Kelley-Roosevelts Asiatic Expedition

[8] After separating from Stevens's section of the expedition, the Roosevelt brothers with Suydam Cutting went rapidly north to collect specimens of the giant panda.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and Suydam Cutting continued to the vicinity of Saigon to procure specimens of banteng, seladang, and water buffalo.

Under the leadership of Harold J. Coolidge, Jr., a party of four was organized in which Russell W. Hendee was the mammalogist, Josselyn Van Tyne ornithologist, and Ralph E. Wheeler physician and parasitologist.

They passed on into Northern Laos and worked there from a base at Phong Saly, finally descending the Mekong River with a short stop at Vientiane to Savannaket and thence overland to Hue.

[3]Hendee departed from Coolidge's party in Laos on 14 May 1929 and started down the Mekong to join Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and Suydam Cutting in Saigon but shortly after his departure he suffered a severe attack of malarial fever.

A collection of more than 5000 specimens were gathered by the Kelley-Roosevelts Expedition of the Field Museum, in unexplored regions of Siam, French Indo-China, and the interior of Southern China.

The skins were all prepared in the field and many of them transported over a thousand miles down rivers, along mountain trails, in the rainy season, before they could be shipped home.

[14] The lure of exploration through one of the few remaining corners of the world which Is little known, the Chinese-Tibetan frontier, brought 3,000 persons to the Field museum yesterday to hear Kermit Roosevelt.

Slides and motion pictures showed how the William V. Kelley-Roosevelt party abandoned their pack and ridIng animals and went on foot over mountain passes as high as 17,100 feet[15] in what they thought would be a futile effort to kill a giant panda.