Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/186

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remember showed a contented lion sitting up on his haunches with drawn and bulging stomach. Beneath, the caption read, "He was a good President."

I was planning an expedition to collect materials for an elephant group in behalf of the American Museum of Natural History about the time that Roosevelt was arranging for his African hunt, and it was a fancy of mine that he should shoot at least one of the elephants for my group. Upon my request that he should do so, we planned to meet in Africa, but as I was delayed in getting over, it was only by chance that his safari and mine met on the Uasin Gishu Plateau.

One day while on the march I sighted a safari. I was aware that the Roosevelt outfit had gone into that region, but I assumed that he had already left there for Uganda. Nevertheless, while we made camp on the banks of the river, I sent a runner to see if it could be the Roosevelt safari. My runner met a runner from the other outfit and returned with a message from Roosevelt himself which said that if we were Akeley's party he would go into camp at a near-by swamp. I mounted my pony and went to meet him as he approached on horseback accompanied by his son, Kermit, Edmund Heller, and their guide, Tarlton. We all went back to our camp for luncheon, where I gave Roosevelt a bottle of very choice brandy, a present from Mr. Oscar Strauss. Mr. Strauss had been one of our steamer companions across the Atlantic and, learning that I was likely to meet Roosevelt, he asked me to take this choice