436 ROOSEVELT'S RETURN TO CIVILIZATION 



dashed at him, touching him with its trunk as it passed. The hunter 

 saved himself by a quick jump behind a tree. Nearly every day 

 dangerous incidents took place, but, fortimately, not a single white 

 man in the party was injured throughout the expedition. On the last 

 hunt Roosevelt and his son were the only ones in the party who were 

 in fit condition to shoot. 



As for the merits of father and son, Mr. Cunninghame thus 

 expressed himself: "Bwana Tumbo is a mighty hunter, but if his 

 laurels have been imperilled at all on this expedition it has been by 

 Kermit, who is one of the deadliest shots and nerviest men, young or 

 old, I ever met." To this praise of the skill and boldness of Kermit 

 the others added their tribute. 



At a dinner given the correspondents on the barge, the scene 

 lighted by a fire in the papyrus along the stream, the Colonel enter- 

 tained them with humorous stories of his trip, including the struggles 

 of the gun-bearers with English. He talked amusingly of the letters 

 which penetrated even to mid-Africa from strangers desiring him to 

 send such trifles as a water baby or a 200-pound live snake, tigers' 

 claws for Shriners, all-pink baby elephants, not too old to train or 

 too young to bring up. Also of letters of criticism, one man asking 

 how he had the heart to kill poor, unoffending rhinoceroses. He 

 suggested that probably the writer never had been charged by an 

 angry rhinoceros in long grass. 



"Bully!" he ejaculated in response to one remark. He quickly 

 stopped. "I mustn't say 'bully' any more," he remarked. "A distin- 

 guished critic has said that this word is only used by children and 

 ex-Presidents." 



He entertained a high regard for his guns, and had made an 

 interesting collection of the bullets which brought down notable game 

 — for instance, the nickel sheathing of the bullet which saved his life 

 from a charging elephant and the flattened shell which killed a des- 

 perate rhinoceros in the nick of time. 



The correspondents, in their turn, had adventurous incidents 

 for the ears of the traveler. There had been a sharp race on the 

 Nile between the Pasha and the Cairo, two river boats, in the effort 



