Page:American Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt.djvu/69

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THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
39

CHAPTER V


Theodore Roosevelt as a Ranchman and Hunter in the Bad Lands—Bringing down His First Buffalo—Rattlesnakes, and a Wild Goose


Theodore Roosevelt had now published his "Naval History of the War of 1812," and it had created a decidedly favorable opinion among those critics who were best able to judge of the production. It is an authoritative work, and is to-day in the library of nearly every American warship afloat, as well as in numerous government libraries in this country, as at Washington, West Point, and Annapolis, and also in leading libraries of England.

Being out of politics the young author thought of taking up his pen once more. But he was restless by nature, and the loss of his wife and his mother still weighed heavily upon him. So he took himself to the West, to where the Little Missouri River flows in winding form through what are called the Bad Lands of North Dakota.