The middle regions are densely covered with an impenetrable forest inhabited by rhomboidal armadillos and gigantic crabs, to which Mr. Roosevelt has given the name of Kermit crabs, to commemorate the escape of his son, who was carried off by one of these monsters and rescued by a troglodyte guide after a desperate struggle. On emerging from the forest the travellers were faced by perpendicular granite crags, which they ascended on the backs of some friendly condors.... The summit proved to be an extensive plateau, the site of a prehistoric city, built of pedunculated wood-pulp. Lying among the ruins was a gigantic mastodon in excellent preservation, which Mr. Roosevelt brought down on his shoulders.
It was after the descent from Mount Skyscraper, which was accomplished in parachutes, that Mr. Roosevelt struck the new river, the upper parts of which were utterly unknown except to some wild rubber-necked Indians. In consequence of its character and size Mr. Roosevelt originally thought of calling it the Taft, but finally decided on the Rio Encyclopædia in virtue of its volume.
The journey was made in canoes and was full of incident. Descending the great Golliwog Falls Mr. Roosevelt's canoe was smashed to atoms, but the ex-President escaped with only slight injury to his eyeglasses, after a desperate conflict with a pliocene crocodile. The Encyclopædia River, as described by Mr. Roosevelt, resembles the Volga, the Hoang-ho and the Mississippi; but it is richer in snags and of a deeper and more luscious purple than any of them. Near its junction with the Mandragora it runs uphill for several miles, with the result that the canoes were constantly capsizing. The waters of Mandragora are of a curiously soporific character, while those of the River Madeira have a toxic quality which renders them dangerous when drunk in large quantities.
Mr. Roosevelt, it may be added, is shortly expected in London, when he will lecture before the Royal Geographical Society, Master Anthony Asquith having kindly consented to preside.
Dear Mr. S.,--We have been here a week, and I feel I really must write and thank you for what I can see is going to be the most lovely holiday.
It was ripping of you to let us come--for _sending_ us, in fact. I can't think why more people don't do it--I mean travel when they can't afford it. Perhaps it is that all bankers aren't so good-natured as you are. I shall tell all my friends to come to you in future. Of course I shall only recommend the conscientious ones. _We_ are being frightfully conscientious. For instance, when we arrived we purposely didn't go to a hotel some friends of ours were at because it was two francs a day dearer than one we found in _Baedeker_--though as I told Fred I don't believe you'd have grudged us the two francs a bit. The only thing I have on my conscience a little is that in Paris, where we stayed three days on our way out, we _did_ go to rather good restaurants. But I had never been to Paris before, and I thought, when you knew that, you would quite approve, because first impressions are everything, aren't they? It is rather as if you were an invisible host everywhere we go. "Of course you will have a liqueur with your coffee, Mrs. Merrison?" I hear you say after dinner; and really, Grand Marnier (_cordon jaune_) _is_ heavenly, isn't it?