Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

30 страница из 495

Upon Rosevelt’s return to America, the Smithsonian Institution received almost 800 examples of various African animals, large and small. One of them, a white rhinoceros TR killed at a place called Kilimakiu, is the only one on display today, in the Hall of Mammals. A sign placed next to it identifies its donor. A comparison of the original photo taken at the time of the kill, and the horns of the animal on display, confirms that they are the same beast.

A hundred years have passed since Roosevelt made his grand safari. The world has changed greatly in the century since: two world wars – the first of which claimed Kermit’s life – have been fought as well as several smaller ones and innumerable regional conflicts. The world of 1909 with its political and economic issues, its imperialist conquests, its good and bad, all of it, has vanished into the mists of the past. Yet the H&H double still is here, a tangible link to that world and its mighty figures.

This rifle symbolizes in its substance not just a hunt, but the twilight period of the only sort of world in which such a hunt could be made. It is emblematic of the exploitation of Africa and its resources, but as well, of the embryonic environmental conscience of western societies, embodied in the rationale for the hunt itself and the words of its commander. TR’s safari may be considered in some sense the watershed event in the development of modern-day conservation and preservation ethic. The rifle’s true value is therefore as a historical artifact joining today’s hunter/ conservationists with those who came before them, by virtue of its one-time ownership by a major player in the history of America and the world. It is the best-known and best-documented firearm ever made, beyond any conceivable monetary valuation; a unique example of the pinnacle of the gunmaker’s craft, a symbol of a lost era, and a tribute to a man whose legacy lives on still in our game laws.