“I am very glad I have been doing this ... but ... I am not at all sure I shall ever try it again while I am so busy with other work as I am now. Often by the time I get to five o’clock in the afternoon I will be feeling like a stewed owl, after eight hours’ grapple with Senators, Congressmen, etc., then I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest. My right ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am well mottled with bruises elsewhere. Still I have made good progress, and since you left they have taught me three new throws that are perfect corkers.” He also took up fencing; he engaged in all of these sports and exercises with either General Leonard Wood or his own boys. In April, 1903, the President, with a party of twenty-seven selected and invited by himself, started on the long-postponed and often-discussed trip to the Pacific Coast. The party left on the morning of April 1st and returned after sixty-five days of almost continuous travel on the evening of June 5th. On this trip, the travellers experienced every kind of climate, saw every type of vegetation, and met every class of people in the United States. The itinerary covered 13,955 miles, 23 states, and 136 cities. On his return to Washington, the President was given a tremendous reception by the people of the Capital. Crowds lined both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue and cheered as he rode from the station to the White House. President Roosevelt’s first administration accomplished a number of important projects. His term opened with his interest centred in the creation of a Department of Commerce and Labour, also of the establishment of forest reserves and the irrigation of the dry or arid land by the government. The Canal across the Isthmus of Panama long under discussion and partially under construction became a reality after Congress authorized the purchase of the French holdings for $40,000,000, and after a revolution in Colombia resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Panama in November, 1903, which was recognized by the United States Government a few days later and a treaty signed containing more liberal terms than the one rejected by Colombia. Dr. W. C. Gorgas applied the discoveries of the Spanish War to the problem of the yellow fever, and American sanitary science made the completion of the Canal possible without the scourges of diseases of past years.