It was in May during the last term of his Presidency that Roosevelt
asked me to go with him down to Pine Knot, Virginia, to help him name
his birds. I stayed with him at the White House the night before we
started. I remember that at dinner[1] there was an officer from the
British army stationed in India, and the talk naturally turned on Indian
affairs. I did not take part in it because I knew nothing about India,
but Roosevelt was so conversant with Indian affairs and Indian history
that you would think he had just been cramming on it, which I knew very
well he had not. But that British officer was put on his mettle to hold
his own. In fact, Roosevelt knew more about India and England's relation
to it than the officer seemed to know. It was amazing to see the
thoroughness of his knowledge about India.
[1] Mr. Burroughs's memory played him false here. The
incident he speaks of was at a dinner in the White House,
just before starting on the Yellowstone trip, in 1903.
C. B.
The next morning we started off for Virginia, taking an early train.
Pine Knot is about one hundred miles from Washington. I think we left
the train at Charlottesville, Virginia, and drove about ten miles to
Pine Knot; the house is a big barnlike structure on the edge of the
woods, a mile from the nearest farmhouse.
Before we reached there we got out of the wagon and walked, as there
were a good many warblers in the trees--the spring migration was on. It
was pretty warm; I took off my overcoat and the President insisted on
carrying it. We identified several warblers there, among them the
black-poll, the black-throated blue, and Wilson's black-cap. He knew
them in the trees overhead as quickly as I did.
We reached Pine Knot late in the afternoon, but as he was eager for a
walk we started off, he leading, as if walking for a wager. We went
through fields and woods and briers and marshy places for a mile or
more, when we stopped and mopped our brows and turned homeward without
having seen many birds.
Mrs. Roosevelt took him to task, I think, when she saw the heated
condition in which we returned, for not long afterwards he came to me
and said: "Oom John, that was no way to go after birds; we were in too
much of a hurry." I replied, "No, Mr. President, that isn't the way I
usually go a-birding." His thirst for the wild and the woods, and his
joy at returning to these after his winter in the White House, had
evidently urged him on. He added, "We will try a different plan
to-morrow."
So on the morrow we took a leisurely drive along the highways. Very soon
we heard a wren which was new to me. "That's Bewick's wren," he said. We
got out and watched it as it darted in and out of the fence and sang.
I asked him if he knew whether the little gray gnatcatcher was to be
seen there. I had not seen or heard it for thirty years. "Yes," he
replied, "I saw it the last time I was here, over by a spring run."
We walked over to some plum-trees where there had been a house at one
time. No sooner had we reached the spot than he cried, "There it is
now!" And sure enough, there it was in full song--a little bird the
shape of a tiny catbird, with a very fine musical strain.
As we were walking in a field we saw some birds that were new to me.
Roosevelt also was puzzled to know what they were till we went among
them and stirred them up, discovering that they were females of the blue
grosbeak, with some sparrows which we did not identify.
In the course of that walk he showed me a place where he had seen what
he had thought at the time to be a flock of wild pigeons. He described
how they flew, the swoop of their movements, and the tree where they
alighted. I was skeptical, for it had long been thought that wild
pigeons were extinct, but that fact had not impressed itself upon his
mind. He said if he had known there could be any doubt about it, he
would have observed them more closely. I was sorry that he had not, as
it was one of the points on which I wanted indisputable evidence. We
talked with the colored coachman about the birds, as he also had seen
them. His description agreed with Roosevelt's, and he had seen wild
pigeons in his youth; still I had my doubts. Subsequently Roosevelt
wrote me that he had come to the conclusion that they had been mistaken
about their being pigeons.
One day while there, as we were walking through an old weedy field, I
chanced to spy, out of the corner of my eye, a nighthawk sitting on the
ground only three or four yards away. I called Roosevelt's attention to
it and said, "Now, Mr. President, I think with care you can drop your
hat over that bird." So he took off his sombrero and crept up on the
bird, and was almost in a position to let his hat drop over it when the
bird flew to a near tree, alighting lengthwise on the branch as this
bird always does. Roosevelt approached it again cautiously and almost
succeeded in putting his hand upon it; the bird flew just in time to
save itself from his hand.
One Sunday after church he took me to a field where he had recently seen
and heard Lincoln's sparrow. We loitered there, reclining upon the dry
grass for an hour or more, waiting for the sparrow, but it did not
appear.
During my visit there we named over seventy-five species of birds and
fowl, he knowing all of them but two, and I knowing all but two. He
taught me Bewick's wren and the prairie warbler, and I taught him the
swamp sparrow and one of the rarer warblers; I think it was the pine
warbler. If he had found the Lincoln sparrow again, he would have been
one ahead of me.
I remember talking politics a little with him while we were waiting for
the birds, and, knowing that he was expecting Taft to be his successor,
I expressed my doubts as to Taft's being able to fill his shoes.
"Oh, yes, he can," he said confidently; "you don't know him as well as I
do."
"Of course not," I admitted; "but my feeling is that, though Taft is an
able and amiable man, he is not a born leader."
(I am glad to say that Mr. Taft's recent course in support of the
proposed League of Nations has quite brought me around to Roosevelt's
estimate of him.)
Pine Knot is a secluded place in the woods. One evening as we sat in the
lamplight, he reading Lord Cromer on Egypt, and I a book on the
man-eating lions of Tsavo, and Mrs. Roosevelt sitting near with her
needlework, suddenly Roosevelt's hand came down on the table with such a
bang that it made us both jump, and Mrs. Roosevelt exclaimed in a
slightly nettled tone, "Why, my dear, what _is_ the matter?"
He had killed a mosquito with a blow that would almost have demolished
an African lion.
It occurred to me later that evening how risky it was for the President
of the United States to be so unprotected--without a guard of any
kind--in that out-of-the-way place, and I expressed something of this to
him, suggesting that some one might "kidnap" him.
"Oh," he answered, slapping his hand on his hip pocket, "I go armed, and
they would have to be mighty quick to get the drop on me."
Shortly after that, to stretch my legs a little and listen to the night
sounds in the Virginia woods, I went out around the cabin and almost
immediately heard some animal run heavily through the woods not far from
the house. I thought perhaps it was a neighboring dog, but, on speaking
of it to Mrs. Roosevelt, was told that two secret service men came every
night at nine o'clock and stood on guard till morning, spending the day
at a farmhouse in that vicinity. She did not let the President know of
this because it would irritate him.
The only flower we saw there which was new to me was the Indian pink.
Roosevelt seemed to know the flowers as well as he did the birds. Pink
moccasin-flowers and the bird's-foot violet were common in that
locality.
On our return trip, Roosevelt's secretary being on the train, Roosevelt
threw himself into the dictation of many letters, the wrens and the
warblers already sidetracked for the business of the Administration.
I passed another night at the White House, and in the morning early we
went out on the White House grounds to look for birds, our quest seeming
to attract the puzzled attention of the passers-by.
"They often stare at me as though they thought me crazy," he said, "when
they see me gazing up into the trees."
"Well, now they will think I am your keeper," I said.
"Yes, and I your nurse," laughed Mrs. Roosevelt.
When I left, Roosevelt gave me a list of the birds that we had seen
while at Pine Knot and hoped that I would sometime write up the trip; in
fact, for years after, whenever we would meet, almost the first thing he
would say was, "Have you written up our Pine Knot trip yet, Oom John?"
And his disappointment at my failure to do so was always
unmistakable.[2]
[2] The following letter may be of interest in this
connection.
C. B.