524 
FOREST AND 
STREAM 
October, 1919 
A REMINISCENCE OF ROOSEVELT 
THE EXAMPLE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S UNQUALIFIED AMERICANISM, HIS STURDY MAN- 
HOOD AND HIS SURE SENSE OF JUSTICE SHOULD SPUR US ON TO A NOBLER AND SANER LIFE 
By EDWARD GILLETTE 
I N the month of September, 1891, our 
survey party camped at the head of 
Buffalo Fork of Snake River, about 
one hundred miles southeast of Yellow- 
stone National Park. 
We were engaged in locating a rail- 
way line from Sheridan, Wyo., to Boise, 
Idaho. It being necessary to explore the 
country ahead of us and to get some sup- 
plies and winter clothing for the outfit, 
especially overshoes (without which camp 
life in winter is a failure) I got together 
a pack outfit of ten or twelve horses and 
with a guide by the name of Charley 
Marsden and Don Hardy for cook, packer 
and all around good utility man, we 
started for the Old Faithful hotel in 
the Yellowstone Park. 
Our camps on Buffalo Fork are pleas- 
ant to remember — good water, wood and 
grass were abundant. The Teton Moun- 
tains loomed up ahead of us in wonder- 
ful grandeur; the stream at each bend 
where there was still water contained 
schools of trout sixteen to eighteen inches 
long and there were herds of elk moving 
along the trails on the opposite side of 
the valley, to their bedding grounds. 
At Jackson Lake we found the only 
house in that country. A man by the 
name of Sargent lived there and he told 
us his partner named Hamilton, a New 
York man, had been drowned in the lake 
and that he was running the ranch. 
On entering Yellowstone Park the 
weather suddenly changed, snow com- 
menced to fall in large flakes and pile 
up rapidly, so that when we made camp 
about fifteen miles from Old Faithful, 
the scene presented a midwinter aspect. 
The next morning everything was 
covered with a thick blanket of snow, 
which was growing deeper as though 
the storm had just gotten a good start. 
It was anything but pleasant to break 
camp, brush off the snow, thaw out the 
frozen canvas and pack up. The chief 
incentive to do this was the fact that 
the horses had no feed and that it was 
possible we could get some at the Inn. 
We plowed through the snow all day 
breaking the trail and arrived at Old 
Faithful just before dark. On looking 
back at the pack train, I saw two horse- 
men following our trail, one of them on 
riding up introduced himself as Roose- 
velt and his partner as Woody, an old- 
time guide in the Park. He thanked us 
for breaking a trail for them, stating 
they had followed it nearly all day. We 
wondered how anyone could be foolish 
enough to leave camp on such a day. 
Roosevelt said he was a Civil Service 
Commissioner and had been wired for 
from Washington and was on the way, 
having left his partner Ferguson in 
camp. 
We secured accommodations at the Inn, 
but the custodian would not sell us any 
oats, as his instructions had been to lock 
them up for use the next season. This 
Norwegian or Swede could not be per- 
suaded to part with a single sack of oats, 
no matter what the price or the needs 
of our stock. 
Finally an Irishman named Larry, a 
great character in the Park, who had 
overheard my plea for the oats, gave me 
a wink and later joined me in another 
room. He said : “That Swede don’t know 
anything, when it gets dark take a bar, 
pull the staple at the barn and help 
yourself.” I acted on Larry’s advice 
and our stock did not lack for oats there- 
after. 
I N the conversation we had that even- 
ing the Teton range was declared to 
be the real thing as far as rugged 
mountains are concerned. The Commis- 
sioner stated that they reminded him 
more of the Alps than any other moun- 
tains he had ever seen. To me, for the 
first time they came up to my expecta- 
tions of how mountains should appear, 
as shown in the first geography. The 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 568) 
Photographed by J. B. Stimson, Cheyenne, Wyo. 
The Teton Mountains loomed up ahead of us in wonderful grandeur, coinciding exactly with the pictures in geographies 
