THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN 

 WILDERNESS 



CHAPTER I 



THE START 



ONE day in 1908, when my presidential term was 

 coming to a close, Father Zahm, a priest whom 

 I knew, came in to call on me. Father Zahm 

 and I had been cronies for some time, because we were 

 both of us fond of Dante and of history and of science 

 — I had always commended to theologians his book, 

 "Evolution and Dogma." He was an Ohio boy, and his 

 early schooling had been obtained in old-time American 

 fashion in a little log school ; where, by the way, one of 

 the other boys was Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, after- 

 ward the famous war correspondent and friend of Sko- 

 beloff. Father Zahm told me that MacGahan even at 

 that time added an utter fearlessness to chivalric tender- 

 ness for the weak, and was the defender of any small 

 boy who was oppressed by a larger one. Later Father 

 Zahm was at Notre Dame University, in Indiana, with 

 Maurice Egan, whom, when I was President, I appointed 

 minister to Denmark. 



On the occasion in question Father Zahm had just 

 returned from a trip across the Andes and down the 

 Amazon, and came in to propose that after I left the 



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