CHAPTER X 
From New York to Mombasa 
O N the morning of March 5, 1909, Theodore Roosevelt, as we may 
well judge, roused from sleep with a fervent sense of freedom 
and exhilaration. He had cast off the weight of political 
responsiblity which had laid heavily upon him for nearly eight years, 
and at last was free from the burdens of office and in a position to enjoy 
to its full a genuine holiday. 
That “Call of the Wild” which had rung in his ears in his younger 
days and led him west to the companionship of the cowboy and the 
perils of the hunting field, was ringing again in his ears. A born 
huntsman, with a native love of adventure and a strong zest for 
stirring and perilous scenes, the “Call of the Wild” now drew him in 
a different direction, to that African wilderness which is the haunt of 
the most savage and dangerous beasts on the face of the earth. 
Hunting in America is a tame and mild enjoyment compared with 
hunting in Africa. We have the grizzly bear, to be sure, a foe not 
safe to despise. But there may be found the elephants, the rhinoceros, 
the buffalo, the lion, creatures to be challenged on their native soil 
only by the most hardy and daring of men. 
It was not alone these lordly beasts that our huntsman had to 
fear. The district he sought is one where lurk deadly diseases, fevers 
that enervate the frame, that mysterious “sleeping sickness” from 
whose slumbers few awake, disorders that lie in wait for those not 
native to tropical climes; and earnest warnings were sent the ex- 
President that he was going to his doom, that in the African fevers he 
would find foes tenfold more deadly than the wildest beasts. 
So far as we know all this rather whetted Roosevelt’s appetite for 
these new hunting fields than deterred him from them. We cannot 
say that he is devoid of the faculty of fear, but he has a happy faculty 
of concealing it. He had thrown off the harness of the Presidency, 
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