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 ob- 

 tained in old-time American fashion in a little log school; 

 where, by the way, one of the other boys was Januarius 

 Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous war corre- 

 spondent and friend of Skobeloif. Father Zahm told 

 me that MacGahan, even at that time, added an utter 

 fearlessness to chivalric tenderness for the weak, and 

 «was the defender of any smaU 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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