Transcriber's Note
Every effort has been made to replicate this text asfaithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and otherinconsistencies.
CAMPING WITH
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
By JOHN BURROUGHS
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
Reprinted from
The Atlantic Monthly
May, 1906
ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT.
(ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.)
CAMPING WITH
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
BY JOHN BURROUGHS
At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with PresidentRoosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write upmy impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slowin getting around to it. The President himself, having the absoluteleisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the tripnearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at"Slabsides,"—administering the affairs of so many of the wildcreatures of the woods about me,—I have not till this blessed seasonfound the time to put on record an account of the most interestingthing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was thePresident himself.
A STORM CENTRE
When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during thejourney I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is notalways a pleasant[Pg 2] prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. ThePresident himself is a good deal of a storm,—a man of such aboundingenergy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion aroundhim wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied onhis way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receivingpersonal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to passthrough. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him inthe wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a fewattendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was itlikely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I hadvisions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be doneonly upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in mylife. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so outthere, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along onhorseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had notbeen on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it belikely to fare with me there?
THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY
I had known the President several years before he became famous, andwe had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. Hisinterest in such themes is always very fresh and keen,[Pg 3] and the mainmotive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study inits semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so oftenhunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it wouldbe an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself.For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there wasno man in the country with whom I should so like to see it asRoosevelt.
HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS
Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt inthe Park.