428 
ROOSEVELTS THRILLING EXPERIENCES. 
Roosevelt, like Nimrod, the son of Cush, •“ began to be a mighty one 
in the earth’’ long before he went to Africa, and since he started in 
pursuit of lions, hippopotami, giraffe and other beasts of the field and 
the jungle, he has shown himself to be a mighty hunter before the Lord 
and has sent home more than 600 casks and bales of trophies and a 
menagerie of living things to prove it. 
The serious work of preparing the Roosevelt trophies for exhibition 
began the first week in January, 1910. Scientific tanners of great skill 
and long experience are in Washington, and the atmosphere around the 
basement of the Smithsonian Institution was redolent of pungent odors, 
such as arise from the contact of acids and other chemical agencies that 
are employed to arrest the forces of nature. It will be more than a year 
before anything will be ready for exhibition. The Roosevelt trophies 
will be set up in the new museum building which is nearly completed 
and will doubtless be open to the public in the fall of 1910. But it 
will take at least a year to tan and stuff the hides and mount and install 
the other trophies which have been received from Africa. And it will 
^e several years before the work is entirely completed because of the 
enormous extent and extraordinary value of the collections. 
Up to January 1st, 1910, Mr. Roosevelt had already sent to the 
Smithsonian more than 6,000 objects of interest, including the skins and 
hides of the animals he has killed, hundreds of rare birds, reptiles, fishes, 
botanical specimens, native implements, utensils and other ethnological 
material of great scientific value and intense human interest. No ex¬ 
pedition, either private or public, that was sent out for exploration 
ever produced such results. No expedition of the kind was ever con¬ 
ducted on such a large scale or enjoyed the extraordinary advantages 
which Colonel Roosevelt commanded. The officials of the British, 
Dutch and Portuguese governments, the local authorities and foreign 
population of Central Africa; the native chiefs and tribesmen, the mis¬ 
sionaries and everybody who was capable of rendering any service 
1o the modern Nimrod did their best to contribute to its success 
and never before have the jungles and wilderness of Africa been 
beaten so thoroughly for game or searched for all forms of animate 
and inanimate objects of interest. 
