54 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



obvious reasons, impossible in a thickly-populated 

 island with twenty centuries of history behind it. 

 The fatigue of stalking mountain sheep, I reminded 

 him, would not appeal to everyone, and he admitted 

 that there was something in that point of view. 

 Like most sportsmen, the President, though nearing 

 fifty, retains the keenness of a schoolboy. On the 

 morning of my visit, he had received from Europe 

 a gift of a presentation copy of a sporting book 

 written by an Austrian archduke, and he whimsically 

 envied the man who could afford to give the world 

 his autobiography in such sumptuous style. To the 

 terrible disaster at San Francisco he referred in 

 terms that combined the warmest sympathy with a 

 business-like grasp of the best means of help, and 

 even then a long string of relief trains was speeding 

 west. Lastly, we talked of Panama, and in response 

 to a casual remark of mine that I proposed to return 

 by the Royal Mail route and visit the Isthmus, he 

 kindly gave me a letter to Colonel Gorgas, which, 

 in due course, ensured for me a quite unexpected 

 reception in the canal zone. I told him of the 

 anxiety felt at home owing to the possible trans- 

 mission of yellow fever into Asia by way of the 

 canal, and he suggested, with a humorous allusion 

 to the obsolete advice of Apollo not to drain the 

 Camarina lake to get rid of malaria, that I should 

 go and see for myself the great work that was being 

 done by the sanitary authorities at Panama, which 

 at the appointed time I did. 



The President was precisely what I had expected, 

 neither more nor less. I had seen great men before, 

 but they had been invested with the peculiar atmos- 

 phere of royalty or military pomp. Here was one 



