In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

The third cow killed by Colonel Roosevelt was too small for the group, so the skin was divided up as souvenirs of the day. We each got a foot, fifteen square feet of skin, and one of the ears was saved for the colonel.

We then started on the long two hours' ride back to the Roosevelt camp, arriving there at a few minutes before one o'clock. We had not been in camp ten minutes before a whirlwind came along, blew down a tent, and in another minute was gone.

A big American flag was flying from the colonel's tent, and he came out and, greeted us with the utmost cordiality and warmth. In honor of the occasion he had put on his coat and a green knit tie. He was beaming with pleasure at the result of the elephant hunt and seemed proud that he was to have elephants in the American Museum group to be done by Mr. Akeley. Heller was stuffing some birds and mice and was as slouchy, deliberate and as full of dry humor as any one I've ever seen. He is a character of a most likable type. Tarlton, small, with short cropped red hair—a sort of Scotchman in appearance—is also a remarkable type. He has a quiet voice, never raised in tone, and talks like the university man that he is. He is a famous lion hunter and has killed numbers of lions and elephants, but now he says he is through with dangerous game.

"I've had enough of it," he says.

The colonel, Tarlton, Heller, and Kermit were the only members of the expedition present, Mearns and Loring having been engaged in a separate mission up in the Kenia country for several weeks, while Cuninghame had gone to Uganda to make preparations for the future operations of the party in that country.

Mrs. Akeley washed up in the colonel's tent, while Stephenson and I used Kermit's tent, and as we washed and scrubbed away the memories of the elephant carcasses the colonel stood in the door and talked to us.

We told him that each of us had taken a drink of Scotch whisky the evening before in honor of the elephants—the first drinks we had taken for weeks.

"I'd do the same," said the colonel, "but I don't like Scotch whisky. As a matter of fact, I have taken only three drinks of brandy since I've been in Africa, twice when I was exhausted and once when I was feeling a little feverish. Before I left Washington there were lots of people saying that I was a drunkard, and that I could never do any work until I had emptied a bottle or two of liquor."

We told him that we had heard these rumors frequently during the closing months of his administration, and he laughed.

"I never drank whisky," he said; "not from principle, but because I don't like it. I seldom drink wine, because I'm rather particular about the kind of wine I drink. We have some champagne with us, but the thought of drinking hot champagne in this country is unpleasant. Sometimes, when I can get wines that just suit my taste, I drink a little, but never much. The three drinks of brandy are all I've had in Africa, and I'm sure that I've not taken one in the last four months. They had all sorts of stories out about me before I left Washington—that I was drinking hard and that I was crazy. I may be crazy," he said, laughing, "but I most certainly haven't been drinking hard."