The members of the Smithsonian African Expedition accompanying Roosevelt were Dr. and Colonel Edgar A. Mearns, U. S. A. (retired) one of the first field naturalists of the United States; Edmund Heller, of Stanford University, a thoroughly trained naturalist; J. Alden Loring, of Oswego, N. Y., a successful collector of birds and small animals. Among the white pioneers who had preceded Roosevelt in the African jungles were such famous men as Livingstone and Stanley. In the footsteps of these self-sacrificing men came great hunters, drawn by the fascination of facing the lordly lion or the furious elephant or the dangerous rhinoceros. Among the boldest of these was Roosevelt, the first great American to track these savage creatures into the secret places of the Dark Continent. Penetrating the jungles of East and Central Africa, he and his party remained for months almost entirely cut off from the outside world. In his book, “African Game Trails,” published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, the hunter-naturalist-author has described fascinatingly the story of his encounters with lions, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and other dangerous animals. At Heatley’s ranch, a place seventeen miles long and four miles wide, he found the haunts of the buffalo, a creature it had been his desire for a long time to shoot. Of these animals he wrote: “There is no doubt that under certain circumstances buffalo, in addition to showing themselves exceedingly dangerous opponents when wounded by hunters, become truculent and inclined to take the offensive themselves. There are places in East Africa where, as regards at least certain herds, this seems to be the case; and in Uganda the buffalo have caused such loss of life and such damage to the native plantations that they are now ranked as vermin and not as game, and their killing is encouraged in every possible way.” Here is his account of his shooting of his first buffaloes: “Cautiously threading our way along the edge of the swamp, we got within 150 yards of the buffalo before we were perceived. There were four bulls, grazing close by the edge of the swamp, their black bodies glistening in the early sun rays, their massive horns showing white, and the cow herons perched on their backs. They stared sullenly at us with outstretched heads from under their great frontlets of horn. “The biggest of the four stood a little out from the other three, and at him I fired, the bullet telling with a smack on the tough hide and going through the lungs. We had been afraid they would at once turn into the papyrus, but instead of this they started across our front directly for the open country.