Editor's Note: Before signing on as our video editor, Michael R. Shea worked as a historical researcher and writer. This 40-image slideshow tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Selous' parallel lives, friendship and sojourn to Africa in 1909. The gallery includes turn-of-the-century photographs, manuscript pages and four rarely seen films of TR in Africa. Nineteen days after leaving the White House and his second term as President, Theodore Roosevelt kissed his wife goodbye. He boarded a train in Oyster Bay with his son Kermit, bound for a steamship, bound for Africa. Roosevelt was embarking on a 15 month safari, sponsored by the Smithsonian, meticulously planned more than a year in advance, with a goal of taking enough specimens to start an American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. In the planning, Roosevelt turned to his friend and the most famous white hunter of their day, the Englishman Frederick Courteney Selous. Presidential portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.