
lion hunting is no child's play, and it is not good to run risks.
Ordinarily it is a very mean thing to experience joy at a friend's
miss, but this was not an ordinary case, and I felt keen delight
when the bullet from the badly sighted rifle missed, striking the
ground many yards short. I was sighting carefully from my knee,
and I knew I had the lion all right; for though he galloped at a
great pace he came on steadily--ears laid back, and uttering
terrific coughing grunts--and there was now no question of making
allowance for distance, nor, as he was out in the open, for the
fact that he had not before been distinctly visible. The bead of
my foresight was exactly on the center of his chest as I pressed
the trigger, and the bullet went as true as if the place had been
plotted with dividers. The blow brought him up all standing, and
he fell forward on his head.
The soft-nosed Winchester bullet had gone straight through the
chest cavity, smashing the lungs and the big blood-vessels of the
heart. Painfully he recovered his feet, and tried to come on, his
ferocious courage holding out to the last; but he staggered and
turned from side to side, unable to stand firmly, still less to
advance at a faster pace than a walk. He had not ten seconds to
live; but it is a sound principle to take no chances with lions.
Tarlton hit him with his second bullet probably in the shoulder;
and with my next shot I broke his neck. I had stopped him when he
was still a hundred yards away, and certainly no finer sight could
be imagined than that of this great maned lion as he charged.
[Footnote: "African Game Trails," pp. 192-3.]
To the man who can shoot straight, and shoot just as straight at a
savage animal as at a target, African game-hunting is for part of
the time not very dangerous. Nine or ten lions or elephants or
rhinoceros may be killed, without seeming risk. The tenth time
something unexpected happens, and death comes very near to the
hunter.
In shooting an elephant in the forest one day, Roosevelt had what
was perhaps his closest call since the bear nearly killed him,
years before in Idaho. He had just shot an elephant, when there
came a surprise:
But at that very instant, before there was a moment's time in
which to reload, the thick bushes parted immediately on my left
front, and through them surged the vast bulk of a charging bull
elephant, the matted mass of tough creepers snapping like
packthread before his rush. He was so close that he could have
touched me with his trunk. I leaped to one side and dodged behind
a tree trunk, opening the rifle, throwing out the empty shells,
and slipping in two cartridges. Meantime Cunninghame fired right
and left, at the same time throwing himself into the bushes on the
other side. Both his bullets went home, and the bull stopped short
in his charge, wheeled, and immediately disappeared in the thick
cover. We ran forward, but the forest had closed over his wake. We
heard him trumpet shrilly, and then all sounds ceased. [Footnote:
"African Game Trails," p. 251.]
