42 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 



making of him. It had built him up and hardened 

 him physically, and it had opened his eyes to the wealth 

 of manly character among the plainsmen and cattle- 

 men. 



Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have 

 raised the Rough Riders Regiment; and had he not 

 raised that regiment and gone to the Cuban War, he 

 would not have been made governor of New York; 

 and had not this happened, the politicians would not 

 unwittingly have made his rise to the Presidency so 

 inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that he would 

 have got there some day; but without the chain of 

 events above outlined, his rise could not have been so 

 rapid. 



Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota 

 'in the early evening twilight, and the President stood 

 on the rear platform of his car, gazing wistfully upon 

 the scene. "I know all this country like a book," he 

 said. " I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and 

 tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks 

 like home to me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall 

 soon reach Medora, which was my station." It was 

 plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking land- 

 scape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoral- 

 ized and gone to the bad, flayed, fantastic, treeless, 

 a riot of naked clay slopes, chimney-like buttes, and 

 dry coulees, was in his eyes a land of almost pa- 

 thetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage 

 here and there where his cattle used to graze, and where 

 the deer and the pronghorn used to linger. 



When we reached Medora, where the train was 

 scheduled to stop an hour, it was nearly dark, but the 

 whole town and country round had turned out to wel- 



