East of the Sun and West of the Moon

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. Marco Polo says:
There are great numbers of wild beasts, among others wild sheep of great size, whose horns are good six palms in length.... This plain is called Pamier, and you ride across it for twelve days together, finding nothing but desert without habitation or any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with them whatsoever they have need of.
For a long time this was considered a romance, for any one was willing to prove that no such animal could exist. It was allotted a place with the unicorn and the phœnix. At last, some six hundred years later, Lieutenant John Wood, an English officer, made his way into the country, shot a sheep, and proved that Marco Milione—at least in this instance—was speaking the truth. Indeed, if anything, he was understating the case, for whereas he says that “these great sheep have horns six hands in length,” the record head, a pick-up, is seventy-five inches. This head belonged to Lord Roberts, the famous “Little Bobs of Kandahar,” and was given him by the Emir of Afghanistan. Not only is Marco Polo correct where he describes the wild sheep but also the customs of the natives which he mentions are practically unchanged from that day to this. Poor Polo, like many another who has told the unknown truth, was branded a colossal liar by his generation.
Beyond the Pamirs, the “world’s white rooftree,” lies the plain of Turkestan. There the barren, sandy waste of the Takla Makan desert is broken only by the oases and jungles that fringe the streams. These rivers, turbulent, muddy torrents when they leave the mountains, gradually shrink as they wind their way through the plain until they finally disappear in brackish marshes in the desert. In the jungles are Yarkand stag and many small animals and birds. Still farther north, running across northern Turkestan, lie the Tian Shan mountains, where two other great sheep live—the ovis ammon karelini and the ovis ammon littledalei. There also lives the greatest of all the ibex, whose horns measure between fifty and sixty inches. Besides these, in this territory are snow-leopards, the great brown bear, the Siberian roe, the Asiatic wapiti, and many other forms of wild life.
On this trek we would strike all climates, from the bitter weather of snow-swept mountains to the blazing heat of sand-drifted deserts and jungle-covered river-bottoms. The country was exceedingly interesting from a scientific standpoint, because no comprehensive American expedition had ever covered it, and there were to all intents and purposes no collections of the wild life in our museums.
My brother Kermit and I were in no position to finance an undertaking of this sort ourselves. Fortunately for us, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was interested in our plans, and Mr. Stanley Field and Mr. Davies, director of the museum, went to Mr. James Simpson to see if the money could be raised for the undertaking. Mr. Simpson not only believes very strongly in out-of-door life but also is a great advocate and backer of scientific enterprise. Within an hour he had agreed to furnish the financial support, and the James Simpson-Roosevelts-Field Museum Expedition was born.
One of the real problems that confronted us on the trails of central Asia was the difficulty of transporting equipment and supplies. Every additional white man, of course, greatly increased the baggage that must be carried. For this reason we had to keep our white personnel to a minimum. We decided, therefore, that besides ourselves we would be able to take only two others. Our first choice was George K. Cherrie, a man of marked attainments as a scientist. Cherrie was with my father and Kermit on their South American expedition. We got in touch with him at once, and were delighted when he not only agreed to come but was as enthusiastic as either of us.
For the fourth member, we asked a lifelong friend, Suydam Cutting, who took photography for his particular work. Parenthetically, just before we left the United States, Cutting and his brother won the National Court Tennis Championship, and when he returned he won the singles.