A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open
Theodore Roosevelt opens this account of his later outdoor journeys with a July 1913 trip to the Grand Canyon, where he is joined by his sons Archie and Quentin, his cousin Nicholas, and cook-packer Jesse Cummings. Crossing to the north rim via the Bright Angel Trail with help from Bar Z cattlemen, the party is hosted on Buckskin Mountain by game warden Uncle Jim Owens, a former buffalo hunter turned conservationist. Roosevelt describes the plateau's wildflowers, birds, deer, and especially its cougars, detailing Uncle Jim's hound-hunting methods and the mechanics of how cougars kill horses and deer. He reflects on forest-reserve policy, grazing leases, bison preservation, and the contrast between the cougar's deadliness to game and its harmlessness to man. The boys, with Nicholas and Archie taking the shots, kill three cougars in dramatic treed encounters along the canyon's cliff walls, including one dangerous episode with a spooked horse on a steep slope. The party then crosses the desert to Lee's Ferry, traveling by wagon with Francisco Marquez and the Navajo cook Loko through Navajo country, where Roosevelt describes Navajo pastoral life, silverwork, weaving, and his views on Indian policy, favoring gradual, practical education over forced assimilation. Guided by trader John Wetherill, the group rides to the Rainbow Natural Bridge via a hazardous canyon trail, camping beneath the great arch. Roosevelt praises Louisa Wetherill's ethnographic work and records two Navajo prayers she translated. The party then crosses Black Mesa to Walpi for the Hopi snake-dance, where Roosevelt is admitted to the kiva to witness the snake priests' handling and washing of live rattlesnakes, and later watches the public dance itself, musing on the Indians' apparent immunity to snakebite. He meets Indian Service officials, missionaries, and other Hopi community members, and discusses at length his views on preserving Hopi architecture and culture while advancing practical education. The narrative shifts to late 1913 in South America: ranch visits in Argentina (including Mendoza, where he dines with a veteran general of the Paraguayan War) and Brazil, where Roosevelt admires the gaucho and huaso cattle cultures, the modernization of ranching under men like Murdo Mackenzie, and delivers an extended argument on large families and population growth as markers of national vitality. He describes a scenic crossing of the Andes from Chile into Patagonia by lake steamer, horseback, and oxcart, visiting Bariloche and conversing with settlers of many nationalities, before a grueling motor-car journey across Patagonian wastes to the Argentine railway, encountering gauchos, territorial police, and frontier stores. Roosevelt closes this portion by reflecting on his various hunting companions across continents—ranch hands, African gun-bearers and porters (including Ali and Kongoni), Brazilian camaradas, and Indian guides—recounting anecdotes such as the mock "trial" of gun-bearer Gouvimali and ghost stories told by Indians, African attendants, Mississippi black hunters, a Tahitian nobleman, and an old Long Island gunner. He then turns to reflections on prehistoric parallels, arguing that African wildlife and "primitive" peoples he observed resemble Pleistocene-era Europe, describing in detail his encounters with 'Ndorobo forest hunters and the abundant game—lions, elephants, rhinoceros, zebra, giraffe, and antelope—he observed across the East African plains.
By Theodore Roosevelt · First published 1916 · Genre: Travel Literature, Nature Writing, Memoir/Autobiography · 11 chapters · 85,869 words
First lines
Come away! Come away! There's a frost along the marshes, / And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water; / There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland / Of a dirge that seeks to send us back to the arms of those that love us. / Come away! come away! -- or the roving field will hold us, / And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring. / - Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Genres
- Travel Literature — The work is fundamentally a first-person account of Roosevelt's journey through the Grand Canyon region and across Arizona, documenting a chronological expedition with detailed descriptions of routes, campsites, and geographic progression.
- Nature Writing — Extensive, lyrical descriptions of landscapes, weather phenomena, and natural scenery dominate the text; Roosevelt employs literary comparisons (Karnak, Baalbec, Turner, Browning, Poe) to convey the majesty and terror of the natural world.
- Memoir/Autobiography — The narrative is a first-person recounting of personal experiences with family members and companions; Roosevelt reflects on his own observations, reactions, and values throughout the journey.
- Wildlife Writing — Detailed naturalistic observations of fauna including deer, cougars, birds, insects, and reptiles occupy substantial portions of the text, with scientific attention to behavior, anatomy, and ecological relationships.
Tags
Grand Canyon · Cougar hunting · Wildlife conservation · Desert landscape · Mountain wilderness · Natural history observation · Outdoor adventure · American frontier · Predator-prey relationships · Forest reserves · Travel memoir · Hunting culture
What this Textopian page supports
A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open is listed on Textopian as a historical account by Theodore Roosevelt, dated 1916 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Historical account
- Author: Theodore Roosevelt
- Date: 1916 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Travel Literature, Nature Writing, Memoir/Autobiography, Wildlife Writing, Adventure Narrative
- Length: 85,869 words
- Structure: 11 chapters, 416 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open by Theodore Roosevelt
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph
Contents
- A Cougar Hunt on the Rim of the Great Canyon
- Across the Navajo Desert
- The Hopi Snake-Dance
- The Ranchland of Argentina and Southern Brazil
- A Chilean Rondeo
- Across the Andes and Northern Patagonia
- Wild Hunting Companions
- Primitive Man; and the Horse, the Lion, and the Elephant
- Books for Holidays in the Open
- Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi
- A Curious Experience