1I4 
THE ORIGIN OF TiiE ROOSEVELT EXPEDITION. 
siastic collector, as well as a well equipped Naturalist. He is also 
author of Scientific papers on Mammals, Birds, Reptiles and Fishes. 
When he started with Col. Roosevelt’s expedition he was assistant 
curator of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the University of 
California. 
J. Alden Loring was a field naturalist, whose training comprises 
service in the biological survey of the Department of Agriculture 
and in the Bronx Zoological Park, New York City, as well as on 
numerous collecting trips through British America, Mexico and 
the United States. 
He was of ardent temperament, and intensely energetic. In 
August, September and October, 1898, he made the highest record 
for a traveling collector, having sent in to the United States National 
Museum 900 well prepared specimens of small mammals in the three 
months’ journey from London through Sweden, Germany, Switzer¬ 
land and Belgium. 
WHERE ROOSEVELT HUNTED WILD ANIMALS. 
Major Edgar A. Mearns, a retired officer of the Medical Corps 
of the Army, was the physician of the trip and had charge of the 
Smithsonian portion of the party. He had twenty-five years’ exper¬ 
ience as an army doctor, and is also well known as a naturalist and 
collector of natural history specimens. 
The party reached Mombasa in April. The general route was 
up the Uganda Railway to Nairobi and Lake Victoria Nyanza, a 
distance of about 650 miles by rail, thence crossing into Uganda, 
and, finally, passing down the Nile to Cairo. Much of the hunting 
was done in British East Africa, where the Uganda Railroad was 
used as a base of supplies and means of ready transportation. The 
expedition spent about one year on African soil. 
British East Africa lies directly south of Abyssinia, is bounded 
on the east by the Italian Somaliland and the Indian Ocean. It has 
about 300 miles of coast. It includes the East African Protectorate 
and the Uganda Protectorate, and is immediately controlled by the 
foreign office. 
The equator runs through the southern end of the possessions, 
