Existing comment:
In 1909, twelve days after leaving office, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) set out on his long-awaited hunting and scientific expedition to British East Africa (now Kenya). Originally Roosevelt had planned a private journey, intended to both rekindle his love for the outdoors and vacate the political stage for the new president. But given Roosevelt's outsized personality and his international celebrity, the expedition quickly became a large public affair. Roosevelt was especially concerned that he had not be criticized, as he had been, as just a voracious killer of game. So the trip became a full-fledged scientific expedition: the Smithsonian Institution underwrote it (with steel magnate Andrew Carnegie's help) and provide naturalists to help collect and preserve specimens shot by the ex-president's party and to catalogue flora and fauna. Roosevelt funded his and his son's portion of the expenses by signing a contract with Scribner's for a series of articles and a book, African Game Trails. In all, the safari's 300 porters, gun bearers, horse boys, tent men, and guards made it the largest ever mounted in equatorial Africa: it cost about one million dollars in today's currency. Many of the specimens and skins remain in the Smithsonian's collection.
Roosevelt ended his African sojourn with a whirlwind tour of Europe that mixed public adulation with diplomacy. His well-meant attempt to leave public life behind had failed: he would always be "the man in the arena." |