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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Real Soldiers of Fortune
+by Richard Harding Davis
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+Title: Real Soldiers of Fortune 
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+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Release Date:  January, 2002  [Etext #3029]
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+The Project Gutenberg Real Soldiers of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis
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+
+Real Soldiers of Fortune 
+by Richard Harding Davis
+
+MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY RONALD
+DOUGLAS MACIVER
+
+ANY sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, or at night in the _table
+d'hote_ restaurants of University Place, you may meet the soldier
+of fortune who of all his brothers in arms now living is the most
+remarkable. You may have noticed him; a stiffly erect,
+distinguished-looking man, with gray hair, an imperial of the
+fashion of Louis Napoleon, fierce blue eyes, and across his
+forehead a sabre cut.
+
+This is Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver, for some time in India an
+ensign in the Sepoy mutiny; in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; in
+Spain, captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, major in the
+Confederate army; in Mexico, lieutenant-colonel under the
+Emperor Maximilian; colonel under Napoleon III, inspector of
+cavalry for the Khedive of Egypt, and chief of cavalry and general
+of brigade of the army of King Milan of Servia. These are only a
+few of his military titles. In 1884 was published a book giving the
+story of his life up to that year. It was called "Under Fourteen
+Flags." If to-day General MacIver were to reprint the book, it
+would be called "Under Eighteen Flags."
+
+MacIver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, at sea, a league off the
+shore of Virginia. His mother was Miss Anna Douglas of that
+State; Ronald MacIver, his father, was a Scot, a Rossshire
+gentleman, a younger son of the chief of the Clan MacIver. Until
+he was ten years old young MacIver played in Virginia at the home
+of his father. Then, in order that he might be educated, he was
+shipped to Edinburgh to an uncle, General Donald Graham. After
+five years his uncle obtained for him a commission as ensign in the
+Honorable East India Company, and at sixteen, when other boys
+are preparing for college, MacIver was in the Indian Mutiny,
+fighting, not for a flag, nor a country, but as one fights a wild
+animal, for his life. He was wounded in the arm, and, with a
+sword, cut over the head. As a safeguard against the sun the boy
+had placed inside his helmet a wet towel. This saved him to fight
+another day, but even with that protection the sword sank through
+the helmet, the towel, and into the skull. To-day you can see the
+scar. He was left in the road for dead, and even after his wounds
+had healed, was six weeks in the hospital.
+
+This tough handling at the very start might have satisfied some
+men, but in the very next war MacIver was a volunteer and wore
+the red shirt of Garibaldi. He remained at the front throughout that
+campaign, and until within a few years there has been no campaign
+of consequence in which he has not taken part. He served in the
+Ten Years' War in Cuba, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Crete, in
+Greece, twice in Spain in Carlist revolutions, in Bosnia, and for
+four years in our Civil War under Generals Jackson and Stuart
+around Richmond. In this great war he was four times wounded.
+
+It was after the surrender of the Confederate army, that, with other
+Southern officers, he served under Maximilian in Mexico; in
+Egypt, and in France. Whenever in any part of the world there was
+fighting, or the rumor of fighting, the procedure of the general
+invariably was the same. He would order himself to instantly
+depart for the front, and on arriving there would offer to organize a
+foreign legion. The command of this organization always was
+given to him. But the foreign legion was merely the entering
+wedge. He would soon show that he was fitted for a better
+command than a band of undisciplined volunteers, and would
+receive a commission in the regular army. In almost every
+command in which he served that is the manner in which
+promotion came. Sometimes he saw but little fighting, sometimes
+he should have died several deaths, each of a nature more
+unpleasant than the others. For in war the obvious danger of a
+bullet is but a three hundred to one shot, while in the pack against
+the combatant the jokers are innumerable. And in the career of the
+general the unforeseen adventures are the most interesting. A man
+who in eighteen campaigns has played his part would seem to have
+earned exemption from any other risks, but often it was outside the
+battle-field that MacIver encountered the greatest danger. He
+fought several duels, in two of which he killed his adversary;
+several attempts were made to assassinate him, and while on his
+way to Mexico he was captured by hostile Indians. On returning
+from an expedition in Cuba he was cast adrift in an open boat and
+for days was without food.
+
+Long before I met General MacIver I had read his book and had
+heard of him from many men who had met him in many different
+lands while engaged in as many different undertakings. Several of
+the older war correspondents knew him intimately; Bennett
+Burleigh of the _Telegraph_ was his friend, and E. F. Knight of the
+_Times_ was one of those who volunteered for a filibustering
+expedition which  MacIver organized against New Guinea. The
+late Colonel Ochiltree of Texas told me tales of MacIver's bravery,
+when as young men they were fellow officers in the Southern
+army, and Stephen Bonsal had met him when  MacIver was United
+States Consul at Denia in Spain. When MacIver arrived at this
+post, the ex-consul refused to vacate the Consulate, and MacIver
+wished to settle the difficulty with duelling pistols. As Denia is a
+small place, the inhabitants feared for their safety, and Bonsal,
+who was our _charge d'affaires_ then, was sent from Madrid to
+adjust matters. Without bloodshed he got rid of the ex-consul, and
+later  MacIver so endeared himself to the Denians that they begged
+the State Department to retain him in that place for the remainder
+of his life.
+
+Before General MacIver was appointed to a high position at the St.
+Louis Fair, I saw much of him in New York. His room was in a
+side street in an old-fashioned boarding-house, and overlooked his
+neighbor's back yard and a typical New York City sumac tree; but
+when the general talked one forgot he was within a block of the
+Elevated, and roamed over all the world. On his bed he would
+spread out wonderful parchments, with strange, heathenish
+inscriptions, with great seals, with faded ribbons. These were
+signed by Sultans, Secretaries of War, Emperors, filibusters. They
+were military commissions, titles of nobility, brevets for
+decorations, instructions and commands from superior officers.
+Translated the phrases ran: "Imposing special confidence in," "we
+appoint," or "create," or "declare," or "In recognition of services
+rendered to our person," or "country," or "cause," or "For bravery
+on the field of battle we bestow the Cross----"
+
+As must a soldier, the general travels "light," and all his worldly
+possessions were crowded ready for mobilization into a small
+compass. He had his sword, his field blanket, his trunk, and the tin
+despatch boxes that held his papers. From these, like a conjurer, he
+would draw souvenirs of all the world. From the embrace of faded
+letters, he would unfold old photographs, daguerrotypes, and
+miniatures of fair women and adventurous men: women who now
+are queens in exile, men who, lifted on waves of absinthe, still,
+across a _cafe_ table, tell how they will win back a crown.
+
+Once in a written document the general did me the honor to
+appoint me his literary executor, but as he is young, and as healthy
+as myself, it never may be my lot to perform such an unwelcome
+duty. And to-day all one can write of him is what the world can
+read in "Under Fourteen Flags," and some of the "foot-notes to
+history" which I have copied from his scrap-book. This scrap-book
+is a wonderful volume, but owing to "political" and other reasons,
+for the present, of the many clippings from newspapers it contains
+there are only a few I am at liberty to print. And from them it is
+difficult to make a choice. To sketch in a few thousand words a
+career that had developed under Eighteen Flags is in its very
+wealth embarrassing.
+
+Here is one story, as told by the scrap-book, of an expedition that
+failed. That it failed was due to a British Cabinet Minister; for had
+Lord Derby possessed the imagination of the Soldier of Fortune,
+his Majesty's dominions might now be the richer by many
+thousands of square miles and many thousands of black subjects.
+
+On October 29, 1883, the following appeared in the London
+_Standard_: "The New Guinea Exploration and Colonization
+Company is already chartered, and the first expedition expects to
+leave before Christmas." "The prospectus states settlers intending
+to join the first party must contribute one hundred pounds toward
+the company. This subscription will include all expenses for
+passage money. Six months' provisions will be provided, together
+with tents and arms for protection. Each subscriber of one hundred
+pounds is to obtain a certificate entitling him to one thousand
+acres."
+
+The view of the colonization scheme taken by the _Times_ of
+London, of the same date, is less complaisant. "The latest
+commercial sensation is a proposed company for the seizure of
+New Guinea. Certain adventurous gentlemen are looking out for
+one hundred others who have money and a taste for buccaneering.
+When the company has been completed, its share-holders are to
+place themselves under military regulations, sail in a body for New
+Guinea, and without asking anybody's leave, seize upon the island
+and at once, in some unspecified way, proceed to realize large
+profits. If the idea does not suggest comparisons with the large
+designs of Sir Francis Drake, it is at least not unworthy of Captain
+Kidd."
+
+When we remember the manner in which some of the colonies of
+Great Britain were acquired, the _Times_ seems almost
+squeamish.
+
+In a Melbourne paper, June, 1884, is the following paragraph:
+
+"Toward the latter part of 1883 the Government of Queensland
+planted the flag of Great Britain on the shores of New Guinea.
+When the news reached England it created a sensation. The Earl of
+Derby, Secretary for the Colonies, refused, however, to sanction
+the annexation of New Guinea, and in so doing acted contrary to
+the sincere wish of every right-thinking Anglo-Saxon under the
+Southern Cross.
+
+"While the subsequent correspondence between the Home and
+Queensland governments was going on, Brigadier-General H. R.
+MacIver originated and organized the New Guinea Exploration
+and Colonization Company in London, with a view to establishing
+settlements on the island. The company, presided over by General
+Beresford of the British Army, and having an eminently
+representative and influential board of directors, had a capital of
+two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and placed the supreme
+command of the expedition in the hands of General MacIver.
+Notwithstanding the character of the gentlemen composing the
+board of directors, and the truly peaceful nature of the expedition,
+his Lordship informed General MacIver that in the event of the
+latter's attempting to land on New Guinea, instructions would be
+sent to the officer in command of her Majesty's fleet in the
+Western Pacific to fire upon the company's vessel. This meant that
+the expedition would be dealt with as a filibustering one.
+
+In _Judy_, September 21, 1887, appears:
+
+"We all recollect the treatment received by Brigadier-General
+MacI. in the action he took with respect to the annexation of New
+Guinea. The General, who is a sort of Pizarro, with a dash of
+D'Artagnan, was treated in a most scurvy manner by Lord Derby.
+Had MacIver not been thwarted in his enterprise, the whole of
+New Guinea would now have been under the British flag, and we
+should not be cheek-by-jowl with the Germans, as we are in too
+many places."
+
+_Society_, September 3, 1887, says:
+
+"The New Guinea expedition proved abortive, owing to the
+blundering shortsightedness of the then Government, for which
+Lord Derby was chiefly responsible, but what little foothold we
+possess in New Guinea, is certainly due to General MacIver's
+gallant effort."
+
+Copy of statement made by J. Rintoul Mitchell, June 2, 1887:
+
+"About the latter end of the year 1883, when I was editor-in-chief
+of the _Englishman_ in Calcutta, I was told by Captain de Deaux,
+assistant secretary in the Foreign Office of the Indian Government,
+that he had received a telegram from Lord Derby to the effect that
+if General MacIver ventured to land upon the coast of New Guinea
+it would become the duty of Lord Ripon, Viceroy, to use the naval
+forces at his command for the purpose of deporting General MacI.
+Sir Aucland Calvin can certify to this, as it was discussed in the
+Viceregal Council."
+
+Just after our Civil War MacIver was interested in another
+expedition which also failed. Its members called themselves the
+Knights of Arabia, and their object was to colonize an island much
+nearer to our shores than New Guinea. MacIver, saying that his
+oath prevented, would never tell me which island this was, but the
+reader can choose from among Cuba, Haiti, and the Hawaiian
+group. To have taken Cuba, the "colonizers" would have had to
+fight not only Spain, but the Cubans themselves, on whose side
+they were soon fighting in the Ten Years' War; so Cuba may be
+eliminated. And as the expedition was to sail from the Atlantic
+side, and not from San Francisco, the island would appear to be the
+Black Republic. From the records of the times it would seem that
+the greater number of the Knights of Arabia were veterans of the
+Confederate army, and there is no question but that they intended
+to subjugate the blacks of Haiti and form a republic for white men
+in which slavery would be recognized. As one of the leaders of this
+filibustering expedition, MacIver was arrested by General Phil
+Sheridan and for a short time cast into jail.
+
+This chafed the general's spirit, but he argued philosophically that
+imprisonment for filibustering, while irksome, brought with it no
+reproach. And, indeed, sometimes the only difference between a
+filibuster and a government lies in the fact that the government
+fights the gun-boats of only the enemy while a filibuster must
+dodge the boats of the enemy and those of his own countrymen.
+When the United States went to war with Spain there were many
+men in jail as filibusters, for doing that which at the time the
+country secretly approved, and later imitated. And because they
+attempted exactly the same thing for which Dr. Jameson was
+imprisoned in Holloway Jail, two hundred thousand of his
+countrymen are now wearing medals.
+
+The by-laws of the Knights of Arabia leave but little doubt as to its
+object.
+
+By-law No. II reads:
+
+"We, as Knights of Arabia, pledge ourselves to aid, comfort, and
+protect all Knights of Arabia, especially those who are wounded in
+obtaining our grand object.
+
+"III--Great care must be taken that no unbeliever or outsider shall
+gain any insight into the mysteries or secrets of the Order.
+
+"IV--The candidate will have to pay one hundred dollars cash to
+the Captain of the Company, and the candidate will receive from
+the Secretary a Knight of Arabia bond for one hundred dollars in
+gold, with ten per cent interest, payable ninety days after the
+recognition of (The Republic of----) by the United States, or any
+government.
+
+"V--All Knights of Arabia will be entitled to one hundred acres of
+land, location of said land to be drawn for by lottery. The products
+are coffee, sugar, tobacco, and cotton."
+
+A local correspondent of the New York _Herald_ writes of the
+arrest of MacIver as follows:
+
+"When MacIver will be tried is at present unknown, as his case has
+assumed a complicated aspect. He claims British protection as a
+subject of her British Majesty, and the English Consul has
+forwarded a statement of his case to Sir Frederick Bruce at
+Washington, accompanied by a copy of the by-laws. General
+Sheridan also has forwarded a statement to the Secretary of War,
+accompanied not only by the by-laws, but very important
+documents, including letters from Jefferson Davis, Benjamin, the
+Secretary of State of the Confederate States, and other personages
+prominent in the Rebellion, showing that MacIver enjoyed the
+highest confidence of the Confederacy."
+
+As to the last statement, an open letter I found in his scrap-book is
+an excellent proof. It is as follows: "To officers and members of all
+camps of United Confederate Veterans: It affords me the greatest
+pleasure to say that the bearer of this letter, General Henry Ronald
+MacIver, was an officer of great gallantry in the Confederate
+Army, serving on the staff at various times of General Stonewall
+Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and E. Kirby Smith, and that his official
+record is one of which any man may be proud.
+
+"Respectfully, MARCUS J. WRIGHT,
+"_Agent for the Collection of Confederate Records_.
+
+"War Records office, War Department, Washington, July 8, 1895."
+
+At the close of the war duels between officers of the two armies
+were not infrequent. In the scrap-book there is the account of one
+of these affairs sent from Vicksburg to a Northern paper by a
+correspondent who was an eye-witness of the event. It tells how
+Major MacIver, accompanied by Major Gillespie, met, just outside
+of Vicksburg, Captain Tomlin of Vermont, of the United States
+Artillery Volunteers. The duel was with swords. MacIver ran
+Tomlin through the body. The correspondent writes:
+
+"The Confederate officer wiped his sword on his handkerchief. In
+a few seconds Captain Tomlin expired. One of Major MacIver's
+seconds called to him: 'He is dead; you must go. These gentlemen
+will look after the body of their friend.' A negro boy brought up the
+horses, but before mounting MacIver said to Captain Tomlin's
+seconds: 'My friends are in haste for me to go. Is there anything I
+can do? I hope you consider that this matter has been settled
+honorably?'
+
+"There being no reply, the Confederates rode away."
+
+In a newspaper of to-day so matter-of-fact an acceptance of an
+event so tragic would make strange reading.
+
+From the South MacIver crossed through Texas to join the Royalist
+army under the Emperor Maximilian. It was while making his way,
+with other Confederate officers, from Galveston to El Paso, that
+MacIver was captured by the Indians. He was not ill-treated by
+them, but for three months was a prisoner, until one night, the
+Indians having camped near the Rio Grande, he escaped into
+Mexico. There he offered his sword to the Royalist commander,
+General Mejia, who placed him on his staff, and showed him some
+few skirmishes. At Monterey MacIver saw big fighting, and for his
+share in it received the title of Count, and the order of Guadaloupe.
+In June, contrary to all rules of civilized war, Maximilian was
+executed and the empire was at an end. MacIver escaped to the
+coast, and from Tampico took a sailing vessel to Rio de Janeiro.
+Two months later he was wearing the uniform of another emperor,
+Dom Pedro, and, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was in
+command of the Foreign Legion of the armies of Brazil and
+Argentina, which at that time as allies were fighting against
+Paraguay.
+
+MacIver soon recruited seven hundred men, but only half of these
+ever reached the front. In Buenos Ayres cholera broke out and
+thirty thousand people died, among the number about half the
+Legion. MacIver was among those who suffered, and before he
+recovered was six weeks in hospital. During that period, under a
+junior officer, the Foreign Legion was sent to the front, where it
+was disbanded.
+
+On his return to Glasgow, MacIver foregathered with an old friend,
+Bennett Burleigh, whom he had known when Burleigh was a
+lieutenant in the navy of the Confederate States. Although today
+known as a distinguished war correspondent, in those days
+Burleigh was something of a soldier of fortune himself, and was
+organizing an expedition to assist the Cretan insurgents against the
+Turks. Between the two men it was arranged that MacIver should
+precede the expedition to Crete and prepare for its arrival. The
+Cretans received him gladly, and from the provisional government
+he received a commission in which he was given "full power to
+make war on land and sea against the enemies of Crete, and
+particularly against the Sultan of Turkey and the Turkish forces,
+and to burn, destroy, or capture any vessel bearing the Turkish
+flag."
+
+This permission to destroy the Turkish navy single-handed strikes
+one as more than generous, for the Cretans had no navy, and
+before one could begin the destruction of a Turkish gun-boat it was
+first necessary to catch it and tie it to a wharf.
+
+At the close of the Cretan insurrection MacIver crossed to Athens
+and served against the brigands in Kisissia on the borders of
+Albania and Thessaly as volunteer aide to Colonel Corroneus, who
+had been commander-in-chief of the Cretans against the Turks.
+MacIver spent three months potting at brigands, and for his
+services in the mountains was recommended for the highest Greek
+decoration.
+
+From Greece it was only a step to New York, and almost
+immediately MacIver appears as one of the Goicouria-Christo
+expedition to Cuba, of which Goicouria was commander-in-chief,
+and two famous American officers, Brigadier-General Samuel C.
+Williams was a general and Colonel Wright Schumburg was chief
+of staff.
+
+In the scrap-book I find "General Order No. 11 of the Liberal Army
+of the Republic of Cuba, issued at Cedar Keys, October 3, 1869."
+In it Colonel MacIver is spoken of as in charge of officers not
+attached to any organized corps of the division. And again:
+
+"General Order No. V, Expeditionary Division, Republic of Cuba,
+on board _Lilian_," announces that the place to which the
+expedition is bound has been changed, and that General Wright
+Schumburg, who now is in command, orders "all officers not
+otherwise commissioned to join Colonel MacIver's 'Corps of
+Officers.'"
+
+The _Lilian_ ran out of coal, and to obtain firewood put in at
+Cedar Keys. For two weeks the patriots cut wood and drilled upon
+the beach, when they were captured by a British gun-boat and
+taken to Nassau. There they were set at liberty, but their arms,
+boat, and stores were confiscated.
+
+In a sailing vessel MacIver finally reached Cuba, and under
+Goicouria, who had made a successful landing, saw some "help
+yourself" fighting. Goicouria's force was finally scattered, and
+MacIver escaped from the Spanish soldiery only by putting to sea
+in an open boat, in which he endeavored to make Jamaica.
+
+On the third day out he was picked up by a steamer and again
+landed at Nassau, from which place he returned to New York.
+
+At that time in this city there was a very interesting man named
+Thaddeus P. Mott, who had been an officer in our army and later
+had entered the service of Ismail Pasha. By the Khedive he had
+been appointed a general of division and had received permission
+to reorganize the Egyptian army.
+
+His object in coming to New York was to engage officers for that
+service. He came at an opportune moment. At that time the city
+was filled with men who, in the Rebellion, on one side or the
+other, had held command, and many of these, unfitted by four
+years of soldiering for any other calling, readily accepted the
+commissions which Mott had authority to offer. New York was not
+large enough to keep MacIver and Mott long apart, and they soon
+came to an understanding. The agreement drawn up between them
+is a curious document. It is written in a neat hand on sheets of
+foolscap tied together like a Commencement-day address, with
+blue ribbon. In it MacIver agrees to serve as colonel of cavalry in
+the service of the Khedive. With a few legal phrases omitted, the
+document reads as follows:
+
+"Agreement entered into this 24th day of March, 1870, between
+the Government of his Royal Highness and the Khedive of Egypt,
+represented by General Thaddeus P. Mott of the first part, and H.
+R. H. MacIver of New York City.
+
+"The party of the second part, being desirous of entering into the
+service of party of the first part, in the military capacity of a
+colonel of cavalry, promises to serve and obey party of the first
+part faithfully and truly in his military capacity during the space of
+five years from this date; that the party of the second part waives
+all claims of protection usually afforded to Americans by consular
+and diplomatic agents of the United States, and expressly obligates
+himself to be subject to the orders of the party of the first part, and
+to make, wage, and vigorously prosecute war against any and all
+the enemies of party of the first part; that the party of the second
+part will not under any event be governed, controlled by, or submit
+to, any order, law, mandate, or proclamation issued by the
+Government of the United States of America, forbidding party of
+the second part to serve party of the first part to make war
+according to any of the provisions herein contained, _it being,
+however, distinctly understood_ that nothing herein contained
+shall be construed as obligating party of the second part to bear
+arms or wage war against the United States of America.
+
+"Party of the first part promises to furnish party of the second part
+with horses, rations, and pay him for his services the same salary
+now paid to colonels of cavalry in United States army, and will
+furnish him quarters suitable to his rank in army. Also promises, in
+the case of illness caused by climate, that said party may resign his
+office and shall receive his expenses to America and two months'
+pay; that he receives one-fifth of his regular pay during his active
+service, together with all expenses of every nature attending such
+enterprise."
+
+It also stipulates as to what sums shall be paid his family or
+children in case of his death.
+
+To this MacIver signs this oath:
+
+"In the presence of the ever-living God, I swear that I will in all
+things honestly, faithfully, and truly keep, observe, and perform
+the obligations and promises above enumerated, and endeavor to
+conform to the wishes and desires of the Government of his Royal
+Highness, the Khedive of Egypt, in all things connected with the
+furtherance of his prosperity, and the maintenance of his throne."
+
+On arriving at Cairo, MacIver was appointed inspector-general of
+cavalry, and furnished with a uniform, of which this is a
+description: "It consisted of a blue tunic with gold spangles,
+embroidered in gold up the sleeves and front, neat-fitting red
+trousers, and high patent-leather boots, while the inevitable fez
+completed the gay costume."
+
+The climate of Cairo did not agree with MacIver, and, in spite of
+his "gay costume," after six months he left the Egyptian service.
+His honorable discharge was signed by Stone Bey, who, in the
+favor of the Khedive, had supplanted General Mott.
+
+It is a curious fact that, in spite of his ill health, immediately after
+leaving Cairo, MacIver was sufficiently recovered to at once
+plunge into the Franco-Prussian War. At the battle of Orleans,
+while on the staff of General Chanzy, he was wounded. In this war
+his rank was that of a colonel of cavalry of the auxiliary army.
+
+His next venture was in the Carlist uprising of 1873, when he
+formed a Carlist League, and on several occasions acted as bearer
+of important messages from the "King," as Don Carlos was called,
+to the sympathizers with his cause in France and England.
+
+MacIver was promised, if he carried out successfully a certain
+mission upon which he was sent, and if Don Carlos became king,
+that he would be made a marquis. As Don Carlos is still a
+pretender, MacIver is still a general.
+Although in disposing of his sword MacIver never allowed his
+personal predilections to weigh with him, he always treated
+himself to a hearty dislike of the Turks, and we next find him
+fighting against them in Herzegovina with the Montenegrins. And
+when the Servians declared war against the same people, MacIver
+returned to London to organize a cavalry brigade to fight with the
+Servian army.
+
+Of this brigade and of the rapid rise of MacIver to highest rank and
+honors in Servia, the scrap-book is most eloquent. The cavalry
+brigade was to be called the Knights of the Red Cross.
+
+In a letter to the editor of the _Hour_, the general himself speaks
+of it in the following terms:
+
+"It may be interesting to many of your readers to learn that a select
+corps of gentlemen is at present in course of organization under
+the above title with the mission of proceeding to the Levant to take
+measures in case of emergency for the defense of the Christian
+population, and more especially of British subjects who are to a
+great extent unprovided with adequate means of protection from
+the religious furies of the Mussulmans. The lives of Christian
+women and children are in hourly peril from fanatical hordes. The
+Knights will be carefully chosen and kept within strict military
+control, and will be under command of a practical soldier with
+large experience of the Eastern countries. Templars and all other
+crusaders are invited to give aid and sympathy."
+
+Apparently MacIver was not successful in enlisting many Knights,
+for a war correspondent at the capital of Servia, waiting for the
+war to begin, writes as follows:
+
+"A Scotch soldier of fortune, Henry MacIver, a colonel by rank,
+has arrived at Belgrade with a small contingent of military
+adventurers. Five weeks ago I met him in Fleet Street, London, and
+had some talk about his 'expedition.' He had received a
+commission from the Prince of Servia to organize and command
+an independent cavalry brigade, and he then was busily enrolling
+his volunteers into a body styled 'The Knights of the Red Cross.' I
+am afraid some of his bold crusaders have earned more distinction
+for their attacks on Fleet Street bars than they are likely to earn on
+Servian battle-fields, but then I must not anticipate history."
+
+Another paper tells that at the end of the first week of his service
+as a Servian officer, MacIver had enlisted ninety men, but that they
+were scattered about the town, many without shelter and rations:
+
+"He assembled his men on the Rialto, and in spite of official
+expostulation, the men were marched up to the Minister's four
+abreast--and they marched fairly well, making a good show. The
+War Minister was taken by storm, and at once granted everything.
+It has raised the English colonel's popularity with his men to fever
+heat."
+
+This from the _Times_, London:
+
+"Our Belgrade correspondent telegraphs last night:
+
+"'There is here at present a gentleman named MacIver. He came
+from England to offer himself and his sword to the Servians. The
+Servian Minister of War gave him a colonel's commission. This
+morning I saw him drilling about one hundred and fifty remarkably
+fine-looking fellows, all clad in a good serviceable cavalry
+uniform, and he has horses."'
+
+Later we find that:
+
+"Colonel MacIver's Legion of Cavalry, organizing here, now
+numbers over two hundred men."
+
+And again:
+
+"Prince Nica, a Roumanian cousin of the Princess Natalie of
+Servia, has joined Colonel MacIver's cavalry corps."
+
+Later, in the _Court Journal_, October 28, 1876, we read:
+
+"Colonel MacIver, who a few years ago was very well known in
+military circles in Dublin, now is making his mark with the
+Servian army. In the war against the Turks, he commands about
+one thousand Russo-Servian cavalry."
+
+He was next to receive the following honors:
+
+"Colonel MacIver has been appointed commander of the cavalry of
+the Servian armies on the Morava and Timok, and has received the
+Cross of the Takovo Order from General Tchemaieff for gallant
+conduct in the field, and the gold medal for valor."
+
+Later we learn from the _Daily News_:
+
+"Mr. Lewis Farley, Secretary of the 'League in Aid of Christians of
+Turkey,' has received the following letter, dated Belgrade, October
+10, 1876:
+
+"'DEAR SIR: In reference to the embroidered banner so kindly
+worked by an English lady and forwarded by the League to
+Colonel MacIver, I have great pleasure in conveying to you the
+following particulars. On Sunday morning, the flag having been
+previously consecrated by the archbishop, was conducted by a
+guard of honor to the palace, and Colonel MacIver, in the presence
+of Prince Milan and a numerous suite, in the name and on behalf
+of  yourself and the fair donor, delivered it into the hands of the
+Princess Natalie. The gallant Colonel wore upon this occasion his
+full uniform as brigade commander and chief of cavalry of the
+Servian army, and bore upon his breast the 'Gold Cross of Takovo'
+which he received after the battles of the 28th and 30th of
+September, in recognition of the heroism and bravery he displayed
+upon these eventful days. The beauty of the decoration was
+enhanced by the circumstances of its bestowal, for on the evening
+of the battle of the 30th, General Tchernaieff approached Colonel
+MacIver, and, unclasping the cross from his own breast, placed it
+upon that of the Colonel.
+
+"'(Signed.) HUGH JACKSON,
+"'_Member of Council of the League_."
+
+In Servia and in the Servian army MacIver reached what as yet is
+the highest point of his career, and of his life the happiest period.
+
+He was _general de brigade_, which is not what we know as a
+brigade general, but is one who commands a division, a
+major-general. He was a great favorite both at the palace and with
+the people, the pay was good, fighting plentiful, and Belgrade gay
+and amusing. Of all the places he has visited and the countries he
+has served, it is of this Balkan kingdom that the general seems to
+speak most fondly and with the greatest feeling. Of Queen Natalie
+he was and is a most loyal and chivalric admirer, and was ever
+ready, when he found any one who did not as greatly respect the
+lady, to offer him the choice of swords or pistols. Even for Milan
+he finds an extenuating word.
+
+After Servia the general raised more foreign legions, planned
+further expeditions; in Central America reorganized the small
+armies of the small republics, served as United States Consul, and
+offered his sword to President McKinley for use against Spain. But
+with Servia the most active portion of the life of the general
+ceased, and the rest has been a repetition of what went before. At
+present his time is divided between New York and Virginia, where
+he has been offered an executive position in the approaching
+Jamestown Exposition. Both North and South he has many friends,
+many admirers. But his life is, and, from the nature of his
+profession, must always be, a lonely one.
+
+While other men remain planted in one spot, gathering about them
+a home, sons and daughters, an income for old age, MacIver is a
+rolling stone, a piece of floating sea-weed; as the present King of
+England called him fondly, "that vagabond soldier."
+
+To a man who has lived in the saddle and upon transports,
+"neighbor" conveys nothing, and even "comrade" too often means
+one who is no longer living.
+
+With the exception of the United States, of which he now is a
+naturalized citizen, the general has fought for nearly every country
+in the world, but if any of those for which he lost his health and
+blood, and for which he risked his life, remembers him, it makes
+no sign. And the general is too proud to ask to be remembered.
+To-day there is no more interesting figure than this man who in
+years is still young enough to lead an army corps, and who, for
+forty years, has been selling his sword and risking his life for
+presidents, pretenders, charlatans, and emperors.
+
+He finds some mighty changes: Cuba, which he fought to free, is
+free; men of the South, with whom for four years he fought
+shoulder to shoulder, are now wearing the blue; the empire of
+Mexico, for which he fought, is a republic; the empire of France,
+for which he fought, is a republic; the empire of Brazil, for which
+he fought is a republic; the dynasty in Servia, to which he owes his
+greatest honors, has been wiped out by murder. From none of the
+eighteen countries he has served has he a pension, berth, or billet,
+and at sixty he finds himself at home in every land, but with a
+home in none.
+
+Still he has his sword, his blanket, and in the event of war, to
+obtain a commission he has only to open his tin boxes and show
+the commissions already won. Indeed, any day, in a new uniform,
+and under the Nineteenth Flag, the general may again be winning
+fresh victories and honors.
+
+And so, this brief sketch of him is left unfinished. We will mark
+it--_To be continued_.
+
+BARON JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY
+
+THIS is an attempt to tell the story of Baron Harden-Hickey, the
+Man Who Made Himself King, the man who was born after his
+time.
+
+If the reader, knowing something of the strange career of
+Harden-Hickey, wonders why one writes of him appreciatively
+rather than in amusement, he is asked not to judge Harden-Hickey
+as one judges a contemporary.
+
+Harden-Hickey, in our day, was as incongruous a figure as was the
+American at the Court of King Arthur; he was as unhappily out of
+the picture as would be Cyrano de Bergerac on the floor of the
+Board of Trade. Judged, as at the time he was judged, by writers of
+comic paragraphs, by presidents of railroads, by amateur
+"statesmen" at Washington, Harden-Hickey was a joke. To the
+vacant mind of the village idiot, Rip Van Winkle returning to
+Falling Water also was a joke. The people of our day had not the
+time to understand Harden-Hickey; they thought him a charlatan,
+half a dangerous adventurer and half a fool; and Harden-Hickey
+certainly did not under stand them. His last words, addressed to his
+wife, showed this. They were: "I would rather die a gentleman than
+live a blackguard like your father."
+
+As a matter of fact, his father-in-law, although living under the
+disadvantage of being a Standard Oil magnate, neither was, nor is,
+a blackguard, and his son-in-law had been treated by him
+generously and with patience. But for the duellist and soldier of
+fortune it was impossible to sympathize with a man who took no
+greater risk in life than to ride on one of his own railroads, and of
+the views the two men held of each other, that of John H. Flagler
+was probably the fairer and the more kindly.
+
+Harden-Hickey was one of the most picturesque, gallant, and
+pathetic adventurers of our day; but Flagler also deserves our
+sympathy.
+
+For an unimaginative and hard-working Standard Oil king to have
+a D'Artagnan thrust upon him as a son-in-law must be trying.
+
+James A. Harden-Hickey, James the First of Trinidad, Baron of the
+Holy Roman Empire, was born on December 8, 1854. As to the
+date all historians agree; as to where the important event took
+place they differ. That he was born in France his friends are
+positive, but at the time of his death in El Paso the San Francisco
+papers claimed him as a native of California. All agree that his
+ancestors were Catholics and Royalists who left Ireland with the
+Stuarts when they sought refuge in France. The version which
+seems to be the most probable is that he was born in San
+Francisco, where as one of the early settlers, his father, E. C.
+Hickey, was well known, and that early in his life, in order to
+educate him, the mother took him to Europe.
+
+There he was educated at the Jesuit College at Namur, then at
+Leipsic, and later entered the Military College of St. Cyr.
+
+James the First was one of those boys who never had the
+misfortune to grow up. To the moment of his death, in all he
+planned you can trace the effects of his early teachings and
+environment; the influences of the great Church that nursed him,
+and of the city of Paris, in which he lived. Under the Second
+Empire, Paris was at her maddest, baddest, and best. To-day under
+the republic, without a court, with a society kept in funds by the
+self-expatriated wives and daughters of our business men, she
+lacks the reasons for which Baron Haussmann bedecked her and
+made her beautiful. The good Loubet, the worthy Fallieres, except
+that they furnish the cartoonist with subjects for ridicule, do not
+add to the gayety of Paris. But when Harden-Hickey was a boy,
+Paris was never so carelessly gay, so brilliant, never so
+overcharged with life, color, and adventure.
+
+In those days "the Emperor sat in his box that night," and in the
+box opposite sat Cora Pearl; veterans of the campaign of Italy, of
+Mexico, from the desert fights of Algiers, sipped sugar and water
+in front of Tortoni's, the Cafe Durand, the Cafe Riche; the
+sidewalks rang with their sabres, the boulevards were filled with
+the colors of the gorgeous uniforms; all night of each night the
+Place Vendome shone with the carriage lamps of the visiting
+pashas from Egypt, of nabobs from India, of _rastaquoueres_ from
+the sister empire of Brazil; the state carriages, with the outriders
+and postilions in the green and gold of the Empress, swept through
+the Champs Elysees, and at the Bal Bulier, and at Mabile the
+students and "grisettes" introduced the cancan. The men of those
+days were Hugo, Thiers, Dumas, Daudet, Alfred de Musset; the
+magnificent blackguard, the Duc de Morny, and the great, simple
+Canrobert, the captain of barricades, who became a marshal of
+France.
+
+Over all was the mushroom Emperor, his anterooms crowded with
+the titled charlatans of Europe, his court radiant with countesses
+created overnight. And it was the Emperor, with his love of
+theatrical display, of gorgeous ceremonies; with his restless
+reaching after military glory, the weary, cynical adventurer, that
+the boy at St. Cyr took as his model.
+
+Royalist as was Harden-Hickey by birth and tradition, and Royalist
+as he always remained, it was the court at the Tuileries that filled
+his imagination. The Bourbons, whom he served, hoped some day
+for a court; at the Tuileries there was a court, glittering before his
+physical eyes. The Bourbons were pleasant old gentlemen, who
+later willingly supported him, and for whom always he was equally
+willing to fight, either with his sword or his pen. But to the last, in
+his mind, he carried pictures of the Second Empire as he, as a boy,
+had known it.
+
+Can you not imagine the future James the First, barelegged, in a
+black-belted smock, halting with his nurse, or his priest, to gaze up
+in awestruck delight at the great, red-breeched Zouaves lounging
+on guard at the Tuileries?
+
+"When I grow up," said little James to himself, not knowing that
+he never would grow up, "I shall have Zouaves for _my_ palace
+guard."
+
+And twenty years later, when he laid down the laws for his little
+kingdom, you find that the officers of his court must wear the
+mustache, "_a la_ Louis Napoleon," and that the Zouave uniform
+will be worn by the Palace Guards.
+
+In 1883, while he still was at the War College, his father died, and
+when he graduated, which he did with honors, he found himself his
+own master. His assets were a small income, a perfect knowledge
+of the French language, and the reputation of being one of the most
+expert swordsman in Paris. He chose not to enter the army, and
+instead became a journalist, novelist, duellist, an _habitue_ of the
+Latin Quarter and the boulevards.
+
+As a novelist the titles of his books suggest their quality. Among
+them are: "Un Amour Vendeen," "Lettres d'un Yankee," "Un
+Amour dans le Monde," "Memoires d'un Gommeux,"
+"Merveilleuses Aventures de Nabuchodonosor, Nosebreaker."
+
+Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, apparently with deep
+conviction, with high enthusiasm. In her service as a defender of
+the faith he issued essays, pamphlets, "broadsides." The opponents
+of the Church in Paris he attacked relentlessly.
+
+As a reward for his championship he received the title of baron.
+
+In 1878, while only twenty-four, he married the Countess de
+Saint-Pery, by whom he had two children, a boy and a girl, and
+three years later he started _Triboulet_. It was this paper that made
+him famous to "all Paris."
+
+It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the Count de Chambord and
+published in the interest of the Bourbons. Until 1888
+Harden-Hickey was its editor, and even by his enemies it must be
+said that he served his employers with zeal. During the seven years
+in which the paper amused Paris and annoyed the republican
+government, as its editor Harden-Hickey was involved in forty-two
+lawsuits, for different editorial indiscretions, fined three hundred
+thousand francs, and was a principal in countless duels.
+
+To his brother editors his standing interrogation was: "Would you
+prefer to meet me upon the editorial page, or in the Bois de
+Boulogne?" Among those who met him in the Bois were Aurelien
+Scholl, H. Lavenbryon, M. Taine, M. de Cyon, Philippe Du Bois,
+Jean Moreas.
+
+In 1888, either because, his patron the Count de Chambord having
+died, there was no more money to pay the fines, or because the
+patience of the government was exhausted, _Triboulet_ ceased to
+exist, and Harden-Hickey, claiming the paper had been suppressed
+and he himself exiled, crossed to London.
+
+From there he embarked upon a voyage around the world, which
+lasted two years, and in the course of which he discovered the
+island kingdom of which he was to be the first and last king.
+Previous to his departure, having been divorced from the Countess
+de Saint-Pery, he placed his boy and girl in the care of a
+fellow-journalist and very dear friend, the Count de la Boissiere, of
+whom later we shall hear more.
+
+Harden-Hickey started around the world on the _Astoria_, a British
+merchant vessel bound for India by way of Cape Horn, Captain
+Jackson commanding.
+
+When off the coast of Brazil the ship touched at the uninhabited
+island of Trinidad. Historians of James the First say that it was
+through stress of weather that the _Astoria_ was driven to seek
+refuge there, but as, for six months of the year, to make a landing
+on the island is almost impossible, and as at any time, under stress
+of weather, Trinidad would be a place to avoid, it is more likely
+Jackson put in to replenish his water-casks, or to obtain a supply of
+turtle meat.
+
+Or it may have been that, having told Harden-Hickey of the
+derelict island, the latter persuaded the captain to allow him to
+land and explore it. Of this, at least, we are certain, a boat was sent
+ashore, Harden-Hickey went ashore in it, and before he left the
+island, as a piece of no man's land, belonging to no country, he
+claimed it in his own name, and upon the beach raised a flag of his
+own design.
+
+The island of Trinidad claimed by Harden-Hickey must not be
+confused with the larger Trinidad belonging to Great Britain and
+lying off Venezuela.
+
+The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful spot of great tropical
+beauty; it is one of the fairest places in the West Indies. At every
+hour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open its arms to
+vessels of every draught. A governor in a pith helmet, a cricket
+club, a bishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden go to make it a
+prosperous and contented colony. But the little derelict Trinidad,
+in latitude 20 degrees 30 minutes south, and longitude 29 degrees
+22 minutes west, seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, is
+but a spot upon the ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot.
+Except by birds, turtles, and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited;
+and against the advances of man its shores are fortified with cruel
+ridges of coral, jagged limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering
+surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many feet high against the
+coast.
+
+In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says he found nothing
+living but doves and land-crabs. "Saw many green turtles in sea,
+but by reason of the great surf, could catch none."
+
+After Halley's visit, in 1700 the island was settled by a few
+Portuguese from Brazil. The ruins of their stone huts are still in
+evidence. But Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no
+mention of the Portuguese; and when, in 1822, Commodore Owen
+visited Trinidad, he found nothing living there save cormorants,
+petrels, gannets, man-of-war birds, and "turtles weighing from five
+hundred to seven hundred pounds."
+
+In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the Japanese-Russian War
+represented the London _Morning Post_, visited Trinidad in his
+yacht in search of buried treasure.
+
+Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled "Collection of Voages,
+chiefly in the Southern Atlantick Ocean, 1775," tells how, in 1700,
+he "took possession of the island in his Majesty's name as knowing
+it to be granted by the King's letter patent, leaving a Union Jack
+flying."
+
+So it appears that before Harden-Hickey seized the island it
+already had been claimed by Great Britain, and later, on account of
+the Portuguese settlement, by Brazil. The answer Harden-Hickey
+made to these claims was that the English never settled in
+Trinidad, and that the Portuguese abandoned it, and, therefore,
+their claims lapsed. In his "prospectus" of his island,
+Harden-Hickey himself describes it thus:
+
+"Trinidad is about five miles long and three miles wide. In spite of
+its rugged and uninviting appearance, the inland plateaus are rich
+with luxuriant vegetation.
+
+"Prominent among this is a peculiar species of bean, which is not
+only edible, but extremely palatable. The surrounding seas swarm
+with fish, which as yet are wholly unsuspicious of the hook.
+Dolphins, rock-cod, pigfish, and blackfish may be caught as
+quickly as they can be hauled out. I look to the sea birds and the
+turtles to afford our principal source of revenue. Trinidad is the
+breeding-place of almost the entire feathery population of the
+South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of guano alone should
+make my little country prosperous. Turtles visit the island to
+deposit eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is literally alive with
+them. The only drawback to my projected kingdom is the fact that
+it has no good harbor and can be approached only when the sea is
+calm."
+
+As a matter of fact sometimes months pass before it is possible to
+effect a landing.
+
+Another asset of the island held out by the prospectus was its great
+store of buried treasure. Before Harden-Hickey seized the island,
+this treasure had made it known. This is the legend. In 1821 a great
+store of gold and silver plate plundered from Peruvian churches
+had been concealed on the islands by pirates near Sugar Loaf Hill,
+on the shore of what is known as the Southwest Bay. Much of this
+plate came from the cathedral at Lima, having been carried from
+there during the war of independence when the Spanish residents
+fled the country. In their eagerness to escape they put to sea in any
+ship that offered, and these unarmed and unseaworthy vessels fell
+an easy prey to pirates. One of these pirates on his death-bed, in
+gratitude to his former captain, told him the secret of the treasure.
+In 1892 this captain was still living, in Newcastle, England, and
+although his story bears a family resemblance to every other story
+of buried treasure, there were added to the tale of the pirate some
+corroborative details. These, in twelve years, induced five different
+expeditions to visit the island. The two most important were that
+of E. F. Knight and one from the Tyne in the bark _Aurea_.
+
+In his "Cruise of the _Alerte_," Knight gives a full description of
+the island, and of his attempt to find the treasure. In this, a
+landslide having covered the place where it was buried, he was
+unsuccessful.
+
+But Knight's book is the only source of accurate information
+concerning Trinidad, and in writing his prospectus it is evident that
+Harden-Hickey was forced to borrow from it freely. Knight
+himself says that the most minute and accurate description of
+Trinidad is to be found in the "Frank Mildmay" of Captain
+Marryat. He found it so easy to identify each spot mentioned in the
+novel that he believes the author of "Midshipman Easy" himself
+touched there.
+
+After seizing Trinidad, Harden-Hickey rounded the Cape and made
+north to Japan, China, and India. In India he became interested in
+Buddhism, and remained for over a year questioning the priests of
+that religion and studying its tenets and history.
+
+On his return to Paris, in 1890, he met Miss Annie Harper Flagler,
+daughter of John H. Flagler. A year later, on St. Patrick's Day,
+1891, at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Miss Flagler
+became the Baroness Harden-Hickey. The Rev. John Hall married
+them.
+
+For the next two years Harden-Hickey lived in New York, but so
+quietly that, except that he lived quietly, it is difficult to find out
+anything concerning him. The man who, a few years before, had
+delighted Paris with his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his
+forty-two lawsuits, who had been the master of revels in the Latin
+Quarter, in New York lived almost as a recluse, writing a book on
+Buddhism. While he was in New York I was a reporter on the
+_Evening Sun_, but I cannot recall ever having read his name in
+the newspapers of that day, and I heard of him only twice; once as
+giving an exhibition of his water-colors at the American Art
+Galleries, and again as the author of a book I found in a store in
+Twenty-second Street, just east of Broadway, then the home of the
+Truth Seeker Publishing Company.
+
+It was a grewsome compilation and had just appeared in print. It
+was called "Euthanasia, or the Ethics of Suicide." This book was
+an apology or plea for self-destruction. In it the baron laid down
+those occasions when he considered suicide pardonable, and when
+obligatory. To support his arguments and to show that suicide was
+a noble act, he quoted Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, and even
+misquoted the Bible. He gave a list of poisons, and the amount of
+each necessary to kill a human being. To show how one can depart
+from life with the least pain, he illustrated the text with most
+unpleasant pictures, drawn by himself.
+
+The book showed how far Harden-Hickey had strayed from the
+teachings of the Jesuit College at Namur, and of the Church that
+had made him "noble."
+
+All of these two years had not been spent only in New York.
+Harden-Hickey made excursions to California, to Mexico, and to
+Texas, and in each of these places bought cattle ranches and
+mines. The money to pay for these investments came from his
+father-in-law. But not directly. Whenever he wanted money he
+asked his wife, or De la Boissiere, who was a friend also of
+Flagler, to obtain it for him.
+
+His attitude toward his father-in-law is difficult to explain. It is not
+apparent that Flagler ever did anything which could justly offend
+him; indeed, he always seems to have spoken of his son-in-law
+with tolerance, and often with awe, as one would speak of a clever,
+wayward child. But Harden-Hickey chose to regard Flagler as his
+enemy, as a sordid man of business who could not understand the
+feelings and aspirations of a genius and a gentleman.
+
+Before Harden-Hickey married, the misunderstanding between his
+wife's father and himself began. Because he thought
+Harden-Hickey was marrying his daughter for her money, Flagler
+opposed the union. Consequently, Harden-Hickey married Miss
+Flagler without "settlements," and for the first few years supported
+her without aid from her father. But his wife had been accustomed
+to a manner of living beyond the means of the soldier of fortune,
+and soon his income, and then even his capital, was exhausted.
+From her mother the baroness inherited a fortune. This was in the
+hands of her father as executor. When his own money was gone,
+Harden-Hickey endeavored to have the money belonging to his
+wife placed to her credit, or to his. To this, it is said, Flagler, on
+the ground that Harden-Hickey was not a man of business, while
+he was, objected, and urged that he was, and that if it remained in
+his hands the money would be better invested and better expended.
+It was the refusal of Flagler to intrust Harden-Hickey with the care
+of his wife's money that caused the breach between them.
+
+As I have said, you cannot judge Harden-Hickey as you would a
+contemporary. With the people among whom he was thrown, his
+ideas were entirely out of joint. He should have lived in the days of
+"The Three Musketeers." People who looked upon him as working
+for his own hand entirely misunderstood him. He was absolutely
+honest, and as absolutely without a sense of humor. To him, to pay
+taxes, to pay grocers' bills, to depend for protection upon a
+policeman, was intolerable. He lived in a world of his own
+imagining. And one day, in order to make his imaginings real, and
+to escape from his father-in-law's unromantic world of Standard
+Oil and Florida hotels, in a proclamation to the powers he
+announced himself as King James the First of the Principality of
+Trinidad.
+
+The proclamation failed to create a world crisis. Several of the
+powers recognized his principality and his title; but, as a rule,
+people laughed, wondered, and forgot. That the daughter of John
+Flagler was to rule the new principality gave it a "news interest,"
+and for a few Sundays in the supplements she was hailed as the
+"American Queen."
+
+When upon the subject of the new kingdom Flagler himself was
+interviewed, he showed an open mind.
+
+"My son-in-law is a very determined man," he said; "he will carry
+out any scheme in which he is interested. Had he consulted me
+about this, I would have been glad to have aided him with money
+or advice. My son-in-law is an extremely well-read, refined,
+well-bred man. He does not court publicity. While he was staying
+in my house he spent nearly all the time in the library translating
+an Indian book on Buddhism. My daughter has no ambition to be a
+queen or anything else than what she is--an American girl. But my
+son-in-law means to carry on this Trinidad scheme, and--he will."
+
+From his father-in-law, at least, Harden-Hickey could not complain
+that he had met with lack of sympathy.
+
+The rest of America was amused; and after less than nine days,
+indifferent. But Harden-Hickey, though unobtrusively, none the
+less earnestly continued to play the part of king. His friend De la
+Boissiere he appointed his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and
+established in a Chancellery at 217 West Thirty-sixth Street, New
+York, and from there was issued a sort of circular, or prospectus,
+written by the king, and signed by "Le Grand Chancelier,
+Secretaire d'Etat pour les Affaires Etrangeres, M. le Comte de la
+Boissiere."
+
+The document, written in French, announced that the new state
+would be governed by a military dictatorship, that the royal
+standard was a yellow triangle on a red ground, and that the arms
+of the principality were "d'Or chape de Gueules." It pointed out
+naively that those who first settled on the island would be naturally
+the oldest inhabitants, and hence would form the aristocracy. But
+only those who at home enjoyed social position and some private
+fortune would be admitted into this select circle.
+
+For itself the state reserved a monopoly of the guano, of the turtles,
+and of the buried treasure. And both to discover the treasure and to
+encourage settlers to dig and so cultivate the soil, a percentage of
+the treasure was promised to the one who found it.
+
+Any one purchasing ten $200 bonds was entitled to a free passage
+to the island, and after a year, should he so desire it, a return trip.
+The hard work was to be performed by Chinese coolies, the
+aristocracy existing beautifully, and, according to the prospectus,
+to enjoy _"vie d'un genre tout nouveau, et la recherche de
+sensations nouvelles."_
+
+To reward his subjects for prominence in literature, the arts, and
+the sciences, his Majesty established an order of chivalry. The
+official document creating this order reads:
+
+
+"We, James, Prince of Trinidad, have resolved to commemorate
+our accession to the throne of Trinidad by the institution of an
+Order of Chivalry, destined to reward literature, industry, science,
+and the human virtues, and by these presents have established and
+do institute, with cross and crown, the Order of the Insignia of the
+Cross of Trinidad, of which we and our heirs and successors shall
+be the sovereigns.
+
+"Given in our Chancellery the Eighth of the month of December,
+one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, and of our reign, the
+First Year.
+
+"JAMES."
+
+There were four grades: Chevalier, Commander, Grand Officer,
+and Grand Cross; and the name of each member of the order was
+inscribed in "The Book of Gold." A pension of one thousand francs
+was given to a Chevalier, of two thousand francs to a Commander,
+and of three thousand francs to a Grand Officer. Those of the grade
+of Grand Cross were content with a plaque of eight
+diamond-studded rays, with, in the centre, set in red enamel, the
+arms of Trinidad. The ribbon was red and yellow.
+
+A rule of the order read: "The costume shall be identical with that
+of the Chamberlains of the Court of Trinidad, save the buttons,
+which shall bear the impress of the Crown of the Order."
+
+For himself, King James commissioned a firm of jewelers to
+construct a royal crown. In design it was similar to the one which
+surmounted the cross of Trinidad. It is shown in the photograph of
+the insignia. Also, the king issued a set of postage-stamps on
+which was a picture of the island. They were of various colors and
+denominations, and among stamp-collectors enjoyed a certain sale.
+
+To-day, as I found when I tried to procure one to use in this book,
+they are worth many times their face value.
+
+For some time the affairs of the new kingdom progressed
+favorably. In San Francisco, King James, in person, engaged four
+hundred coolies and fitted out a schooner which he sent to
+Trinidad, where it made regular trips between his principality and
+Brazil; an agent was established on the island, and the construction
+of docks, wharves, and houses was begun, while at the chancellery
+in West Thirty-sixth Street, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was
+ready to furnish would-be settlers with information.
+
+And then, out of a smiling sky, a sudden and unexpected blow was
+struck at the independence of the little kingdom. It was a blow
+from which it never recovered.
+
+In July of 1895, while constructing a cable to Brazil, Great Britain
+found the Island of Trinidad lying in the direct line she wished to
+follow, and, as a cable station, seized it. Objection to this was
+made by Brazil, and at Bahia a mob with stones pelted the sign of
+the English Consul-General.
+
+By right of Halley's discovery, England claimed the island; as a
+derelict from the main land, Brazil also claimed it. Between the
+rivals, the world saw a chance for war, and the fact that the island
+really belonged to our King James for a moment was forgotten.
+
+But the Minister of Foreign Affairs was at his post. With
+promptitude and vigor he acted. He addressed a circular note to all
+the powers of Europe, and to our State Department a protest. It
+read as follows:
+
+
+"GRANDE CHANCELLERIE DE LA PRINCIPAUTE DE
+TRINIDAD,
+27 WEST THIRTY-SIXTH STREET,
+NEW YORK CITY, U. S. A.,
+
+"NEW YORK, _July_ 30, 1895.
+
+_"To His Excellency Mr. the Secretary of State of
+the Republic of the United States of North
+America, Washington, D. C.:_
+
+"EXCELLENCY.--I have the honor to recall to your memory:
+
+"1. That in the course of the month of September, 1893, Baron
+Harden-Hickey officially notified all the Powers of his taking
+possession of the uninhabited island of Trinidad; and
+
+"2. That in course of January, 1894, he renewed to all these Powers
+the official notification of the said taking of possession, and
+informed them at the same time that from that date the land would
+be known as 'Principality of Trinidad'; that he took the title of
+'Prince of Trinidad,' and would reign under the name of James I.
+
+"In consequence of these official notifications several Powers have
+recognized the new Principality and its Prince, and at all events
+none thought it necessary at that epoch to raise objections or
+formulate opposition.
+
+"The press of the entire world has, on the other hand, often
+acquainted readers with these facts, thus giving to them all
+possible publicity. In consequence of the accomplishment of these
+various formalities, and as the law of nations prescribes that
+'derelict' territories belong to whoever will take possession of
+them, and as the island of Trinidad, which has been abandoned for
+years, certainly belongs to the aforesaid category, his Serene
+Highness Prince James I was authorized to regard his rights on the
+said island as perfectly valid and indisputable.
+
+"Nevertheless, your Excellency knows that recently, in spite of all
+the legitimate rights of my august sovereign, an English war-ship
+has disembarked at Trinidad a detachment of armed troops and
+taken possession of the island in the name of England.
+
+"Following this assumption of territory, the Brazilian Government,
+invoking a right of ancient Portuguese occupation (long ago
+outlawed), has notified the English Government to surrender the
+island to Brazil.
+
+"I beg of your Excellency to ask of the Government of the United
+States of North America to recognize the Principality of Trinidad
+as an independent State, and to come to an understanding with the
+other American Powers in order to guarantee its neutrality.
+
+"Thus the Government of the United States of North America will
+once more accord its powerful assistance to the cause of right and
+of justice, misunderstood by England and Brazil, put an end to a
+situation which threatens to disturb the peace, re-establish concord
+between two great States ready to appeal to arms, and affirm itself,
+moreover, as the faithful interpreter of the Monroe Doctrine.
+
+"In the expectation of your reply please accept, Excellency, the
+expression of my elevated consideration.
+
+"The Grand Chancellor, Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
+
+"COMTE DE LA BOISSIERE."
+
+At that time Richard Olney was Secretary of State, and in his
+treatment of the protest, and of the gentleman who wrote it, he
+fully upheld the reputation he made while in office of lack of good
+manners. Saying he was unable to read the handwriting in which
+the protest was written, he disposed of it in a way that would
+suggest itself naturally to a statesman and a gentleman. As a
+"crank" letter he turned it over to the Washington correspondents.
+You can imagine what they did with it.
+
+The day following the reporters in New York swept down upon the
+chancellery and upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was the
+"silly season" in August, there was no real news in town, and the
+troubles of De la Boissiere were allowed much space.
+
+They laughed at him and at his king, at his chancellery, at his
+broken English, at his "grave and courtly manners," even at his
+clothes. But in spite of the ridicule, between the lines you could
+read that to the man himself it all was terribly real.
+
+I had first heard of the island of Trinidad from two men I knew
+who spent three months on it searching for the treasure, and when
+Harden-Hickey proclaimed himself lord of the island, through the
+papers I had carefully followed his fortunes. So, partly out of
+curiosity and partly out of sympathy, I called at the chancellery.
+
+I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty neighborhood just west
+of Seventh Avenue, and of  where now stands the York Hotel.
+Three weeks ago I revisited it and found it unchanged. At the time
+of my first visit, on the jamb of the front door was pasted a piece
+of paper on which was written in the handwriting of De la
+Boissiere: "Chancellerie de la Principaute de Trinidad."
+
+The chancellery was not exactly in its proper setting. On its
+door-step children of the tenements were playing dolls with
+clothes-pins; in the street a huckster in raucous tones was offering
+wilted cabbages to women in wrappers leaning from the fire
+escapes; the smells and the heat of New York in midsummer rose
+from the asphalt. It was a far cry to the wave-swept island off the
+coast of Brazil.
+
+De la Boissiere received me with distrust. The morning papers had
+made him man-shy; but, after a few "Your Excellencies" and a
+respectful inquiry regarding "His Royal Highness," his confidence
+revived. In the situation he saw nothing humorous, not even in an
+announcement on the wall which read: "Sailings to Trinidad." Of
+these there were _two_; on March 1, and on October 1. On the
+table were many copies of the royal proclamation, the
+postage-stamps of the new government, the thousand-franc bonds,
+and, in pasteboard boxes, the gold and red enamelled crosses of
+the Order of Trinidad.
+
+He talked to me frankly and fondly of Prince James. Indeed, I
+never met any man who knew Harden-Hickey well who did not
+speak of him with aggressive loyalty. If at his eccentricities they
+smiled, it was with the smile of affection. It was easy to see De la
+Boissiere regarded him not only with the affection of a friend, but
+with the devotion of a true subject. In his manner he himself was
+courteous, gentle, and so distinguished that I felt as though I were
+enjoying, on intimate terms, an audience with one of the
+prime-ministers of Europe.
+
+And he, on his part, after the ridicule of the morning papers, to
+have any one with outward seriousness accept his high office and
+his king, was, I believe, not ungrateful.
+
+I told him I wished to visit Trinidad, and in that I was quite
+serious. The story of an island filled with buried treasure, and
+governed by a king, whose native subjects were turtles and
+seagulls, promised to make interesting writing.
+
+The count was greatly pleased. I believe in me he saw his first
+bona-fide settler, and when I rose to go he even lifted one of the
+crosses of Trinidad and, before my envious eyes, regarded it
+uncertainly.
+
+Perhaps, had he known that of all decorations it was the one I most
+desired; had I only then and there booked my passage, or sworn
+allegiance to King James, who knows but that to-day I might be a
+chevalier, with my name in the "Book of Gold"? But instead of
+bending the knee, I reached for my hat; the count replaced the
+cross in its pasteboard box, and for me the psychological moment
+had passed.
+
+Others, more deserving of the honor, were more fortunate. Among
+my fellow-reporters who, like myself, came to scoff, and remained
+to pray, was Henri Pene du Bois, for some time, until his recent
+death, the brilliant critic of art and music of the _American_. Then
+he was on the _Times_, and Henry N. Cary, now of the _Morning
+Telegraph_, was his managing editor.
+
+When Du Bois reported to Cary on his assignment, he said: "There
+is nothing funny in that story. It's pathetic. Both those men are in
+earnest. They are convinced they are being robbed of their rights.
+Their only fault is that they have imagination, and that the rest of
+us lack it. That's the way it struck me, and that's the way the story
+ought to be written."
+
+"Write it that way," said Cary.
+
+So, of all the New York papers, the _Times_, for a brief period,
+became the official organ of the Government of James the First,
+and in time Cary and Du Bois were created Chevaliers of the
+Order of Trinidad, and entitled to wear uniforms "Similar to those
+of the Chamberlains of the Court, save that the buttons bear the
+impress of the Royal Crown."
+
+The attack made by Great Britain and Brazil upon the
+independence of the principality, while it left Harden-Hickey in
+the position of a king in exile, brought him at once another crown,
+which, by those who offered it to him, was described as of
+incomparably greater value than that of Trinidad.
+
+In the first instance the man had sought the throne; in this case the
+throne sought the man.
+
+In 1893 in San Francisco, Ralston J. Markowe, a lawyer and a
+one-time officer of artillery in the United States army, gained
+renown as one of the Morrow filibustering expedition which
+attempted to overthrow the Dole government in the Hawaiian Isles
+and restore to the throne Queen Liliuokalani. In San Francisco
+Markowe was nicknamed the "Prince of Honolulu," as it was
+understood, should Liliuokalani regain her crown, he would be
+rewarded with some high office. But in the star of Liliuokalani,
+Markowe apparently lost faith, and thought he saw in
+Harden-Hickey timber more suitable for king-making.
+Accordingly, twenty-four days after the "protest" was sent to our
+State Department, Markowe switched his allegiance to
+Harden-Hickey, and to him addressed the following letter:
+
+"SAN FRANCISCO, August 26, 1895.
+
+BARON HARDEN-HICKEY, LOS ANGELES, CAL.:
+
+"Monseigneur--Your favor of August 16 has been received.
+
+"1. I am the duly authorized agent of the Royalist party in so far as
+it is possible for any one to occupy that position under existing
+circumstances. With the Queen in prison and absolutely cut off
+from all communication with her friends, it is out of the question
+for me to carry anything like formal credentials.
+
+"2. Alienating any part of the territory cannot give rise to any
+constitutional questions, for the reason that the constitutions, like
+the land tenures, are in a state of such utter confusion that only a
+strong hand can unravel them, and the restoration will result in the
+establishment of a strong military government. If I go down with
+the expedition I have organized I shall be in full control of the
+situation and in a position to carry out all my contracts.
+
+"3. It is the island of Kauai on which I propose to establish you as
+an independent sovereign.
+
+"4. My plan is to successively occupy all the islands, leaving the
+capital to the last. When the others have fallen, the capital, being
+cut off from all its resources, will be easily taken, and may very
+likely fall without effort. I don't expect in any case to have to
+fortify myself or to take the defensive, or to have to issue a call to
+arms, as I shall have an overwhelming force to join me at once, in
+addition to those who go with me, who by themselves will be
+sufficient to carry everything before them without active
+cooperation from the people there.
+
+"5. The Government forces consist of about 160 men and boys,
+with very imperfect military training, and of whom about forty are
+officers. They are organized as infantry. There are also about 600
+citizens enrolled as a reserve guard, who may be called upon in
+case of an emergency, and about 150 police. We can fully rely
+upon the assistance of all the police and from one-quarter to
+one-half of the other troops. And of the remainder many will under
+no circumstances engage in a sharp fight in defense of the present
+government. There are now on the island plenty of men and arms
+to accomplish our purpose, and if my expedition does not get off
+very soon the people there will be organized to do the work
+without other assistance from here than the direction of a few
+leaders, of which they stand more in need than anything else.
+
+"6. The tonnage of the vessel is 146. She at present has berth-room
+for twenty men, but bunks can be arranged in the hold for 256
+more, with provision for ample ventilation. She has one complete
+set of sails and two extra spars. The remaining information in
+regard to her I will have to obtain and send you to-morrow. I think
+it must be clear to you that the opportunity now offered you will be
+of incomparably greater value at once than Trinidad would ever
+be. Still hoping that I may have an interview with you at an early
+date, respectfully yours,
+
+"RALSTON J. MARKOWE."
+
+What Harden-Hickey thought of this is not known, but as two
+weeks before he received it he had written Markowe, asking him
+by what authority he represented the Royalists of Honolulu, it
+seems evident that when the crown of Hawaii was first proffered
+him he did not at once spurn it.
+
+He now was in the peculiar position of being a deposed king of an
+island in the South Atlantic, which had been taken from him, and
+king-elect of an island in the Pacific, which was his if he could
+take it.
+
+This was in August of 1895. For the two years following,
+Harden-Hickey was a soldier of misfortunes. Having lost his island
+kingdom, he could no longer occupy himself with plans for its
+improvement. It had been his toy. They had taken it from him, and
+the loss and the ridicule which followed hurt him bitterly.
+
+And for the lands he really owned in Mexico and California, and
+which, if he were to live in comfort, it was necessary he should
+sell, he could find no purchaser; and, moreover, having quarrelled
+with his father-in-law, he had cut off his former supply of money.
+The need of it pinched him cruelly.
+
+The advertised cause of this quarrel was sufficiently characteristic
+to be the real one. Moved by the attack of Great Britain upon his
+principality, Harden-Hickey decided upon reprisals. It must be
+remembered that always he was more Irish than French. On paper
+he organized an invasion of England from Ireland, the home of his
+ancestors. It was because Flagler refused to give him money for
+this adventure that he broke with him. His friends say this was the
+real reason of the quarrel, which was a quarrel on the side of
+Harden-Hickey alone.
+
+And there were other, more intimate troubles. While not separated
+from his wife, he now was seldom in her company. When the
+Baroness was in Paris, Harden-Hickey was in San Francisco; when
+she returned to San Francisco, he was in Mexico. The fault seems
+to have been his. He was greatly admired by pretty women. His
+daughter by his first wife, now a very beautiful girl of sixteen,
+spent much time with her stepmother; and when not on his father's
+ranch in Mexico, his son also, for months together, was at her side.
+The husband approved of this, but he himself saw his wife
+infrequently. Nevertheless, early in the spring of 1898, the
+Baroness leased a house in Brockton Square, in Riverside, Cal.,
+where it was understood by herself and by her friends her husband
+would join her. At that time in Mexico he was trying to dispose of
+a large tract of land. Had he been able to sell it, the money for a
+time would have kept one even of his extravagances contentedly
+rich. At least, he would have been independent of his wife and of
+her father. Up to February of 1898 his obtaining this money
+seemed probable.
+
+Early in that month the last prospective purchaser decided not to
+buy.
+
+There is no doubt that had Harden-Hickey then turned to his
+father-in-law, that gentleman, as he had done before, would have
+opened an account for him.
+
+But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no longer beg, even for the
+money belonging to his wife, from the man he had insulted. He
+could no longer ask his wife to intercede for him. He was without
+money of his own, with out the means of obtaining it; from his
+wife he had ceased to expect even sympathy, and from the world
+he knew, the fact that he was a self-made king caused him always
+to be pointed out with ridicule as a charlatan, as a jest.
+
+The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist and dreamer, the
+devout Catholic and devout Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of
+his life only as the meeting-place of many fiascos.
+
+His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights,
+imaginary failures.
+
+This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize
+colonies oversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a
+waistcoat, forgot the twenty good years still before him; forgot that
+men loved him for the mistakes he had made; that in parts of the
+great city of Paris his name was still spoken fondly, still was
+famous and familiar.
+
+In his book on the "Ethics of Suicide," for certain hard places in
+life he had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct.
+
+As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he
+would not ask of others what he himself would not perform.
+
+From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his
+wife had prepared for him.
+
+Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train and
+registered at a hotel.
+
+At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the
+following morning, they kicked in the door, they found him
+stretched rigidly upon the bed, like one lying in state, with, near
+his hand, a half-emptied bottle of poison.
+
+On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife:
+
+"My DEAREST,--No news from you, although you have had
+plenty of time to write. Harvey has written me that he has no one
+in view at present to buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup
+of bitterness to the very dregs, but I do not complain. Good-by. I
+forgive you your conduct toward me and trust you will be able to
+forgive yourself. I prefer to be a dead gentleman to a living
+blackguard like your father."
+
+
+And when they searched his open trunk for something that might
+identify the body on the bed, they found the crown of Trinidad.
+
+You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, the military figure
+with its white face and mustache, "_a la_ Louis Napoleon," at rest
+upon the pillow, the startled drummers and chambermaids peering
+in from the hall, and the landlord, or coroner, or doctor, with a
+bewildered countenance, lifting to view the royal crown of gilt and
+velvet.
+
+The other actors in this, as Harold Frederic called it, "Opera
+Bouffe Monarchy," are still living.
+
+The Baroness Harden-Hickey makes her home in this country.
+
+The Count de la Boissiere, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, is still a
+leader of the French colony in New York, and a prosperous
+commission merchant with a suite of offices on Fifty-fourth Street.
+By the will of Harden-Hickey he is executor of his estate, guardian
+of his children, and what, for the purpose of this article, is of more
+importance, in his hands lies the future of the kingdom of
+Trinidad. When Harden-Hickey killed himself the title to the
+island was in dispute. Should young Harden-Hickey wish to claim
+it, it still would be in dispute. Meanwhile, by the will of the First
+James, De la Boissiere is appointed perpetual regent, a sort of
+"receiver," and executor of the principality.
+
+To him has been left a royal decree signed and sealed, but blank.
+In the will the power to fill in this blank with a statement showing
+the final disposition of the island has been bestowed upon De la
+Boissiere.
+
+So, some day, he may proclaim the accession of a new king, and
+give a new lease of life to the kingdom of which Harden-Hickey
+dreamed.
+
+But unless his son, or wife, or daughter should assert his or her
+rights, which is not likely to happen, so ends the dynasty of James
+the First of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire.
+
+To the wise ones in America he was a fool, and they laughed at
+him; to the wiser ones, he was a clever rascal who had evolved a
+new real-estate scheme and was out to rob the people--and they
+respected him. To my mind, of them all, Harden-Hickey was the
+wisest.
+
+Granted one could be serious, what could be more delightful than
+to be your own king on your own island?
+
+The comic paragraphers, the business men of "hard, common
+sense," the captains of industry who laughed at him and his
+national resources of buried treasure, turtles' eggs, and guano, with
+his body-guard of Zouaves and his Grand Cross of Trinidad,
+certainly possessed many things that Harden-Hickey lacked. But
+they in turn lacked the things that made him happy; the power to
+"make believe," the love of romance, the touch of adventure that
+plucked him by the sleeve.
+
+When, as boys, we used to say: "Let's pretend we're pirates," as a
+man, Harden-Hickey begged: "Let's pretend I'm a king."
+
+But the trouble was, the other boys had grown up and would not
+pretend.
+
+For some reason his end always reminds me of the closing line of
+Pinero's play, when the adventuress, Mrs. Tanqueray, kills herself,
+and her virtuous stepchild says: "If we had only been kinder!"
+
+WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
+
+IN the strict sense of the phrase, a soldier of fortune is a man who
+for pay, or for the love of adventure, fights under the flag of any
+country.
+
+In the bigger sense he is the kind of man who in any walk of life
+makes his own fortune, who, when he sees it coming, leaps to
+meet it, and turns it to his advantage.
+
+Than Winston Spencer Churchill to-day there are few young
+men--and he is a very young man--who have met more varying
+fortunes, and none who has more frequently bent them to his own
+advancement. To him it has been indifferent whether, at the
+moment, the fortune seemed good or evil, in the end always it was
+good.
+
+As a boy officer, when other subalterns were playing polo, and at
+the Gaiety Theatre attending night school, he ran away to Cuba
+and fought with the Spaniards. For such a breach of military
+discipline, any other officer would have been court-martialled.
+Even his friends feared that by his foolishness his career in the
+army was at an end. Instead, his escapade was made a question in
+the House of Commons, and the fact brought him such publicity
+that the _Daily Graphic_ paid him handsomely to write on the
+Cuban Revolution, and the Spanish Government rewarded him
+with the Order of Military Merit.
+
+At the very outbreak of the Boer war he was taken prisoner. It
+seemed a climax of misfortune. With his brother officers he had
+hoped in that campaign to acquit himself with credit, and that he
+should lie inactive in Pretoria appeared a terrible calamity. To the
+others who, through many heart-breaking months, suffered
+imprisonment, it continued to be a calamity. But within six weeks
+of his capture Churchill escaped, and, after many adventures,
+rejoined his own army to find that the calamity had made him a
+hero.
+
+When after the battle of Omdurman, in his book on "The River
+War," he attacked Lord Kitchener, those who did not like him, and
+they were many, said: "That's the end of Winston in the army. He'll
+never get another chance to criticise K. of  K."
+
+But only two years later the chance came, when, no longer a
+subaltern, but as a member of the House of Commons, he
+patronized Kitchener by defending him from the attacks of others.
+
+Later, when his assaults upon the leaders of his own party closed to
+him, even in his own constituency, the Conservative debating
+clubs, again his ill-wishers said: "This _is_ the end. He has
+ridiculed those who sit in high places. He has offended his cousin
+and patron, the Duke of Marlborough. Without political friends,
+without the influence and money of the Marlborough family he is a
+political nonentity." That was eighteen months ago. To-day, at the
+age of thirty-two, he is one of the leaders of the Government party,
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and with the Liberals the most
+popular young man in public life.
+
+Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Edward Grey, the new
+Foreign Secretary, said of him: "Mr. Winston Churchill has
+achieved distinction in at least five different careers--as a soldier, a
+war correspondent, a lecturer, an author, and last, but not least, as
+a politician. I have understated it even now, for he has achieved
+two careers as a politician--one on each side of the House. His first
+career on the Government side was a really distinguished career. I
+trust the second will be even more distinguished--and more
+prolonged. The remarkable thing is that he has done all this when,
+unless appearances very much belie him, he has not reached the
+age of sixty-four, which is the minimum age at which the
+politician ceases to be young."
+
+Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born thirty-two years ago,
+in November, 1874. By birth he is half-American. His father was
+Lord Randolph Churchill, and his mother was Jennie Jerome, of
+New York. On the father's side he is the grandchild of the seventh
+Duke of Marlborough, on the distaff side, of Leonard Jerome.
+
+To a student of heredity it would be interesting to try and discover
+from which of these ancestors Churchill drew those qualities
+which in him are most prominent, and which have led to his
+success.
+
+What he owes to his father and mother it is difficult to
+overestimate, almost as difficult as to overestimate what he has
+accomplished by his own efforts.
+
+He was not a child born a full-grown genius of commonplace
+parents. Rather his fate threatened that he should always be known
+as the son of his father. And certainly it was asking much of a boy
+that he should live up to a father who was one of the most
+conspicuous, clever, and erratic statesmen of the later Victorian
+era, and a mother who is as brilliant as she is beautiful.
+
+For at no time was the American wife content to be merely
+ornamental. Throughout the political career of her husband she
+was his helpmate, and as an officer of the Primrose League, as an
+editor of the _Anglo-Saxon Review_, as, for many hot, weary
+months in Durban Harbor, the head of the hospital ship _Maine_,
+she has shown an acute mind and real executive power. At the
+polls many votes that would not respond to the arguments of the
+husband, and later of the son, were gained over to the cause by the
+charm and wit of the American woman.
+
+In his earlier days, if one can have days any earlier than those he
+now enjoys, Churchill was entirely influenced by two things: the
+tremendous admiration he felt for his father, which filled him with
+ambition to follow in his orbit, and the camaraderie of his mother,
+who treated him less like a mother than a sister and companion.
+
+Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious that I cannot recall the
+time when he was young enough to be Lady Randolph's son;
+certainly, I cannot recall the time when she was old enough to be
+his mother.
+
+When first I knew him he had passed through Harrow and
+Sandhurst and was a second lieutenant in the Queen's Own
+Hussars. He was just of age, but appeared much younger.
+
+He was below medium height, a slight, delicate-looking boy;
+although, as a matter of fact, extremely strong, with blue eyes,
+many freckles, and hair which threatened to be a decided red, but
+which now has lost its fierceness. When he spoke it was with a
+lisp, which also has changed, and which now appears to be merely
+an intentional hesitation.
+
+His manner of speaking was nervous, eager, explosive. He used
+many gestures, some of which were strongly reminiscent of his
+father, of whom he, unlike most English lads, who shy at
+mentioning a distinguished parent, constantly spoke.
+
+He even copied his father in his little tricks of manner. Standing
+with hands shoved under the frock-coat and one resting on each
+hip as though squeezing in the waist line; when seated, resting the
+elbows on the arms of the chair and nervously locking and
+unclasping fingers, are tricks common to both.
+
+He then had and still has a most embarrassing habit of asking
+many questions; embarrassing, sometimes, because the questions
+are so frank, and sometimes because they lay bare the wide
+expanse of one's own ignorance.
+
+At that time, although in his twenty-first year, this lad twice had
+been made a question in the House of Commons.
+
+That in itself had rendered him conspicuous. When you consider
+out of Great Britain's four hundred million subjects how many live,
+die, and are buried without at any age having drawn down upon
+themselves the anger of the House of Commons, to have done so
+twice, before one has passed his twenty-first year, seems to
+promise a lurid future.
+
+The first time Churchill disturbed the august assemblage in which
+so soon he was to become a leader was when he "ragged" a brother
+subaltern named Bruce and cut up his saddle and accoutrements.
+The second time was when he ran away to Cuba to fight with the
+Spaniards.
+
+After this campaign, on the first night of his arrival in London, he
+made his maiden speech. He delivered it in a place of less dignity
+than the House of Commons, but one, throughout Great Britain
+and her colonies, as widely known and as well supported. This was
+the Empire Music Hall.
+
+At the time Mrs. Ormiston Chant had raised objections to the
+presence in the Music Hall of certain young women, and had
+threatened, unless they ceased to frequent its promenade, to have
+the license of the Music Hall revoked. As a compromise, the
+management ceased selling liquor, and on the night Churchill
+visited the place the bar in the promenade was barricaded with
+scantling and linen sheets. With the thirst of tropical Cuba still
+upon him, Churchill asked for a drink, which was denied him, and
+the crusade, which in his absence had been progressing fiercely,
+was explained. Any one else would have taken no for his answer,
+and have sought elsewhere for his drink. Not so Churchill. What
+he did is interesting, because it was so extremely characteristic.
+Now he would not do it; then he was twenty-one.
+
+He scrambled to the velvet-covered top of the railing which
+divides the auditorium from the promenade, and made a speech. It
+was a plea in behalf of his "Sisters, the Ladies of the Empire
+Promenade."
+
+"Where," he asked of the ladies themselves and of their escorts
+crowded below him in the promenade, "does the Englishman in
+London always find a welcome? Where does he first go when,
+battle-scarred and travel-worn, he reaches home? Who is always
+there to greet him with a smile, and join him in a drink? Who is
+ever faithful, ever true--the Ladies of the Empire Promenade."
+
+The laughter and cheers that greeted this, and the tears of the
+ladies themselves, naturally brought the performance on the stage
+to a stop, and the vast audience turned in the seats and boxes.
+
+They saw a little red-haired boy in evening clothes, balancing
+himself on the rail of the balcony, and around him a great crowd,
+cheering, shouting, and bidding him "Go on!"
+
+Churchill turned with delight to the larger audience, and repeated
+his appeal. The house shook with laughter and applause.
+
+The commissionaires and police tried to reach him and a
+good-tempered but very determined mob of well-dressed
+gentlemen and cheering girls fought them back. In triumph
+Churchill ended his speech by begging his hearers to give "fair
+play" to the women, and to follow him in a charge upon the
+barricades.
+
+The charge was instantly made, the barricades were torn down,
+and the terrified management ordered that drink be served to its
+victorious patrons.
+
+Shortly after striking this blow for the liberty of others, Churchill
+organized a dinner which illustrated the direction in which at that
+age his mind was working, and showed that his ambition was
+already abnormal. The dinner was given to those of his friends and
+acquaintances who "were under twenty-one years of age, and who
+in twenty years would control the destinies of the British Empire."
+
+As one over the age limit, or because he did not consider me an
+empire-controlling force, on this great occasion, I was permitted to
+be present. But except that the number of incipient empire-builders
+was very great, that they were very happy, and that save the host
+himself none of them took his idea seriously, I would not call it an
+evening of historical interest. But the fact is interesting that of all
+the boys present, as yet, the host seems to be the only one who to
+any conspicuous extent is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain.
+However, the others can reply that ten of the twenty years have not
+yet passed.
+
+When he was twenty-three Churchill obtained leave of absence
+from his regiment, and as there was no other way open to him to
+see fighting, as a correspondent he joined the Malakand Field
+Force in India.
+
+It may be truthfully said that by his presence in that frontier war he
+made it and himself famous. His book on that campaign is his best
+piece of war reporting. To the civilian reader it has all the delight
+of one of Kipling's Indian stories, and to writers on military
+subjects it is a model. But it is a model very few can follow, and
+which Churchill himself was unable to follow, for the reason that
+only once is it given a man to be twenty-three years of age.
+
+The picturesque hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the
+charges up precipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the
+wounded under constant fire, which he witnessed and in which he
+bore his part, he never again can see with the same fresh and
+enthusiastic eyes. Then it was absolutely new, and the charm of the
+book and the value of the book are that with the intolerance of
+youth he attacks in the service evils that older men prefer to let lie,
+and that with the ingenuousness of youth he tells of things which
+to the veteran have become unimportant, or which through usage
+he is no longer even able to see.
+
+In his three later war books, the wonder of it, the horror of it, the
+quick admiration for brave deeds and daring men, give place, in
+"The River War," to the critical point of view of the military
+expert, and in his two books on the Boer war to the rapid
+impressions of the journalist. In these latter books he tells you of
+battles he has seen, in the first one he made you see them.
+
+For his services with the Malakand Field Force he received the
+campaign medal with clasp, and, "in despatches,"
+Brigadier-General Jeffreys praises "the courage and resolution of
+Lieutenant W. L. S. Churchill, Fourth Hussars, with the force as
+correspondent of the _Pioneer_."
+
+From the operations around Malakand, he at once joined Sir
+William Lockhart as orderly officer, and with the Tirah Expedition
+went through that campaign.
+
+For this his Indian medal gained a second clasp.
+
+This was in the early part of 1898. In spite of the time taken up as
+an officer and as a correspondent, he finished his book on the
+Malakand Expedition and then, as it was evident Kitchener would
+soon attack Khartum, he jumped across to Egypt and again as a
+correspondent took part in the advance upon that city.
+
+Thus, in one year, he had seen service in three campaigns.
+
+On the day of the battle his luck followed him. Kitchener had
+attached him to the Twenty-first Lancers, and it will be
+remembered the event of the battle was the charge made by that
+squadron. It was no canter, no easy "pig-sticking"; it was a fight to
+get in and a fight to get out, with frenzied followers of the Khalifa
+hanging to the bridle reins, hacking at the horses' hamstrings, and
+slashing and firing point-blank at the troopers. Churchill was in
+that charge. He received the medal with clasp.
+
+Then he returned home and wrote "The River War." This book is
+the last word on the campaigns up the Nile. From the death of
+Gordon in Khartum to the capture of the city by Kitchener, it tells
+the story of the many gallant fights, the wearying failures, the
+many expeditions into the hot, boundless desert, the long, slow
+progress toward the final winning of the Sudan.
+
+The book made a distinct sensation. It was a work that one would
+expect from a lieutenant-general, when, after years of service in
+Egypt, he laid down his sword to pen the story of his life's work.
+From a Second Lieutenant, who had been on the Nile hardly long
+enough to gain the desert tan, it was a revelation. As a contribution
+to military history it was so valuable that for the author it made
+many admirers, but on account of his criticisms of his superior
+officers it gained him even more enemies.
+
+This is a specimen of the kind of thing that caused the retired army
+officer to sit up and choke with apoplexy:
+
+"General Kitchener, who never spares himself, cares little for
+others. He treated all men like machines, from the private soldiers,
+whose salutes he disdained, to the superior officers, whom he
+rigidly controlled. The comrade who had served with him and
+under him for many years, in peace and peril, was flung aside as
+soon as he ceased to be of use. The wounded Egyptian and even
+the wounded British soldier did not excite his interest."
+
+When in the service clubs they read that, the veterans asked each
+other their favorite question of what is the army coming to, and to
+their own satisfaction answered it by pointing out that when a
+lieutenant of twenty-four can reprimand the commanding general
+the army is going to the dogs.
+
+To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over their own signatures,
+on the service club stationery, wrote violent, furious letters, and
+the newspapers themselves, besides the ordinary reviews, gave to
+the book editorial praise and editorial condemnation.
+
+Equally disgusted were the younger officers of the service. They
+nicknamed his book "A Subaltern's Advice to Generals," and
+called Churchill himself a "Medal Snatcher." A medal snatcher is
+an officer who, whenever there is a rumor of war, leaves his men
+to the care of any one, and through influence in high places and for
+the sake of the campaign medal has himself attached to the
+expeditionary force. But Churchill never was a medal hunter. The
+routine of barrack life irked him, and in foreign parts he served his
+country far better than by remaining at home and inspecting
+awkward squads and attending guard mount. Indeed, the War
+Office could cover with medals the man who wrote "The Story of
+the Malakand Field Force" and "The River War" and still be in his
+debt.
+
+In October, 1898, a month after the battle of Omdurman, Churchill
+made his debut as a political speaker at minor meetings in Dover
+and Rotherhithe. History does not record that these first speeches
+set fire to the Channel. During the winter he finished and
+published his "River War," and in the August of the following
+summer, 1899, at a by-election, offered himself as Member of
+Parliament for Oldham.
+
+In the _Daily Telegraph_ his letters from the three campaigns in
+India and Egypt had made his name known, and there was a
+general desire to hear him and to see him. In one who had attacked
+Kitchener of Khartum, the men of Oldham expected to find a
+stalwart veteran, bearded, and with a voice of command. When
+they were introduced to a small red-haired boy with a lisp, they
+refused to take him seriously. In England youth is an unpardonable
+thing. Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, Hugh Cecil, and
+others have made it less reprehensible. But, in spite of a vigorous
+campaign, in which Lady Randolph took an active part, Oldham
+decided it was not ready to accept young Churchill for a member.
+Later he was Oldham's only claim to fame.
+
+A week after he was defeated he sailed for South Africa, where
+war with the Boers was imminent. He had resigned from his
+regiment and went south as war correspondent for the _Morning
+Post_.
+
+Later in the war he held a commission as Lieutenant in the South
+African Light Horse, a regiment of irregular cavalry, and on the
+staffs of different generals acted as galloper and aide-de-camp. To
+this combination of duties, which was in direct violation of a rule
+of the War Office, his brother officers and his fellow
+correspondents objected; but, as in each of his other campaigns he
+had played this dual role, the press censors considered it a
+traditional privilege, and winked at it. As a matter of record,
+Churchill's soldiering never seemed to interfere with his writing,
+nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper ever prevent him from
+mixing in as a belligerent.
+
+War was declared October 9th, and only a month later, while
+scouting in the armored train along the railroad line between
+Pietermaritzburg and Colenso, the cars were derailed and
+Churchill was taken prisoner.
+
+The train was made up of three flat cars, two armored cars, and
+between them the engine, with three cars coupled to the
+cow-catcher and two to the tender.
+
+On the outward trip the Boers did not show themselves, but as
+soon as the English passed Frere station they rolled a rock on the
+track at a point where it was hidden by a curve. On the return trip,
+as the English approached this curve the Boers opened fire with
+artillery and pompoms. The engineer, in his eagerness to escape,
+rounded the curve at full speed, and, as the Boers had expected, hit
+the rock. The three forward cars were derailed, and one of them
+was thrown across the track, thus preventing the escape of the
+engine and the two rear cars. From these Captain Haldane, who
+was in command, with a detachment of the Dublins, kept up a
+steady fire on the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear the
+track. To assist him he had a company of Natal volunteers, and
+those who had not run away of the train hands and break-down
+crew.
+
+"We were not long left in the comparative safety of a railroad
+accident," Churchill writes to his paper. "The Boers' guns, swiftly
+changing their position, reopened fire from a distance of thirteen
+hundred yards before any one had got out of the stage of
+exclamations. The tapping rifle-fire spread along the hills, until it
+encircled the wreckage on three sides, and from some high ground
+on the opposite side of the line a third field-gun came into action."
+
+For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked
+railroad train at thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull's-eye as
+the hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine
+butted and snorted and the men with their bare bands tore at the
+massive beams of the freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about
+them.
+
+"I have had in the last four years many strange and varied
+experiences," continues young Churchill, "but nothing was so
+thrilling as this; to wait and struggle among these clanging,
+rending iron boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells, the
+noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in
+the air, the grunting and puffing of the engine--poor, tortured
+thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by
+penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of all--the
+expectation of destruction as a matter of course, the realization of
+powerlessness--all this for seventy minutes by the clock, with only
+four inches of twisted iron between danger, captivity, and shame
+on one side--and freedom on the other."
+
+The "protected" train had proved a deathtrap, and by the time the
+line was clear every fourth man was killed or wounded. Only the
+engine, with the more severely wounded heaped in the cab and
+clinging to its cow-catcher and foot-rails, made good its escape.
+Among those left behind, a Tommy, without authority, raised a
+handkerchief on his rifle, and the Boers instantly ceased firing and
+came galloping forward to accept surrender. There was a general
+stampede to escape. Seeing that Lieutenant Franklin was gallantly
+trying to hold his men, Churchill, who was safe on the engine,
+jumped from it and ran to his assistance. Of what followed, this is
+his own account:
+
+"Scarcely had the locomotive left me than I found myself alone in
+a shallow cutting, and none of our soldiers, who had all
+surrendered, to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on the line
+at the end of the cutting two men not in uniform. 'Plate-layers,' I
+said to myself, and then, with a surge of realization, 'Boers.' My
+mind retains a momentary impression of these tall figures, full of
+animated movement, clad in dark flapping clothes, with slouch,
+storm-driven hats, posing their rifles hardly a hundred yards away.
+I turned and ran between the rails of the track, and the only
+thought I achieved was this: 'Boer marksmanship.'
+
+"Two bullets passed, both within a foot, one on either side. I flung
+myself against the banks of the cutting. But they gave no cover.
+Another glance at the figures; one was now kneeling to aim. Again
+I darted forward. Again two soft kisses sucked in the air, but
+nothing struck me. I must get out of the cutting--that damnable
+corridor. I scrambled up the bank. The earth sprang up beside me,
+and a bullet touched my hand, but outside the cutting was a tiny
+depression. I crouched in this, struggling to get my wind. On the
+other side of the railway a horseman galloped up, shouting to me
+and waving his hand. He was scarcely forty yards off. With a rifle I
+could have killed him easily. I knew nothing of the white flag, and
+the bullets had made me savage. I reached down for my Mauser
+pistol. I had left it in the cab of the engine. Between me and the
+horseman there was a wire fence. Should I continue to fly? The
+idea of another shot at such a short range decided me. Death stood
+before me, grim and sullen; Death without his light-hearted
+companion, Chance. So I held up my hand, and like Mr. Jorrock's
+foxes, cried 'Capivy!' Then I was herded with the other prisoners in
+a miserable group, and about the same time I noticed that my hand
+was bleeding, and it began to pour with rain.
+
+"Two days before I had written to an officer at home: 'There has
+been a great deal too much surrendering in this war, and I hope
+people who do so will not be encouraged.'"
+
+With other officers, Churchill was imprisoned in the State Model
+Schools, situated in the heart of Pretoria. It was distinctly
+characteristic that on the very day of his arrival he began to plan to
+escape.
+
+Toward this end his first step was to lose his campaign hat, which
+he recognized was too obviously the hat of an English officer. The
+burgher to whom he gave money to purchase him another
+innocently brought him a Boer sombrero.
+
+Before his chance to escape came a month elapsed, and the
+opportunity that then offered was less an opportunity to escape
+than to get himself shot.
+
+The State Model Schools were surrounded by the children's
+playgrounds, penned in by a high wall, and at night, while they
+were used as a prison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. After
+many nights of observation, Churchill discovered that while the
+sentries were pacing their beats there was a moment when to them
+a certain portion of the wall was in darkness. This was due to
+cross-shadows cast by the electric lights. On the other side of this
+wall there was a private house set in a garden filled with bushes.
+Beyond this was the open street.
+
+To scale the wall was not difficult; the real danger lay in the fact
+that at no time were the sentries farther away than fifteen yards,
+and the chance of being shot by one or both of them was excellent.
+To a brother officer Churchill confided his purpose, and together
+they agreed that some night when the sentries had turned from the
+dark spot on the wall they would scale it and drop among the
+bushes in the garden. After they reached the garden, should they
+reach it alive, what they were to do they did not know. How they
+were to proceed through the streets and out of the city, how they
+were to pass unchallenged under its many electric lights and before
+the illuminated shop windows, how to dodge patrols, and how to
+find their way through two hundred and eighty miles of a South
+African wilderness, through an utterly unfamiliar, unfriendly, and
+sparsely settled country into Portuguese territory and the coast,
+they left to chance. But with luck they hoped to cover the distance
+in a fortnight, begging corn at the Kaffir kraals, sleeping by day,
+and marching under cover of the darkness.
+
+They agreed to make the attempt on the 11th of December, but on
+that night the sentries did not move from the only part of the wall
+that was in shadow. On the night following, at the last moment,
+something delayed Churchill's companion, and he essayed the
+adventure alone. He writes: "Tuesday, the 12th! Anything was
+better than further suspense. Again night came. Again the dinner
+bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity, I strolled across the
+quadrangle and secreted myself in one of the offices. Through a
+chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour they remained stolid
+and obstructive. Then suddenly one turned and walked up to his
+comrade and they began to talk. Their backs were turned.
+
+I darted out of my hiding-place and ran to the wall, seized the top
+with my hands and drew myself up. Twice I let myself down again
+in sickly hesitation, and then with a third resolve scrambled up.
+The top was flat. Lying on it, I had one parting glimpse of the
+sentries, still talking, still with their backs turned, but, I repeat,
+still fifteen yards away. Then I lowered myself into the adjoining
+garden and crouched among the shrubs. I was free. The first step
+had been taken, and it was irrevocable."
+
+Churchill discovered that the house into the garden of which he
+had so unceremoniously introduced himself was brilliantly lighted,
+and that the owner was giving a party. At one time two of the
+guests walked into the garden and stood, smoking and chatting, in
+the path within a few yards of him.
+
+Thinking his companion might yet join him, for an hour he
+crouched in the bushes, until from the other side of the wall he
+heard the voices of his friend and of another officer.
+
+"It's all up!" his friend whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively.
+The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, should they
+be listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and
+quoted Latin phrases, while the other, in a  low and distinct voice,
+said: " I cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It's all up. Can you get
+back again?"
+
+To go back was impossible. Churchill now felt that in any case he
+was sure to be recaptured, and decided he would, as he expresses
+it, at least have a run for his money.
+
+"I shall go on alone," he whispered.
+
+He heard the footsteps of his two friends move away from him
+across the play yard. At the same moment he stepped boldly out
+into the garden and, passing the open windows of the house,
+walked down the gravel path to the street. Not five yards from the
+gate stood a sentry. Most of those guarding the school-house knew
+him by sight, but Churchill did not turn his head, and whether the
+sentry recognized him or not, he could not tell.
+
+For a hundred feet he walked as though on ice, inwardly shrinking
+as he waited for the sharp challenge, and the rattle of the Mauser
+thrown to the "Ready." His nerves were leaping, his heart in his
+throat, his spine of water. And then, as he continued to advance,
+and still no tumult pursued him, he quickened his pace and turned
+into one of the main streets of Pretoria. The sidewalks were
+crowded with burghers, but no one noticed him. This was due
+probably to the fact that the Boers wore no distinctive uniform,
+and that with them in their commandoes were many English
+Colonials who wore khaki riding breeches, and many Americans,
+French, Germans, and Russians, in every fashion of semi-uniform.
+
+If observed, Churchill was mistaken for one of these, and the very
+openness of his movements saved him from suspicion.
+
+Straight through the town he walked until he reached the suburbs,
+the open veldt, and a railroad track. As he had no map or compass
+he knew this must be his only guide, but he knew also that two
+railroads left Pretoria, the one along which he had been captured,
+to Pietermaritzburg, and the other, the one leading to the coast and
+freedom. Which of the two this one was he had no idea, but he
+took his chance, and a hundred yards beyond a station waited for
+the first outgoing train. About midnight, a freight stopped at the
+station, and after it had left it and before it had again gathered
+headway, Churchill swung himself up upon it, and stretched out
+upon a pile of coal. Throughout the night the train continued
+steadily toward the east, and so told him that it was the one he
+wanted, and that he was on his way to the neutral territory of
+Portugal.
+
+Fearing the daylight, just before the sun rose, as the train was
+pulling up a steep grade, he leaped off into some bushes. All that
+day he lay hidden, and the next night he walked. He made but little
+headway. As all stations and bridges were guarded, he had to make
+long detours, and the tropical moonlight prevented him from
+crossing in the open. In this way, sleeping by day, walking by
+night, begging food from the Kaffirs, five days passed.
+
+Meanwhile, his absence had been at once discovered, and, by the
+Boers, every effort was being made to retake him. Telegrams
+giving his description were sent along both railways, three
+thousand photographs of him were distributed, each car of every
+train was searched, and in different parts of the Transvaal men
+who resembled him were being arrested. It was said he had
+escaped dressed as a woman; in the uniform of a Transvaal
+policeman whom he had bribed; that he had never left Pretoria,
+and that in the disguise of a waiter he was concealed in the house
+of a British sympathizer. On the strength of this rumor the houses
+of all suspected persons were searched.
+
+In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a significant fact that a
+week before his escape Churchill had drawn from the library Mill's
+"Essay on Liberty."
+
+In England and over all British South Africa the escape created as
+much interest as it did in Pretoria. Because the attempt showed
+pluck, and because he had outwitted the enemy, Churchill for the
+time became a sort of popular hero, and to his countrymen his
+escape gave as much pleasure as it was a cause of chagrin to the
+Boers.
+
+But as days passed and nothing was heard of him, it was feared he
+had lost himself in the Machadodorp Mountains, or had
+succumbed to starvation, or, in the jungle toward the coast, to
+fever, and congratulations gave way to anxiety.
+
+The anxiety was justified, for at this time Churchill was in a very
+bad way. During the month in prison he had obtained but little
+exercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold by night and the
+terrific heat by day, the long stumbling marches in the darkness,
+the mental effect upon an extremely nervous, high-strung
+organization of being hunted, and of having to hide from his
+fellow men, had worn him down to a condition almost of collapse.
+
+Even though it were neutral soil, in so exhausted a state he dared
+not venture into the swamps and waste places of the Portuguese
+territory; and, sick at heart as well as sick in body, he saw no
+choice left him save to give himself up.
+
+But before doing so he carefully prepared a tale which, although
+most improbable, he hoped might still conceal his identity and aid
+him to escape by train across the border.
+
+One night after days of wandering he found himself on the
+outskirts of a little village near the boundary line of the Transvaal
+and Portuguese territory. Utterly unable to proceed further, he
+crawled to the nearest zinc-roofed shack, and, fully prepared to
+surrender, knocked at the door. It was opened by a rough-looking,
+bearded giant, the first white man to whom in many days Churchill
+had dared address himself.
+
+To him, without hope, he feebly stammered forth the speech he
+had rehearsed. The man listened with every outward mark of
+disbelief. At Churchill himself he stared with open suspicion.
+Suddenly he seized the boy by the shoulder, drew him inside the
+hut, and barred the door.
+
+"You needn't lie to me," he said. "You are Winston Churchill, and
+I--am the only Englishman in this village."
+
+The rest of the adventure was comparatively easy. The next night
+his friend in need, an engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill
+ Into a freight-car, and hid him under sacks of some soft
+merchandise.
+
+At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, for eighteen hours the
+car in which Churchill lay concealed was left in the sun on a
+siding, and before it again started it was searched, but the man who
+was conducting the search lifted only the top layer of sacks, and a
+few minutes later Churchill heard the hollow roar of the car as it
+passed over the bridge, and knew that he was across the border.
+
+Even then he took no chances, and for two days more lay hidden at
+the bottom of the car.
+
+When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Marques he at once sought out
+the English Consul, who, after first mistaking him for a stoker
+from one of the ships in the harbor, gave him a drink, a bath, and a
+dinner.
+
+As good luck would have it, the _Induna_ was leaving that night
+for Durban, and, escorted by a body-guard of English residents
+armed with revolvers, and who were taking no chances of his
+recapture by the Boer agents, he was placed safely on board. Two
+days later he arrived at Durban, where he was received by the
+Mayor, the populace, and a brass band playing: "Britons Never,
+Never, Never shall be Slaves!"
+
+For the next month Churchill was bombarded by letters and
+telegrams from every part of the globe, some invited him to
+command filibustering expeditions, others sent him woollen
+comforters, some forwarded photographs of himself to be signed,
+others photographs of themselves, possibly to be admired, others
+sent poems, and some bottles of whiskey.
+
+One admirer wrote: "My congratulations on your wonderful and
+glorious deeds, which will send such a thrill of pride and
+enthusiasm through Great Britain and the United States of
+America, that the Anglo-Saxon race will be irresistible."
+
+Lest so large an order as making the Anglo-Saxon race irresistible
+might turn the head of a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was
+also sent him, from London, reading:
+
+"Best friends here hope you won't go making further ass of
+yourself.
+
+"McNEILL."
+
+One day in camp we counted up the price per word of this
+cablegram, and Churchill was delighted to find that it must have
+cost the man who sent it five pounds.
+
+On the day of his arrival in Durban, with the cheers still in the air,
+Churchill took the first train to "the front," then at Colenso.
+Another man might have lingered. After a month's imprisonment
+and the hardships of the escape, he might have been excused for
+delaying twenty-four hours to taste the sweets of popularity and the
+flesh-pots of the Queen Hotel. But if the reader has followed this
+brief biography he will know that to have done so would have been
+out of the part. This characteristic of Churchill's to get on to the
+next thing explains his success. He has no time to waste on
+postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels.
+
+As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until
+the relief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria.
+He was in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out
+of the war with another medal and clasps for six battles.
+
+On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second
+book on the war, and in October at the general election as a
+"khaki" candidate, as those were called who favored the war, again
+stood for Oldham. This time, with his war record to help him, he
+wrested from the Liberals one of Oldham's two seats. He had been
+defeated by thirteen hundred votes; he was elected by a majority of
+two hundred and twenty-seven.
+
+The few months that intervened between his election and the
+opening of the new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a
+lecturing tour at home, and in the United States and Canada. His
+subject was the war and his escape from Pretoria.
+
+When he came to this country half of the people here were in
+sympathy with the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they
+supposed would be a strictly British version of the war. His
+manager, without asking permission of those whose names he
+advertised, organized for Churchill's first appearance in various
+cities, different reception committees.
+
+Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for
+these committees, wrote indignantly to the papers, saying that
+while for Churchill, personally, they held every respect, they
+objected to being used to advertise an anti-Boer demonstration.
+
+While this was no fault of Churchill's, who, until he reached this
+country knew nothing of it, it was neither for him nor for the
+success of his tour the best kind of advance work.
+
+During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with General Buller's
+force, Churchill and I had again been together, and later when I
+joined the Boer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with
+which he was a correspondent had chased the army with which I
+was a correspondent, forty miles. I had been one of those who
+refused to act on his reception committee, and he had come to this
+country with a commission from twenty brother officers to shoot
+me on sight. But in his lecture he was using the photographs I had
+taken of the scene of his escape, and which I had sent him from
+Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he arrived I was at the hotel to
+welcome him, and that same evening three hours after midnight he
+came, in a blizzard, pounding at our door for food and drink. What
+is a little thing like a war between friends?
+
+During his "tour," except of hotels, parlor-cars, and "Lyceums," he
+saw very little of this country or of its people, and they saw very
+little of him. On the trip, which lasted about two months, he
+cleared ten thousand dollars. This, to a young man almost entirely
+dependent for an income upon his newspaper work and the sale of
+his books, nearly repaid him for the two months of "one night
+stands." On his return to London he took his seat in the new
+Parliament.
+
+It was a coincidence that he entered Parliament at the same age as
+did his father. With two other members, one born six days earlier
+than himself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among the three
+youngest members of the new House.
+
+The fact did not seem to appall him. In the House it is a tradition
+that young and ambitious members sit "below" the gangway; the
+more modest and less assured are content to place themselves
+"above" it, at a point farthest removed from the leaders.
+
+On the day he was sworn in there was much curiosity to see where
+Churchill would elect to sit. In his own mind there was apparently
+no doubt. After he had taken the oath, signed his name, and shaken
+the hand of the Speaker, without hesitation he seated himself on
+the bench next to the Ministry. Ten minutes later, so a newspaper
+of the day describes it, he had cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved
+his hands into his trousers pockets, and was lolling back eying the
+veterans of the House with critical disapproval.
+
+His maiden speech was delivered in May, 1901, in reply to David
+Lloyd George, who had attacked the conduct of British soldiers in
+South Africa. Churchill defended them, and in a manner that from
+all sides gained him honest admiration. In the course of the debate
+he produced and read a strangely apropos letter which, fifteen
+years before, had been written by his father to Lord Salisbury. His
+adroit use of this filled H. W. Massingham, the editor of the _Daily
+News_, with enthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary tactics, he
+declared, since Mr. Gladstone died, had been so clever. He
+proclaimed that Churchill would be Premier. John Dillon, the
+Nationalist leader, said he never before had seen a young man, by
+means of his maiden effort, spring into the front rank of
+parliamentary speakers. He promised that the Irish members would
+ungrudgingly testify to his ability and honesty of purpose. Among
+others to at once recognize the rising star was T. P. O'Connor,
+himself for many years of the parliamentary firmament one of the
+brightest stars. In _M. A. P._ he wrote: "I am inclined to think that
+the dash of American blood which he has from his mother has
+been an improvement on the original stock, and that Mr. Winston
+Churchill may turn out to be a stronger and abler politician than
+his father."
+
+It was all a part of Churchill's "luck" that when he entered
+Parliament the subject in debate was the conduct of the war.
+
+Even in those first days of his career in the House, in debates
+where angels feared to tread, he did not hesitate to rush in, but this
+subject was one on which he spoke with knowledge. Over the
+older men who were forced to quote from hearsay or from what
+they had read, Churchill had the tremendous advantage of being
+able to protest: "You only read of that. I was there. I saw it."
+
+In the House he became at once one of the conspicuous and
+picturesque figures, one dear to the heart of the caricaturist, and
+one from the strangers' gallery most frequently pointed out. He was
+called "the spoiled child of the House," and there were several
+distinguished gentlemen who regretted they were forced to spare
+the rod. Broderick, the Secretary for War, was one of these. Of him
+and of his recruits in South Africa, Churchill spoke with the awful
+frankness of the _enfant terrible_. And although he addressed them
+more with sorrow than with anger, to Balfour and Chamberlain he
+daily administered advice and reproof, while mere generals and
+field-marshals, like Kitchener and Roberts, blushing under new
+titles, were held up for public reproof and briefly but severely
+chastened. Nor, when he saw Lord Salisbury going astray, did he
+hesitate in his duty to the country, but took the Prime Minister by
+the hand and gently instructed him in the way he should go.
+
+This did not tend to make him popular, but in spite of his
+unpopularity, in his speeches against national extravagancies he
+made so good a fight that he forced the Government, unwillingly,
+to appoint a committee to investigate the need of economy. For a
+beginner this was a distinct triumph.
+
+With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian Malcolm, and other clever
+young men, he formed inside the Conservative Party a little group
+that in its obstructive and independent methods was not unlike the
+Fourth Party of his father. From its leader and its filibustering,
+guerilla-like tactics the men who composed it were nicknamed the
+"Hughligans." The Hughligans were the most active critics of the
+Ministry and of all in their own party, and as members of the Free
+Food League they bitterly attacked the fiscal proposals of Mr.
+Chamberlain. When Balfour made Chamberlain's fight for fair
+trade, or for what virtually was protection, a measure of the
+Conservatives, the lines of party began to break, and men were no
+longer Conservatives or Liberals, but Protectionists or Free
+Traders.
+
+Against this Churchill daily protested, against Chamberlain,
+against his plan, against that plan being adopted by the Tory Party.
+By tradition, by inheritance, by instinct, Churchill was a Tory.
+
+"I am a Tory," he said, "and I have as much right in the party as has
+anybody else, certainly as much as certain people from
+Birmingham. They can't turn us out, and we, the Tory Free
+Traders, have as much right to dictate the policy of the
+Conservative Party as have any reactionary Fair Traders." In 1904
+the Conservative Party already recognized Churchill as one
+working outside the breastworks. Just before the Easter vacation of
+that year, when he rose to speak a remarkable demonstration was
+made against him by his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising
+and leaving the House.
+
+To the Liberals who remained to hear him he stated that if to his
+constituents his opinions were obnoxious, he was ready to resign
+his seat. It then was evident he would go over to the Liberal Party.
+Some thought he foresaw which way the tidal wave was coming,
+and to being slapped down on the beach and buried in the sand, he
+preferred to be swept forward on its crest. Others believed he left
+the Conservatives because he could not honestly stomach the taxed
+food offered by Mr. Chamberlain.
+
+In any event, if he were to be blamed for changing from one party
+to the other, he was only following the distinguished example set
+him by Gladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his own father.
+
+It was at the time of this change that he was called "the best hated
+man in England," but the Liberals welcomed him gladly, and the
+National Liberal Club paid him the rare compliment of giving in
+his honor a banquet. There were present two hundred members.
+Up to that time this dinner was the most marked testimony to his
+importance in the political world. It was about then, a year since,
+that he prophesied: "Within nine months there will come such a
+tide and deluge as will sweep through England and Scotland, and
+completely wash out and effect a much-needed spring cleaning in
+Downing Street."
+
+When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. Balfour was defeated,
+and Churchill was victorious, and when the new Government was
+formed the tidal wave landed Churchill in the office of
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies.
+
+While this is being written the English papers say that within a
+month he again will be promoted. For this young man of thirty the
+only promotion remaining is a position in the Cabinet, in which
+august body men of fifty are considered young.
+
+His is a picturesque career. Of any man of his few years speaking
+our language, his career is probably the most picturesque. And that
+he is half an American gives all of us an excuse to pretend we
+share in his successes.
+
+CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN
+
+IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of the Yalu was the first
+battle fought between warships of modern make, and, except on
+paper, neither the men who made them nor the men who fought
+them knew what the ships could do, or what they might not do. For
+years every naval power had been building these new engines of
+war, and in the battle which was to test them the whole world was
+interested. But in this battle Americans had a special interest, a
+human, family interest, for the reason that one of the Chinese
+squadron, which was matched against some of the same vessels of
+Japan which lately swept those of Russia from the sea, was
+commanded by a young graduate of the American Naval Academy.
+This young man, who, at the time of the battle of the Yalu, was
+thirty-three years old, was Captain Philo Norton McGiffin. So it
+appears that five years before our fleet sailed to victory in Manila
+Bay another graduate of Annapolis, and one twenty years younger
+than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey, had commanded in action a
+modern battleship, which, in tonnage, in armament, and in the
+number of the ships' company, far outclassed Dewey's _Olympia_.
+
+McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 1860, came of fighting
+stock. Back in Scotland the family is descended from the Clan
+MacGregor and the Clan MacAlpine.
+
+"These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true,
+And, Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu."
+
+McGiffin's great-grandfather, born in Scotland, emigrated to this
+country and settled in "Little Washington," near Pittsburg, Pa. In
+the Revolutionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives fought in
+the War of 1812, one of them holding a commission as major.
+McGiffin's own father was Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served
+in the Mexican War, and in the Civil War was Lieutenant-Colonel
+of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers. So McGiffin inherited
+his love for arms.
+
+In Washington he went to the high school and at the Washington
+Jefferson College had passed through his freshman year. But the
+honors that might accrue to him if he continued to live on in the
+quiet and pretty old town of Washington did not tempt him. To
+escape into the world he wrote his Congressman, begging him to
+obtain for him an appointment to Annapolis. The Congressman
+liked the letter, and wrote Colonel McGiffin to ask if the
+application of his son had his approval. Colonel McGiffin was
+willing, and in 1877 his son received his commission as cadet
+midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in
+vacation time I went coon hunting in the woods outside of
+Washington. For his age he was a very tall boy, and in his
+midshipman undress uniform, to my youthful eyes, appeared a
+most bold and adventurous spirit.
+
+At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like
+other boys. According to his classmates, with all of whom I find he
+was very popular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as
+seamanship, gunnery, navigation, and steam engineering, but in all
+else he was near the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade
+was risky and reckless he was always one of the leaders. To him
+discipline was extremely irksome. He could maintain it among
+others, but when it applied to himself it bored him. On the floor of
+the Academy building on which was his room there was a pyramid
+of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812. They stood at the head
+of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could not sleep, he
+decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one, rolled the
+cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters and
+bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower
+halls. For any one who might think of ascending to discover the
+motive power back of the bombardment they were extremely
+dangerous.  But an officer approached McGiffin in the rear, and,
+having been caught in the act, he was sent to the prison ship. There
+he made good friends with his jailer, an old man-of-warsman
+named "Mike." He will be remembered by many naval officers
+who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won over
+Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of
+gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the
+Mexican War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy
+grounds, and at midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It
+aroused the entire garrison, and for a week the empty window
+frames kept the glaziers busy.
+
+About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland. The people of
+New York City contributed provisions for the sufferers, and to
+carry the supplies to Ireland the Government authorized the use of
+the old _Constellation_. At the time the voyage was to begin each
+cadet was instructed to consider himself as having been placed in
+command of the _Constellation_ and to write a report on the
+preparations made for the voyage, on the loading of the vessel, and
+on the distribution of the stores. This exercise was intended for the
+instruction of the cadets; first in the matter of seamanship and
+navigation, and second in making official reports. At that time it
+was a very difficult operation to get a gun out of the port of a
+vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do this the
+necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yard-arm and the yard
+and mast properly braced and stayed, and then the lower block of
+the tackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave
+the fall a very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin's report dealt
+with a new method of dismounting the guns and carrying them
+through the gun ports, and so admirable was his plan, so simple
+and ingenious, that it was used whenever it became necessary to
+dismount a gun from one of the old sailing ships. Having,
+however, offered this piece of good work, McGiffin's report
+proceeded to tell of the division of the ship into compartments that
+were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores, which
+included the old "fifteen puzzles," at that particular time very
+popular. The report terminated with a description of the joy of the
+famished Irish as they received the puzzle-boxes. At another time
+the cadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression
+of the insurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great
+praise for the military arrangements and disposition of his men,
+but, in the same report, he went on to describe how he armed them
+with a new gun known as Baines's Rhetoric and told of the havoc
+he wrought in the enemy's ranks when he fired these guns loaded
+with similes and metaphors and hyperboles.
+
+Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he was sent to the
+_Santee_ and given an opportunity to meditate.
+
+On another occasion, when one of the instructors lectured to the
+cadets, he required them to submit a written statement embodying
+all that they could recall of what had been said at the lecture. One
+of the rules concerning this report provided that there should be no
+erasures or interlineations, but that when mistakes were made the
+objectionable or incorrect expressions should be included within
+parentheses; and that the matter so enclosed within parentheses
+would not be considered a part of the report. McGiffin wrote an
+excellent _resume_ of the lecture, but he interspersed through it in
+parentheses such words as "applause," "cheers," "cat-calls," and
+"groans," and as these words were enclosed within parentheses he
+insisted that they did not count, and made a very fair plea that he
+ought not to be punished for words which slipped in by mistake,
+and which he had officially obliterated by what he called oblivion
+marks.
+
+He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the
+house of a professor caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and
+carried out two children, for which act he was commended by the
+Secretary of the Navy.
+
+It was an act of Congress that determined that the career of
+McGiffin should be that of a soldier of fortune. This was a most
+unjust act, which provided that only as many midshipmen should
+receive commissions as on the warships there were actual
+vacancies. In those days, in 1884, our navy was very small. To-day
+there is hardly a ship having her full complement of officers, and
+the difficulty is not to get rid of those we have educated, but to get
+officers to educate. To the many boys who, on the promise that
+they would be officers of the navy, had worked for four years at
+the Academy and served two years at sea, the act was most unfair.
+Out of a class of about ninety, only the first twelve were given
+commissions and the remaining eighty turned adrift upon the
+uncertain seas of civil life. As a sop, each was given one thousand
+dollars.
+
+McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. In the final
+examinations on the list he was well toward the tail. But without
+having studied many things, and without remembering the greater
+part of them, no one graduates from Annapolis, even last on the
+list; and with his one thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also
+this six years of education at what was then the best naval college
+in the world. This was his only asset--his education--and as in his
+own country it was impossible to dispose of it, for possible
+purchasers he looked abroad.
+
+At that time the Tong King war was on between France and China,
+and he decided, before it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to the
+followers of the Yellow Dragon. In those days that was a hazard of
+new fortunes that meant much more than it does now. To-day the
+East is as near as San Francisco; the Japanese-Russian War, our
+occupation of the Philippines, the part played by our troops in the
+Boxer trouble, have made the affairs of China part of the daily
+reading of every one. Now, one can step into a brass bed at
+Forty-second Street and in four days at the Coast get into another
+brass bed, and in twelve more be spinning down the Bund of
+Yokohama in a rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter months
+as they used to go to Cairo.
+
+But in 1885 it was no such light undertaking, certainly not for a
+young man who had been brought up in the quiet atmosphere of an
+inland town, where generations of his family and other families
+had lived and intermarried, content with their surroundings.
+
+With very few of his thousand dollars left him, McGiffin arrived in
+February, 1885, in San Francisco. From there his letters to his
+family give one the picture of a healthy, warm-hearted youth,
+chiefly anxious lest his mother and sister should "worry." In our
+country nearly every family knows that domestic tragedy when the
+son and heir "breaks home ties," and starts out to earn a living; and
+if all the world loves a lover, it at least sympathizes with the boy
+who is "looking for a job." The boy who is looking for the job may
+not think so, but each of those who has passed through the same
+hard place gives him, if nothing else, his good wishes. McGiffin's
+letters at this period gain for him from those who have had the
+privilege to read them the warmest good feeling.
+
+They are filled with the same cheery optimism, the same slurring
+over of his troubles, the same homely jokes, the same assurances
+that he is feeling "bully," and that it all will come out right, that
+every boy, when he starts out in the world, sends back to his
+mother.
+
+"I am in first-rate health and spirits, so I don't want you to fuss
+about me. I am big enough and ugly enough to scratch along
+somehow, and I will not starve."
+
+To his mother he proudly sends his name written in Chinese
+characters, as he had been taught to write it by the Chinese
+Consul-General in San Francisco, and a pen-picture of two
+elephants. "I am going to bring you home _two_ of these," he
+writes, not knowing that in the strange and wonderful country to
+which he is going elephants are as infrequent as they are in
+Pittsburg.
+
+He reached China in April, and from Nagasaki on his way to
+Shanghai the steamer that carried him was chased by two French
+gunboats. But, apparently much to his disappointment, she soon
+ran out of range of their guns. Though he did not know it then,
+with the enemy he had travelled so far to fight this was his first
+and last hostile meeting; for already peace was in the air.
+
+Of that and of how, in spite of peace, he obtained the "job" he
+wanted, he must tell you himself in a letter home:
+
+TIEN-TSIN, CHINA, April 13, 1885.
+
+"MY DEAR MOTHER--I have not felt much in the humor for
+writing, for I did not know what was going to happen. I spent a
+good deal of money coming out, and when I got here, I knew,
+unless something turned up, I was a gone coon. We got off Taku
+forts Sunday evening and the next morning we went inside; the
+channel is very narrow and sown with torpedoes. We struck
+one--an electric one--in coming up, but it didn't go off. We were
+until 10.30 P.M. in coming up to Tien-Tsin--thirty miles in a
+straight line, but nearly seventy by the river, which is only about
+one hundred feet wide--and we grounded ten times.
+
+"Well--at last we moored and went ashore. Brace Girdle, an
+engineer, and I went to the hotel, and the first thing we heard
+was--that _peace was declared!_ I went back on board ship, and I
+didn't sleep much--I never was so blue in my life. I knew if they
+didn't want me that I might as well give up the ghost, for I could
+never get away from China. Well--I worried around all night
+without sleep, and in the morning I felt as if I had been drawn
+through a knot-hole. I must have lost ten pounds. I went around
+about 10 A.M. and gave my letters to Pethick, an American U. S.
+Vice-Consul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He said he would
+fix them for me. Then I went back to the ship, and as our captain
+was going up to see Li Hung Chang, I went along out of
+desperation. We got in, and after a while were taken in through
+corridor after corridor of the Viceroy's palace until we got into the
+great Li, when we sat down and had tea and tobacco and talked
+through an interpreter. When it came my turn he asked: 'Why did
+you come to China?' I said: 'To enter the Chinese service for the
+war.' 'How do you expect to enter?' 'I expect _you_ to give me a
+commission!' 'I have no place to offer you.' 'I think you have--I
+have come all the way from America to get it.' 'What would you
+like?' 'I would like to get the new torpedo-boat and go down the
+Yang-tse-Kiang to the blockading squadron.' 'Will you do that?' 'Of
+course.'
+
+"He thought a little and said: 'I will see what can be done. Will you
+take $100 a month for a start?' I said: 'That depends.' (Of course I
+would take it.) Well, after parley, he said he would put me on the
+flagship, and if I did well he would promote me. Then he looked at
+me and said: 'How old are you ?' When I told him I was
+twenty-four I thought he would faint--for in China a man is a
+_boy_ until he is over thirty. He said I would _never_ do--I was a
+child. I could not know anything at all. I could not convince him,
+but at last he compromised--I was to pass an examination at the
+Arsenal at the Naval College, in all branches, and if they passed
+me I would have a show. So we parted. I reported for examination
+next day, but was put off--same the next day. But to-day I was told
+to come, and sat down to a stock of foolscap, and had a pretty stiff
+exam. I am only just through. I had seamanship, gunnery,
+navigation, nautical astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
+conic sections, curve tracing, differential and integral calculus. I
+had only three questions out of five to answer in each branch, but
+in the first three I answered all five. After that I only had time for
+three, but at the end he said I need not finish, he was perfectly
+satisfied. I had done remarkably well, and he would report to the
+Viceroy to-morrow. He examined my first
+papers--seamanship--said I was _perfect_ in it, so I will get
+_along_, you need not fear. I told the Consul--he was very well
+pleased--he is a nice man.
+
+"I feel pretty well now--have had dinner and am smoking a good
+Manila cheroot. I wrote hard all day, wrote fifteen sheets of
+foolscap and made about a dozen drawings--got pretty tired.
+
+"I have had a hard scramble for the service and only got in by the
+skin of my teeth. I guess I will go to bed--I will sleep well
+to-night--Thursday.
+
+"I did not hear from the Naval Secretary, Tuesday, so yesterday
+morning I went up to the Admiralty and sent in my card. He came
+out and received me very well--said I had passed a  'very splendid
+examination'; had been recommended very strongly to the Viceroy,
+who was very much pleased; that the Director of the Naval College
+over at the Arsenal had wanted me and would I go over at once? I
+_would_. It was about five miles. We (a friend, who is a great rider
+here) went on steeplechase ponies--we were ferried across the Pei
+Ho in a small scow and then had a long ride. There _is_ a path--but
+Pritchard insisted on taking all the ditches, and as my pony jumped
+like a cat, it wasn't nice at first, but I didn't squeal and kept my seat
+and got the swing of it at last and rather liked it. I think I will keep
+a horse here--you can hire one and a servant together for $7 a
+month; that is $5.60 of our money, and pony and man found in
+everything.
+
+"Well--at last we got to the Arsenal--a place about four miles
+around, fortified, where all sorts of arms--cartridges, shot and
+shell, engines, and _everything_--are made. The Naval College is
+inside surrounded by a moat and wall. I thought to myself, if the
+cadet here is like to the thing I used to be at the U. S. N. A. _that_
+won't keep him in. I went through a lot of yards till I was ushered
+into a room finished in black ebony and was greeted very warmly
+by the Director. We took seats on a raised platform--Chinese style
+and pretty soon an interpreter came, one of the Chinese professors,
+who was educated abroad, and we talked and drank tea. He said I
+had done well, that he had the authority of the Viceroy to take me
+there as 'Professor' of seamanship and gunnery; in addition I might
+be required to teach navigation or nautical astronomy, or drill the
+cadets in infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I was to receive
+what would be in our money $1,800 per annum, as near as we can
+compare it, paid in gold each month. Besides, I will have a house
+furnished for my use, and it is their intention, as soon as I _show_
+that I _know_ something, to considerably increase my pay. They
+asked the Viceroy to give me 130 T per month (about $186) and
+house, but the Viceroy said I was _but a boy_; that I had seen no
+years and had only come here a week ago with no one to vouch for
+me, and that I might turn out an impostor. But he would risk 100 T
+on me anyhow, and as soon as I was reported favorably on by the
+college I would be raised--the agreement is to be for three years.
+For a few months I am to command a training ship--an ironclad
+that is in dry dock at present, until a captain in the English Navy
+comes out, who has been sent for to command her.
+
+"_So Here I am_--twenty-four years old and captain of a
+man-of-war--a better one than any in our own navy--only for a
+short time, of course, but I would be a pretty long time before I
+would command one at home. Well--I accepted and will enter on
+my duties in a week, as soon as my house is put in order. I saw
+it--it has a long veranda, very broad; with flower garden, apricot
+trees, etc., just covered with blossoms; a wide hall on the front, a
+room about 18x15, with a 13-foot ceiling; then back another rather
+larger, with a cupola skylight in the centre, where I am going to
+put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to furnish the house
+with bed, tables, chairs, sideboards, lounges, stove for kitchen. I
+have grates (American) in the room, but I don't need them. We
+have snow, and a good deal of ice in winter, but the thermometer
+never gets below zero. I have to supply my own crockery. I will
+have two servants and cook; I will only get one and the cook
+first--they only cost $4 to $5.50 per month, and their board
+amounts to very little. I can get along, don't you think so? Now I
+want you to get Jim to pack up all my professional works on
+gunnery, surveying, seamanship, mathematics, astronomy, algebra,
+geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, calculus, mechanics, and
+_every_ book of that description I own, including those
+paperbound 'Naval Institute' papers, and put them in a box,
+together with any photos, etc., you think I would like--I have none
+of you or Pa or the family (including Carrie)--and send to me.
+
+"I just got in in time--didn't I? Another week would have been too
+late. My funds were getting low; I would not have had _anything_
+before long. The U. S. Consul, General Bromley, is much pleased.
+The interpreter says it was all in the way I did with the Viceroy in
+the interview.
+
+"I will have a chance to go to Peking and later to a tiger hunt in
+Mongolia, but for the present I am going to study, work, and
+_stroke_ these mandarins till I get a raise. I am the only instructor
+in both seamanship and gunnery, and I must know _everything_,
+both practically and theoretically. But it will be good for me and
+the only thing is, that if I were put back into the Navy I would be
+in a dilemma. I think I will get my 'influence' to work, and I want
+you people at home to look out, and in case I _am_--if it were
+represented to the Sec. that my position here was giving me an
+immense lot of practical knowledge professionally--more than I
+could get on a ship at sea--I think he would give me two years'
+leave on half or quarter pay. Or, I would be willing to do without
+pay--only to be kept on the register in my rank.
+
+"I will write more about this. Love to all."
+
+
+It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the very same letter in which
+he announces he has entered foreign service he plans to return to
+that of his own country. This hope never left him. You find the
+same homesickness for the quarterdeck of an American
+man-of-war all through his later letters. At one time a bill to
+reinstate the midshipmen who had been cheated of their
+commissions was introduced into Congress. Of this McGiffin
+writes frequently as "our bill." "It may pass," he writes, "but I am
+tired hoping. I have hoped so long. And if it should," he adds
+anxiously, "there may be a time limit set in which a man must
+rejoin, or lose his chance, so do not fail to let me know as quickly
+as you can." But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never returned
+to the navy that had cut him adrift. He settled down at Tien-Tsin
+and taught the young cadets how to shoot. Almost all of those who
+in the Chinese-Japanese War served as officers were his pupils. As
+the navy grew, he grew with it, and his position increased in
+importance. More Mexican dollars per month, more servants,
+larger houses, and buttons of various honorable colors were given
+him, and, in return, he established for China a modem naval
+college patterned after our own. In those days throughout China
+and Japan you could find many of these foreign advisers. Now, in
+Japan, the Hon. W. H. Dennison of the Foreign Office, one of our
+own people, is the only foreigner with whom the Japanese have
+not parted, and in China there are none. Of all of those who have
+gone none served his employers more faithfully than did McGiffin.
+At a time when every official robbed the people and the
+Government, and when "squeeze" or "graft" was recognized as a
+perquisite, McGiffin's hands were clean. The shells purchased for
+the Government by him were not loaded with black sand, nor were
+the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. Once a year he celebrated
+the Thanksgiving Day of his own country by inviting to a great
+dinner all the Chinese naval officers who had been at least in part
+educated in America. It was a great occasion, and to enjoy it
+officers used to come from as far as Port Arthur, Shanghai, and
+Hong-Kong. So fully did some of them appreciate the efforts of
+their host that previous to his annual dinner, for twenty-four hours,
+they delicately starved themselves.
+
+During ten years McGiffin served as naval constructor and
+professor of gunnery and seamanship, and on board ships at sea
+gave practical demonstrations in the handling of the new cruisers.
+In 1894 he applied for leave, which was granted, but before he had
+sailed for home war with Japan was declared and he withdrew his
+application. He was placed as second in command on board the
+_Chen Yuen_, a seven-thousand-ton battleship, a sister ship to the
+_Ting Yuen_, the flagship of Admiral Ting Ju Chang. On the
+memorable 17th of September, 1894, the battle of the Yalu was
+fought, and so badly were the Chinese vessels hammered that the
+Chinese navy, for the time being, was wiped out of existence.
+
+From the start the advantage was with the Japanese fleet. In heavy
+guns the Chinese were the better armed, but in quick-firing guns
+the Japanese were vastly superior, and while the Chinese
+battleships _Ting Yuen_ and _Chen Yuen_, each of 7,430 tons,
+were superior to any of the Japanese warships, the three largest of
+which were each of 4,277 tons, the gross tonnage of the Japanese
+fleet was 36,000 to 21,000 of the Chinese. During the progress of
+the battle the ships engaged on each side numbered an even dozen,
+but at the very start, before a decisive shot was fired by either
+contestant, the _Tsi Yuen_, 2,355 tons, and _Kwan Chiae_, 1,300
+tons, ran away, and before they had time to get into the game the
+_Chao Yung_ and _Yang Wei_ were in flames and had fled to the
+nearest land. So the battle was fought by eight Chinese ships
+against twelve of the Japanese. Of the Chinese vessels, the
+flagship, commanded by Admiral Ting, and her sister ship, which
+immediately after the beginning of the fight was for four hours
+commanded by McGiffin, were the two chief aggressors, and in
+consequence received the fire of the entire Japanese squadron.
+Toward the end of the fight, which without interruption lasted for
+five long hours, the Japanese did not even consider the four
+smaller ships of the enemy, but, sailing around the two ironclads in
+a circle, fired only at them. The Japanese themselves testified that
+these two ships never lost their
+formation, and that when her sister ironclad was closely pressed
+the _Chen Yuen_, by her movements and gun practice, protected
+the _Ting Yuen_, and, in fact, while she could not prevent the
+heavy loss the fleet encountered, preserved it from annihilation.
+During the fight this ship was almost continuously on fire, and was
+struck by every kind of projectile, from the thirteen-inch Canet
+shells to a rifle bullet, four hundred times. McGiffin himself was
+so badly wounded, so beaten about by concussions, so burned, and
+so bruised by steel splinters, that his health and eyesight were
+forever wrecked. But he brought the _Chen Yuen_ safely into Port
+Arthur and the remnants of the fleet with her.
+
+On account of his lack of health he resigned from the Chinese
+service and returned to America. For two years he lived in New
+York City, suffering in body without cessation the most exquisite
+torture. During that time his letters to his family show only
+tremendous courage. On the splintered, gaping deck of the _Chen
+Yuen_, with the fires below it, and the shells bursting upon it, he
+had shown to his Chinese crew the courage of the white man who
+knew he was responsible for them and for the honor of their
+country. But far greater and more difficult was the courage he
+showed while alone in the dark sick-room, and in the private wards
+of the hospitals.
+
+In the letters he dictates from there he still is concerned only lest
+those at home shall "worry"; he reassures them with falsehoods,
+jokes at their fears; of the people he can see from the window of
+the hospital tells them foolish stories; for a little boy who has been
+kind he asks them to send him his Chinese postage stamps; he
+plans a trip he will take with them when he is stronger, knowing he
+never will be stronger. The doctors had urged upon him a certain
+operation, and of it to a friend he wrote: "I know that I will have to
+have a piece about three inches square cut out of my skull, and this
+nerve cut off near the middle of the brain, as well as my eye taken
+out (for a couple of hours only, provided it is not mislaid, and can
+be found). Doctor ------ and his crowd show a bad memory for
+failures. As a result of this operation others have told me--I forget
+the percentage of deaths, which does not matter, but--that a large
+percentage have become insane. And some lost their sight."
+
+While threatened with insanity and complete blindness, and hourly
+from his wounds suffering a pain drugs could not master, he
+dictated for the _Century Magazine_ the only complete account of
+the battle of the Yalu. In a letter to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder he
+writes: "...my eyes are troubling me. I cannot see even what I am
+writing now, and am getting the article under difficulties. I yet
+hope to place it in your hands by the 21st, still, if my eyes grow
+worse------"
+
+"Still, if my eyes grow worse------"
+
+The unfinished sentence was grimly prophetic.
+
+Unknown to his attendants at the hospital, among the papers in his
+despatch-box he had secreted his service revolver. On the morning
+of the 11th of February, 1897, he asked for this box, and on some
+pretext sent the nurse from the room. When the report of the pistol
+brought them running to his bedside, they found the pain-driven
+body at peace, and the tired eyes dark forever.
+
+In the article in the _Century_ on the battle of the Yalu, he had
+said:
+
+"Chief among those who have died for their country is Admiral
+Ting Ju Chang, a gallant soldier and true gentleman. Betrayed by
+his countrymen, fighting against odds, almost his last official act
+was to stipulate for the lives of his officers and men. His own he
+scorned to save, well knowing that his ungrateful country would
+prove less merciful than his honorable foe. Bitter, indeed, must
+have been the reflections of the old, wounded hero, in that
+midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cup that was to give him
+rest."
+
+And bitter indeed must have been the reflections of the young
+wounded American, robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of
+the right he had earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give
+his best years and his life for a strange people under a strange flag.
+
+GENERAL WILLIAM WALKER,
+THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS
+
+IT is safe to say that to members of the younger generation the
+name of William Walker conveys absolutely nothing.  To them, as
+a name, "William Walker" awakens no pride of race or country.  It
+certainly does not suggest poetry and adventure.  To obtain a place
+in even this group of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the
+most distinguished of all American Soldiers of Fortune, the one
+who but for his own countrymen would have single-handed
+attained the most far-reaching results, had to wait his turn behind
+adventurers of other lands and boy officers of his own.  And yet
+had this man with the plain name, the name that to-day means
+nothing, accomplished what he adventured, he would on this
+continent have solved the problem of slavery, have established an
+empire in Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have
+brought us into war with all of Europe. That is all he would have
+accomplished.
+
+In the days of gold in San Francisco among the "Forty-niners"
+William Walker was one of the most famous, most picturesque
+and popular figures. Jack Oakhurst, gambler; Colonel Starbottle,
+duellist; Yuba Bill, stage-coach driver, were his contemporaries.
+Bret Harte was one of his keenest admirers, and in two of his
+stories, thinly disguised under a more appealing name, Walker is
+the hero. When, later, Walker came to New York City, in his
+honor Broadway from the Battery to Madison Square was
+bedecked with flags and arches. "It was roses, roses all the way."
+The house-tops rocked and swayed.
+
+In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera he made his first
+appearance, for ten minutes the performance came to a pause,
+while the audience stood to salute him.
+
+This happened less than fifty years ago, and there are men who as
+boys were out with "Walker of Nicaragua," and who are still active
+in the public life of San Francisco and New York.
+
+Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, Tenn. He was the oldest
+son of a Scotch banker, a man of a deeply religious mind, and
+interested in a business which certainly is removed, as far as
+possible, from the profession of arms. Indeed, few men better than
+William Walker illustrate the fact that great generals are born, not
+trained. Everything in Walker's birth, family tradition, and
+education pointed to his becoming a member of one of the
+"learned" professions. It was the wish of his father that he should
+be a minister of the Presbyterian Church, and as a child he was
+trained with that end in view. He himself preferred to study
+medicine, and after graduating at the University of Tennessee, at
+Edinburgh he followed a course of lectures, and for two years
+travelled in Europe, visiting many of the great hospitals.
+
+Then having thoroughly equipped himself to practise as a
+physician, after a brief return to his native city, and as short a stay
+in Philadelphia, he took down his shingle forever, and proceeded
+to New Orleans to study law. In two years he was admitted to the
+bar of Louisiana. But because clients were few, or because the red
+tape of the law chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he had
+abandoned the Church and Medicine, he abandoned his law
+practice and became an editorial writer on the New Orleans
+_Crescent_. A year later the restlessness which had rebelled
+against the grave professions led him to the gold fields of
+California, and San Francisco. There, in 1852, at the age of only
+twenty-eight, as editor of the San Francisco _Herald_, Walker
+began his real life which so soon was to end in both disaster and
+glory.
+
+Up to his twenty-eighth year, except in his restlessness, nothing in
+his life foreshadowed what was to follow. Nothing pointed to him
+as a man for whom thousands of other men, from every capital of
+the world, would give up their lives.
+
+Negatively, by abandoning three separate callings, and in making it
+plain that a professional career did not appeal to him, Walker had
+thrown a certain sidelight on his character; but actively he never
+had given any hint that under the thoughtful brow of the young
+doctor and lawyer there was a mind evolving schemes of empire,
+and an ambition limited only by the two great oceans.
+
+Walker's first adventure was undoubtedly inspired by and in
+imitation of one which at the time of his arrival in San Francisco
+had just been brought to a disastrous end. This was the De
+Boulbon expedition into Mexico. The Count Gaston Raoulx de
+Raousset-Boulbon was a young French nobleman and Soldier of
+Fortune, a _chasseur d'Afrique_, a duellist, journalist, dreamer,
+who came to California to dig gold. Baron Harden-Hickey, who
+was born in San Francisco a few years after Boulbon at the age of
+thirty was shot in Mexico, also was inspired to dreams of conquest
+by this same gentleman adventurer.
+
+Boulbon was a young man of large ideas. In the rapid growth of
+California he saw a threat to Mexico and proposed to that
+government, as a "buffer" state between the two republics, to form
+a French colony in the Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part
+of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of
+Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to
+attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in the Gulf of
+California with two hundred and sixty well-armed Frenchmen. The
+ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was his
+contract with the President under which his "emigrants" were hired
+to protect other foreigners working in the "Restauradora" mines
+from the attacks of Apache Indians from our own Arizona. But
+there is evidence that back of Boulbon was the French
+Government, and that he was attempting, in his small way, what
+later was attempted by Maximilian, backed by a French army corps
+and Louis Napoleon, to establish in Mexico an empire under
+French protection. For both the filibuster and the emperor the end
+was the same; to be shot by the fusillade against a church wall.
+
+In 1852, two years before Boulbon's death, which was the finale to
+his second filibustering expedition into Sonora, he wrote to a
+friend in Paris: "Europeans are disturbed by the growth of the
+United States. And rightly so. Unless she be dismembered; unless
+a powerful rival be built up beside her (_i .e._, France in Mexico),
+America will become, through her commerce, her trade, her
+population, her geographical position upon two oceans, the
+inevitable mistress of the world. In ten years Europe dare not fire a
+shot without her permission. As I write fifty Americans prepare to
+sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. _Voila les Etats-Unis_."
+
+These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of Boulbon, threatened the
+peace of Europe, were led by the ex-doctor, ex-lawyer, ex-editor,
+William Walker, _aged twenty-eight years_. Walker had attempted
+but had failed to obtain from the Mexican Government such a
+contract as the one it had granted De Boulbon. He accordingly
+sailed without it, announcing that, whether the Mexican
+Government asked him to do so or not, he would see that the
+women and children on the border of Mexico and Arizona were
+protected from massacre by the Indians. It will be remembered that
+when Dr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he also went to protect
+"women and children" from massacre by the Boers. Walker's
+explanation of his expedition, in his own words, is as follows. He
+writes in the third person: "What Walker saw and heard satisfied
+him that a comparatively small body of Americans might gain a
+position on the Sonora frontier and protect the families on the
+border from the Indians, and such an act would be one of humanity
+whether or not sanctioned by the Mexican Government. The
+condition of the upper part of Sonora was at that time, and still is
+[he was writing eight years later, in 1860], a disgrace to the
+civilization of the continent...and the people of the United States
+were more immediately responsible before the world for the
+Apache outrages. Northern Sonora was in fact, more under the
+dominion of the Apaches than under the laws of Mexico, and the
+contributions of the Indians were collected with greater regularity
+and certainty than the dues of the tax-gatherers. The state of this
+region furnished the best defence for any American aiming to
+settle there without the formal consent of Mexico; and, although
+political changes would certainly have followed the establishment
+of a colony, they might be justified by the plea that any social
+organization, no matter how secured, is preferable to that in which
+individuals and families are altogether at the mercy of savages."
+
+While at the time of Jameson's raid the women and children in
+danger of massacre from the Boers were as many as there are
+snakes in Ireland, at the time of Walker's raid the women and
+children were in danger from the Indians, who as enemies, as
+Walker soon discovered, were as cruel and as greatly to be feared
+as he had described them.
+
+But it was not to save women and children that Walker sought to
+conquer the State of Sonora. At the time of his expedition the great
+question of slavery was acute; and if in the States next to be
+admitted to the Union slavery was to be prohibited, the time had
+come, so it seemed to this statesman of twenty-eight years, when
+the South must extend her boundaries, and for her slaves find an
+outlet in fresh territory. Sonora already joined Arizona. By
+conquest her territory could easily be extended to meet Texas. As a
+matter of fact, strategically the spot selected by William Walker
+for the purpose for which he desired it was almost perfect.
+Throughout his brief career one must remember that the spring of
+all his acts was this dream of an empire where slavery would be
+recognized. His mother was a slave-holder. In Tennessee he had
+been born and bred surrounded by slaves. His youth and manhood
+had been spent in Nashville and New Orleans. He believed as
+honestly, as fanatically in the right to hold slaves as did his father
+in the faith of the Covenanters. To-day one reads his arguments in
+favor of slavery with the most curious interest. His appeal to the
+humanity of his reader, to his heart, to his sense of justice, to his
+fear of God, and to his belief in the Holy Bible not to abolish
+slavery, but to continue it, to this generation is as amusing as the
+topsy-turvyisms of Gilbert or Shaw. But to the young man himself
+slavery was a sacred institution, intended for the betterment of
+mankind, a God-given benefit to the black man and a God-given
+right of his white master.
+
+White brothers in the South, with perhaps less exalted motives,
+contributed funds to fit out Walker's expedition, and in October,
+1852, with forty-five men, he landed at Cape St. Lucas, at the
+extreme point of Lower California. Lower California, it must be
+remembered, in spite of its name, is not a part of our California,
+but then was, and still is, a part of Mexico. The fact that he was at
+last upon the soil of the enemy caused Walker to throw off all
+pretence; and instead of hastening to protect women and children,
+he sailed a few miles farther up the coast to La Paz. With his
+forty-five followers he raided the town, made the Governor a
+prisoner, and established a republic with himself as President. In a
+proclamation he declared the people free of the tyranny of Mexico.
+They had no desire to be free, but Walker was determined, and,
+whether they liked it or not, they woke up to find themselves an
+independent republic. A few weeks later, although he had not yet
+set foot there, Walker annexed on paper the State of Sonora, and to
+both States gave the name of the Republic of Sonora.
+
+As soon as word of this reached San Francisco, his friends busied
+themselves in his behalf, and the danger-loving and adventurous of
+all lands were enlisted as "emigrants" and shipped to him in the
+bark _Anita_.
+
+Two months later, in November, 1852, three hundred of these
+joined Walker. They were as desperate a band of scoundrels as
+ever robbed a sluice, stoned a Chinaman, or shot a "Greaser."
+When they found that to command them there was only a boy, they
+plotted to blow up the magazine in which the powder was stored,
+rob the camp, and march north, supporting themselves by looting
+the ranches. Walker learned of their plot, tried the ringleaders by
+court-martial, and shot them. With a force as absolutely
+undisciplined as was his, the act required the most complete
+personal courage. That was a quality the men with him could fully
+appreciate. They saw they had as a leader one who could fight, and
+one who would punish. The majority did not want a leader who
+would punish so when Walker called upon those who would
+follow him to Sonora to show their hands, only the original
+forty-five and about forty of the later recruits remained with him.
+With less than one hundred men he started to march up the
+Peninsula through Lower California, and so around the Gulf to
+Sonora.
+
+From the very start the filibusters were overwhelmed with disaster.
+The Mexicans, with Indian allies, skulked on the flanks and rear.
+Men who in the almost daily encounters were killed fell into the
+hands of the Indians, and their bodies were mutilated. Stragglers
+and deserters were run to earth and tortured. Those of the
+filibusters who were wounded died from lack of medical care. The
+only instruments they possessed with which to extract the
+arrow-heads were probes made from ramrods filed to a point.
+Their only food was the cattle they killed on the march. The army
+was barefoot, the Cabinet in rags, the President of Sonora wore
+one boot and one shoe.
+
+Unable to proceed farther, Walker fell back upon San Vincente,
+where he had left the arms and ammunition of the deserters and a
+rear-guard of eighteen men. He found not one of these to welcome
+him. A dozen had deserted, and the Mexicans had surprised the
+rest, lassoing them and torturing them until they died. Walker now
+had but thirty-five men. To wait for further re-enforcements from
+San Francisco, even were he sure that re-enforcements would
+come, was impossible. He determined by forced marches to fight
+his way to the boundary line of California. Between him and safety
+were the Mexican soldiers holding the passes, and the Indians
+hiding on his flanks. When within three miles of the boundary line,
+at San Diego, Colonel Melendrez, who commanded the Mexican
+forces, sent in a flag of truce, and offered, if they would surrender,
+a safe-conduct to all of the survivors of the expedition except the
+chief. But the men who for one year had fought and starved for
+Walker, would not, within three miles of home, abandon him.
+
+Melendrez then begged the commander of the United States troops
+to order Walker to surrender. Major McKinstry, who was in
+command of the United States Army Post at San Diego, refused.
+For him to cross the line would be a violation of neutral territory.
+On Mexican soil he would neither embarrass the ex-President of
+Sonora nor aid him; but he saw to it that if the filibusters reached
+American soil, no Mexican or Indian should follow them.
+
+Accordingly, on the imaginary boundary he drew up his troop, and
+like an impartial umpire awaited the result. Hidden behind rocks
+and cactus, across the hot, glaring plain, the filibusters could see
+the American flag, and the gay, fluttering guidons of the cavalry.
+The sight gave them heart for one last desperate spurt. Melendrez
+also appreciated that for the final attack the moment had come. As
+he charged, Walker, apparently routed, fled, but concealed in the
+rocks behind him he had stationed a rear-guard of a dozen men. As
+Melendrez rode into this ambush the dozen riflemen emptied as
+many saddles, and the Mexicans and Indians stampeded. A half
+hour later, footsore and famished, the little band that had set forth
+to found an empire of slaves, staggered across the line and
+surrendered to the forces of the United States.
+
+Of this expedition James Jeffrey Roche says, in his "Byways of
+War," which is of all books published about Walker the most
+intensely and fascinatingly interesting and complete: "Years
+afterward the peon herdsman or prowling Cocupa Indian in the
+mountain by-paths stumbled over the bleaching skeleton of some
+nameless one whose resting-place was marked by no cross or
+cairn, but the Colts revolver resting beside his bones spoke his
+country and his occupation--the only relic of the would-be
+conquistadores of the nineteenth century."
+
+Under parole to report to General Wood, commanding the
+Department of the Pacific, the filibusters were sent by sailing
+vessel to San Francisco, where their leader was tried for violating
+the neutrality laws of the United States, and acquitted.
+
+Walker's first expedition had ended in failure, but for him it had
+been an opportunity of tremendous experience, as active service is
+the best of all military academies, and for the kind of warfare he
+was to wage, the best preparation. Nor was it inglorious, for his
+fellow survivors, contrary to the usual practice, instead of in
+bar-rooms placing the blame for failure upon their leader, stood
+ready to fight one and all who doubted his ability or his courage.
+Later, after five years, many of these same men, though ten to
+twenty years his senior, followed him to death, and never
+questioned his judgment nor his right to command.
+
+At this time in Nicaragua there was the usual revolution. On the
+south the sister republic of Costa Rica was taking sides, on the
+north Honduras was landing arms and men. There was no law, no
+government. A dozen political parties, a dozen commanding
+generals, and not one strong man.
+
+In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco _Herald_, Walker,
+searching the map for new worlds to conquer, rested his finger
+upon Nicaragua.
+
+In its confusion of authority he saw an opportunity to make
+himself a power, and in its tropical wealth and beauty, in the
+laziness and incompetence of its inhabitants, he beheld a greater,
+fairer, more kind Sonora. On the Pacific side from San Francisco
+he could re-enforce his army with men and arms; on the Caribbean
+side from New Orleans he could, when the moment arrived, people
+his empire with slaves.
+
+The two parties at war in Nicaragua were the Legitimists and the
+Democrats. Why they were at war it is not necessary to know.
+Probably Walker did not know; it is not likely that they themselves
+knew. But from the leader of the Democrats Walker obtained a
+contract to bring to Nicaragua three hundred Americans, who were
+ each to receive several hundred acres of land, and who were
+described as "colonists liable to military duty." This contract
+Walker submitted to the Attorney-General of the State and to
+General Wood, who once before had acquitted him of
+filibustering; and neither of these Federal officers saw anything
+which seemed to give them the right to interfere. But the rest of
+San Francisco was less credulous, and the "colonists" who joined
+Walker had a very distinct idea that they were not going to
+Nicaragua to plant coffee or to pick bananas.
+
+In May, 1855, just a year after Walker and his thirty-three
+followers had surrendered to the United States troops at San
+Diego, with fifty new recruits and seven veterans of the former
+expedition he sailed from San Francisco in the brig _Vesta_, and
+in five weeks, after a weary and stormy voyage, landed at Realejo.
+There he was met by representatives of the Provisional Director of
+the Democrats, who received the Californians warmly.
+
+Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achilles Kewen, who had
+been fighting under Lopez in Cuba, a lieutenant-colonel, and
+Timothy Crocker, who had served under Walker in the Sonora
+expedition, a major. The corps was organized as an independent
+command and was named "La Falange Americana." At this time
+the enemy held the route to the Caribbean, and Walker's first
+orders were to dislodge him.
+
+Accordingly, a week after landing with his fifty-seven Americans
+and one hundred and fifty native troops, Walker sailed in the
+_Vesta_ for Brito, from which port he marched upon Rivas, a city
+of eleven thousand people and garrisoned by some twelve hundred
+of the enemy.
+
+The first fight ended in a complete and disastrous fiasco. The
+native troops ran away, and the Americans surrounded by six
+hundred of the Legitimists' soldiers, after defending themselves for
+three hours behind some adobe huts, charged the enemy and
+escaped into the jungle. Their loss was heavy, and among the
+killed were the two men upon whom Walker chiefly depended:
+Kewen and Crocker. The Legitimists placed the bodies of the dead
+and wounded who were still living on a pile of logs and burned
+them. After a painful night march, Walker, the next day, reached
+San Juan on the coast, and, finding a Costa Rican schooner in port,
+seized it for his use. At this moment, although Walker's men were
+defeated, bleeding, and in open flight, two "gringos " picked up on
+the beach of San Juan, "the Texan Harry McLeod and the Irishman
+Peter Burns," asked to be permitted to join him.
+
+"It was encouraging," Walker writes, "for the soldiers to find that
+some besides themselves did not regard their fortunes as altogether
+desperate, and small as was this addition to their number it gave
+increased moral as well as material strength to the command."
+
+Sometimes in reading history it would appear as though for
+success the first requisite must be an utter lack of humor, and
+inability to look upon what one is attempting except with absolute
+seriousness. With forty men Walker was planning to conquer and
+rule Nicaragua, a country with a population of two hundred and
+fifty thousand souls and as large as the combined area of
+Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and
+Connecticut. And yet, even seven years later, he records without a
+smile that two beach-combers gave his army "moral and material
+strength." And it is most characteristic of the man that at the
+moment he was rejoicing over this addition to his forces, to
+maintain discipline two Americans who had set fire to the houses
+of the enemy he ordered to be shot. A weaker man would have
+repudiated the two Americans, who, in fact, were not members of
+the Phalanx, and trusted that their crimes would not be charged
+against him. But the success of Walker lay greatly in his stern
+discipline. He tried the men, and they confessed to their guilt. One
+got away; and, as it might appear that Walker had connived at his
+escape, to the second man was shown no mercy. When one reads
+how severe was Walker in his punishments, and how frequently
+the death penalty was invoked by him against his own few
+followers, the wonder grows that these men, as independent and as
+unaccustomed to restraint as were those who first joined him,
+submitted to his leadership. One can explain it only by the
+personal quality of Walker himself.
+
+Among these reckless, fearless outlaws, who, despising their allies,
+believed and proved that with his rifle one American could
+account for a dozen Nicaraguans, Walker was the one man who
+did not boast or drink or gamble, who did not even swear, who
+never looked at a woman, and who, in money matters, was
+scrupulously honest and unself-seeking. In a fight, his followers
+knew that for them he would risk being shot just as unconcernedly
+as to maintain his authority he would shoot one of them.
+
+Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to women, he
+punished with death; but to the wounded, either of his own or of
+the enemy's forces, he was as gentle as a nursing sister and the
+brave and able he rewarded with instant promotion and higher pay.
+In no one trait was he a demagogue. One can find no effort on his
+part to ingratiate himself with his men. Among the officers of his
+staff there were no favorites. He messed alone, and at all times
+kept to himself. He spoke little, and then with utter lack of
+self-consciousness. In the face of injustice, perjury, or physical
+danger, he was always calm, firm, dispassionate. But it is said that
+on those infrequent occasions when his anger asserted itself, the
+steady steel-gray eyes flashed so menacingly that those who faced
+them would as soon look down the barrel of his Colt.
+
+The impression one gets of him gathered from his recorded acts,
+from his own writings, from the writings of those who fought with
+him, is of a silent, student-like young man believing religiously in
+his "star of destiny"; but, in all matters that did not concern
+himself, possessed of a grim sense of fun. The sayings of his men
+that in his history of the war he records, show a distinct
+appreciation of the Bret Harte school of humor. As, for instance,
+when he tells how he wished to make one of them a drummer boy
+and the Californian drawled: "No, thanks, colonel; I never seen a
+picture of a battle yet that the first thing in it wasn't a dead
+drummer boy with a busted drum."
+
+In Walker the personal vanity which is so characteristic of the
+soldier of fortune was utterly lacking. In a land where a captain
+bedecks himself like a field-marshal, Walker wore his trousers
+stuffed in his boots, a civilian's blue frock-coat, and the slouch hat
+of the period, with, for his only ornament, the red ribbon of the
+Democrats. The authority he wielded did not depend upon braid or
+buttons, and only when going into battle did he wear his sword. In
+appearance he was slightly built, rather below the medium height,
+smooth shaven, and with deep-set gray eyes. These eyes
+apparently, as they gave him his nickname, were his most marked
+feature.
+
+His followers called him, and later, when he was thirty-two years
+old, he was known all over the United States as the "Gray-Eyed
+Man of Destiny."
+
+From the first Walker recognized that in order to establish himself
+in Nicaragua he must keep in touch with all possible recruits
+arriving from San Francisco and New York, and that to do this he
+must hold the line of transit from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific.
+At this time the sea routes to the gold-fields were three: by sailing
+vessel around the Cape, one over the Isthmus of Panama, and one,
+which was the shortest, across Nicaragua. By a charter from the
+Government of Nicaragua, the right to transport passengers across
+this isthmus was controlled by the Accessory Transit Company, of
+which the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was president. His company
+owned a line of ocean steamers both on the Pacific side and on the
+Atlantic side. Passengers _en route_ from New York to the
+gold-fields were landed by these latter steamers at Greytown on
+the west coast of Nicaragua, and sent by boats of light draught up
+the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua. There they were met by
+larger lake steamers and conveyed across the lake to Virgin Bay.
+From that point, in carriages and on mule back, they were carried
+twelve miles overland to the port of San Juan del Sud on the
+Pacific Coast, where they boarded the company's steamers to San
+Francisco.
+
+During the year of Walker's occupation the number of passengers
+crossing Nicaragua was an average of about two thousand a
+month.
+
+It was to control this route that immediately after his first defeat
+Walker returned to San Juan del Sud, and in a smart skirmish
+defeated the enemy and secured possession of Virgin Bay, the
+halting place for the passengers going east or west. In this fight
+Walker was outnumbered five to one, but his losses were only
+three natives killed and a few Americans wounded. The
+Legitimists lost sixty killed and a hundred wounded. This
+proportion of losses shows how fatally effective was the rifle and
+revolver fire of the Californians. Indeed, so wonderful was it that
+when some years ago I visited the towns and cities captured by the
+filibusters, I found that the marksmanship of Walker's Phalanx was
+still a tradition. Indeed, thanks to the filibusters, to-day in any part
+of Central America a man from the States, if in trouble, has only to
+show his gun. No native will wait for him to fire it.
+
+After the fight at Virgin Bay, Walker received from California fifty
+recruits--a very welcome addition to his force, and as he now
+commanded about one hundred and twenty Americans, three
+hundred Nicaraguans, under a friendly native, General Valle, and
+two brass cannon, he decided to again attack Rivas. Rivas is on the
+lake just above Virgin Bay; still further up is Granada, which was
+the head-quarters of the Legitimists.
+
+Fearing Walker's attack upon Rivas, the Legitimist troops were
+hurried south from Granada to that city, leaving Granada but
+slightly protected.
+
+Through intercepted letters Walker learned of this and determined
+to strike at Granada. By night, in one of the lake steamers, he
+skirted the shore, and just before daybreak, with fires banked and
+all lights out, drew up to a point near the city. The day previous the
+Legitimists had gained a victory, and, as good luck or Walker's
+"destiny" would have it, the night before Granada had been
+celebrating the event. Much joyous dancing and much drinking of
+aguardiente had buried the inhabitants in a drugged slumber. The
+garrison slept, the sentries slept, the city slept. But when the
+convent bells called for early mass, the air was shaken with sharp
+reports that to the ears of the Legitimists were unfamiliar and
+disquieting. They were not the loud explosions of their own
+muskets nor of the smooth bores of the Democrats. The sounds
+were sharp and cruel like the crack of a whip. The sentries flying
+from their posts disclosed the terrifying truth. "The Filibusteros!"
+they cried. Following them at a gallop came Walker and Valle and
+behind them the men of the awful Phalanx, whom already the
+natives had learned to fear: the bearded giants in red flannel shirts
+who at Rivas on foot had charged the artillery with revolvers, who
+at Virgin Bay when wounded had drawn from their boots glittering
+bowie knives and hurled them like arrows, who at all times shot
+with the accuracy of the hawk falling upon a squawking hen.
+
+There was a brief terrified stand in the Plaza, and then a complete
+rout. As was their custom, the native Democrats began at once to
+loot the city. But Walker put his sword into the first one of these
+he met, and ordered the Americans to arrest all others found
+stealing, and to return the goods already stolen. Over a hundred
+political prisoners in the cartel were released by Walker, and the
+ball and chain to which each was fastened stricken off. More than
+two-thirds of them at once enlisted under Walker's banner.
+
+He now was in a position to dictate to the enemy his own terms of
+peace, but a fatal blunder on the part of Parker H. French, a
+lieutenant of Walker's, postponed peace for several weeks, and led
+to unfortunate reprisals. French had made an unauthorized and
+unsuccessful assault on San Carlos at the eastern end of the lake,
+and the Legitimists retaliated at Virgin Bay by killing half a dozen
+peaceful passengers, and at San Carlos by firing at a transit
+steamer. For this the excuse of the Legitimists was, that now that
+Walker was using the lake steamers as transports it was impossible
+for them to know whether the boats were occupied by his men or
+neutral passengers. As he could not reach the guilty ones, Walker
+held responsible for their acts their secretary of state, who at the
+taking of Granada was among the prisoners. He was tried by
+court-martial and shot, "a victim of the new interpretation of the
+principles of constitutional government." While this act of
+Walker's was certainly stretching the theory of responsibility to the
+breaking point, its immediate effect was to bring about a hasty
+surrender and a meeting between the generals of the two political
+parties. Thus, four months after Walker and his fifty-seven
+followers landed in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was
+arranged, and the side for which the Americans had fought was in
+power. Walker was made commander-in-chief of an army of
+twelve hundred men with salary of six thousand dollars a year. A
+man named Rivas was appointed temporary president.
+
+To Walker this pause in the fight was most welcome. It gave him
+an opportunity to enlist recruits and to organize his men for the
+better accomplishment of what was the real object of his going to
+Nicaragua. He now had under him a remarkable force, one of the
+most effective known to military history. For although six months
+had not yet passed, the organization he now commanded was as
+unlike the Phalanx of the fifty-eight adventurers who were driven
+back at Rivas, as were Falstaff's followers from the regiment of
+picked men commanded by Colonel Roosevelt. Instead of the
+undisciplined and lawless now being in the majority, the ranks
+were filled with the pick of the California mining camps, with
+veterans of the Mexican War, with young Southerners of birth and
+spirit, and with soldiers of fortune from all of the great armies of
+Europe.
+
+In the Civil War, which so soon followed, and later in the service
+of the Khedive of Egypt, were several of Walker's officers, and for
+years after his death there was no war in which one of the men
+trained by him in the jungles of Nicaragua did not distinguish
+himself. In his memoirs, the Englishman, General Charles Frederic
+Henningsen, writes that though he had taken part in some of the
+greatest battles of the Civil War he would pit a thousand men of
+Walker's command against any five thousand Confederate or
+Union soldiers. And General Henningsen was one who spoke with
+authority. Before he joined Walker he had served in Spain under
+Don Carlos, in Hungary under Kossuth, and in Bulgaria.
+
+Of Walker's men, a regiment of which he commanded, he writes:
+"I often have seen them march with a broken or compound
+fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or
+revolver. Those with a fractured thigh or wounds which rendered
+them incapable of removal, shot themselves. Such men do not turn
+up in the average of everyday life, nor do I ever expect to see their
+like again. All military science failed on a suddenly given field
+before such assailants, who came at a run to close with their
+revolvers and who thought little of charging a gun battery, pistol in
+hand."
+
+Another graduate of Walker's army was Captain Fred Townsend
+Ward, a native of Salem, Mass., who after the death of Walker
+organized and led the ever victorious army that put down the
+Tai-Ping rebellion, and performed the many feats of martial glory
+for which Chinese Gordon received the credit. In Shanghai, to the
+memory of the filibuster, there are to-day two temples in his honor.
+
+Joaquin Miller, the poet, miner, and soldier, who but recently was
+a picturesque figure on the hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was
+one of the young Californians who was "out with Walker," and
+who later in his career by his verse helped to preserve the name of
+his beloved commander. I. C. Jamison, living to-day in Guthrie,
+Oklahoma, was a captain under Walker. When war again came, as
+it did within four months, these were the men who made Walker
+President of Nicaragua.
+
+During the four months in all but title he had been president, and
+as such he was recognized and feared. It was against him, not
+Rivas, that in February, 1856, the neighboring republic of Costa
+Rica declared war. For three months this war continued with
+varying fortunes until the Costa Ricans were driven across the
+border.
+
+In June of the same year Rivas called a general election for
+president, announcing himself as the candidate of the Democrats.
+Two other Democrats also presented themselves, Salazar and
+Ferrer. The Legitimists, recognizing in their former enemy the real
+ruler of the country, nominated Walker. By an overwhelming
+majority he was elected, receiving 15,835 votes to 867 cast for
+Rivas. Salazar received 2,087; Ferrer, 4,447.
+
+Walker now was the legal as well as the actual ruler of the country,
+and at no time in its history, as during Walker's administration,
+was Nicaragua governed so justly, so wisely, and so well. But in
+his success the neighboring republics saw a menace to their own
+independence. To the four other republics of Central America the
+five-pointed blood-red star on the flag of the filibusters bore a
+sinister motto: "Five or None." The meaning was only too
+unpleasantly obvious. At once, Costa Rica on the south, and
+Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras from the north, with the
+malcontents of Nicaragua, declared war against the foreign
+invader. Again Walker was in the field with opposed to him
+21,000 of the allies. The strength of his own force varied. On his
+election as president the backbone of his army was a magnificently
+trained body of veterans to the number of 2,000. This was later
+increased to 3,500, but it is doubtful if at any one time it ever
+exceeded that number. His muster and hospital rolls show that
+during his entire occupation of Nicaragua there were enlisted, at
+one time or another, under his banner 10,000 men. While in his
+service, of this number, by hostile shots or fever, 5,000 died.
+
+To describe the battles with the allies would be interminable and
+wearying. In every particular they are much alike: the long silent
+night march, the rush at daybreak, the fight to gain strategic
+positions either of the barracks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza,
+the hand-to-hand fighting from behind barricades and adobe walls.
+The out-come of these fights sometimes varied, but the final result
+was never in doubt, and had no outside influences intervened, in
+time each republic in Central America would have come under the
+five-pointed star.
+
+In Costa Rica there is a marble statue showing that republic
+represented as a young woman with her foot upon the neck of
+Walker. Some night a truth-loving American will place a can of
+dynamite at the foot of that statue, and walk hurriedly away.
+Unaided, neither Costa Rica nor any other Central American
+republic could have driven Walker from her soil. His downfall
+came through his own people, and through an act of his which
+provoked them.
+
+When Walker was elected president he found that the Accessory
+Transit Company had not lived up to the terms of its concession
+with the Nicaraguan Government. His efforts to hold it to the
+terms of its concession led to his overthrow. By its charter the
+Transit Company agreed to pay to Nicaragua ten thousand dollars
+annually and ten per cent. of the net profits; but the company,
+whose history the United States Minister, Squire, characterized as
+"an infamous career of deception and fraud," manipulated its
+books in such a fashion as to show that there never were any
+profits. Doubting this, Walker sent a commission to New York to
+investigate. The commission discovered the fraud and demanded
+in back payments two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When
+the company refused to pay this, as security for the debt Walker
+seized its steamers, wharves, and storehouses, revoked its charter,
+and gave a new charter to two of its directors, Morgan and
+Garrison, who, in San Francisco, were working against Vanderbilt.
+In doing this, while he was legally in the right, he committed a
+fatal error. He had made a powerful enemy of Vanderbilt, and he
+had shut off his only lines of communication with the United
+States. For, enraged at the presumption of the filibuster president,
+Vanderbilt withdrew his ocean steamers, thus leaving Walker
+without men or ammunition, and as isolated as though upon a
+deserted island. He possessed Vanderbilt's boats upon the San Juan
+River and Nicaragua Lake, but they were of use to him only
+locally.
+
+His position was that of a man holding the centre span of a bridge
+of which every span on either side of him has been destroyed.
+
+Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing his steamers, but by
+supporting the Costa Ricans with money and men, carried the war
+into Central America. From Washington he fought Walker through
+Secretary of State Marcy, who proved a willing tool.
+
+Spencer and Webster, and the other soldiers of fortune employed
+by Vanderbilt, closed the route on the Caribbean side, and the
+man-of-war _St. Marys_, commanded by Captain Davis, was
+ordered to San Juan on the Pacific side. The instructions given to
+Captain Davis were to aid the allies in forcing Walker out of
+Nicaragua. Walker claims that these orders were given to Marcy
+by Vanderbilt and by Marcy to Commodore Mervin, who was
+Marcy's personal friend and who issued them to Davis. Davis
+claims that he acted only in the interest of humanity to save
+Walker in spite of himself. In any event, the result was the same.
+Walker, his force cut down by hostile shot and fever and desertion,
+took refuge in Rivas, where he was besieged by the allied armies.
+There was no bread in the city. The men were living on horse and
+mule meat. There was no salt. The hospital was filled with
+wounded and those stricken with fever.
+
+Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, demanded Walker's
+surrender to the United States. Walker told him he would not
+surrender, but that if the time came when he found he must fly, he
+would do so in his own little schooner of war, the _Granada_,
+which constituted his entire navy, and in her, as a free man, take
+his forces where he pleased. Then Davis informed Walker that the
+force Walker had sent to recapture the Greytown route had been
+defeated by the janizaries of Vanderbilt; that the steamers from
+San Francisco, on which Walker now counted to bring him
+re-enforcements, had also been taken off the line, and finally that it
+was his "unalterable and deliberate intention" to seize the
+_Granada_. On this point his orders left him no choice. The
+_Granada_ was the last means of transportation still left to Walker.
+He had hoped to make a sortie and on board her to escape from the
+country. But with his ship taken from him and no longer able to
+sustain the siege of the allies, he surrendered to the forces of the
+United States. In the agreement drawn up by him and Davis,
+Walker provided for the care, by Davis, of the sick and wounded,
+for the protection after his departure of the natives who had fought
+with him, and for the transportation of himself and officers to the
+United States.
+
+On his arrival in New York he received a welcome such as later
+was extended to Kossuth, and, in our own day, to Admiral Dewey.
+The city was decorated with flags and arches; and banquets, fetes,
+and public meetings were everywhere held in his honor. Walker
+received these demonstrations modestly, and on every public
+occasion announced his determination to return to the country of
+which he was the president, and from which by force he had been
+driven. At Washington, where he went to present his claims, he
+received scant encouragement. His protest against Captain Davis
+was referred to Congress, where it was allowed to die.
+
+Within a month Walker organized an expedition with which to
+regain his rights in Nicaragua, and as, in his new constitution for
+that country, he had annulled the old law abolishing slavery,
+among the slave-holders of the South he found enough money and
+recruits to enable him to at once leave the United States. With one
+hundred and fifty men he sailed from New Orleans and landed at
+San del Norte on the Caribbean side. While he formed a camp on
+the harbor of San Juan, one of his officers, with fifty men,
+proceeded up the river and, capturing the town of Castillo Viejo
+and four of the Transit steamers, was in a fair way to obtain
+possession of the entire route. At this moment upon the scene
+arrived the United States frigate _Wabash_ and Hiram Paulding,
+who landed a force of three hundred and fifty blue-jackets with
+howitzers, and turned the guns of his frigate upon the camp of the
+President of Nicaragua. Captain Engel, who presented the terms of
+surrender to Walker, said to him: "General, I am sorry to see you
+here. A man like you is worthy to command better men." To which
+Walker replied grimly: "If I had a third the number you have
+brought against me, I would show you which of us two commands
+the better men."
+
+For the third time in his history Walker surrendered to the armed
+forces of his own country.
+
+On his arrival in the United States, in fulfilment of his parole to
+Paulding, Walker at once presented himself at Washington a
+prisoner of war. But President Buchanan, although Paulding had
+acted exactly as Davis had done, refused to support him, and in a
+message to Congress declared that that officer had committed a
+grave error and established an unsafe precedent.
+
+On the strength of this Walker demanded of the United States
+Government indemnity for his losses, and that it should furnish
+him and his followers transportation even to the very camp from
+which its representatives had torn him. This demand, as Walker
+foresaw, was not considered seriously, and with a force of about
+one hundred men, among whom were many of his veterans, he
+again set sail from New Orleans. Owing to the fact that, to prevent
+his return, there now were on each side of the Isthmus both
+American and British men-of-war, Walker, with the idea of
+reaching Nicaragua by land, stopped off at Honduras.  In his war
+with the allies the Honduranians had been as savage in their
+attacks upon his men as even the Costa Ricans, and finding his old
+enemies now engaged in a local revolution, on landing, Walker
+declared for the weaker side and captured the important seaport of
+Trujillo. He no sooner had taken it than the British warship
+_Icarus_ anchored in the harbor, and her commanding officer,
+Captain Salmon, notified Walker that the British Government held
+a mortgage on the revenues of the port, and that to protect the
+interests of his Government he intended to take the town. Walker
+answered that he had made Trujillo a free port, and that Great
+Britain's claims no longer existed.
+
+The British officer replied that if Walker surrendered himself and
+his men he would carry them as prisoners to the United States, and
+that if he did not, he would bombard the town. At this moment
+General Alvarez, with seven hundred Honduranians, from the land
+side surrounded Trujillo, and prepared to attack. Against such odds
+by sea and land Walker was helpless, and he determined to fly.
+That night, with seventy men, he left the town and proceeded
+down the coast toward Nicaragua. The _Icarus_, having taken on
+board Alvarez, started in pursuit. The President of Nicaragua was
+found in a little Indian fishing village, and Salmon sent in his
+shore-boats and demanded his surrender. On leaving Trujillo,
+Walker had been forced to abandon all his ammunition save thirty
+rounds a man, and all of his food supplies excepting two barrels of
+bread. On the coast of this continent there is no spot more
+unhealthy than Honduras, and when the Englishmen entered the
+fishing village they found Walker's seventy men lying in the palm
+huts helpless with fever, and with no stomach to fight British
+blue-jackets with whom they had no quarrel. Walker inquired of
+Salmon if he were asking him to surrender to the British or to the
+Honduranian forces, and twice Salmon assured him, "distinctly
+and specifically," that he was surrendering to the forces of her
+Majesty. With this understanding Walker and his men laid down
+their arms and were conveyed to the _Icarus_. But on arriving at
+Trujillo, in spite of their protests and demands for trial by a British
+tribunal, Salmon turned over his prisoners to the Honduranian
+general. What excuse for this is now given by his descendants in
+the Salmon family I do not know.
+
+Probably it is a subject they avoid, and, in history, Salmon's
+version has never been given, which for him, perhaps, is an
+injustice. But the fact remains that he turned over his white
+brothers to the mercies of half-Indian, half-negro, savages, who
+were not allies of Great Britain, and in whose quarrels she had no
+interest. And Salmon did this, knowing there could be but one end.
+If he did not know it, his stupidity equalled what now appears to
+be heartless indifference. So far as to secure pardon for all except
+the leader and one faithful follower, Colonel Rudler of the famous
+Phalanx, Salmon did use his authority, and he offered, if Walker
+would ask as an American citizen, to intercede for him. But
+Walker, with a distinct sense of loyalty to the country he had
+conquered, and whose people had honored him with their votes,
+refused to accept life from the country of his birth, the country that
+had injured and repudiated him.
+
+Even in his extremity, abandoned and alone on a strip of glaring
+coral and noisome swamp land, surrounded only by his enemies,
+he remained true to his ideal.
+
+At thirty-seven life is very sweet, many things still seem possible,
+and before him, could his life be spared, Walker beheld greater
+conquests, more power, a new South controlling a Nicaragua
+canal, a network of busy railroads, great squadrons of merchant
+vessels, himself emperor of Central America. On the gunboat the
+gold-braided youth had but to raise his hand, and Walker again
+would be a free man. But the gold-braided one would render this
+service only on the condition that Walker would appeal to him as
+an American; it was not enough that Walker was a human being.
+The condition Walker could not grant.
+
+"The President of Nicaragua," he said, "is a citizen of Nicaragua."
+
+They led him out at sunrise to a level piece of sand along the
+beach, and as the priest held the crucifix in front of him he spoke
+to his executioners in Spanish, simply and gravely: "I die a Roman
+Catholic. In making war upon you at the invitation of the people of
+Ruatan I was wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept my
+punishment with resignation. I would like to think my death will
+be for the good of society."
+
+From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers fired at him, but,
+although each shot took effect, Walker was not dead. So, a
+sergeant stooped, and with a pistol killed the man who would have
+made him one of an empire of slaves.
+
+Had Walker lived four years longer to exhibit upon the great board
+of the Civil War his ability as a general, he would, I believe, to-day
+be ranked as one of America's greatest fighting men.
+
+And because the people of his own day destroyed him is no reason
+that we should withhold from this American, the greatest of all
+filibusters, the recognition of his genius.
+
+MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS
+
+AMONG the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories have been told in
+this book were men who are no longer living, men who, to the
+United States, are strangers, and men who were of interest chiefly
+because in what they attempted they failed.
+
+The subject of this article is none of these. His adventures are as
+remarkable as any that ever led a small boy to dig behind the barn
+for buried treasure, or stalk Indians in the orchard. But entirely
+apart from his adventures he obtains our interest because in what
+he has attempted he has not failed, because he is one of our own
+people, one of the earliest and best types of American, and
+because, so far from being dead and buried, he is at this moment
+very much alive, and engaged in Mexico in searching for a buried
+city. For exercise, he is alternately chasing, or being chased by,
+Yaqui Indians.
+
+In his home in Pasadena, Cal., where sometimes he rests quietly
+for almost a week at a time, the neighbors know him as "Fred"
+Burnham. In England the newspapers crowned him "The King of
+Scouts." Later, when he won an official title, they called him
+"Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D. S. O."
+
+Some men are born scouts, others by training become scouts. From
+his father Burnham inherited his instinct for wood-craft, and to this
+instinct, which in him is as keen as in a wild deer or a mountain
+lion, he has added, in the jungle and on the prairie and mountain
+ranges, years of the hardest, most relentless schooling. In those
+years he has trained himself to endure the most appalling fatigues,
+hunger, thirst, and wounds; has subdued the brain to infinite
+patience, has learned to force every nerve in his body to absolute
+obedience, to still even the beating of his heart. Indeed, than
+Burnham no man of my acquaintance to my knowledge has
+devoted himself to his life's work more earnestly, more honestly,
+and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To him scouting is as
+exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that
+to-day what the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all
+other "trackers," woodmen, and scouts. He reads "the face of
+Nature" as you read your morning paper. To him a movement of
+his horse's ears is as plain a warning as the "Go SLOW" of an
+automobile sign; and he so saves from ambush an entire troop. In
+the glitter of a piece of quartz in the firelight he discovers King
+Solomon's mines. Like the horned cattle, he can tell by the smell of
+it in the air the near presence of water, and where, glaring in the
+sun, you can see only a bare kopje, he distinguishes the muzzle of
+a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the levelled barrel of a
+Mauser. He is the Sherlock Holmes of all out-of-doors.
+
+Besides being a scout, he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, and
+explorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as a
+younger man taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the
+"spoor" of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now leads him as a
+mining expert to the hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and,
+as he advises, great and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of
+land in Africa and Mexico as large as the State of New York. As
+an explorer in the last few years in the course of his expeditions
+into undiscovered lands, he has added to this little world many
+thousands of square miles.
+
+Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of fiction, and of the
+Wild West Show, as it is possible for a man to be. He possesses no
+flowing locks, his talk is not of "greasers," "grizzly b'ars," or
+"pesky redskins." In fact, because he is more widely and more
+thoroughly informed, he is much better educated than many who
+have passed through one of the "Big Three" universities, and his
+English is as conventional as though he had been brought up on the
+borders of Boston Common, rather than on the borders of
+civilization.
+
+In appearance he is slight, muscular, bronzed; with a finely formed
+square jaw, and remarkable light blue eyes. These eyes apparently
+never leave yours, but in reality they see everything behind you
+and about you, above and below you. They tell of him that one
+day, while out with a patrol on the veldt, he said he had lost the
+trail and, dismounting, began moving about on his hands and
+knees, nosing the ground like a bloodhound, and pointing out a
+trail that led back over the way the force had just marched. When
+the commanding officer rode up, Burnham said:
+
+"Don't raise your head, sit. On that kopje to the right there is a
+commando of Boers."
+
+"When did you see them?" asked the officer.
+
+"I see them now," Burnham answered.
+
+"But I thought you were looking for a lost trail?"
+
+"That's what the Boers on the kopje think," said Burnham.
+
+In his eyes, possibly, owing to the uses to which they have been
+trained, the pupils, as in the eyes of animals that see in the dark,
+are extremely small. Even in the photographs that accompany this
+article this feature of his eyes is obvious, and that he can see in the
+dark the Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In manner he is
+quiet, courteous, talking slowly but well, and, while without any of
+that shyness that comes from self-consciousness, extremely
+modest. Indeed, there could be no better proof of his modesty than
+the difficulties I have encountered in gathering material for this
+article, which I have been five years in collecting. And even now,
+as he reads it by his camp-fire, I can see him squirm with
+embarrassment.
+
+Burnham's father was a pioneer missionary in a frontier hamlet
+called Tivoli on the edge of the Indian reserve of Minnesota. He
+was a stern, severely religious man, born in Kentucky, but
+educated in New York, where he graduated from the Union
+Theological Seminary. He was wonderfully skilled in wood-craft.
+Burnham's mother was a Miss Rebecca Russell of a well-known
+family in Iowa. She was a woman of great courage, which, in those
+days on that skirmish line of civilization, was a very necessary
+virtue; and she was possessed of a most gentle and sweet
+disposition. That was her gift to her son Fred, who was born on
+May 11, 1861.
+
+His education as a child consisted in memorizing many verses of
+the Bible, the "Three R's," and wood-craft. His childhood was
+strenuous. In his mother's arms he saw the burning of the town of
+New Ulm, which was the funeral pyre for the women and children
+of that place when they were massacred by Red Cloud and his
+braves.
+
+On another occasion Fred's mother fled for her life from the
+Indians, carrying the boy with her. He was a husky lad, and
+knowing that if she tried to carry him farther they both would be
+overtaken, she hid him under a shock of corn. There, the next
+morning, the Indians having been driven off, she found her son
+sleeping as soundly as a night watchman. In these Indian wars, and
+the Civil War which followed, of the families of Burnham and
+Russell, twenty-two of the men were killed. There is no question
+that Burnham comes of fighting stock.
+
+In 1870, when Fred was nine years old, his father moved to Los
+Angeles, Cal., where two years later he died; and for a time for
+both mother and boy there was poverty, hard and grinding. To
+relieve this young Burnham acted as a mounted messenger. Often
+he was in the saddle from twelve to fifteen hours, and even in a
+land where every one rode well, he gained local fame as a hard
+rider. In a few years a kind uncle offered to Mrs. Burnham and a
+younger brother a home in the East, but at the last moment Fred
+refused to go with them, and chose to make his own way. He was
+then thirteen years old, and he had determined to be a scout.
+
+At that particular age many boys have set forth determined to be
+scouts, and are generally brought home the next morning by a
+policeman. But Burnham, having turned his back on the cities, did
+not repent. He wandered over Mexico, Arizona, California. He met
+Indians, bandits, prospectors, hunters of all kinds of big game; and
+finally a scout who, under General Taylor, had served in the
+Mexican War. This man took a liking to the boy; and his influence
+upon him was marked and for his good. He was an educated man,
+and had carried into the wilderness a few books. In the cabin of
+this man Burnham read "The Conquest of Mexico and Peru" by
+Prescott, the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, of Livingstone
+the explorer, which first set his thoughts toward Africa, and many
+technical works on the strategy and tactics of war. He had no
+experience of military operations on a large scale, but, with the aid
+of the veteran of the Mexican War, with corn-cobs in the sand in
+front of the cabin door, he constructed forts and made trenches,
+redoubts, and traverses. In Burnham's life this seems to have been
+a very happy period. The big game he hunted and killed he sold for
+a few dollars to the men of Nadean's freight outfits, which in those
+days hauled bullion from Cerro Gordo for the man who is now
+Senator Jones of Nevada.
+
+At nineteen Burnham decided that there were things in this world
+he should know that could not be gleaned from the earth, trees,
+and sky; and with the few dollars he had saved he came East. The
+visit apparently was not a success. The atmosphere of the town in
+which he went to school was strictly Puritanical, and the
+townspeople much given to religious discussion. The son of the
+pioneer missionary found himself unable to subscribe to the
+formulas which to the others seemed so essential, and he returned
+to the West with the most bitter feelings, which lasted until he was
+twenty-one.
+
+"It seems strange now," he once said to me, "but in those times
+religious questions were as much a part of our daily life as to-day
+are automobiles, the Standard Oil, and the insurance scandals, and
+when I went West I was in an unhappy, doubting frame of mind.
+The trouble was I had no moral anchors; the old ones father had
+given me were gone, and the time for acquiring new ones had not
+arrived." This bitterness of heart, or this disappointment, or
+whatever the state of mind was that the dogmas of the New
+England town had inspired in the boy from the prairie, made him
+reckless. For the life he was to lead this was not a handicap. Even
+as a lad, in a land-grant war in California, he had been under
+gunfire, and for the next fifteen years he led a life of danger and of
+daring; and studied in a school of experience than which, for a
+scout, if his life be spared, there can be none better. Burnham
+came out of it a quiet, manly, gentleman. In those fifteen years he
+roved the West from the Great Divide to Mexico. He fought the
+Apache Indians for the possession of waterholes, he guarded
+bullion on stage-coaches, for days rode in pursuit of Mexican
+bandits and American horse thieves, took part in county-seat
+fights, in rustler wars, in cattle wars; he was cowboy, miner,
+deputy-sheriff, and in time throughout the  the name of "Fred"
+Burnham became significant and familiar.
+
+During this period Burnham was true to his boyhood ideal of
+becoming a scout. It was not enough that by merely living the life
+around him he was being educated for it. He daily practised and
+rehearsed those things which some day might mean to himself and
+others the difference between life and death. To improve his sense
+of smell he gave up smoking, of which he was extremely fond, nor,
+for the same reason, does he to this day use tobacco. He
+accustomed himself also to go with little sleep, and to subsist on
+the least possible quantity of food. As a deputy-sheriff this
+educated faculty of not requiring sleep aided him in many
+important captures. Sometimes he would not strike the trail of the
+bandit or "bad man" until the other had several days the start of
+him. But the end was the same; for, while the murderer snatched a
+few hours' rest by the trail, Burnham, awake and in the saddle,
+would be closing up the miles between them.
+
+That he is a good marksman goes without telling. At the age of
+eight his father gave him a rifle of his own, and at twelve, with
+either a "gun" or a Winchester, he was an expert. He taught
+himself to use a weapon either in his left or  right hand and to
+shoot, Indian fashion, hanging by one leg from his pony and using
+it as a cover, and to turn in the saddle and shoot behind him. I once
+asked him if he really could shoot to the rear with a galloping
+horse under him and hit a man.
+
+"Well," he said, "maybe not to hit him, but I can come near enough
+to him to make him decide my pony's so much faster than his that
+it really isn't worth while to follow me."
+
+Besides perfecting himself in what he tolerantly calls "tricks" of
+horsemanship and marksmanship, he studied the signs of the trail,
+forest and prairie, as a sailing-master studies the waves and clouds.
+The knowledge he gathers from inanimate objects and dumb
+animals seems little less than miraculous. And when you ask him
+how he knows these things he always gives you a reason founded
+on some fact or habit of nature that shows him to be a naturalist,
+mineralogist, geologist, and botanist, and not merely a seventh son
+of a seventh son.
+
+In South Africa he would say to the officers: "There are a dozen
+Boers five miles ahead of us riding Basuto ponies at a trot, and
+leading five others. If we hurry we should be able to sight them in
+an hour." At first the officers would smile, but not after a
+half-hour's gallop, when they would see ahead of them a dozen
+Boers leading five ponies. In the early days of Salem, Burnham
+would have been burned as a witch.
+
+When twenty-three years of age he married Miss Blanche Blick, of
+Iowa. They had known each other from childhood, and her
+brothers-in-law have been Burnham's aids and companions in
+every part of Africa and the West. Neither at the time of their
+marriage nor since did Mrs. Burnham "lay a hand on the bridle
+rein," as is witnessed by the fact that for nine years after his
+marriage Burnham continued his career as sheriff, scout, mining
+prospector. And in 1893, when Burnham and his brother-in-law,
+Ingram, started for South Africa, Mrs. Burnham went with them,
+and in every part of South Africa shared her husband's life of travel
+and danger.
+
+In making this move across the sea, Burnham's original idea was to
+look for gold in the territory owned by the German East African
+Company. But as in Rhodesia the first Matabele uprising had
+broken out, he continued on down the coast, and volunteered for
+that campaign. This was the real beginning of his fortunes. The
+"war" was not unlike the Indian fighting of his early days, and
+although the country was new to him, with the kind of warfare
+then being waged between the Kaffirs under King Lobengula and
+the white settlers of the British South Africa Company, the
+chartered company of Cecil Rhodes, he was intimately familiar.
+
+It does not take big men long to recognize other big men, and
+Burnham's remarkable work as a scout at once brought him to the
+notice of Rhodes and Dr. Jameson, who was personally conducting
+the campaign. The war was their own private war, and to them, at
+such a crisis in the history of their settlement, a man like Burnham
+was invaluable.
+
+The chief incident of this campaign, the fame of which rang over
+all Great Britain and her colonies, was the gallant but hopeless
+stand made by Major Alan Wilson and his patrol of thirty-four
+men. It was Burnham's attempt to save these men that made him
+known from Buluwayo to Cape Town.
+
+King Lobengula and his warriors were halted on one bank of the
+Shangani River, and on the other Major Forbes, with a picked
+force of three hundred men, was coming up in pursuit. Although at
+the moment he did not know it, he also was being pursued by a
+force of Matabeles, who were gradually surrounding him. At
+nightfall Major Wilson and a patrol of twelve men, with Burnham
+and his brother-in-law, Ingram, acting as scouts, were ordered to
+make a dash into the camp of Lobengula and, if possible, in the
+confusion of their sudden attack, and under cover of a terrific
+thunder-storm that was raging, bring him back a prisoner.
+
+With the king in their hands the white men believed the rebellion
+would collapse. To the number of three thousand the Matabeles
+were sleeping in a succession of camps, through which the
+fourteen men rode at a gallop. But in the darkness it was difficult
+to distinguish the trek wagon of the king, and by the time they
+found his laager the Matabeles from the other camps through
+which they had ridden had given the alarm. Through the
+underbrush from every side the enemy, armed with assegai and
+elephant guns, charged toward them and spread out to cut off their
+retreat.
+
+At a distance of about seven hundred yards from the camps there
+was a giant ant-hill, and the patrol rode toward it. By the aid of the
+lightning flashes they made their way through a dripping wood and
+over soil which the rain had turned into thick black mud. When the
+party drew rein at the ant-hill it was found that of the fourteen
+three were missing. As the official scout of the patrol and the only
+one who could see in the dark, Wilson ordered Burnham back to
+find them. Burnham said he could do so only by feeling the
+hoof-prints in the mud and that he would like some one with him
+to lead his pony. Wilson said he would lead it. With his fingers
+Burnham followed the trail of the eleven horses to where, at right
+angles, the hoof-prints of the three others separated from it, and so
+came upon the three men. Still, with nothing but the mud of the
+jungle to guide him, he brought them back to their comrades. It
+was this feat that established his reputation among British, Boers,
+and black men in South Africa.
+
+Throughout the night the men of the patrol lay in the mud holding
+the reins of their horses. In the jungle about them, they could hear
+the enemy splashing through the mud, and the swishing sound of
+the branches as they swept back into place. It was still raining. Just
+before the dawn there came the sounds of voices and the welcome
+clatter of accoutrements. The men of the patrol, believing the
+column had joined them, sprang up rejoicing, but it was only a
+second patrol, under Captain Borrow, who had been sent forward
+with twenty men as re-enforcements. They had come in time to
+share in a glorious immortality. No sooner had these men joined
+than the Kaffirs began the attack; and the white men at once
+learned that they were trapped in a complete circle of the enemy.
+Hidden by the trees, the Kaffirs fired point-blank, and in a very
+little time half of Wilson's force was killed or wounded. As the
+horses were shot down the men used them for breastworks. There
+was no other shelter. Wilson called Burnham to him and told him
+he must try and get through the lines of the enemy to Forbes.
+
+"Tell him to come up at once," he said; "we are nearly finished."
+He detailed a trooper named Gooding and Ingram to accompany
+Burnham. "One of you may get through," he said. Gooding was but
+lately out from London, and knew nothing of scouting, so
+Burnham and Ingram warned him, whether he saw the reason for it
+or not, to act exactly as they did. The three men had barely left the
+others before the enemy sprang at them with their spears. In five
+minutes they were being fired at from every bush. Then followed a
+remarkable ride, in which Burnham called to his aid all he had
+learned in thirty years of border warfare. As the enemy rushed
+after them, the three doubled on their tracks, rode in triple loops,
+hid in dongas to breathe their horses; and to scatter their pursuers,
+separated, joined again, and again separated. The enemy followed
+them to the very bank of the river, where, finding the "drift"
+covered with the swollen waters, they were forced to swim. They
+reached the other bank only to find Forbes hotly engaged with
+another force of the Matabeles.
+
+"I have been sent for re-enforcements," Burnham said to Forbes,
+"but I believe we are the only survivors of that party." Forbes
+himself was too hard pressed to give help to Wilson, and Burnham,
+his errand over, took his place in the column, and began firing
+upon the new enemy.
+
+Six weeks later the bodies of Wilson's patrol were found lying in a
+circle. Each of them had been shot many times. A son of
+Lobengula, who witnessed their extermination, and who in
+Buluwayo had often heard the Englishmen sing their national
+anthem, told how the five men who were the last to die stood up
+and, swinging their hats defiantly, sang "God Save the Queen."
+The incident will long be recorded in song and story; and in
+London was reproduced in two theatres, in each of which the man
+who played "Burnham, the American Scout," as he rode off for
+re-enforcements, was as loudly cheered by those in the audience as
+by those on the stage.
+
+Hensman, in his "History of Rhodesia," says: "One hardly knows
+which to most admire, the men who went on this dangerous
+errand, through brush swarming with natives, or those who
+remained behind battling against overwhelming odds."
+
+For his help in this war the Chartered Company presented
+Burnham with the campaign medal, a gold watch engraved with
+words of appreciation; and at the suggestion of Cecil Rhodes gave
+him, Ingram, and the Hon. Maurice Clifford, jointly, a tract of land
+of three hundred square acres.
+
+After this campaign Burnham led an expedition of ten white men
+and seventy Kaffirs north of the Zambesi River to explore
+Barotzeland and other regions to the north of Mashonaland, and to
+establish the boundaries of the concession given him, Ingram, and
+Clifford.
+
+In order to protect Burnham on the march the Chartered Company
+signed a treaty with the native king of the country through which
+he wished to travel, by which the king gave him permission to pass
+freely and guaranteed him against attack.
+
+But Latea, the son of the king, refused to recognize the treaty and
+sent his young men in great numbers to surround Burnham's camp.
+Burnham had been instructed to avoid a fight, and was torn
+between his desire to obey the Chartered Company and to prevent
+a massacre. He decided to make it a sacrifice either of himself or
+of Latea. As soon as night fell, with only three companions and a
+missionary to act as a witness of what occurred, he slipped through
+the lines of Latea's men, and, kicking down the fence around the
+prince's hut, suddenly appeared before him and covered him with
+his rifle.
+
+"Is it peace or war?" Burnham asked. "I have the king your father's
+guarantee of protection, but your men surround us. I have told my
+people if they hear shots to open fire. We may all be killed, but
+you will be the first to die."
+
+The missionary also spoke urging Latea to abide by the treaty.
+Burnham says the prince seemed much more impressed by the
+arguments of the missionary than by the fact that he still was
+covered by Burnham's rifle. Whichever argument moved him, he
+called off his warriors. On this expedition Burnham discovered the
+ruins of great granite structures fifteen feet wide, and made
+entirely without mortar. They were of a period dating before the
+Phoenicians. He also sought out the ruins described to him by F. C.
+Selous, the famous hunter, and by Rider Haggard as King
+Solomon's Mines. Much to the delight of Mr. Haggard, he brought
+back for him from the mines of his imagination real gold
+ornaments and a real gold bar.
+
+On this same expedition, which lasted five months, Burnham
+endured one of the severest hardships of his life. Alone with ten
+Kaffir boys, he started on a week's journey across the dried-up
+basin of what once had been a great lake. Water was carried in
+goat-skins on the heads of the bearers. The boys, finding the bags
+an unwieldy burden, and believing, with the happy optimism of
+their race, that Burnham's warnings were needless, and that at a
+stream they soon could refill the bags, emptied the water on the
+ground.
+
+The tortures that followed this wanton waste were terrible. Five of
+the boys died, and after several days, when Burnham found water
+in abundance, the tongues of the others were so swollen that their
+jaws could not meet.
+
+On this trip Burnham passed through a region ravaged by the
+"sleeping sickness," where his nostrils were never free from the
+stench of dead bodies, where in some of the villages, as he
+expressed it, "the hyenas were mangy with overeating, and the
+buzzards so gorged they could not move out of our way." From this
+expedition he brought back many ornaments of gold manufactured
+before the Christian era, and made several valuable maps of
+hitherto uncharted regions. It was in recognition of the information
+gathered by him on this trip that he was elected a Fellow of the
+Royal Geographical Society.
+
+He returned to Rhodesia in time to take part in the second
+Matabele rebellion. This was in 1896.  By now Burnham was a
+very prominent member of the "vortrekers" and pioneers at
+Buluwayo, and Sir Frederick Carrington, who was in command of
+the forces, attached him to his staff. This second outbreak was a
+more serious uprising than the one of 1893, and as it was evident
+the forces of the Chartered Company could not handle it, imperial
+troops were sent to assist them. But with even their aid the war
+dragged on until it threatened to last to the rainy season, when the
+troops must have gone into winter quarters. Had they done so, the
+cost of keeping them would have fallen on the Chartered
+Company, already a sufferer in pocket from the ravages of the
+rinderpest and the expenses of the investigation which followed
+the Jameson raid.
+
+Accordingly, Carrington looked about for some measure by which
+he could bring the war to an immediate end.
+
+It was suggested to him by a young Colonial, named Armstrong,
+the Commissioner of the district, that this could be done by
+destroying the "god," or high priest, Umlimo, who was the chief
+inspiration of the rebellion.
+
+This high priest had incited the rebels to a general massacre of
+women and children, and had given them confidence by promising
+to strike the white soldiers blind and to turn their bullets into
+water. Armstrong had discovered the secret hiding-place of
+Umlimo, and Carrington ordered Burnham to penetrate the
+enemy's lines, find the god, capture him, and if that were not
+possible to destroy him.
+
+The adventure was a most desperate one. Umlimo was secreted in
+a cave on the top of a huge kopje. At the base of this was a village
+where were gathered two regiments, of a thousand men each, of
+his fighting men.
+
+For miles around this village the country was patrolled by roving
+bands of the enemy.
+
+Against a white man reaching the cave and returning, the chances
+were a hundred to one, and the difficulties of the journey are
+illustrated by the fact that Burnham and Armstrong were unable to
+move faster than at the rate of a mile an hour. In making the last
+mile they consumed three hours. When they reached the base of
+the kopje in which Umlimo was hiding, they concealed their
+ponies in a clump of bushes, and on hands and knees began the
+ascent.
+
+Directly below them lay the village, so close that they could smell
+the odors of cooking from the huts, and hear, rising drowsily on
+the hot, noonday air, voices of the warriors. For minutes at a time
+they lay as motionless as the granite bowlders around or squirmed
+and crawled over loose stones which a miss of hand or knee would
+have dislodged and sent clattering into the village. After an hour of
+this tortuous climbing the cave suddenly opened before them, and
+they beheld Umlimo. Burnham recognized that to take him alive
+from his stronghold was an impossibility, and that even they
+themselves would leave the place was equally doubtful. So,
+obeying orders, he fired, killing the man who had boasted he
+would turn the bullets of his enemies into water. The echo of the
+shot aroused the village as would a stone hurled into an ant-heap.
+In an instant the veldt below was black with running men, and as,
+concealment being no longer possible, the white men rose to fly a
+great shout of anger told them they were discovered. At the same
+moment two women, returning from a stream where they had gone
+for water, saw the ponies, and ran screaming to give the alarm.
+The race that followed lasted two hours, for so quickly did the
+Kaffirs spread out on every side that it was impossible for
+Burnham to gain ground in any one direction, and he was forced to
+dodge, turn, and double. At one time the white men were driven
+back to the very kopje from which the race had started.
+
+But in the end they evaded assegai and gunfire, and in safety
+reached Buluwayo. This exploit was one of the chief factors in
+bringing the war to a close. The Matabeles, finding their leader
+was only a mortal like themselves, and so could not, as he had
+promised, bring miracles to their aid, lost heart, and when Cecil
+Rhodes in person made overtures of peace, his terms were
+accepted. During the hard days of the siege, when rations were few
+and bad, Burnham's little girl, who had been the first white child
+born in Buluwayo, died of fever and lack of proper food. This with
+other causes led him to leave Rhodesia and return to California. It
+is possible he then thought he had forever turned his back on South
+Africa, but, though he himself had departed, the impression he had
+made there remained behind him.
+
+Burnham did not rest long in California. In Alaska the hunt for
+gold had just begun, and, the old restlessness seizing him, he left
+Pasadena and her blue skies, tropical plants, and trolley-car strikes
+for the new raw land of the Klondike. With Burnham it has always
+been the place that is being made, not the place in being, that
+attracts. He has helped to make straight the ways of several great
+communities--Arizona, California, Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda.
+As he once said: "It is the constructive side of frontier life that
+most appeals to me, the building up of a country, where you see
+the persistent drive and force of the white man; when the place is
+finally settled I don't seem to enjoy it very long."
+
+In Alaska he did much prospecting, and, with a sled and only two
+dogs, for twenty-four days made one long fight against snow and
+ice, covering six hundred miles. In mining in Alaska he succeeded
+well, but against the country he holds a constant grudge, because it
+kept him out of the fight with Spain. When war was declared he
+was in the wilds and knew nothing of it, and though on his return
+to civilization he telegraphed Colonel Roosevelt volunteering for
+the Rough Riders, and at once started south, by the time he had
+reached Seattle the war was over.
+
+Several times has he spoken to me of how bitterly he regretted
+missing this chance to officially fight for his country. That he had
+twice served with English forces made him the more keen to show
+his loyalty to his own people.
+
+That he would have been given a commission in the Rough Riders
+seems evident from the opinion President Roosevelt has publicly
+expressed of him.
+
+"I know Burnham," the President wrote in 1901. "He is a scout and
+a hunter of courage and ability, a man totally without fear, a sure
+shot, and a fighter. He is the ideal scout, and when enlisted in the
+military service of any country he is bound to be of the greatest
+benefit."
+
+The truth of this Burnham was soon to prove.
+
+In 1899 he had returned to the Klondike, and in January of 1900
+had been six months in Skagway. In that same month Lord Roberts
+sailed for Cape Town to take command of the army, and with him
+on his staff was Burnham's former commander, Sir Frederick, now
+Lord, Carrington. One night as the ship was in the Bay of Biscay,
+Carrington was talking of Burnham and giving instances of his
+marvellous powers as a "tracker."
+
+"He is the best scout we ever had in South Africa!" Carrington
+declared.
+
+"Then why don't we get him back there?" said Roberts.
+
+What followed is well known.
+
+From Gibraltar a cable was sent to Skagway, offering Burnham the
+position, created especially for him, of chief of scouts of the
+British army in the field.
+
+Probably never before in the history of wars has one nation paid so
+pleasant a tribute to the abilities of a man of another nation.
+
+The sequel is interesting. The cablegram reached Skagway by the
+steamer _City of Seattle_. The purser left it at the post-office, and
+until two hours and a half before the steamer was listed to start on
+her return trip, there it lay. Then Burnham, in asking for his mail,
+received it. In two hours and a half he had his family, himself, and
+his belongings on board the steamer, and had started on his
+half-around-the-world journey from Alaska to Cape Town.
+
+A Skagway paper of January 5, 1900, published the day after
+Burnham sailed, throws a side light on his character. After telling
+of his hasty departure the day before, and of the high compliment
+that had been paid to "a prominent Skagwayan," it adds: "Although
+Mr. Burnham has lived in Skagway since last August, and has been
+North for many months, he has said little of his past, and few have
+known that he is the man famous over the world as 'the American
+scout' of the Matabele wars."
+
+Many a man who went to the Klondike did not, for reasons best
+known to himself, talk about his past. But it is characteristic of
+Burnham that, though he lived there two years, his associates did
+not know, until the British Government snatched him from among
+them, that he had not always been a prospector like themselves.
+
+I was on the same ship that carried Burnham the latter half of his
+journey, from Southampton to Cape Town, and every night for
+seventeen nights was one of a group of men who shot questions at
+him. And it was interesting to see a fellow-countryman one had
+heard praised so highly so completely make good. It was not as
+though he had a credulous audience of commercial tourists.
+Among the officers who each evening gathered around him were
+Colonel Gallilet of the Egyptian cavalry, Captain Frazer
+commanding the Scotch Gillies, Captain Mackie of Lord Roberts's
+staff, each of whom was later killed in action; Colonel Sir Charles
+Hunter of the Royal Rifles, Major Bagot, Major Lord Dudley, and
+Captain Lord Valentia. Each of these had either held command in
+border fights in India or the Sudan or had hunted big game, and the
+questions each asked were the outcome of his own experience and
+observation.
+
+Not for a single evening could a faker have submitted to the
+midnight examination through which they put Burnham and not
+have exposed his ignorance. They wanted to know what difference
+there is in a column of dust raised by cavalry and by trek wagons,
+how to tell whether a horse that has passed was going at a trot or a
+gallop, the way to throw a diamond hitch, how to make a fire
+without at the same time making a target of yourself,
+how--why--what--and how?
+
+And what made us most admire Burnham was that when he did not
+know he at once said so.
+
+Within two nights he had us so absolutely at his mercy that we
+would have followed him anywhere; anything he chose to tell us,
+we would have accepted. We were ready to believe in flying foxes,
+flying squirrels, that wild turkeys dance quadrilles--even that you
+must never sleep in the moonlight. Had he demanded: "Do you
+believe in vampires?" we would have shouted "Yes." To ask that a
+scout should on an ocean steamer prove his ability was certainly
+placing him under a severe handicap.
+
+As one of the British officers said: "It's about as fair a game as
+though we planted the captain of this ship in the Sahara Desert,
+and told him to prove he could run a ten-thousand-ton liner."
+
+Burnham continued with Lord Roberts to the fall of Pretoria, when
+he was invalided home.
+
+During the advance north he was a hundred times inside the Boer
+laagers, keeping Headquarters Staff daily informed of the enemy's
+movements; was twice captured and twice escaped.
+
+He was first captured while trying to warn the British from the
+fatal drift at Thaba'nchu. When reconnoitring alone in the morning
+mist he came upon the Boers hiding on the banks of the river,
+toward which the English were even then advancing. The Boers
+were moving all about him, and cut him off from his own side. He
+had to choose between abandoning the English to the trap or
+signalling to them, and so exposing himself to capture. With the
+red kerchief the scouts carried for that purpose he wigwagged to
+the approaching soldiers to turn back, that the enemy were
+awaiting them. But the column, which was without an advance
+guard, paid no attention to his signals and plodded steadily on into
+the ambush, while Burnham was at once made prisoner. In the
+fight that followed he pretended to receive a wound in the knee
+and bound it so elaborately that not even a surgeon would have
+disturbed the carefully arranged bandages. Limping heavily and
+groaning with pain, he was placed in a trek wagon with the officers
+who really were wounded, and who, in consequence, were not
+closely guarded. Burnham told them who he was and, as he
+intended to escape, offered to take back to head-quarters their
+names or any messages they might wish to send to their people. As
+twenty yards behind the wagon in which they lay was a mounted
+guard, the officers told him escape was impossible. He proved
+otherwise. The trek wagon was drawn by sixteen oxen and driven
+by a Kaffir boy. Later in the evening, but while it still was
+moonlight, the boy descended from his seat and ran forward to
+belabor the first spans of oxen. This was the opportunity for which
+Burnham had been waiting.
+
+Slipping quickly over the driver's seat, he dropped between the two
+"wheelers" to the disselboom, or tongue, of the trek wagon. From
+this he lowered himself and fell between the legs of the oxen on
+his back in the road. In an instant the body of the wagon had
+passed over him, and while the dust still hung above the trail he
+rolled rapidly over into the ditch at the side of the road and lay
+motionless.
+
+It was four days before he was able to re-enter the British lines,
+during which time he had been lying in the open veldt, and had
+subsisted on one biscuit and two handfuls of "mealies," or what we
+call Indian corn.
+
+Another time when out scouting he and his Kaffir boy while on
+foot were "jumped" by a Boer commando and forced to hide in
+two great ant-hills. The Boers went into camp on every side of
+them, and for two days, unknown to themselves, held Burnham a
+prisoner. Only at night did he and the Cape boy dare to crawl out
+to breathe fresh air and to eat the food tablets they carried in their
+pockets. On five occasions was Burnham sent into the Boer lines
+with dynamite cartridges to blow up the railroad over which the
+enemy was receiving supplies and ammunition. One of these
+expeditions nearly ended his life.
+
+On June 2, 1901, while trying by night to blow up the line between
+Pretoria and Delagoa Bay, he was surrounded by a party of Boers
+and could save himself only by instant flight. He threw himself
+Indian fashion along the back of his pony, and had all but got away
+when a bullet caught the horse and, without even faltering in its
+stride, it crashed to the ground dead, crushing Burnham beneath it
+and knocking him senseless. He continued unconscious for
+twenty-four hours, and when he came to, both friends and foes had
+departed. Bent upon carrying out his orders, although suffering the
+most acute agony, he crept back to the railroad and destroyed it.
+Knowing the explosion would soon bring the Boers, on his hands
+and knees he crept to an empty kraal, where for two days and
+nights he lay insensible. At the end of that time he appreciated that
+he was sinking and that unless he found aid he would die.
+
+Accordingly, still on his hands and knees, he set forth toward the
+sound of distant firing. He was indifferent as to whether it came
+from the enemy or his own people, but, as it chanced, he was
+picked up by a patrol of General Dickson's Brigade, who carried
+him to Pretoria. There the surgeons discovered that in his fall he
+had torn apart the muscles of the stomach and burst a blood-vessel.
+That his life was saved, so they informed him, was due only to the
+fact that for three days he had been without food. Had he
+attempted to digest the least particle of the "staff of life " he would
+have surely died. His injuries were so serious that he was ordered
+home.
+
+On leaving the army he was given such hearty thanks and generous
+rewards as no other American ever received from the British War
+Office. He was promoted to the rank of major, presented with a
+large sum of money, and from Lord Roberts received a personal
+letter of thanks and appreciation.
+
+In part the Field-Marshal wrote: "I doubt if any other man in the
+force could have successfully carried out the thrilling enterprises
+in which from time to time you have been engaged, demanding as
+they did the training of a lifetime, combined with exceptional
+courage, caution, and powers of endurance." On his arrival in
+England he was commanded to dine with the Queen and spend the
+night at Osborne, and a few months later, after her death, King
+Edward created him a member of the Distinguished Service Order,
+and personally presented him with the South African medal with
+five bars, and the cross of the D. S. 0. While recovering his health
+Burnham, with Mrs. Burnham, was "passed on" by friends he had
+made in the army from country house to country house; he was
+made the guest of honor at city banquets, with the Duke of Rutland
+rode after the Belvoir hounds, and in Scotland made mild
+excursions after grouse. But after six months of convalescence he
+was off again, this time to the hinterland of Ashanti, on the west
+coast of Africa, where he went in the interests of a syndicate to
+investigate a concession for working gold mines.
+
+With his brother-in-law, J. C. Blick, he marched and rowed twelve
+hundred miles, and explored the Volta River, at that date so little
+visited that in one day's journey they counted eleven
+hippopotamuses. In July, 1901, he returned from Ashanti, and a
+few months later an unknown but enthusiastic admirer asked in the
+House of Commons if it were true Major Burnham had applied for
+the post of Instructor of Scouts at Aldershot. There is no such post,
+and Burnham had not applied for any other post. To the Timer he
+wrote: "I never have thought myself competent to teach Britons
+how to fight, or to act as an instructor with officers who have
+fought in every corner of the world. The question asked in
+Parliament was entirely without my knowledge, and I deeply regret
+that it was asked." A few months later, with Mrs. Burnham and his
+younger son, Bruce, he journeyed to East Africa as director of the
+East African Syndicate.
+
+During his stay there the _African Review_ said of him: "Should
+East Africa ever become a possession for England to be proud of,
+she will owe much of her prosperity to the brave little band that
+has faced hardships and dangers in discovering her hidden
+resources. Major Burnham has chosen men from England, Ireland,
+the United States, and South Africa for sterling qualities, and they
+have justified his choice. Not the least like a hero is the retiring,
+diffident little major himself, though a finer man for a friend or a
+better man to serve under would not be found in the five
+continents."
+
+Burnham explored a tract of land larger than Germany, penetrating
+a thousand miles through a country, never before visited by white
+men, to the borders of the Congo Basin. With him he had twenty
+white men and five hundred natives. The most interesting result of
+the expedition was the discovery of a lake forty-nine miles square,
+composed almost entirely of pure carbonate of soda, forming a
+snowlike crust so thick that on it the men could cross the lake.
+
+It is the largest, and when the railroad is built--the Uganda
+Railroad is now only eighty-eight miles distant--it will be the most
+valuable deposit of carbonate of soda ever found.
+
+A year ago, in the interests of John Hays Hammond, the
+distinguished mining engineer of South Africa and this country,
+Burnham went to Sonora, Mexico, to find a buried city and to open
+up mines of copper and silver.
+
+Besides seeking for mines, Hammond and Burnham, with Gardner
+Williams, another American who also made his fortune in South
+Africa, are working together on a scheme to import to this country
+at their own expense many species of South African deer.
+
+The South African deer is a hardy animal and can live where the
+American deer cannot, and the idea in importing him is to prevent
+big game in this country from passing away. They have asked
+Congress to set aside for these animals a portion of the forest
+reserve. Already Congress has voted toward the plan $15,000, and
+President Roosevelt is one of its most enthusiastic supporters.
+
+We cannot leave Burnham in better hands than those of Hammond
+and Gardner Williams. Than these three men the United States has
+not sent to British Africa any Americans of whom she has better
+reason to be proud. Such men abroad do for those at home untold
+good. They are the real ambassadors of their country.
+
+The last I learned of Burnham is told in the snapshot of him which
+accompanies this article, and which shows him, barefoot, in the
+Yaqui River, where he has gone, perhaps, to conceal his trail from
+the Indians. It came a month ago in a letter which said briefly that
+when the picture was snapped the expedition was "trying to cool
+off." There his narrative ended. Promising as it does adventures
+still to come, it seems a good place in which to leave him.
+
+Meanwhile, you may think of Mrs. Burnham after a year in
+Mexico keeping the house open for her husband's return to
+Pasadena, and of their first son, Roderick, studying woodcraft with
+his father, forestry with Gifford Pinchot, and playing right guard
+on the freshman team at the University of California.
+
+But Burnham himself we will leave "cooling off " in the Yaqui
+River, maybe, with Indians hunting for him along the banks. And
+we need not worry about him. We know they will not catch him.
+
+End
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Real Soldiers of Fortune
+by Richard Harding Davis
+
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