Camping & Tramping with Roosevelt

A cuckoo called in a tree overhead, the first I had heard this season. I feared the cold spring had cut them off. "The yellow-billed, undoubtedly," the President observed, and was confirmed by Mr. Childs. I was not certain that I knew the call of the yellow-billed from that of the black-billed. "We have them both," said the President, "but the yellow-billed is the more common."

We continued our walk along a path that led down through a most delightful wood to the bay. Everywhere the marks of the President's axe were visible, as he had with his own hand thinned out and cleared up a large section of the wood.

A few days previous he had seen some birds in a group of tulip-trees near the edge of the woods facing the water; he thought they were rose-breasted grosbeaks, but could not quite make them out. He had hoped to find them there now, and we looked and listened for some moments, but no birds appeared.

Then he led us to a little pond in the midst of the forest where the night heron sometimes nested. A pair of them had nested there in a big water maple the year before, but the crows had broken them up. As we reached the spot the cry of the heron was heard over the tree-tops. "That is its alarm note," said the President. I remarked that it was much like the cry of the little green heron. "Yes, it is, but if we wait here till the heron returns, and we are not discovered, you would hear his other more characteristic call, a hoarse quawk."

Presently we moved on along another path through the woods toward the house. A large, wide-spreading oak attracted my attention – a superb tree.

"You see by the branching of that oak," said the President, "that when it grew up this wood was an open field and maybe under the plough; it is only in fields that oaks take that form." I knew it was true, but my mind did not take in the fact when I first saw the tree. His mind acts with wonderful swiftness and completeness, as I had abundant proof that day.

As we walked along we discussed many questions, all bearing directly or indirectly upon natural history. The conversation was perpetually interrupted by some bird-note in the trees about us which we would pause to identify – the President's ear, I thought, being the most alert of the three. Continuing the talk, he dwelt upon the inaccuracy of most persons' seeing, and upon the unreliability as natural history of most of the stories told by guides and hunters. Sometimes writers of repute were to be read with caution. He mentioned that excellent hunting book of Colonel Dodge's, in which are described two species of the puma, one in the West called the "mountain lion," very fierce and dangerous; the other called in the East the "panther," – a harmless and cowardly animal. "Both the same species," said the President, "and almost identical in disposition."

Nothing is harder than to convince a person that he has seen wrongly. The other day a doctor accosted me in the street of one of our inland towns to tell me of a strange bird he had seen; the bird was blood-red all over and was in some low bushes by the roadside. Of course I thought of our scarlet tanager, which was then just arriving. No, he knew that bird with black wings and tail; this bird had no black upon it, but every quill and feather was vivid scarlet. The doctor was very positive, so I had to tell him we had no such bird in our state. There was the summer redbird common in the Southern States, but this place is much beyond its northern limit, and, besides, this bird is not scarlet, but is of a dull red. Of course he had seen a tanager, but in the shade of the bushes the black of the wings and tail had escaped him.

This was simply a case of mis-seeing in an educated man; but in the untrained minds of trappers and woodsmen generally there is an element of the superstitious, and a love for the marvelous, which often prevents them from seeing the wild life about them just as it is. They possess the mythop[oe]ic faculty, and they unconsciously give play to it.

Thus our talk wandered as we wandered along the woods and field paths. The President brought us back by the corner of a clover meadow where he was sure a pair of red-shouldered starlings had a nest. He knew it was an unlikely place for starlings to nest, as they breed in marshes and along streams and in the low bushes on lake borders, but this pair had always shown great uneasiness when he had approached this plot of tall clover. As we drew near, the male starling appeared and uttered his alarm note. The President struck out to look for the nest, and for a time the Administration was indeed in clover, with the alarmed black-bird circling above it and showing great agitation. For my part, I hesitated on the edge of the clover patch, having a farmer's dread of seeing fine grass trampled down. I suggested to the President that he was injuring his hay crop; that the nest was undoubtedly there or near there; so he came out of the tall grass, and, after looking into the old tumbled-down barn – a regular early settler's barn, with huge timbers hewn from forest trees – that stood near by, and which the President said he preserved for its picturesqueness and its savor of old times, as well as for a place to romp in with his dogs and children, we made our way to the house.

The purple finch nested in the trees about the house, and the President was greatly pleased that he was able to show us this bird also.

A few days previous to our visit the children had found a bird's nest on the ground, in the grass, a few yards below the front of the house. There were young birds in it, and as the President had seen the grasshopper sparrow about there, he concluded the nest belonged to it. We went down to investigate it, and found the young gone and two addled eggs in the nest. When the President saw those eggs, he said: "That is not the nest of the grasshopper sparrow, after all; those are the eggs of the song sparrow, though the nest is more like that of the vesper sparrow. The eggs of the grasshopper sparrow are much lighter in color – almost white, with brown specks." For my part, I had quite forgotten for the moment how the eggs of the little sparrow looked or differed in color from those of the song sparrow. But the President has so little to remember that he forgets none of these minor things! His bird-lore and wood-lore seem as fresh as if just learned.

I asked him if he ever heard that rare piece of bird music, the flight song of the oven-bird. "Yes," he replied, "we frequently hear it of an evening, while we are sitting on the porch, right down there at the corner of the woods." Now, this flight song of the oven-bird was unknown to the older ornithologists, and Thoreau, with all his years of patient and tireless watching of birds and plants, never identified it; but the President had caught it quickly and easily, sitting on his porch at Sagamore Hill. I believe I may take the credit of being the first to identify and describe this song – back in the old "Wake Robin" days.

In an inscription in a book the President had just given me he had referred to himself as my pupil. Now I was to be his pupil. In dealing with the birds I could keep pace with him pretty easily, and, maybe, occasionally lead him; but when we came to consider big game and the animal life of the globe, I was nowhere. His experience with the big game has been very extensive, and his acquaintance with the literature of the subject is far beyond my own; and he forgets nothing, while my memory is a sieve. In his study he set before me a small bronze elephant in action, made by the famous French sculptor Barye. He asked me if I saw anything wrong with it. I looked it over carefully, and was obliged to confess that, so far as I could see, it was all right. Then he placed before me another, by a Japanese artist. Instantly I saw what was wrong with the Frenchman's elephant. Its action was like that of a horse or a cow, or any trotting animal – a hind and a front foot on opposite sides moving together. The Japanese had caught the real movement of the animal, which is that of a pacer – both legs on the same side at a time. What different effects the two actions gave the statuettes! The free swing of the Japanese elephant you at once recognize as the real thing. The President laughed, and said he had never seen any criticism of Barye's elephant on this ground, or any allusion to his mistake; it was his own discovery. I was fairly beaten at my own game of observation.

He then took down a copy of his "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail," and pointed out to me the mistakes the artist had made in some of his drawings of big Western game.

"Do you see anything wrong in the head of the pronghorn?" he asked, referring to the animal which the hunter is bringing in on the saddle behind him. Again I had to confess that I could not. Then he showed me the mounted head of a pronghorn over the mantel in one of his rooms, and called my attention to the fact that the eye was close under the root of the horn, whereas in the picture the artist had placed it about two inches too low. And in the artist's picture of the pronghorn, which heads Chapter IX, he had made the tail much too long, as he had the tail of the elk on the opposite page.

I had heard of Mr. Roosevelt's attending a fair in Orange County, while he was Governor, where a group of mounted deer were exhibited. It seems the group had had rough usage, and one of the deer had lost its tail and a new one had been supplied. No one had noticed anything wrong with it till Mr. Roosevelt came along. "But the minute he clapped his eyes on that group," says the exhibitor, "he called out, 'Here, Gunther, what do you mean by putting a white-tail deer's tail on a black-tail deer?" Such closeness and accuracy of observation even few naturalists can lay claim to. I mentioned the incident to him, and he recalled it laughingly. He then took down a volume on the deer family which he had himself had a share in writing, and pointed out two mistakes in the naming of the pictures which had been overlooked. The picture of the "white-tail in flight" was the black-tail of Colorado, and the picture of the black-tail of Colorado showed the black-tail of Columbia – the difference this time being seen in the branching of the horns.

The President took us through his house and showed us his trophies of the chase – bearskins of all sorts and sizes on the floors, panther and lynx skins on the chairs, and elk heads and deer heads on the walls, and one very large skin of the gray timber wolf. We examined the teeth of the wolf, barely more than an inch long, and we all laughed at the idea of its reaching the heart of a caribou through the breast by a snap, or any number of snaps, as it has been reported to do. I doubt if it could have reached the heart of a gobbler turkey in that way at a single snap.

The President's interest in birds, and in natural history generally, dates from his youth. While yet in his teens he published a list of the birds of Franklin County, New York. He showed me a bird journal which he kept in Egypt when he was a lad of fourteen, and a case of three African plovers which he had set up at that time; and they were well done.

Evidently one of his chief sources of pleasure at Sagamore Hill is the companionship of the birds. He missed the bobolink, the seaside finch, and the marsh wren, but his woods and grounds abounded in other species. He knew and enjoyed not only all the more common birds, but many rarer and shyer ones that few country people ever take note of – such as the Maryland yellow-throat, the black and white creeper, the yellow-breasted chat, the oven-bird, the prairie warbler, the great crested flycatcher, the wood pewee, and the sharp-tailed finch. He enjoyed the little owls, too. "It is a pity the little-eared owl is called a screech owl. Its tremulous, quavering cry is not a screech at all, and has an attraction of its own. These little owls come up to the house after dark, and are fond of sitting on the elk's antlers over the gable. When the moon is up, by choosing one's position, the little owl appears in sharp outline against the bright disk, seated on his many-tined perch."

A few days after my visit he wrote me that he had identified the yellow-throated or Dominican warbler in his woods, the first he had ever seen. I had to confess to him that I had never seen the bird. It is very rare north of Maryland. The same letter records several interesting little incidents in the wild life about him:

"The other night I took out the boys in rowboats for a camping-out expedition. We camped on the beach under a low bluff near the grove where a few years ago on a similar expedition we saw a red fox. This time two young foxes, evidently this year's cubs, came around the camp half a dozen times during the night, coming up within ten yards of the fire to pick up scraps and seeming to be very little bothered by our presence. Yesterday on the tennis ground I found a mole shrew. He was near the side lines first. I picked him up in my handkerchief, for he bit my hand, and after we had all looked at him I let him go; but in a few minutes he came back and deliberately crossed the tennis grounds by the net. As he ran over the level floor of the court, his motion reminded all of us of the motion of those mechanical mice that run around on wheels when wound up. A chipmunk that lives near the tennis court continually crosses it when the game is in progress. He has done it two or three times this year, and either he or his predecessor has had the same habit for several years. I am really puzzled to know why he should go across this perfectly bare surface, with the players jumping about on it, when he is not frightened and has no reason that I can see for going. Apparently he grows accustomed to the players and moves about among them as he would move about, for instance, among a herd of cattle."

The President is a born nature-lover, and he has what does not always go with this passion – remarkable powers of observation. He sees quickly and surely, not less so with the corporeal eye than with the mental. His exceptional vitality, his awareness all around, gives the clue to his powers of seeing. The chief qualification of a born observer is an alert, sensitive, objective type of mind, and this Roosevelt has in a preëminent degree.

You may know the true observer, not by the big things he sees, but by the little things; and then not by the things he sees with effort and premeditation, but by his effortless, unpremeditated seeing – the quick, spontaneous action of his mind in the presence of natural objects. Everybody sees the big things, and anybody can go out with note-book and opera-glass and make a dead set at the birds, or can go into the northern forests and interview guides and trappers and Indians, and stare in at the door of the "school of the woods." None of these things evince powers of observation; they only evince industry and intention. In fact, born observers are about as rare as born poets. Plenty of men can see straight and report straight what they see; but the men who see what others miss, who see quickly and surely, who have the detective eye, like Sherlock Holmes, who "get the drop," so to speak, on every object, who see minutely and who see whole, are rare indeed.

President Roosevelt comes as near fulfilling this ideal as any man I have known. His mind moves with wonderful celerity, and yet as an observer he is very cautious, jumps to no hasty conclusions.

He had written me, toward the end of May, that while at Pine Knot in Virginia he had seen a small flock of passenger pigeons. As I had been following up the reports of wild pigeons from various parts of our own state during the past two or three years, this statement of the President's made me prick up my ears. In my reply I said, "I hope you are sure about those pigeons," and I told him of my interest in the subject, and also how all reports of pigeons in the East had been discredited by a man in Michigan who was writing a book on the subject. This made him prick up his ears, and he replied that while he felt very certain he had seen a small band of the old wild pigeons, yet he might have been deceived; the eye sometimes plays one tricks. He said that in his old ranch days he and a cowboy companion thought one day that they had discovered a colony of black prairie dogs, thanks entirely to the peculiar angle at which the light struck them. He said that while he was President he did not want to make any statement, even about pigeons, for the truth of which he did not have good evidence. He would have the matter looked into by a friend at Pine Knot upon whom he could depend. He did so, and convinced himself and me also that he had really seen wild pigeons. I had the pleasure of telling him that in the same mail with his letter came the news to me of a large flock of wild pigeons having been seen near the Beaverkill in Sullivan County, New York. While he was verifying his observation I was in Sullivan County verifying this report. I saw and questioned persons who had seen the pigeons, and I came away fully convinced that a flock of probably a thousand birds had been seen there late in the afternoon of May 23. "You need have no doubt about it," said the most competent witness, an old farmer. "I lived here when the pigeons nested here in countless numbers forty years ago. I know pigeons as I know folks, and these were pigeons."

I mention this incident of the pigeons because I know that the fact that they have been lately seen in considerable numbers will be good news to a large number of readers.

The President's nature-love is deep and abiding. Not every bird student succeeds in making the birds a part of his life. Not till you have long and sympathetic intercourse with them, in fact, not till you have loved them for their own sake, do they enter into and become a part of your life. I could quote many passages from President Roosevelt's books which show how he has felt and loved the birds, and how discriminating his ear is with regard to their songs. Here is one: —

"The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher order [than the plains skylark], deserving to rank with the best. Its song has length, variety, power, and rich melody, and there is in it sometimes a cadence of wild sadness inexpressibly touching. Yet I cannot say that either song would appeal to others as it appeals to me; for to me it comes forever laden with a hundred memories and associations – with the sight of dim hills reddening in the dawn, with the breath of cool morning winds blowing across lonely plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlit prairie, with the motion of fiery horses, with all the strong thrill of eager and buoyant life. I doubt if any man can judge dispassionately the bird-songs of his own country; he cannot disassociate them from the sights and sounds of the land that is so dear to him."

Here is another, touching upon some European song-birds as compared with some of our own: "No one can help liking the lark; it is such a brave, honest, cheery bird, and moreover its song is uttered in the air, and is very long-sustained. But it is by no means a musician of the first rank. The nightingale is a performer of a very different and far higher order; yet though it is indeed a notable and admirable singer, it is an exaggeration to call it unequaled. In melody, and above all in that finer, higher melody where the chords vibrate with the touch of eternal sorrow, it cannot rank with such singers as the wood-thrush and the hermit-thrush. The serene ethereal beauty of the hermit's song, rising and falling through the still evening, under the archways of hoary mountain forests that have endured from time everlasting; the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood-thrush, sounding on June afternoons, stanza by stanza, through the sun-flecked groves of tall hickories, oaks, and chestnuts; with these there is nothing in the nightingale's song to compare. But in volume and continuity, in tuneful, voluble, rapid outpouring and ardor, above all in skillful and intricate variation of theme, its song far surpasses that of either of the thrushes. In all these respects it is more just to compare it with the mocking-bird's, which, as a rule, likewise falls short precisely on those points where the songs of the two thrushes excel."

In his "Pastimes of an American Hunter" he says: "It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one's sense of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature. All hunters should be nature-lovers. It is to be hoped that the days of mere wasteful, boastful slaughter are past, and that from now on the hunter will stand foremost in working for the preservation and perpetuation of the wild life, whether big or little." Surely this man is the rarest kind of a sportsman.