East of the Sun and West of the Moon
Theodore Roosevelt & Kermit Roosevelt
9781465506979
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
When I was defeated for Governor of New York I got an involuntary holiday, and fortunately my brother Kermit could adjust his affairs and free himself for the coming year. For years he and I had been planning to make an expedition together. Time and again we had to put it off, because when one could go, the other could not. This year conditions shaped themselves to make it possible. There were many delightful short trips we could have taken with reasonable comfort. We decided, however, that these should be saved for a later day when we had qualified for the grandfather class. We felt we should take the hard trek now when we were still in good condition physically, before we “carried too much weight for age.” Though I have done a certain amount of roughing it and hunting during my life, compared to Kermit I am a beginner. Every continent has seen the smoke of his camp-fires. He was on the expeditions made by my father to Africa and South America. His business is shipping, which takes him all over the world, and as a result he has been able in the course of his work to hunt in India, Manchuria, and various parts of the United States and Mexico. Though hunting in itself is great sport, without the scientific aspect as well it loses much of its charm. Therefore, we decided that any expedition we made would be organized along scientific lines. Both Kermit and I are much interested in natural history and have been for years. Through my father, originally, we met naturalists the world over. When I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper I remember delightful days spent with John Burroughs and others, who saw in the woods ten times more than the ordinary individual sees. Our thoughts turned to central Asia. As a matter of fact, this had always been the Mecca of our desires. Though one of the oldest countries in the world, it is one of the least known. In the northern part the Mongol tribes originated, who swept like flame over Asia and half of Europe. Through it the great caravan routes run, over which trade passed before Rome was founded, when Egypt was the world-power, and elephants were hunted on the Euphrates. These caravan routes are practically the same to-day as they were when a few adventurous Europeans pushed east over them in the late Middle Ages. Roy Chapman Andrews and his expedition have covered the Gobi desert and the surrounding territory, and will reach the Altai mountains, and probably Dzungaria. It would have been duplication of effort for us to strike for the same country, so we decided we would make our general objective farther south and west. Besides this we had in our minds Kipling’s verse from “The Feet of the Young Men”: “Do you know the world’s white rooftree—do you know that windy rift Where the baffling mountain eddies chop and change? Do you know the long day’s patience, belly-down on frozen drift, While the head of heads is feeding out of range? It is there that I am going, where the boulders and snow lie, With a trusty, nimble tracker that I know. I have sworn an oath, to keep it, on the Horns of Ovis Poli, For the Red Gods call me out, and I must go.” We therefore fixed on the Pamirs, Turkestan, and the Tian Shan mountains as our objectives. There in the Pamirs lives ovis poli, which is conceded by sportsmen the world over to be one of the finest of all game trophies. Ovis poli is the great wild sheep of Marco Polo, the “father and mother” of all the wild sheep. He represents the elder branch of the family of which our bighorn is a member, and makes our bighorn look, in comparison, a small animal. He lives in the barren, treeless Pamirs. He was originally discovered about 1256 by Marco Polo, hence the name.
