CHAPTER X 



From New York to Mombasa 



ON the morning of March 5, 1909, Theodore Roosevelt, as we may 

 well judge, roused from sleep with a fervent sense of freedom 

 and exhilaration. He had cast off the weight of political 

 responsiblity which had laid heavily upon him for nearly eight years, 

 and at last was free from the burdens of office and in a position to enjoy 

 to its full a genuine holiday. 



That "Call of the Wild" which had rung in his ears in his younger 

 days and led him west to the companionship of the cowboy and the 

 perils of the hunting field, was ringing again in his ears. A born 

 huntsman, with a native love of adventure and a strong zest for 

 stirring and perilous scenes, the "Call of the Wild" now drew him in 

 a different direction, to that African wilderness which is the haunt of 

 the most savage and dangerous beasts on the face of the earth. 

 Hunting in America is a tame and mild enjoyment compared with 

 hunting in Africa. We have the grizzly bear, to be sure, a foe not 

 safe to despise. But there may be found the elephants, the rhinoceros, 

 the buffalo, the lion, creatures to be challenged on their native soil 

 only by the most hardy and daring of men. 



It was not alone these lordly beasts that our huntsman had to 

 fear. The district he sought is one where lurk deadly diseases, fevers 

 that enervate the frame, that mysterious "sleeping sickness" from 

 whose slumbers few awake, disorders that He in wait for those not 

 native to tropical climes; and earnest warnings were sent the ex- 

 President that he was going to his doom, that in the African fevers he 

 would find foes tenfold more deadly than the wildest beasts. 



So far as we know all this rather whetted Roosevelt's appetite for 

 these new hunting fields than deterred him from them. We cannot 

 say that he is devoid of the faculty of fear, but he has a happy faculty 

 of concealing it. He had thrown off the harness of the Presidency, 



