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 whoof all his brothers in arms now living is the most remarkable. You mayhave noticed him; a stiffly erect, distinguished-looking man, with grayhair, 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 ensignin the Sepoy mutiny; in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; in Spain, captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, major in the Confederatearmy; in Mexico, lieutenant-colonel under the Emperor Maximilian;colonel under Napoleon III, inspector of cavalry for the Khedive ofEgypt, and chief of cavalry and general of brigade of the army of KingMilan of Servia. These are only a few of his military titles. In 1884was published a book giving the story of his life up to that year. Itwas called "Under Fourteen Flags. " If to-day General MacIver were toreprint the book, it would be called "Under Eighteen Flags. "

MacIver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, at sea, a league off the shoreof Virginia. His mother was Miss Anna Douglas of that State; RonaldMacIver, his father, was a Scot, a Rossshire gentleman, a younger son ofthe chief of the Clan MacIver. Until he was ten years old young MacIverplayed in Virginia at the home of his father. Then, in order that hemight be educated, he was shipped to Edinburgh to an uncle, GeneralDonald Graham. After five years his uncle obtained for him a commissionas ensign in the Honorable East India Company, and at sixteen, whenother boys are preparing for college, MacIver was in the Indian Mutiny, fighting, not for a flag, nor a country, but as one fights a wildanimal, for his life. He was wounded in the arm, and, with a sword, cutover the head. As a safeguard against the sun the boy had placed insidehis helmet a wet towel. This saved him to fight another day, but evenwith that protection the sword sank through the helmet, the towel, andinto the skull. To-day you can see the scar. He was left in the roadfor dead, and even after his wounds had healed, was six weeks in thehospital. 

This tough handling at the very start might have satisfied some men, butin the very next war MacIver was a volunteer and wore the red shirt ofGaribaldi. He remained at the front throughout that campaign, and untilwithin a few years there has been no campaign of consequence in which hehas not taken part. He served in the Ten Years' War in Cuba, inBrazil, in Argentina, in Crete, in Greece, twice in Spain in Carlistrevolutions, in Bosnia, and for four years in our Civil War underGenerals Jackson and Stuart around Richmond. In this great war he wasfour times wounded. 

It was after the surrender of the Confederate army, that, with otherSouthern officers, he served under Maximilian in Mexico; in Egypt, andin France. Whenever in any part of the world there was fighting, or therumor of fighting, the procedure of the general invariably was thesame. He would order himself to instantly depart for the front, and onarriving there would offer to organize a foreign legion. The command ofthis organization always was given to him. But the foreign legion wasmerely the entering wedge. He would soon show that he was fitted fora better command than a band of undisciplined volunteers, and wouldreceive a commission in the regular army. In almost every command inwhich he served that is the manner in which promotion came. Sometimes hesaw but little fighting, sometimes he should have died several deaths, each of a nature more unpleasant than the others. For in war the obviousdanger of a bullet is but a three hundred to one shot, while in the packagainst the combatant the jokers are innumerable. And in the career ofthe general the unforeseen adventures are the most interesting. A manwho in eighteen campaigns has played his part would seem to haveearned exemption from any other risks, but often it was outside thebattle-field that MacIver encountered the greatest danger. He foughtseveral duels, in two of which he killed his adversary; several attemptswere made to assassinate him, and while on his way to Mexico he wascaptured by hostile Indians. On returning from an expedition in Cuba hewas 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 ofhim from many men who had met him in many different lands whileengaged in as many different undertakings. Several of the older warcorrespondents knew him intimately; Bennett Burleigh of the _Telegraph_was his friend, and E. F. Knight of the _Times_ was one of those whovolunteered for a filibustering expedition which MacIver organizedagainst New Guinea. The late Colonel Ochiltree of Texas told me talesof MacIver's bravery, when as young men they were fellow officers in theSouthern army, and Stephen Bonsal had met him when MacIver was UnitedStates Consul at Denia in Spain. When MacIver arrived at this post, theex-consul refused to vacate the Consulate, and MacIver wished to settlethe difficulty with duelling pistols. As Denia is a small place, theinhabitants feared for their safety, and Bonsal, who was our _charged'affaires_ then, was sent from Madrid to adjust matters. Withoutbloodshed he got rid of the ex-consul, and later MacIver so endearedhimself to the Denians that they begged the State Department to retainhim in that place for the remainder of his life. 

Before General MacIver was appointed to a high position at the St. LouisFair, I saw much of him in New York. His room was in a side street inan old-fashioned boarding-house, and overlooked his neighbor's back yardand a typical New York City sumac tree; but when the general talked oneforgot he was within a block of the Elevated, and roamed over allthe world. On his bed he would spread out wonderful parchments, withstrange, 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 fordecorations, instructions and commands from superior officers. Translated the phrases ran: "Imposing special confidence in, " "weappoint, " or "create, " or "declare, " or "In recognition of servicesrendered to our person, " or "country, " or "cause, " or "For bravery onthe field of battle we bestow the Cross----"

As must a soldier, the general travels "light, " and all his worldlypossessions were crowded ready for mobilization into a small compass. Hehad his sword, his field blanket, his trunk, and the tin despatchboxes that held his papers. From these, like a conjurer, he would drawsouvenirs of all the world. From the embrace of faded letters, he wouldunfold old photographs, daguerrotypes, and miniatures of fair women andadventurous men: women who now are queens in exile, men who, lifted onwaves of absinthe, still, across a _cafe_ table, tell how they will winback a crown. 

Once in a written document the general did me the honor to appoint mehis literary executor, but as he is young, and as healthy as myself, itnever may be my lot to perform such an unwelcome duty. And to-day allone can write of him is what the world can read in "Under FourteenFlags, " and some of the "foot-notes to history" which I have copiedfrom his scrap-book. This scrap-book is a wonderful volume, but owingto "political" and other reasons, for the present, of the many clippingsfrom newspapers it contains there are only a few I am at liberty toprint. And from them it is difficult to make a choice. To sketch in afew thousand words a career that had developed under Eighteen Flags isin its very wealth embarrassing. 

Here is one story, as told by the scrap-book, of an expedition thatfailed. That it failed was due to a British Cabinet Minister; for hadLord Derby possessed the imagination of the Soldier of Fortune, hisMajesty's dominions might now be the richer by many thousands of squaremiles 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 alreadychartered, and the first expedition expects to leave before Christmas. ""The prospectus states settlers intending to join the first party mustcontribute one hundred pounds toward the company. This subscription willinclude all expenses for passage money. Six months' provisions will beprovided, together with tents and arms for protection. Each subscriberof one hundred pounds is to obtain a certificate entitling him to onethousand acres. "

The view of the colonization scheme taken by the _Times_ of London, ofthe same date, is less complaisant. "The latest commercial sensation isa proposed company for the seizure of New Guinea. Certain adventurousgentlemen are looking out for one hundred others who have money anda taste for buccaneering. When the company has been completed, itsshare-holders are to place themselves under military regulations, sailin a body for New Guinea, and without asking anybody's leave, seizeupon the island and at once, in some unspecified way, proceed to realizelarge profits. If the idea does not suggest comparisons with the largedesigns of Sir Francis Drake, it is at least not unworthy of CaptainKidd. "

When we remember the manner in which some of the colonies of GreatBritain 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 theflag of Great Britain on the shores of New Guinea. When the news reachedEngland it created a sensation. The Earl of Derby, Secretary for theColonies, refused, however, to sanction the annexation of NewGuinea, and in so doing acted contrary to the sincere wish of everyright-thinking Anglo-Saxon under the Southern Cross. 

"While the subsequent correspondence between the Home and Queenslandgovernments was going on, Brigadier-General H. R. MacIver originated andorganized 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 havingan eminently representative and influential board of directors, had acapital of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and placed thesupreme command of the expedition in the hands of General MacIver. Notwithstanding the character of the gentlemen composing the board ofdirectors, and the truly peaceful nature of the expedition, his Lordshipinformed General MacIver that in the event of the latter's attempting toland on New Guinea, instructions would be sent to the officer in commandof her Majesty's fleet in the Western Pacific to fire upon the company'svessel. This meant that the expedition would be dealt with as afilibustering one. "

In _Judy_, September 21, 1887, appears:

"We all recollect the treatment received by Brigadier-General MacI. Inthe action he took with respect to the annexation of New Guinea. TheGeneral, who is a sort of Pizarro, with a dash of D'Artagnan, wastreated in a most scurvy manner by Lord Derby. Had MacIver not beenthwarted in his enterprise, the whole of New Guinea would now have beenunder the British flag, and we should not be cheek-by-jowl with theGermans, as we are in too many places. "

_Society_, September 3, 1887, says:

"The New Guinea expedition proved abortive, owing to the blunderingshortsightedness of the then Government, for which Lord Derby waschiefly 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 ofthe _Englishman_ in Calcutta, I was told by Captain de Deaux, assistantsecretary in the Foreign Office of the Indian Government, that hehad received a telegram from Lord Derby to the effect that if GeneralMacIver ventured to land upon the coast of New Guinea it would becomethe duty of Lord Ripon, Viceroy, to use the naval forces at his commandfor the purpose of deporting General MacI. Sir Aucland Calvin cancertify to this, as it was discussed in the Viceregal Council. "

Just after our Civil War MacIver was interested in another expeditionwhich also failed. Its members called themselves the Knights of Arabia, and their object was to colonize an island much nearer to our shoresthan New Guinea. MacIver, saying that his oath prevented, would nevertell me which island this was, but the reader can choose fromamong Cuba, Haiti, and the Hawaiian group. To have taken Cuba, the"colonizers" would have had to fight not only Spain, but the Cubansthemselves, 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 theAtlantic side, and not from San Francisco, the island would appear to bethe Black Republic. From the records of the times it would seem that thegreater number of the Knights of Arabia were veterans of the Confederatearmy, and there is no question but that they intended to subjugate theblacks of Haiti and form a republic for white men in which slavery wouldbe recognized. As one of the leaders of this filibustering expedition, MacIver was arrested by General Phil Sheridan and for a short time castinto jail. 

This chafed the general's spirit, but he argued philosophically thatimprisonment for filibustering, while irksome, brought with itno reproach. And, indeed, sometimes the only difference between afilibuster and a government lies in the fact that the government fightsthe gun-boats of only the enemy while a filibuster must dodge the boatsof the enemy and those of his own countrymen. When the United Stateswent to war with Spain there were many men in jail as filibusters, fordoing that which at the time the country secretly approved, and laterimitated. And because they attempted exactly the same thing for whichDr. Jameson was imprisoned in Holloway Jail, two hundred thousand of hiscountrymen are now wearing medals. 

The by-laws of the Knights of Arabia leave but little doubt as to itsobject. 

By-law No. II reads:

"We, as Knights of Arabia, pledge ourselves to aid, comfort, and protectall Knights of Arabia, especially those who are wounded in obtaining ourgrand object. 

"III--Great care must be taken that no unbeliever or outsider shall gainany insight into the mysteries or secrets of the Order. 

"IV--The candidate will have to pay one hundred dollars cash tothe Captain of the Company, and the candidate will receive from theSecretary a Knight of Arabia bond for one hundred dollars in gold, withten per cent interest, payable ninety days after the recognition of (TheRepublic of----) by the United States, or any government. 

"V--All Knights of Arabia will be entitled to one hundred acres ofland, location of said land to be drawn for by lottery. The products arecoffee, sugar, tobacco, and cotton. "

A local correspondent of the New York _Herald_ writes of the arrest ofMacIver as follows:

"When MacIver will be tried is at present unknown, as his case hasassumed a complicated aspect. He claims British protection as a subjectof her British Majesty, and the English Consul has forwarded a statementof his case to Sir Frederick Bruce at Washington, accompanied by a copyof the by-laws. General Sheridan also has forwarded a statement tothe Secretary of War, accompanied not only by the by-laws, but veryimportant documents, including letters from Jefferson Davis, Benjamin, the Secretary of State of the Confederate States, and other personagesprominent in the Rebellion, showing that MacIver enjoyed the highestconfidence of the Confederacy. "

As to the last statement, an open letter I found in his scrap-book is anexcellent proof. It is as follows: "To officers and members of all campsof United Confederate Veterans: It affords me the greatest pleasure tosay that the bearer of this letter, General Henry Ronald MacIver, was anofficer of great gallantry in the Confederate Army, serving on the staffat 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 beproud. 

"Respectfully, MARCUS J. WRIGHT, "_Agent for the Collection ofConfederate Records_. 

"War Records office, War Department, Washington, July 8, 1895. "

At the close of the war duels between officers of the two armies werenot infrequent. In the scrap-book there is the account of one of theseaffairs sent from Vicksburg to a Northern paper by a correspondent whowas an eye-witness of the event. It tells how Major MacIver, accompaniedby Major Gillespie, met, just outside of Vicksburg, Captain Tomlin ofVermont, of the United States Artillery Volunteers. The duel was withswords. MacIver ran Tomlin through the body. The correspondent writes:

"The Confederate officer wiped his sword on his handkerchief. In a fewseconds Captain Tomlin expired. One of Major MacIver's seconds called tohim: 'He is dead; you must go. These gentlemen will look after the bodyof their friend. ' A negro boy brought up the horses, but before mountingMacIver said to Captain Tomlin's seconds: 'My friends are in haste forme to go. Is there anything I can do? I hope you consider that thismatter 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 sotragic would make strange reading. 

From the South MacIver crossed through Texas to join the Royalist armyunder the Emperor Maximilian. It was while making his way, with otherConfederate officers, from Galveston to El Paso, that MacIver wascaptured by the Indians. He was not ill-treated by them, but for threemonths was a prisoner, until one night, the Indians having camped nearthe Rio Grande, he escaped into Mexico. There he offered his sword tothe Royalist commander, General Mejia, who placed him on his staff, andshowed him some few skirmishes. At Monterey MacIver saw big fighting, and for his share in it received the title of Count, and the order ofGuadaloupe. In June, contrary to all rules of civilized war, Maximilianwas 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 monthslater he was wearing the uniform of another emperor, Dom Pedro, and, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was in command of the ForeignLegion of the armies of Brazil and Argentina, which at that time asallies were fighting against Paraguay. 

MacIver soon recruited seven hundred men, but only half of these everreached the front. In Buenos Ayres cholera broke out and thirty thousandpeople died, among the number about half the Legion. MacIver was amongthose who suffered, and before he recovered was six weeks in hospital. During that period, under a junior officer, the Foreign Legion was sentto 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 lieutenantin the navy of the Confederate States. Although today known as adistinguished war correspondent, in those days Burleigh was something ofa soldier of fortune himself, and was organizing an expedition to assistthe Cretan insurgents against the Turks. Between the two men it wasarranged that MacIver should precede the expedition to Crete andprepare for its arrival. The Cretans received him gladly, and from theprovisional 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 oneas more than generous, for the Cretans had no navy, and before one couldbegin the destruction of a Turkish gun-boat it was first necessary tocatch it and tie it to a wharf. 

At the close of the Cretan insurrection MacIver crossed to Athens andserved against the brigands in Kisissia on the borders of Albaniaand Thessaly as volunteer aide to Colonel Corroneus, who had beencommander-in-chief of the Cretans against the Turks. MacIver spent threemonths potting at brigands, and for his services in the mountains wasrecommended for the highest Greek decoration. 

From Greece it was only a step to New York, and almost immediatelyMacIver appears as one of the Goicouria-Christo expedition to Cuba, of which Goicouria was commander-in-chief, and two famous Americanofficers, Brigadier-General Samuel C. Williams was a general and ColonelWright Schumburg was chief of staff. 

In the scrap-book I find "General Order No. 11 of the Liberal Army ofthe Republic of Cuba, issued at Cedar Keys, October 3, 1869. " In itColonel MacIver is spoken of as in charge of officers not attached toany 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 hasbeen changed, and that General Wright Schumburg, who now is in command, orders "all officers not otherwise commissioned to join ColonelMacIver's 'Corps of Officers. '"

The _Lilian_ ran out of coal, and to obtain firewood put in at CedarKeys. 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 wereconfiscated. 

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 theSpanish soldiery only by putting to sea in an open boat, in which heendeavored to make Jamaica. 

On the third day out he was picked up by a steamer and again landed atNassau, from which place he returned to New York. 

At that time in this city there was a very interesting man namedThaddeus P. Mott, who had been an officer in our army and laterhad entered the service of Ismail Pasha. By the Khedive he hadbeen appointed a general of division and had received permission toreorganize the Egyptian army. 

His object in coming to New York was to engage officers for thatservice. He came at an opportune moment. At that time the city wasfilled with men who, in the Rebellion, on one side or the other, hadheld command, and many of these, unfitted by four years of soldieringfor any other calling, readily accepted the commissions which Mott hadauthority to offer. New York was not large enough to keep MacIver andMott long apart, and they soon came to an understanding. The agreementdrawn up between them is a curious document. It is written in a neathand on sheets of foolscap tied together like a Commencement-dayaddress, with blue ribbon. In it MacIver agrees to serve as colonel ofcavalry 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 theGovernment of his Royal Highness and the Khedive of Egypt, representedby General Thaddeus P. Mott of the first part, and H. R. H. MacIver ofNew York City. 

"The party of the second part, being desirous of entering into theservice of party of the first part, in the military capacity of acolonel of cavalry, promises to serve and obey party of the first partfaithfully and truly in his military capacity during the space of fiveyears from this date; that the party of the second part waives allclaims of protection usually afforded to Americans by consular anddiplomatic agents of the United States, and expressly obligates himselfto 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 ofparty of the first part; that the party of the second part will notunder any event be governed, controlled by, or submit to, any order, law, mandate, or proclamation issued by the Government of the UnitedStates of America, forbidding party of the second part to serve partyof the first part to make war according to any of the provisions hereincontained, _it being, however, distinctly understood_ that nothingherein contained shall be construed as obligating party of the secondpart to bear arms or wage war against the United States of America. 

"Party of the first part promises to furnish party of the second partwith horses, rations, and pay him for his services the same salary nowpaid to colonels of cavalry in United States army, and will furnish himquarters suitable to his rank in army. Also promises, in the case ofillness caused by climate, that said party may resign his office andshall receive his expenses to America and two months' pay; that hereceives 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 childrenin case of his death. 

To this MacIver signs this oath:

"In the presence of the ever-living God, I swear that I will in allthings honestly, faithfully, and truly keep, observe, and perform theobligations and promises above enumerated, and endeavor to conform tothe wishes and desires of the Government of his Royal Highness, theKhedive of Egypt, in all things connected with the furtherance of hisprosperity, and the maintenance of his throne. "

On arriving at Cairo, MacIver was appointed inspector-general ofcavalry, and furnished with a uniform, of which this is a description:"It consisted of a blue tunic with gold spangles, embroidered in goldup the sleeves and front, neat-fitting red trousers, and highpatent-leather boots, while the inevitable fez completed the gaycostume. "

The climate of Cairo did not agree with MacIver, and, in spite ofhis "gay costume, " after six months he left the Egyptian service. Hishonorable discharge was signed by Stone Bey, who, in the favor of theKhedive, had supplanted General Mott. 

It is a curious fact that, in spite of his ill health, immediately afterleaving Cairo, MacIver was sufficiently recovered to at once plunge intothe Franco-Prussian War. At the battle of Orleans, while on the staffof General Chanzy, he was wounded. In this war his rank was that of acolonel of cavalry of the auxiliary army. 

His next venture was in the Carlist uprising of 1873, when he formed aCarlist League, and on several occasions acted as bearer of importantmessages from the "King, " as Don Carlos was called, to the sympathizerswith his cause in France and England. 

MacIver was promised, if he carried out successfully a certain missionupon which he was sent, and if Don Carlos became king, that he would bemade a marquis. As Don Carlos is still a pretender, MacIver is still ageneral. Although in disposing of his sword MacIver never allowed hispersonal predilections to weigh with him, he always treated himself to ahearty dislike of the Turks, and we next find him fighting against themin Herzegovina with the Montenegrins. And when the Servians declaredwar against the same people, MacIver returned to London to organize acavalry brigade to fight with the Servian army. 

Of this brigade and of the rapid rise of MacIver to highest rank andhonors in Servia, the scrap-book is most eloquent. The cavalry brigadewas to be called the Knights of the Red Cross. 

In a letter to the editor of the _Hour_, the general himself speaks ofit in the following terms:

"It may be interesting to many of your readers to learn that a selectcorps of gentlemen is at present in course of organization underthe above title with the mission of proceeding to the Levant totake measures in case of emergency for the defense of the Christianpopulation, and more especially of British subjects who are to a greatextent unprovided with adequate means of protection from the religiousfuries of the Mussulmans. The lives of Christian women and children arein hourly peril from fanatical hordes. The Knights will be carefullychosen and kept within strict military control, and will be undercommand of a practical soldier with large experience of the Easterncountries. Templars and all other crusaders are invited to give aid andsympathy. "

Apparently MacIver was not successful in enlisting many Knights, fora war correspondent at the capital of Servia, waiting for the war tobegin, writes as follows:

"A Scotch soldier of fortune, Henry MacIver, a colonel by rank, hasarrived at Belgrade with a small contingent of military adventurers. Five weeks ago I met him in Fleet Street, London, and had some talkabout his 'expedition. ' He had received a commission from the Prince ofServia to organize and command an independent cavalry brigade, and hethen was busily enrolling his volunteers into a body styled 'The Knightsof the Red Cross. ' I am afraid some of his bold crusaders have earnedmore distinction for their attacks on Fleet Street bars than they arelikely to earn on Servian battle-fields, but then I must not anticipatehistory. "

Another paper tells that at the end of the first week of his service asa Servian officer, MacIver had enlisted ninety men, but that they werescattered about the town, many without shelter and rations:

"He assembled his men on the Rialto, and in spite of officialexpostulation, the men were marched up to the Minister's fourabreast--and they marched fairly well, making a good show. The WarMinister was taken by storm, and at once granted everything. It hasraised 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 fromEngland to offer himself and his sword to the Servians. The ServianMinister of War gave him a colonel's commission. This morning I saw himdrilling 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 overtwo hundred men. "

And again:

"Prince Nica, a Roumanian cousin of the Princess Natalie of Servia, hasjoined 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 militarycircles in Dublin, now is making his mark with the Servian army. Inthe war against the Turks, he commands about one thousand Russo-Serviancavalry. "

He was next to receive the following honors:

"Colonel MacIver has been appointed commander of the cavalry of theServian armies on the Morava and Timok, and has received the Cross ofthe Takovo Order from General Tchemaieff for gallant conduct in thefield, and the gold medal for valor. "

Later we learn from the _Daily News_:

"Mr. Lewis Farley, Secretary of the 'League in Aid of Christians ofTurkey, ' has received the following letter, dated Belgrade, October 10, 1876:

"'DEAR SIR: In reference to the embroidered banner so kindly worked byan English lady and forwarded by the League to Colonel MacIver, I havegreat pleasure in conveying to you the following particulars. On Sundaymorning, 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 andon behalf of yourself and the fair donor, delivered it into the handsof the Princess Natalie. The gallant Colonel wore upon this occasion hisfull uniform as brigade commander and chief of cavalry of the Servianarmy, and bore upon his breast the 'Gold Cross of Takovo' which hereceived after the battles of the 28th and 30th of September, inrecognition of the heroism and bravery he displayed upon these eventfuldays. The beauty of the decoration was enhanced by the circumstancesof its bestowal, for on the evening of the battle of the 30th, GeneralTchernaieff approached Colonel MacIver, and, unclasping the cross fromhis 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 thehighest point of his career, and of his life the happiest period. 

He was _general de brigade_, which is not what we know as a brigadegeneral, but is one who commands a division, a major-general. He was agreat favorite both at the palace and with the people, the pay was good, fighting plentiful, and Belgrade gay and amusing. Of all the placeshe has visited and the countries he has served, it is of this Balkankingdom that the general seems to speak most fondly and with thegreatest feeling. Of Queen Natalie he was and is a most loyal andchivalric admirer, and was ever ready, when he found any one who didnot as greatly respect the lady, to offer him the choice of swords orpistols. Even for Milan he finds an extenuating word. 

After Servia the general raised more foreign legions, planned furtherexpeditions; in Central America reorganized the small armies of thesmall republics, served as United States Consul, and offered his swordto President McKinley for use against Spain. But with Servia the mostactive portion of the life of the general ceased, and the rest has beena repetition of what went before. At present his time is divided betweenNew York and Virginia, where he has been offered an executive positionin the approaching Jamestown Exposition. Both North and South he hasmany friends, many admirers. But his life is, and, from the nature ofhis 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 himfondly, "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 longerliving. 

With the exception of the United States, of which he now is anaturalized citizen, the general has fought for nearly every country inthe 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. Andthe general is too proud to ask to be remembered. To-day there is nomore interesting figure than this man who in years is still young enoughto lead an army corps, and who, for forty years, has been selling hissword and risking his life for presidents, pretenders, charlatans, andemperors. 

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 toshoulder, are now wearing the blue; the empire of Mexico, for which hefought, is a republic; the empire of France, for which he fought, is arepublic; the empire of Brazil, for which he fought is a republic; thedynasty in Servia, to which he owes his greatest honors, has been wipedout by murder. From none of the eighteen countries he has served has hea pension, berth, or billet, and at sixty he finds himself at home inevery land, but with a home in none. 

Still he has his sword, his blanket, and in the event of war, to obtaina commission he has only to open his tin boxes and show the commissionsalready won. Indeed, any day, in a new uniform, and under the NineteenthFlag, the general may again be winning fresh victories and honors. 

And so, this brief sketch of him is left unfinished. We will markit--_To be continued_. 

BARON JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY

THIS is an attempt to tell the story of Baron Harden-Hickey, the Man WhoMade 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 theAmerican at the Court of King Arthur; he was as unhappily out of thepicture as would be Cyrano de Bergerac on the floor of the Boardof Trade. Judged, as at the time he was judged, by writers of comicparagraphs, by presidents of railroads, by amateur "statesmen" atWashington, Harden-Hickey was a joke. To the vacant mind of the villageidiot, Rip Van Winkle returning to Falling Water also was a joke. Thepeople of our day had not the time to understand Harden-Hickey; theythought 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 agentleman than live a blackguard like your father. "

As a matter of fact, his father-in-law, although living under thedisadvantage of being a Standard Oil magnate, neither was, nor is, ablackguard, and his son-in-law had been treated by him generouslyand with patience. But for the duellist and soldier of fortune it wasimpossible to sympathize with a man who took no greater risk in lifethan to ride on one of his own railroads, and of the views the two menheld of each other, that of John H. Flagler was probably the fairer andthe more kindly. 

Harden-Hickey was one of the most picturesque, gallant, and patheticadventurers of our day; but Flagler also deserves our sympathy. 

For an unimaginative and hard-working Standard Oil king to have aD'Artagnan thrust upon him as a son-in-law must be trying. 

James A. Harden-Hickey, James the First of Trinidad, Baron of theHoly Roman Empire, was born on December 8, 1854. As to the date allhistorians agree; as to where the important event took place theydiffer. That he was born in France his friends are positive, but at thetime of his death in El Paso the San Francisco papers claimed him as anative of California. All agree that his ancestors were Catholics andRoyalists who left Ireland with the Stuarts when they sought refuge inFrance. The version which seems to be the most probable is that he wasborn 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 toeducate 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 togrow up. To the moment of his death, in all he planned you can trace theeffects of his early teachings and environment; the influences of thegreat Church that nursed him, and of the city of Paris, in which helived. Under the Second Empire, Paris was at her maddest, baddest, andbest. To-day under the republic, without a court, with a society kept infunds by the self-expatriated wives and daughters of our business men, she lacks the reasons for which Baron Haussmann bedecked her and madeher beautiful. The good Loubet, the worthy Fallieres, except that theyfurnish the cartoonist with subjects for ridicule, do not add to thegayety of Paris. But when Harden-Hickey was a boy, Paris was never socarelessly gay, so brilliant, never so overcharged with life, color, andadventure. 

In those days "the Emperor sat in his box that night, " and in the boxopposite sat Cora Pearl; veterans of the campaign of Italy, of Mexico, from the desert fights of Algiers, sipped sugar and water in front ofTortoni's, the Cafe Durand, the Cafe Riche; the sidewalks rang withtheir sabres, the boulevards were filled with the colors of the gorgeousuniforms; all night of each night the Place Vendome shone with thecarriage lamps of the visiting pashas from Egypt, of nabobs fromIndia, of _rastaquoueres_ from the sister empire of Brazil; the statecarriages, with the outriders and postilions in the green and gold ofthe Empress, swept through the Champs Elysees, and at the Bal Bulier, and at Mabile the students and "grisettes" introduced the cancan. Themen of those days were Hugo, Thiers, Dumas, Daudet, Alfred de Musset;the magnificent blackguard, the Duc de Morny, and the great, simpleCanrobert, the captain of barricades, who became a marshal of France. 

Over all was the mushroom Emperor, his anterooms crowded with thetitled charlatans of Europe, his court radiant with countesses createdovernight. 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 hismodel. 

Royalist as was Harden-Hickey by birth and tradition, and Royalist ashe always remained, it was the court at the Tuileries that filled hisimagination. 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 supportedhim, and for whom always he was equally willing to fight, either withhis sword or his pen. But to the last, in his mind, he carried picturesof the Second Empire as he, as a boy, had known it. 

Can you not imagine the future James the First, barelegged, in ablack-belted smock, halting with his nurse, or his priest, to gaze up inawestruck delight at the great, red-breeched Zouaves lounging on guardat the Tuileries?

"When I grow up, " said little James to himself, not knowing that henever would grow up, "I shall have Zouaves for _my_ palace guard. "

And twenty years later, when he laid down the laws for his littlekingdom, 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 thePalace Guards. 

In 1883, while he still was at the War College, his father died, andwhen he graduated, which he did with honors, he found himself his ownmaster. His assets were a small income, a perfect knowledge of theFrench language, and the reputation of being one of the most expertswordsman in Paris. He chose not to enter the army, and instead becamea journalist, novelist, duellist, an _habitue_ of the Latin Quarter andthe boulevards. 

As a novelist the titles of his books suggest their quality. Amongthem are: "Un Amour Vendeen, " "Lettres d'un Yankee, " "Un Amour dansle Monde, " "Memoires d'un Gommeux, " "Merveilleuses Aventures deNabuchodonosor, Nosebreaker. "

Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, apparently with deepconviction, with high enthusiasm. In her service as a defender of thefaith he issued essays, pamphlets, "broadsides. " The opponents of theChurch 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 laterhe started _Triboulet_. It was this paper that made him famous to "allParis. "

It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the Count de Chambord andpublished in the interest of the Bourbons. Until 1888 Harden-Hickey wasits editor, and even by his enemies it must be said that he served hisemployers with zeal. During the seven years in which the paper amusedParis and annoyed the republican government, as its editor Harden-Hickeywas involved in forty-two lawsuits, for different editorialindiscretions, fined three hundred thousand francs, and was a principalin countless duels. 

To his brother editors his standing interrogation was: "Would you preferto meet me upon the editorial page, or in the Bois de Boulogne?" Amongthose 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 ofthe government was exhausted, _Triboulet_ ceased to exist, andHarden-Hickey, claiming the paper had been suppressed and he himselfexiled, crossed to London. 

From there he embarked upon a voyage around the world, which lasted twoyears, and in the course of which he discovered the island kingdom ofwhich 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 boyand girl in the care of a fellow-journalist and very dear friend, theCount de la Boissiere, of whom later we shall hear more. 

Harden-Hickey started around the world on the _Astoria_, a Britishmerchant vessel bound for India by way of Cape Horn, Captain Jacksoncommanding. 

When off the coast of Brazil the ship touched at the uninhabited islandof Trinidad. Historians of James the First say that it was throughstress 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 isalmost impossible, and as at any time, under stress of weather, Trinidadwould be a place to avoid, it is more likely Jackson put in to replenishhis water-casks, or to obtain a supply of turtle meat. 

Or it may have been that, having told Harden-Hickey of the derelictisland, the latter persuaded the captain to allow him to land andexplore 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 apiece of no man's land, belonging to no country, he claimed it in hisown name, and upon the beach raised a flag of his own design. 

The island of Trinidad claimed by Harden-Hickey must not be confusedwith the larger Trinidad belonging to Great Britain and lying offVenezuela. 

The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful spot of great tropicalbeauty; it is one of the fairest places in the West Indies. At everyhour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open its arms tovessels of every draught. A governor in a pith helmet, a cricket club, abishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden go to make it a prosperousand contented colony. But the little derelict Trinidad, in latitude20 degrees 30 minutes south, and longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes west, seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, is but a spot upon theocean. On most maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, andhideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and against the advances of manits shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestonerocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beatsmany feet high against the coast. 

In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says he found nothing livingbut doves and land-crabs. "Saw many green turtles in sea, but by reasonof the great surf, could catch none. "

After Halley's visit, in 1700 the island was settled by a few Portuguesefrom Brazil. The ruins of their stone huts are still in evidence. ButAmaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no mention of the Portuguese;and when, in 1822, Commodore Owen visited Trinidad, he found nothingliving 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 theLondon _Morning Post_, visited Trinidad in his yacht in search of buriedtreasure. 

Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled "Collection of Voages, chieflyin the Southern Atlantick Ocean, 1775, " tells how, in 1700, he "tookpossession of the island in his Majesty's name as knowing it to begranted by the King's letter patent, leaving a Union Jack flying. "

So it appears that before Harden-Hickey seized the island it already hadbeen claimed by Great Britain, and later, on account of the Portuguesesettlement, by Brazil. The answer Harden-Hickey made to these claimswas that the English never settled in Trinidad, and that the Portugueseabandoned 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 ofits rugged and uninviting appearance, the inland plateaus are rich withluxuriant vegetation. 

"Prominent among this is a peculiar species of bean, which is not onlyedible, 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 hauledout. I look to the sea birds and the turtles to afford our principalsource of revenue. Trinidad is the breeding-place of almost the entirefeathery population of the South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation ofguano alone should make my little country prosperous. Turtles visit theisland to deposit eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is literallyalive with them. The only drawback to my projected kingdom is the factthat it has no good harbor and can be approached only when the sea iscalm. "

As a matter of fact sometimes months pass before it is possible toeffect a landing. 

Another asset of the island held out by the prospectus was its greatstore of buried treasure. Before Harden-Hickey seized the island, thistreasure had made it known. This is the legend. In 1821 a great storeof gold and silver plate plundered from Peruvian churches had beenconcealed on the islands by pirates near Sugar Loaf Hill, on the shoreof what is known as the Southwest Bay. Much of this plate came fromthe cathedral at Lima, having been carried from there during the warof independence when the Spanish residents fled the country. In theireagerness to escape they put to sea in any ship that offered, and theseunarmed and unseaworthy vessels fell an easy prey to pirates. One ofthese pirates on his death-bed, in gratitude to his former captain, toldhim the secret of the treasure. In 1892 this captain was still living, in Newcastle, England, and although his story bears a family resemblanceto every other story of buried treasure, there were added to the tale ofthe pirate some corroborative details. These, in twelve years, inducedfive different expeditions to visit the island. The two most importantwere 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 theisland, and of his attempt to find the treasure. In this, a landslidehaving covered the place where it was buried, he was unsuccessful. 

But Knight's book is the only source of accurate information concerningTrinidad, and in writing his prospectus it is evident that Harden-Hickeywas forced to borrow from it freely. Knight himself says that the mostminute and accurate description of Trinidad is to be found in the "FrankMildmay" of Captain Marryat. He found it so easy to identify each spotmentioned 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 toJapan, China, and India. In India he became interested in Buddhism, andremained for over a year questioning the priests of that religion andstudying 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 theBaroness Harden-Hickey. The Rev. John Hall married them. 

For the next two years Harden-Hickey lived in New York, but so quietlythat, except that he lived quietly, it is difficult to find out anythingconcerning him. The man who, a few years before, had delighted Pariswith his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his forty-two lawsuits, who had been the master of revels in the Latin Quarter, in New Yorklived almost as a recluse, writing a book on Buddhism. While he was inNew York I was a reporter on the _Evening Sun_, but I cannot recall everhaving read his name in the newspapers of that day, and I heard of himonly twice; once as giving an exhibition of his water-colors at theAmerican Art Galleries, and again as the author of a book I found in astore in Twenty-second Street, just east of Broadway, then the home ofthe Truth Seeker Publishing Company. 

It was a grewsome compilation and had just appeared in print. It wascalled "Euthanasia, or the Ethics of Suicide. " This book was an apologyor plea for self-destruction. In it the baron laid down those occasionswhen he considered suicide pardonable, and when obligatory. To supporthis arguments and to show that suicide was a noble act, he quoted Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, and even misquoted the Bible. He gave a list ofpoisons, and the amount of each necessary to kill a human being. To showhow one can depart from life with the least pain, he illustrated thetext with most unpleasant pictures, drawn by himself. 

The book showed how far Harden-Hickey had strayed from the teachingsof 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 moneyto pay for these investments came from his father-in-law. But notdirectly. Whenever he wanted money he asked his wife, or De laBoissiere, 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 notapparent 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. ButHarden-Hickey chose to regard Flagler as his enemy, as a sordid manof business who could not understand the feelings and aspirations of agenius and a gentleman. 

Before Harden-Hickey married, the misunderstanding between his wife'sfather and himself began. Because he thought Harden-Hickey was marryinghis daughter for her money, Flagler opposed the union. Consequently, Harden-Hickey married Miss Flagler without "settlements, " and for thefirst few years supported her without aid from her father. But hiswife had been accustomed to a manner of living beyond the means of thesoldier of fortune, and soon his income, and then even his capital, wasexhausted. From her mother the baroness inherited a fortune. This wasin the hands of her father as executor. When his own money was gone, Harden-Hickey endeavored to have the money belonging to his wife placedto her credit, or to his. To this, it is said, Flagler, on the groundthat 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 moneywould be better invested and better expended. It was the refusal ofFlagler to intrust Harden-Hickey with the care of his wife's money thatcaused the breach between them. 

As I have said, you cannot judge Harden-Hickey as you would acontemporary. With the people among whom he was thrown, his ideas wereentirely out of joint. He should have lived in the days of "The ThreeMusketeers. " People who looked upon him as working for his own handentirely misunderstood him. He was absolutely honest, and as absolutelywithout a sense of humor. To him, to pay taxes, to pay grocers' bills, to depend for protection upon a policeman, was intolerable. He livedin a world of his own imagining. And one day, in order to make hisimaginings real, and to escape from his father-in-law's unromantic worldof Standard Oil and Florida hotels, in a proclamation to the powershe announced himself as King James the First of the Principality ofTrinidad. 

The proclamation failed to create a world crisis. Several of the powersrecognized his principality and his title; but, as a rule, peoplelaughed, wondered, and forgot. That the daughter of John Flagler wasto rule the new principality gave it a "news interest, " and for a fewSundays in the supplements she was hailed as the "American Queen. "

When upon the subject of the new kingdom Flagler himself wasinterviewed, he showed an open mind. 

"My son-in-law is a very determined man, " he said; "he will carry outany 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. Myson-in-law is an extremely well-read, refined, well-bred man. He doesnot court publicity. While he was staying in my house he spent nearlyall the time in the library translating an Indian book on Buddhism. Mydaughter has no ambition to be a queen or anything else than what sheis--an American girl. But my son-in-law means to carry on this Trinidadscheme, and--he will. "

From his father-in-law, at least, Harden-Hickey could not complain thathe 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 lessearnestly continued to play the part of king. His friend De la Boissierehe appointed his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and established in aChancellery at 217 West Thirty-sixth Street, New York, and from therewas issued a sort of circular, or prospectus, written by the king, andsigned by "Le Grand Chancelier, Secretaire d'Etat pour les AffairesEtrangeres, M. Le Comte de la Boissiere. "

The document, written in French, announced that the new state wouldbe governed by a military dictatorship, that the royal standard was ayellow triangle on a red ground, and that the arms of the principalitywere "d'Or chape de Gueules. " It pointed out naively that those whofirst settled on the island would be naturally the oldest inhabitants, and hence would form the aristocracy. But only those who at home enjoyedsocial position and some private fortune would be admitted into thisselect 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 toencourage settlers to dig and so cultivate the soil, a percentage of thetreasure was promised to the one who found it. 

Any one purchasing ten $200 bonds was entitled to a free passage to theisland, and after a year, should he so desire it, a return trip. Thehard work was to be performed by Chinese coolies, the aristocracyexisting beautifully, and, according to the prospectus, to enjoy _"vied'un genre tout nouveau, et la recherche de sensations nouvelles. "_

To reward his subjects for prominence in literature, the arts, and thesciences, his Majesty established an order of chivalry. The officialdocument creating this order reads:

"We, James, Prince of Trinidad, have resolved to commemorate ouraccession to the throne of Trinidad by the institution of an Order ofChivalry, destined to reward literature, industry, science, and thehuman virtues, and by these presents have established and do institute, with cross and crown, the Order of the Insignia of the Cross ofTrinidad, of which we and our heirs and successors shall be thesovereigns. 

"Given in our Chancellery the Eighth of the month of December, onethousand eight hundred and ninety-three, and of our reign, the FirstYear. 

"JAMES. "

There were four grades: Chevalier, Commander, Grand Officer, and GrandCross; 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 aChevalier, of two thousand francs to a Commander, and of three thousandfrancs to a Grand Officer. Those of the grade of Grand Cross werecontent with a plaque of eight diamond-studded rays, with, in thecentre, set in red enamel, the arms of Trinidad. The ribbon was red andyellow. 

A rule of the order read: "The costume shall be identical with that ofthe Chamberlains of the Court of Trinidad, save the buttons, which shallbear the impress of the Crown of the Order. "

For himself, King James commissioned a firm of jewelers to construct aroyal crown. In design it was similar to the one which surmounted thecross 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 ofthe island. They were of various colors and denominations, and amongstamp-collectors enjoyed a certain sale. 

To-day, as I found when I tried to procure one to use in this book, theyare worth many times their face value. 

For some time the affairs of the new kingdom progressed favorably. InSan Francisco, King James, in person, engaged four hundred coolies andfitted out a schooner which he sent to Trinidad, where it made regulartrips between his principality and Brazil; an agent was establishedon the island, and the construction of docks, wharves, and houseswas begun, while at the chancellery in West Thirty-sixth Street, theMinister of Foreign Affairs was ready to furnish would-be settlers withinformation. 

And then, out of a smiling sky, a sudden and unexpected blow was struckat the independence of the little kingdom. It was a blow from which itnever recovered. 

In July of 1895, while constructing a cable to Brazil, Great Britainfound the Island of Trinidad lying in the direct line she wished tofollow, and, as a cable station, seized it. Objection to this was madeby Brazil, and at Bahia a mob with stones pelted the sign of the EnglishConsul-General. 

By right of Halley's discovery, England claimed the island; as aderelict from the main land, Brazil also claimed it. Between the rivals, the world saw a chance for war, and the fact that the island reallybelonged to our King James for a moment was forgotten. 

But the Minister of Foreign Affairs was at his post. With promptitudeand vigor he acted. He addressed a circular note to all the powers ofEurope, 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 theUnited 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, BaronHarden-Hickey officially notified all the Powers of his takingpossession of the uninhabited island of Trinidad; and

"2. That in course of January, 1894, he renewed to all these Powers theofficial notification of the said taking of possession, and informedthem at the same time that from that date the land would be knownas 'Principality of Trinidad'; that he took the title of 'Prince ofTrinidad, ' and would reign under the name of James I. 

"In consequence of these official notifications several Powers haverecognized the new Principality and its Prince, and at all events nonethought it necessary at that epoch to raise objections or formulateopposition. 

"The press of the entire world has, on the other hand, often acquaintedreaders with these facts, thus giving to them all possible publicity. Inconsequence of the accomplishment of these various formalities, andas the law of nations prescribes that 'derelict' territories belong towhoever will take possession of them, and as the island of Trinidad, which has been abandoned for years, certainly belongs to the aforesaidcategory, his Serene Highness Prince James I was authorized to regardhis rights on the said island as perfectly valid and indisputable. 

"Nevertheless, your Excellency knows that recently, in spite of allthe legitimate rights of my august sovereign, an English war-shiphas disembarked at Trinidad a detachment of armed troops and takenpossession 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 UnitedStates of North America to recognize the Principality of Trinidad asan independent State, and to come to an understanding with the otherAmerican Powers in order to guarantee its neutrality. 

"Thus the Government of the United States of North America will oncemore accord its powerful assistance to the cause of right and ofjustice, misunderstood by England and Brazil, put an end to a situationwhich threatens to disturb the peace, re-establish concord between twogreat States ready to appeal to arms, and affirm itself, moreover, asthe faithful interpreter of the Monroe Doctrine. 

"In the expectation of your reply please accept, Excellency, theexpression 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 treatmentof the protest, and of the gentleman who wrote it, he fully upheld thereputation he made while in office of lack of good manners. Saying hewas unable to read the handwriting in which the protest was written, he disposed of it in a way that would suggest itself naturally to astatesman and a gentleman. As a "crank" letter he turned it over to theWashington correspondents. You can imagine what they did with it. 

The day following the reporters in New York swept down upon thechancellery and upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was the "sillyseason" in August, there was no real news in town, and the troubles ofDe la Boissiere were allowed much space. 

They laughed at him and at his king, at his chancellery, at his brokenEnglish, at his "grave and courtly manners, " even at his clothes. But inspite of the ridicule, between the lines you could read that to the manhimself it all was terribly real. 

I had first heard of the island of Trinidad from two men I knewwho spent three months on it searching for the treasure, and whenHarden-Hickey proclaimed himself lord of the island, through the papersI had carefully followed his fortunes. So, partly out of curiosity andpartly out of sympathy, I called at the chancellery. 

I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty neighborhood just west ofSeventh Avenue, and of where now stands the York Hotel. Three weeks agoI 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 whichwas written in the handwriting of De la Boissiere: "Chancellerie de laPrincipaute de Trinidad. "

The chancellery was not exactly in its proper setting. On its door-stepchildren of the tenements were playing dolls with clothes-pins; in thestreet a huckster in raucous tones was offering wilted cabbages to womenin wrappers leaning from the fire escapes; the smells and the heat ofNew York in midsummer rose from the asphalt. It was a far cry to thewave-swept island off the coast of Brazil. 

De la Boissiere received me with distrust. The morning papers had madehim man-shy; but, after a few "Your Excellencies" and a respectfulinquiry regarding "His Royal Highness, " his confidence revived. In thesituation he saw nothing humorous, not even in an announcement on thewall which read: "Sailings to Trinidad. " Of these there were _two_; onMarch 1, and on October 1. On the table were many copies of theroyal proclamation, the postage-stamps of the new government, thethousand-franc bonds, and, in pasteboard boxes, the gold and redenamelled crosses of the Order of Trinidad. 

He talked to me frankly and fondly of Prince James. Indeed, I nevermet any man who knew Harden-Hickey well who did not speak of him withaggressive loyalty. If at his eccentricities they smiled, it was withthe smile of affection. It was easy to see De la Boissiere regarded himnot only with the affection of a friend, but with the devotion of atrue subject. In his manner he himself was courteous, gentle, and sodistinguished 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 haveany 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 aking, whose native subjects were turtles and seagulls, promised to makeinteresting writing. 

The count was greatly pleased. I believe in me he saw his firstbona-fide settler, and when I rose to go he even lifted one ofthe crosses of Trinidad and, before my envious eyes, regarded ituncertainly. 

Perhaps, had he known that of all decorations it was the one Imost desired; had I only then and there booked my passage, or swornallegiance to King James, who knows but that to-day I might be achevalier, with my name in the "Book of Gold"? But instead of bendingthe knee, I reached for my hat; the count replaced the cross in itspasteboard box, and for me the psychological moment had passed. 

Others, more deserving of the honor, were more fortunate. Among myfellow-reporters who, like myself, came to scoff, and remained to pray, was Henri Pene du Bois, for some time, until his recent death, thebrilliant critic of art and music of the _American_. Then he was onthe _Times_, and Henry N. Cary, now of the _Morning Telegraph_, was hismanaging editor. 

When Du Bois reported to Cary on his assignment, he said: "There isnothing funny in that story. It's pathetic. Both those men are inearnest. They are convinced they are being robbed of their rights. Theironly fault is that they have imagination, and that the rest of us lackit. That's the way it struck me, and that's the way the story ought tobe written. "

"Write it that way, " said Cary. 

So, of all the New York papers, the _Times_, for a brief period, becamethe official organ of the Government of James the First, and in timeCary and Du Bois were created Chevaliers of the Order of Trinidad, andentitled to wear uniforms "Similar to those of the Chamberlains of theCourt, save that the buttons bear the impress of the Royal Crown. "

The attack made by Great Britain and Brazil upon the independence of theprincipality, while it left Harden-Hickey in the position of a king inexile, brought him at once another crown, which, by those who offeredit to him, was described as of incomparably greater value than that ofTrinidad. 

In the first instance the man had sought the throne; in this case thethrone sought the man. 

In 1893 in San Francisco, Ralston J. Markowe, a lawyer and a one-timeofficer of artillery in the United States army, gained renown as oneof the Morrow filibustering expedition which attempted to overthrow theDole government in the Hawaiian Isles and restore to the throne QueenLiliuokalani. In San Francisco Markowe was nicknamed the "Prince ofHonolulu, " as it was understood, should Liliuokalani regain hercrown, he would be rewarded with some high office. But in the starof Liliuokalani, Markowe apparently lost faith, and thought he sawin 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 addressedthe 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 asit is possible for any one to occupy that position under existingcircumstances. With the Queen in prison and absolutely cut off fromall communication with her friends, it is out of the question for me tocarry anything like formal credentials. 

"2. Alienating any part of the territory cannot give rise to anyconstitutional questions, for the reason that the constitutions, likethe land tenures, are in a state of such utter confusion that only astrong hand can unravel them, and the restoration will result in theestablishment of a strong military government. If I go down with theexpedition I have organized I shall be in full control of the situationand in a position to carry out all my contracts. 

"3. It is the island of Kauai on which I propose to establish you as anindependent sovereign. 

"4. My plan is to successively occupy all the islands, leaving thecapital to the last. When the others have fallen, the capital, being cutoff from all its resources, will be easily taken, and may very likelyfall without effort. I don't expect in any case to have to fortifymyself or to take the defensive, or to have to issue a call to arms, asI shall have an overwhelming force to join me at once, in addition tothose who go with me, who by themselves will be sufficient to carryeverything before them without active cooperation from the people there. 

"5. The Government forces consist of about 160 men and boys, with veryimperfect military training, and of whom about forty are officers. Theyare organized as infantry. There are also about 600 citizens enrolledas 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 thepolice and from one-quarter to one-half of the other troops. And of theremainder many will under no circumstances engage in a sharp fight indefense of the present government. There are now on the island plentyof men and arms to accomplish our purpose, and if my expedition doesnot get off very soon the people there will be organized to do the workwithout 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 fortwenty men, but bunks can be arranged in the hold for 256 more, withprovision for ample ventilation. She has one complete set of sails andtwo extra spars. The remaining information in regard to her I will haveto obtain and send you to-morrow. I think it must be clear to you thatthe opportunity now offered you will be of incomparably greater valueat once than Trinidad would ever be. Still hoping that I may have aninterview with you at an early date, respectfully yours, "RALSTON J. MARKOWE. "

What Harden-Hickey thought of this is not known, but as two weeks beforehe received it he had written Markowe, asking him by what authority herepresented the Royalists of Honolulu, it seems evident that when thecrown 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 islandin the South Atlantic, which had been taken from him, and king-elect ofan island in the Pacific, which was his if he could take it. 

This was in August of 1895. For the two years following, Harden-Hickeywas a soldier of misfortunes. Having lost his island kingdom, he couldno longer occupy himself with plans for its improvement. It had beenhis toy. They had taken it from him, and the loss and the ridicule whichfollowed 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, hecould find no purchaser; and, moreover, having quarrelled with hisfather-in-law, he had cut off his former supply of money. The need of itpinched him cruelly. 

The advertised cause of this quarrel was sufficiently characteristicto be the real one. Moved by the attack of Great Britain upon hisprincipality, Harden-Hickey decided upon reprisals. It must beremembered that always he was more Irish than French. On paperhe organized an invasion of England from Ireland, the home of hisancestors. It was because Flagler refused to give him money for thisadventure that he broke with him. His friends say this was the realreason of the quarrel, which was a quarrel on the side of Harden-Hickeyalone. 

And there were other, more intimate troubles. While not separated fromhis wife, he now was seldom in her company. When the Baroness was inParis, Harden-Hickey was in San Francisco; when she returned to SanFrancisco, he was in Mexico. The fault seems to have been his. He wasgreatly admired by pretty women. His daughter by his first wife, now avery beautiful girl of sixteen, spent much time with her stepmother;and when not on his father's ranch in Mexico, his son also, for monthstogether, was at her side. The husband approved of this, but he himselfsaw 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 wouldjoin her. At that time in Mexico he was trying to dispose of a largetract of land. Had he been able to sell it, the money for a time wouldhave kept one even of his extravagances contentedly rich. At least, he would have been independent of his wife and of her father. Up toFebruary 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 hisfather-in-law, that gentleman, as he had done before, would have openedan account for him. 

But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no longer beg, even for themoney belonging to his wife, from the man he had insulted. He could nolonger ask his wife to intercede for him. He was without money of hisown, with out the means of obtaining it; from his wife he had ceased toexpect even sympathy, and from the world he knew, the fact that he wasa self-made king caused him always to be pointed out with ridicule as acharlatan, as a jest. 

The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist and dreamer, the devoutCatholic and devout Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of his life onlyas 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 coloniesoversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a waistcoat, forgot thetwenty good years still before him; forgot that men loved him for themistakes he had made; that in parts of the great city of Paris his namewas still spoken fondly, still was famous and familiar. 

In his book on the "Ethics of Suicide, " for certain hard places in lifehe had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct. 

As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he would notask of others what he himself would not perform. 

From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his wife hadprepared for him. 

Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train andregistered at a hotel. 

At 7. 30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the followingmorning, they kicked in the door, they found him stretched rigidly uponthe bed, like one lying in state, with, near his hand, a half-emptiedbottle 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 towrite. Harvey has written me that he has no one in view at present tobuy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup of bitterness to the verydregs, but I do not complain. Good-by. I forgive you your conduct towardme and trust you will be able to forgive yourself. I prefer to be a deadgentleman to a living blackguard like your father. "

And when they searched his open trunk for something that might identifythe body on the bed, they found the crown of Trinidad. 

You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, the military figure withits white face and mustache, "_a la_ Louis Napoleon, " at rest upon thepillow, 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 BouffeMonarchy, " 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 aleader of the French colony in New York, and a prosperous commissionmerchant with a suite of offices on Fifty-fourth Street. By the will ofHarden-Hickey he is executor of his estate, guardian of his children, and what, for the purpose of this article, is of more importance, inhis hands lies the future of the kingdom of Trinidad. When Harden-Hickeykilled himself the title to the island was in dispute. Should youngHarden-Hickey wish to claim it, it still would be in dispute. Meanwhile, by the will of the First James, De la Boissiere is appointed perpetualregent, a sort of "receiver, " and executor of the principality. 

To him has been left a royal decree signed and sealed, but blank. In thewill the power to fill in this blank with a statement showing the finaldisposition of the island has been bestowed upon De la Boissiere. 

So, some day, he may proclaim the accession of a new king, and give anew lease of life to the kingdom of which Harden-Hickey dreamed. 

But unless his son, or wife, or daughter should assert his or herrights, which is not likely to happen, so ends the dynasty of James theFirst of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire. 

To the wise ones in America he was a fool, and they laughed at him; tothe wiser ones, he was a clever rascal who had evolved a new real-estatescheme and was out to rob the people--and they respected him. To mymind, of them all, Harden-Hickey was the wisest. 

Granted one could be serious, what could be more delightful than to beyour own king on your own island?

The comic paragraphers, the business men of "hard, common sense, " thecaptains of industry who laughed at him and his national resourcesof buried treasure, turtles' eggs, and guano, with his body-guard ofZouaves and his Grand Cross of Trinidad, certainly possessed many thingsthat Harden-Hickey lacked. But they in turn lacked the things that madehim happy; the power to "make believe, " the love of romance, the touchof 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 ofPinero's play, when the adventuress, Mrs. Tanqueray, kills herself, andher 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 forpay, 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 makeshis own fortune, who, when he sees it coming, leaps to meet it, andturns it to his advantage. 

Than Winston Spencer Churchill to-day there are few young men--and he isa very young man--who have met more varying fortunes, and none who hasmore frequently bent them to his own advancement. To him it has beenindifferent whether, at the moment, the fortune seemed good or evil, inthe end always it was good. 

As a boy officer, when other subalterns were playing polo, and at theGaiety Theatre attending night school, he ran away to Cuba and foughtwith the Spaniards. For such a breach of military discipline, any otherofficer would have been court-martialled. Even his friends feared thatby his foolishness his career in the army was at an end. Instead, hisescapade was made a question in the House of Commons, and the factbrought him such publicity that the _Daily Graphic_ paid him handsomelyto write on the Cuban Revolution, and the Spanish Government rewardedhim with the Order of Military Merit. 

At the very outbreak of the Boer war he was taken prisoner. It seemeda climax of misfortune. With his brother officers he had hoped in thatcampaign to acquit himself with credit, and that he should lie inactivein Pretoria appeared a terrible calamity. To the others who, throughmany heart-breaking months, suffered imprisonment, it continued to bea calamity. But within six weeks of his capture Churchill escaped, and, after many adventures, rejoined his own army to find that the calamityhad made him a hero. 

When after the battle of Omdurman, in his book on "The River War, " heattacked 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 anotherchance 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 bydefending him from the attacks of others. 

Later, when his assaults upon the leaders of his own party closed tohim, even in his own constituency, the Conservative debating clubs, again his ill-wishers said: "This _is_ the end. He has ridiculed thosewho sit in high places. He has offended his cousin and patron, the Dukeof Marlborough. Without political friends, without the influence andmoney of the Marlborough family he is a political nonentity. " That waseighteen months ago. To-day, at the age of thirty-two, he is one of theleaders of the Government party, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, andwith the Liberals the most popular young man in public life. 

Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Edward Grey, the new ForeignSecretary, said of him: "Mr. Winston Churchill has achieved distinctionin at least five different careers--as a soldier, a war correspondent, a lecturer, an author, and last, but not least, as a politician. Ihave understated it even now, for he has achieved two careers as apolitician--one on each side of the House. His first career on theGovernment side was a really distinguished career. I trust the secondwill be even more distinguished--and more prolonged. The remarkablething is that he has done all this when, unless appearances very muchbelie him, he has not reached the age of sixty-four, which is theminimum age at which the politician ceases to be young. "

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born thirty-two years ago, inNovember, 1874. By birth he is half-American. His father was LordRandolph Churchill, and his mother was Jennie Jerome, of New York. On the father's side he is the grandchild of the seventh Duke ofMarlborough, on the distaff side, of Leonard Jerome. 

To a student of heredity it would be interesting to try and discoverfrom which of these ancestors Churchill drew those qualities which inhim 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 hisown 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 sonof his father. And certainly it was asking much of a boy that he shouldlive up to a father who was one of the most conspicuous, clever, anderratic statesmen of the later Victorian era, and a mother who is asbrilliant 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, andas an officer of the Primrose League, as an editor of the _Anglo-SaxonReview_, as, for many hot, weary months in Durban Harbor, the headof the hospital ship _Maine_, she has shown an acute mind and realexecutive power. At the polls many votes that would not respond to thearguments of the husband, and later of the son, were gained over to thecause by the charm and wit of the American woman. 

In his earlier days, if one can have days any earlier than those he nowenjoys, Churchill was entirely influenced by two things: the tremendousadmiration he felt for his father, which filled him with ambition tofollow in his orbit, and the camaraderie of his mother, who treated himless like a mother than a sister and companion. 

Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious that I cannot recall the timewhen he was young enough to be Lady Randolph's son; certainly, I cannotrecall the time when she was old enough to be his mother. 

When first I knew him he had passed through Harrow and Sandhurst and wasa second lieutenant in the Queen's Own Hussars. He was just of age, butappeared much younger. 

He was below medium height, a slight, delicate-looking boy; although, asa matter of fact, extremely strong, with blue eyes, many freckles, andhair which threatened to be a decided red, but which now has lost itsfierceness. 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 manygestures, some of which were strongly reminiscent of his father, ofwhom he, unlike most English lads, who shy at mentioning a distinguishedparent, constantly spoke. 

He even copied his father in his little tricks of manner. Standing withhands shoved under the frock-coat and one resting on each hip as thoughsqueezing in the waist line; when seated, resting the elbows on the armsof the chair and nervously locking and unclasping fingers, are trickscommon to both. 

He then had and still has a most embarrassing habit of asking manyquestions; embarrassing, sometimes, because the questions are so frank, and sometimes because they lay bare the wide expanse of one's ownignorance. 

At that time, although in his twenty-first year, this lad twice had beenmade a question in the House of Commons. 

That in itself had rendered him conspicuous. When you consider out ofGreat Britain's four hundred million subjects how many live, die, andare buried without at any age having drawn down upon themselves theanger of the House of Commons, to have done so twice, before one haspassed his twenty-first year, seems to promise a lurid future. 

The first time Churchill disturbed the august assemblage in which sosoon he was to become a leader was when he "ragged" a brother subalternnamed Bruce and cut up his saddle and accoutrements. The second time waswhen he ran away to Cuba to fight with the Spaniards. 

After this campaign, on the first night of his arrival in London, hemade his maiden speech. He delivered it in a place of less dignitythan the House of Commons, but one, throughout Great Britain and hercolonies, as widely known and as well supported. This was the EmpireMusic Hall. 

At the time Mrs. Ormiston Chant had raised objections to the presence inthe Music Hall of certain young women, and had threatened, unless theyceased to frequent its promenade, to have the license of the Music Hallrevoked. As a compromise, the management ceased selling liquor, andon the night Churchill visited the place the bar in the promenade wasbarricaded with scantling and linen sheets. With the thirst of tropicalCuba 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, andhave sought elsewhere for his drink. Not so Churchill. What he did isinteresting, because it was so extremely characteristic. Now he wouldnot do it; then he was twenty-one. 

He scrambled to the velvet-covered top of the railing which dividesthe auditorium from the promenade, and made a speech. It was a plea inbehalf of his "Sisters, the Ladies of the Empire Promenade. "

"Where, " he asked of the ladies themselves and of their escorts crowdedbelow him in the promenade, "does the Englishman in London always find awelcome? Where does he first go when, battle-scarred and travel-worn, he reaches home? Who is always there to greet him with a smile, andjoin him in a drink? Who is ever faithful, ever true--the Ladies of theEmpire Promenade. "

The laughter and cheers that greeted this, and the tears of the ladiesthemselves, 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 himselfon 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 hisappeal. The house shook with laughter and applause. 

The commissionaires and police tried to reach him and a good-temperedbut very determined mob of well-dressed gentlemen and cheering girlsfought them back. In triumph Churchill ended his speech by begging hishearers to give "fair play" to the women, and to follow him in a chargeupon the barricades. 

The charge was instantly made, the barricades were torn down, and theterrified management ordered that drink be served to its victoriouspatrons. 

Shortly after striking this blow for the liberty of others, Churchillorganized a dinner which illustrated the direction in which at that agehis mind was working, and showed that his ambition was already abnormal. The dinner was given to those of his friends and acquaintances who "wereunder twenty-one years of age, and who in twenty years would control thedestinies of the British Empire. "

As one over the age limit, or because he did not consider me anempire-controlling force, on this great occasion, I was permitted tobe present. But except that the number of incipient empire-builders wasvery great, that they were very happy, and that save the host himselfnone of them took his idea seriously, I would not call it an evening ofhistorical interest. But the fact is interesting that of all theboys present, as yet, the host seems to be the only one who to anyconspicuous extent is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain. However, the others can reply that ten of the twenty years have not yetpassed. 

When he was twenty-three Churchill obtained leave of absence from hisregiment, and as there was no other way open to him to see fighting, asa correspondent he joined the Malakand Field Force in India. 

It may be truthfully said that by his presence in that frontier war hemade it and himself famous. His book on that campaign is his best pieceof war reporting. To the civilian reader it has all the delight of oneof Kipling's Indian stories, and to writers on military subjects it isa model. But it is a model very few can follow, and which Churchillhimself was unable to follow, for the reason that only once is it givena man to be twenty-three years of age. 

The picturesque hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the charges upprecipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the wounded under constantfire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he neveragain can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it wasabsolutely new, and the charm of the book and the value of the book arethat with the intolerance of youth he attacks in the service evils thatolder men prefer to let lie, and that with the ingenuousness of youth hetells of things which to the veteran have become unimportant, or whichthrough usage he is no longer even able to see. 

In his three later war books, the wonder of it, the horror of it, thequick admiration for brave deeds and daring men, give place, in "TheRiver War, " to the critical point of view of the military expert, andin his two books on the Boer war to the rapid impressions of thejournalist. 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 campaignmedal with clasp, and, "in despatches, " Brigadier-General Jeffreyspraises "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 WilliamLockhart as orderly officer, and with the Tirah Expedition went throughthat 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 asan officer and as a correspondent, he finished his book on the MalakandExpedition and then, as it was evident Kitchener would soon attackKhartum, he jumped across to Egypt and again as a correspondent tookpart 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 attachedhim to the Twenty-first Lancers, and it will be remembered the event ofthe battle was the charge made by that squadron. It was no canter, noeasy "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-blankat the troopers. Churchill was in that charge. He received the medalwith clasp. 

Then he returned home and wrote "The River War. " This book is the lastword on the campaigns up the Nile. From the death of Gordon in Khartumto the capture of the city by Kitchener, it tells the story of the manygallant fights, the wearying failures, the many expeditions into thehot, boundless desert, the long, slow progress toward the final winningof the Sudan. 

The book made a distinct sensation. It was a work that one would expectfrom a lieutenant-general, when, after years of service in Egypt, helaid down his sword to pen the story of his life's work. From a SecondLieutenant, who had been on the Nile hardly long enough to gain thedesert tan, it was a revelation. As a contribution to military historyit was so valuable that for the author it made many admirers, but onaccount of his criticisms of his superior officers it gained him evenmore enemies. 

This is a specimen of the kind of thing that caused the retired armyofficer 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, whosesalutes he disdained, to the superior officers, whom he rigidlycontrolled. The comrade who had served with him and under him for manyyears, in peace and peril, was flung aside as soon as he ceased to be ofuse. The wounded Egyptian and even the wounded British soldier did notexcite his interest. "

When in the service clubs they read that, the veterans asked each othertheir favorite question of what is the army coming to, and to theirown satisfaction answered it by pointing out that when a lieutenant oftwenty-four can reprimand the commanding general the army is going tothe dogs. 

To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over their own signatures, onthe service club stationery, wrote violent, furious letters, and thenewspapers themselves, besides the ordinary reviews, gave to the bookeditorial praise and editorial condemnation. 

Equally disgusted were the younger officers of the service. Theynicknamed his book "A Subaltern's Advice to Generals, " and calledChurchill himself a "Medal Snatcher. " A medal snatcher is an officerwho, whenever there is a rumor of war, leaves his men to the care ofany one, and through influence in high places and for the sake of thecampaign medal has himself attached to the expeditionary force. ButChurchill never was a medal hunter. The routine of barrack life irkedhim, and in foreign parts he served his country far better than byremaining at home and inspecting awkward squads and attending guardmount. 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 bein his debt. 

In October, 1898, a month after the battle of Omdurman, Churchillmade his debut as a political speaker at minor meetings in Dover andRotherhithe. History does not record that these first speeches set fireto the Channel. During the winter he finished and published his "RiverWar, " 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 Indiaand Egypt had made his name known, and there was a general desire tohear 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 witha voice of command. When they were introduced to a small red-haired boywith a lisp, they refused to take him seriously. In England youth is anunpardonable thing. Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, Hugh Cecil, and others have made it less reprehensible. But, in spite of a vigorouscampaign, in which Lady Randolph took an active part, Oldham decidedit was not ready to accept young Churchill for a member. Later he wasOldham's only claim to fame. 

A week after he was defeated he sailed for South Africa, where war withthe Boers was imminent. He had resigned from his regiment and went southas war correspondent for the _Morning Post_. 

Later in the war he held a commission as Lieutenant in the South AfricanLight Horse, a regiment of irregular cavalry, and on the staffsof different generals acted as galloper and aide-de-camp. To thiscombination of duties, which was in direct violation of a rule of theWar Office, his brother officers and his fellow correspondents objected;but, as in each of his other campaigns he had played this dual role, thepress censors considered it a traditional privilege, and winked at it. As a matter of record, Churchill's soldiering never seemed to interferewith his writing, nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper everprevent him from mixing in as a belligerent. 

War was declared October 9th, and only a month later, while scouting inthe armored train along the railroad line between Pietermaritzburg andColenso, the cars were derailed and Churchill was taken prisoner. 

The train was made up of three flat cars, two armored cars, and betweenthem the engine, with three cars coupled to the cow-catcher and two tothe tender. 

On the outward trip the Boers did not show themselves, but as soon asthe English passed Frere station they rolled a rock on the track at apoint where it was hidden by a curve. On the return trip, as the Englishapproached this curve the Boers opened fire with artillery and pompoms. The engineer, in his eagerness to escape, rounded the curve at fullspeed, and, as the Boers had expected, hit the rock. The three forwardcars were derailed, and one of them was thrown across the track, thuspreventing the escape of the engine and the two rear cars. From theseCaptain Haldane, who was in command, with a detachment of the Dublins, kept up a steady fire on the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear thetrack. To assist him he had a company of Natal volunteers, and those whohad not run away of the train hands and break-down crew. 

"We were not long left in the comparative safety of a railroadaccident, " Churchill writes to his paper. "The Boers' guns, swiftlychanging their position, reopened fire from a distance of thirteenhundred yards before any one had got out of the stage of exclamations. The tapping rifle-fire spread along the hills, until it encircled thewreckage on three sides, and from some high ground on the opposite sideof the line a third field-gun came into action. "

For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked railroad trainat thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull's-eye as the hands of thefirst baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine butted and snortedand the men with their bare bands tore at the massive beams of thefreight-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; towait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with therepeated explosions of the shells, the noise of the projectiles strikingthe cars, the hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and puffingof the engine--poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozenshells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made anend of all--the expectation of destruction as a matter of course, therealization of powerlessness--all this for seventy minutes by the clock, with only four inches of twisted iron between danger, captivity, andshame on one side--and freedom on the other. "

The "protected" train had proved a deathtrap, and by the time the linewas clear every fourth man was killed or wounded. Only the engine, with the more severely wounded heaped in the cab and clinging to itscow-catcher and foot-rails, made good its escape. Among those leftbehind, a Tommy, without authority, raised a handkerchief on his rifle, and the Boers instantly ceased firing and came galloping forward toaccept surrender. There was a general stampede to escape. Seeing thatLieutenant Franklin was gallantly trying to hold his men, Churchill, who was safe on the engine, jumped from it and ran to his assistance. Ofwhat followed, this is his own account:

"Scarcely had the locomotive left me than I found myself alone in ashallow cutting, and none of our soldiers, who had all surrendered, to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on the line at the end of thecutting two men not in uniform. 'Plate-layers, ' I said to myself, andthen, with a surge of realization, 'Boers. ' My mind retains a momentaryimpression of these tall figures, full of animated movement, clad indark flapping clothes, with slouch, storm-driven hats, posing theirrifles hardly a hundred yards away. I turned and ran between therails of the track, and the only thought I achieved was this: 'Boermarksmanship. '

"Two bullets passed, both within a foot, one on either side. I flungmyself against the banks of the cutting. But they gave no cover. Anotherglance at the figures; one was now kneeling to aim. Again I dartedforward. Again two soft kisses sucked in the air, but nothing struck me. I must get out of the cutting--that damnable corridor. I scrambled upthe 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 horsemangalloped up, shouting to me and waving his hand. He was scarcely fortyyards off. With a rifle I could have killed him easily. I knew nothingof the white flag, and the bullets had made me savage. I reached downfor my Mauser pistol. I had left it in the cab of the engine. Between meand 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 stoodbefore 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 miserablegroup, and about the same time I noticed that my hand was bleeding, andit began to pour with rain. 

"Two days before I had written to an officer at home: 'There has been agreat deal too much surrendering in this war, and I hope people who doso will not be encouraged. '"

With other officers, Churchill was imprisoned in the State ModelSchools, situated in the heart of Pretoria. It was distinctlycharacteristic that on the very day of his arrival he began to plan toescape. 

Toward this end his first step was to lose his campaign hat, which herecognized was too obviously the hat of an English officer. The burgherto whom he gave money to purchase him another innocently brought him aBoer sombrero. 

Before his chance to escape came a month elapsed, and the opportunitythat then offered was less an opportunity to escape than to get himselfshot. 

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 aprison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. After many nights ofobservation, Churchill discovered that while the sentries were pacingtheir beats there was a moment when to them a certain portion of thewall was in darkness. This was due to cross-shadows cast by the electriclights. On the other side of this wall there was a private house set ina garden filled with bushes. Beyond this was the open street. 

To scale the wall was not difficult; the real danger lay in the factthat at no time were the sentries farther away than fifteen yards, andthe chance of being shot by one or both of them was excellent. To abrother officer Churchill confided his purpose, and together they agreedthat some night when the sentries had turned from the dark spot on thewall they would scale it and drop among the bushes in the garden. Afterthey reached the garden, should they reach it alive, what they were todo they did not know. How they were to proceed through the streetsand out of the city, how they were to pass unchallenged under its manyelectric lights and before the illuminated shop windows, how to dodgepatrols, and how to find their way through two hundred and eightymiles of a South African wilderness, through an utterly unfamiliar, unfriendly, and sparsely settled country into Portuguese territory andthe coast, they left to chance. But with luck they hoped to cover thedistance in a fortnight, begging corn at the Kaffir kraals, sleeping byday, and marching under cover of the darkness. 

They agreed to make the attempt on the 11th of December, but on thatnight the sentries did not move from the only part of the wall that wasin shadow. On the night following, at the last moment, something delayedChurchill's companion, and he essayed the adventure alone. He writes:

"Tuesday, the 12th! Anything was better than further suspense. Againnight came. Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity, I strolled across the quadrangle and secreted myself in one of theoffices. Through a chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour theyremained stolid and obstructive. Then suddenly one turned and walked upto 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 withmy hands and drew myself up. Twice I let myself down again in sicklyhesitation, and then with a third resolve scrambled up. The top wasflat. Lying on it, I had one parting glimpse of the sentries, stilltalking, still with their backs turned, but, I repeat, still fifteenyards away. Then I lowered myself into the adjoining garden and crouchedamong the shrubs. I was free. The first step had been taken, and it wasirrevocable. "

Churchill discovered that the house into the garden of which he had sounceremoniously introduced himself was brilliantly lighted, and that theowner was giving a party. At one time two of the guests walked into thegarden and stood, smoking and chatting, in the path within a few yardsof him. 

Thinking his companion might yet join him, for an hour he crouched inthe bushes, until from the other side of the wall he heard the voices ofhis 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 belistening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quotedLatin 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 backagain?"

To go back was impossible. Churchill now felt that in any case he wassure to be recaptured, and decided he would, as he expresses it, atleast 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 theplay 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 tothe street. Not five yards from the gate stood a sentry. Most of thoseguarding the school-house knew him by sight, but Churchill did not turnhis head, and whether the sentry recognized him or not, he could nottell. 

For a hundred feet he walked as though on ice, inwardly shrinking as hewaited for the sharp challenge, and the rattle of the Mauser thrown tothe "Ready. " His nerves were leaping, his heart in his throat, his spineof water. And then, as he continued to advance, and still no tumultpursued him, he quickened his pace and turned into one of the mainstreets of Pretoria. The sidewalks were crowded with burghers, but noone noticed him. This was due probably to the fact that the Boers woreno distinctive uniform, and that with them in their commandoes were manyEnglish 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 veryopenness of his movements saved him from suspicion. 

Straight through the town he walked until he reached the suburbs, theopen veldt, and a railroad track. As he had no map or compass he knewthis must be his only guide, but he knew also that two railroads leftPretoria, the one along which he had been captured, to Pietermaritzburg, and the other, the one leading to the coast and freedom. Which of thetwo this one was he had no idea, but he took his chance, and a hundredyards beyond a station waited for the first outgoing train. Aboutmidnight, a freight stopped at the station, and after it had left it andbefore it had again gathered headway, Churchill swung himself up uponit, and stretched out upon a pile of coal. Throughout the night thetrain continued steadily toward the east, and so told him that it wasthe one he wanted, and that he was on his way to the neutral territoryof Portugal. 

Fearing the daylight, just before the sun rose, as the train was pullingup a steep grade, he leaped off into some bushes. All that day he layhidden, and the next night he walked. He made but little headway. As allstations and bridges were guarded, he had to make long detours, and thetropical moonlight prevented him from crossing in the open. In this way, sleeping by day, walking by night, begging food from the Kaffirs, fivedays passed. 

Meanwhile, his absence had been at once discovered, and, by theBoers, every effort was being made to retake him. Telegrams giving hisdescription were sent along both railways, three thousand photographsof him were distributed, each car of every train was searched, andin different parts of the Transvaal men who resembled him were beingarrested. It was said he had escaped dressed as a woman; in the uniformof a Transvaal policeman whom he had bribed; that he had never leftPretoria, and that in the disguise of a waiter he was concealed in thehouse of a British sympathizer. On the strength of this rumor the housesof all suspected persons were searched. 

In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a significant fact that a weekbefore his escape Churchill had drawn from the library Mill's "Essay onLiberty. "

In England and over all British South Africa the escape created as muchinterest as it did in Pretoria. Because the attempt showed pluck, andbecause he had outwitted the enemy, Churchill for the time became a sortof popular hero, and to his countrymen his escape gave as much pleasureas it was a cause of chagrin to the Boers. 

But as days passed and nothing was heard of him, it was feared hehad lost himself in the Machadodorp Mountains, or had succumbedto starvation, or, in the jungle toward the coast, to fever, andcongratulations gave way to anxiety. 

The anxiety was justified, for at this time Churchill was in a very badway. During the month in prison he had obtained but little exercise. Thelack of food and of water, the cold by night and the terrific heat byday, the long stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental effect uponan extremely nervous, high-strung organization of being hunted, and ofhaving to hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to a conditionalmost of collapse. 

Even though it were neutral soil, in so exhausted a state he dared notventure 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 himsave to give himself up. 

But before doing so he carefully prepared a tale which, although mostimprobable, he hoped might still conceal his identity and aid him toescape by train across the border. 

One night after days of wandering he found himself on the outskirts ofa little village near the boundary line of the Transvaal and Portugueseterritory. Utterly unable to proceed further, he crawled to the nearestzinc-roofed shack, and, fully prepared to surrender, knocked at thedoor. It was opened by a rough-looking, bearded giant, the first whiteman to whom in many days Churchill had dared address himself. 

To him, without hope, he feebly stammered forth the speech he hadrehearsed. The man listened with every outward mark of disbelief. AtChurchill himself he stared with open suspicion. Suddenly he seized theboy 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--amthe only Englishman in this village. "

The rest of the adventure was comparatively easy. The next night hisfriend in need, an engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill Into afreight-car, and hid him under sacks of some soft merchandise. 

At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, for eighteen hours the carin which Churchill lay concealed was left in the sun on a siding, andbefore it again started it was searched, but the man who was conductingthe search lifted only the top layer of sacks, and a few minutes laterChurchill 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 thebottom of the car. 

When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Marques he at once sought out theEnglish Consul, who, after first mistaking him for a stoker from one ofthe 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 forDurban, and, escorted by a body-guard of English residents armed withrevolvers, and who were taking no chances of his recapture by the Boeragents, he was placed safely on board. Two days later he arrived atDurban, where he was received by the Mayor, the populace, and a brassband playing: "Britons Never, Never, Never shall be Slaves!"

For the next month Churchill was bombarded by letters and telegramsfrom every part of the globe, some invited him to command filibusteringexpeditions, others sent him woollen comforters, some forwardedphotographs 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 gloriousdeeds, which will send such a thrill of pride and enthusiasm throughGreat Britain and the United States of America, that the Anglo-Saxonrace will be irresistible. "

Lest so large an order as making the Anglo-Saxon race irresistible mightturn 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, andChurchill was delighted to find that it must have cost the man who sentit 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. Anotherman might have lingered. After a month's imprisonment and the hardshipsof the escape, he might have been excused for delaying twenty-four hoursto 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 thatto have done so would have been out of the part. This characteristic ofChurchill's to get on to the next thing explains his success. He has notime to waste on postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels. 

As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until therelief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria. Hewas in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out of the warwith another medal and clasps for six battles. 

On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second book onthe war, and in October at the general election as a "khaki" candidate, as those were called who favored the war, again stood for Oldham. Thistime, with his war record to help him, he wrested from the Liberals oneof 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 ofthe new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a lecturing tour athome, and in the United States and Canada. His subject was the war andhis escape from Pretoria. 

When he came to this country half of the people here were in sympathywith the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they supposed wouldbe a strictly British version of the war. His manager, without askingpermission of those whose names he advertised, organized for Churchill'sfirst appearance in various cities, different reception committees. 

Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for thesecommittees, wrote indignantly to the papers, saying that while forChurchill, personally, they held every respect, they objected to beingused to advertise an anti-Boer demonstration. 

While this was no fault of Churchill's, who, until he reached thiscountry knew nothing of it, it was neither for him nor for the successof 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 theBoer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with which he was acorrespondent had chased the army with which I was a correspondent, forty miles. I had been one of those who refused to act on his receptioncommittee, and he had come to this country with a commission from twentybrother officers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture he was usingthe photographs I had taken of the scene of his escape, and which I hadsent him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he arrived I was at thehotel to welcome him, and that same evening three hours after midnighthe came, in a blizzard, pounding at our door for food and drink. What isa little thing like a war between friends?

During his "tour, " except of hotels, parlor-cars, and "Lyceums, " he sawvery little of this country or of its people, and they saw very littleof him. On the trip, which lasted about two months, he cleared tenthousand dollars. This, to a young man almost entirely dependent for anincome upon his newspaper work and the sale of his books, nearly repaidhim for the two months of "one night stands. " On his return to London hetook his seat in the new Parliament. 

It was a coincidence that he entered Parliament at the same age asdid his father. With two other members, one born six days earlier thanhimself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among the three youngestmembers of the new House. 

The fact did not seem to appall him. In the House it is a tradition thatyoung and ambitious members sit "below" the gangway; the more modestand less assured are content to place themselves "above" it, at a pointfarthest removed from the leaders. 

On the day he was sworn in there was much curiosity to see whereChurchill would elect to sit. In his own mind there was apparently nodoubt. After he had taken the oath, signed his name, and shaken the handof the Speaker, without hesitation he seated himself on the bench nextto the Ministry. Ten minutes later, so a newspaper of the day describesit, he had cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved his hands into histrousers pockets, and was lolling back eying the veterans of the Housewith critical disapproval. 

His maiden speech was delivered in May, 1901, in reply to David LloydGeorge, who had attacked the conduct of British soldiers in SouthAfrica. Churchill defended them, and in a manner that from all sidesgained him honest admiration. In the course of the debate he producedand read a strangely apropos letter which, fifteen years before, hadbeen written by his father to Lord Salisbury. His adroit use ofthis filled H. W. Massingham, the editor of the _Daily News_, withenthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary tactics, he declared, since Mr. Gladstone died, had been so clever. He proclaimed that Churchill wouldbe Premier. John Dillon, the Nationalist leader, said he never beforehad seen a young man, by means of his maiden effort, spring into thefront rank of parliamentary speakers. He promised that the Irish memberswould ungrudgingly testify to his ability and honesty of purpose. Amongothers to at once recognize the rising star was T. P. O'Connor, himselffor many years of the parliamentary firmament one of the brighteststars. In _M. A. P. _ he wrote: "I am inclined to think that the dash ofAmerican blood which he has from his mother has been an improvement onthe original stock, and that Mr. Winston Churchill may turn out to be astronger and abler politician than his father. "

It was all a part of Churchill's "luck" that when he entered Parliamentthe subject in debate was the conduct of the war. 

Even in those first days of his career in the House, in debates whereangels feared to tread, he did not hesitate to rush in, but this subjectwas one on which he spoke with knowledge. Over the older men who wereforced to quote from hearsay or from what they had read, Churchill hadthe tremendous advantage of being able to protest: "You only read ofthat. I was there. I saw it. "

In the House he became at once one of the conspicuous and picturesquefigures, one dear to the heart of the caricaturist, and one from thestrangers' gallery most frequently pointed out. He was called "thespoiled child of the House, " and there were several distinguishedgentlemen who regretted they were forced to spare the rod. Broderick, the Secretary for War, was one of these. Of him and of his recruits inSouth Africa, Churchill spoke with the awful frankness of the _enfantterrible_. And although he addressed them more with sorrow than withanger, to Balfour and Chamberlain he daily administered advice andreproof, while mere generals and field-marshals, like Kitchener andRoberts, blushing under new titles, were held up for public reproof andbriefly but severely chastened. Nor, when he saw Lord Salisbury goingastray, did he hesitate in his duty to the country, but took the PrimeMinister 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 fightthat he forced the Government, unwillingly, to appoint a committee toinvestigate the need of economy. For a beginner this was a distincttriumph. 

With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian Malcolm, and other clever youngmen, he formed inside the Conservative Party a little group that in itsobstructive and independent methods was not unlike the Fourth Party ofhis father. From its leader and its filibustering, guerilla-like tacticsthe men who composed it were nicknamed the "Hughligans. " The Hughliganswere the most active critics of the Ministry and of all in their ownparty, and as members of the Free Food League they bitterly attackedthe fiscal proposals of Mr. Chamberlain. When Balfour made Chamberlain'sfight for fair trade, or for what virtually was protection, a measureof the Conservatives, the lines of party began to break, and men were nolonger Conservatives or Liberals, but Protectionists or Free Traders. 

Against this Churchill daily protested, against Chamberlain, against hisplan, 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 hasanybody else, certainly as much as certain people from Birmingham. Theycan't turn us out, and we, the Tory Free Traders, have as much rightto dictate the policy of the Conservative Party as have any reactionaryFair Traders. " In 1904 the Conservative Party already recognizedChurchill as one working outside the breastworks. Just before the Eastervacation of that year, when he rose to speak a remarkable demonstrationwas made against him by his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising andleaving the House. 

To the Liberals who remained to hear him he stated that if to hisconstituents his opinions were obnoxious, he was ready to resign hisseat. It then was evident he would go over to the Liberal Party. Somethought he foresaw which way the tidal wave was coming, and to beingslapped down on the beach and buried in the sand, he preferred to beswept forward on its crest. Others believed he left the Conservativesbecause 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 tothe other, he was only following the distinguished example set him byGladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his own father. 

It was at the time of this change that he was called "the best hatedman in England, " but the Liberals welcomed him gladly, and the NationalLiberal Club paid him the rare compliment of giving in his honor abanquet. There were present two hundred members. Up to that time thisdinner was the most marked testimony to his importance in the politicalworld. It was about then, a year since, that he prophesied: "Withinnine months there will come such a tide and deluge as will sweep throughEngland and Scotland, and completely wash out and effect a much-neededspring cleaning in Downing Street. "

When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. Balfour was defeated, andChurchill was victorious, and when the new Government was formed thetidal wave landed Churchill in the office of Under-Secretary for theColonies. 

While this is being written the English papers say that within amonth he again will be promoted. For this young man of thirty the onlypromotion remaining is a position in the Cabinet, in which august bodymen of fifty are considered young. 

His is a picturesque career. Of any man of his few years speaking ourlanguage, his career is probably the most picturesque. And that he ishalf an American gives all of us an excuse to pretend we share in hissuccesses. 

CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN

IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of the Yalu was the first battlefought between warships of modern make, and, except on paper, neitherthe men who made them nor the men who fought them knew what the shipscould do, or what they might not do. For years every naval power hadbeen building these new engines of war, and in the battle which was totest them the whole world was interested. But in this battle Americanshad a special interest, a human, family interest, for the reason thatone of the Chinese squadron, which was matched against some of the samevessels of Japan which lately swept those of Russia from the sea, wascommanded by a young graduate of the American Naval Academy. This youngman, who, at the time of the battle of the Yalu, was thirty-three yearsold, was Captain Philo Norton McGiffin. So it appears that five yearsbefore our fleet sailed to victory in Manila Bay another graduate ofAnnapolis, and one twenty years younger than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey, had commanded in action a modern battleship, which, in tonnage, inarmament, and in the number of the ships' company, far outclassedDewey'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 theClan MacAlpine. 

"These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true, And, Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu. "

McGiffin's great-grandfather, born in Scotland, emigrated to thiscountry and settled in "Little Washington, " near Pittsburg, Pa. In theRevolutionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives fought in the War of1812, one of them holding a commission as major. McGiffin's own fatherwas Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served in the Mexican War, and inthe Civil War was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Eighty-fifth PennsylvaniaVolunteers. So McGiffin inherited his love for arms. 

In Washington he went to the high school and at the Washington JeffersonCollege had passed through his freshman year. But the honors that mightaccrue to him if he continued to live on in the quiet and pretty oldtown of Washington did not tempt him. To escape into the world hewrote his Congressman, begging him to obtain for him an appointment toAnnapolis. The Congressman liked the letter, and wrote Colonel McGiffinto ask if the application of his son had his approval. Colonel McGiffinwas willing, and in 1877 his son received his commission as cadetmidshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in vacation time Iwent coon hunting in the woods outside of Washington. For his age he wasa very tall boy, and in his midshipman undress uniform, to my youthfuleyes, appeared a most bold and adventurous spirit. 

At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like otherboys. According to his classmates, with all of whom I find he was verypopular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as seamanship, gunnery, navigation, and steam engineering, but in all else he was nearthe foot of the class, and in whatever escapade was risky and recklesshe was always one of the leaders. To him discipline was extremelyirksome. He could maintain it among others, but when it applied tohimself it bored him. On the floor of the Academy building on which washis 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 couldnot 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 banistersand bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower halls. For any one who might think of ascending to discover the motive powerback of the bombardment they were extremely dangerous. But an officerapproached McGiffin in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, hewas 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 navalofficers who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so wonover Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges ofgunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the MexicanWar, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and atmidnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It aroused the entiregarrison, 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 YorkCity contributed provisions for the sufferers, and to carry the suppliesto Ireland the Government authorized the use of the old _Constellation_. At the time the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed toconsider himself as having been placed in command of the _Constellation_and to write a report on the preparations made for the voyage, on theloading of the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. Thisexercise was intended for the instruction of the cadets; first in thematter of seamanship and navigation, and second in making officialreports. At that time it was a very difficult operation to get a gun outof the port of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do thisthe necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yard-arm and the yardand mast properly braced and stayed, and then the lower block of thetackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave the falla very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin's report dealt with a newmethod of dismounting the guns and carrying them through the gun ports, and so admirable was his plan, so simple and ingenious, that it wasused whenever it became necessary to dismount a gun from one of theold sailing ships. Having, however, offered this piece of good work, McGiffin's report proceeded to tell of the division of the ship intocompartments that were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores, which included the old "fifteen puzzles, " at that particular time verypopular. The report terminated with a description of the joy of thefamished Irish as they received the puzzle-boxes. At another time thecadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression of theinsurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great praise forthe military arrangements and disposition of his men, but, in the samereport, he went on to describe how he armed them with a new gun known asBaines's Rhetoric and told of the havoc he wrought in the enemy'sranks when he fired these guns loaded with similes and metaphors andhyperboles. 

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 theycould recall of what had been said at the lecture. One of the rulesconcerning this report provided that there should be no erasures orinterlineations, but that when mistakes were made the objectionable orincorrect expressions should be included within parentheses; and thatthe matter so enclosed within parentheses would not be considered a partof 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 enclosedwithin parentheses he insisted that they did not count, and made a veryfair plea that he ought not to be punished for words which slipped inby mistake, and which he had officially obliterated by what he calledoblivion marks. 

He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the house of aprofessor caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and carried out twochildren, for which act he was commended by the Secretary of the Navy. 

It was an act of Congress that determined that the career of McGiffinshould be that of a soldier of fortune. This was a most unjust act, which provided that only as many midshipmen should receive commissionsas 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 fullcomplement of officers, and the difficulty is not to get rid of those wehave educated, but to get officers to educate. To the many boys who, onthe promise that they would be officers of the navy, had worked forfour years at the Academy and served two years at sea, the act was mostunfair. Out of a class of about ninety, only the first twelve were givencommissions and the remaining eighty turned adrift upon the uncertainseas of civil life. As a sop, each was given one thousand dollars. 

McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. In the final examinations onthe list he was well toward the tail. But without having studiedmany things, and without remembering the greater part of them, noone graduates from Annapolis, even last on the list; and with his onethousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also this six years of educationat what was then the best naval college in the world. This was his onlyasset--his education--and as in his own country it was impossible todispose of it, for possible purchasers he looked abroad. 

At that time the Tong King war was on between France and China, and hedecided, before it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to the followersof the Yellow Dragon. In those days that was a hazard of new fortunesthat meant much more than it does now. To-day the East is as near as SanFrancisco; the Japanese-Russian War, our occupation of the Philippines, the part played by our troops in the Boxer trouble, have made theaffairs of China part of the daily reading of every one. Now, one canstep into a brass bed at Forty-second Street and in four days at theCoast get into another brass bed, and in twelve more be spinning downthe Bund of Yokohama in a rickshaw. People go to Japan for the wintermonths as they used to go to Cairo. 

But in 1885 it was no such light undertaking, certainly not for a youngman who had been brought up in the quiet atmosphere of an inlandtown, where generations of his family and other families had lived andintermarried, content with their surroundings. 

With very few of his thousand dollars left him, McGiffin arrived inFebruary, 1885, in San Francisco. From there his letters to his familygive one the picture of a healthy, warm-hearted youth, chiefly anxiouslest his mother and sister should "worry. " In our country nearly everyfamily knows that domestic tragedy when the son and heir "breaks hometies, " and starts out to earn a living; and if all the world loves alover, 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 thosewho has passed through the same hard place gives him, if nothing else, his good wishes. McGiffin's letters at this period gain for him fromthose who have had the privilege to read them the warmest good feeling. 

They are filled with the same cheery optimism, the same slurring overof his troubles, the same homely jokes, the same assurances that he isfeeling "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 fussabout me. I am big enough and ugly enough to scratch along somehow, andI 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 SanFrancisco, and a pen-picture of two elephants. "I am going to bring youhome _two_ of these, " he writes, not knowing that in the strange andwonderful country to which he is going elephants are as infrequent asthey are in Pittsburg. 

He reached China in April, and from Nagasaki on his way to Shanghaithe steamer that carried him was chased by two French gunboats. But, apparently much to his disappointment, she soon ran out of range oftheir guns. Though he did not know it then, with the enemy he hadtravelled 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, forI did not know what was going to happen. I spent a good deal of moneycoming 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 nextmorning we went inside; the channel is very narrow and sown withtorpedoes. We struck one--an electric one--in coming up, but it didn'tgo off. We were until 10. 30 P. M. In coming up to Tien-Tsin--thirty milesin a straight line, but nearly seventy by the river, which is only aboutone hundred feet wide--and we grounded ten times. 

"Well--at last we moored and went ashore. Brace Girdle, an engineer, andI went to the hotel, and the first thing we heard was--that _peace wasdeclared!_ I went back on board ship, and I didn't sleep much--I neverwas so blue in my life. I knew if they didn't want me that I might aswell give up the ghost, for I could never get away from China. Well--Iworried around all night without sleep, and in the morning I felt asif I had been drawn through a knot-hole. I must have lost ten pounds. Iwent around about 10 A. M. And gave my letters to Pethick, an AmericanU. S. Vice-Consul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He said he would fixthem for me. Then I went back to the ship, and as our captain was goingup 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 theViceroy's palace until we got into the great Li, when we sat down andhad tea and tobacco and talked through an interpreter. When it camemy turn he asked: 'Why did you come to China?' I said: 'To enter theChinese 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 thinkyou have--I have come all the way from America to get it. ' 'What wouldyou like?' 'I would like to get the new torpedo-boat and go down theYang-tse-Kiang to the blockading squadron. ' 'Will you do that?' 'Ofcourse. '

"He thought a little and said: 'I will see what can be done. Will youtake $100 a month for a start?' I said: 'That depends. ' (Of courseI would take it. ) Well, after parley, he said he would put me on theflagship, and if I did well he would promote me. Then he looked at meand said: 'How old are you?' When I told him I was twenty-four I thoughthe 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 atall. I could not convince him, but at last he compromised--I was to passan 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 forexamination next day, but was put off--same the next day. But to-day Iwas told to come, and sat down to a stock of foolscap, and had apretty stiff exam. I am only just through. I had seamanship, gunnery, navigation, nautical astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conicsections, curve tracing, differential and integral calculus. I had onlythree questions out of five to answer in each branch, but in the firstthree I answered all five. After that I only had time for three, butat the end he said I need not finish, he was perfectly satisfied. I haddone remarkably well, and he would report to the Viceroy to-morrow. Heexamined my first papers--seamanship--said I was _perfect_ in it, so Iwill get _along_, you need not fear. I told the Consul--he was very wellpleased--he is a nice man. 

"I feel pretty well now--have had dinner and am smoking a good Manilacheroot. I wrote hard all day, wrote fifteen sheets of foolscap and madeabout a dozen drawings--got pretty tired. 

"I have had a hard scramble for the service and only got in by theskin of my teeth. I guess I will go to bed--I will sleep wellto-night--Thursday. 

"I did not hear from the Naval Secretary, Tuesday, so yesterday morningI went up to the Admiralty and sent in my card. He came out and receivedme very well--said I had passed a 'very splendid examination'; had beenrecommended very strongly to the Viceroy, who was very much pleased;that the Director of the Naval College over at the Arsenal had wanted meand would I go over at once? I _would_. It was about five miles. We (afriend, who is a great rider here) went on steeplechase ponies--we wereferried 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'tsqueal and kept my seat and got the swing of it at last and rather likedit. I think I will keep a horse here--you can hire one and a servanttogether for $7 a month; that is $5. 60 of our money, and pony and manfound 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 bya moat and wall. I thought to myself, if the cadet here is like to thething I used to be at the U. S. N. A. _that_ won't keep him in. I wentthrough a lot of yards till I was ushered into a room finished in blackebony and was greeted very warmly by the Director. We took seats on araised platform--Chinese style and pretty soon an interpreter came, oneof the Chinese professors, who was educated abroad, and we talked anddrank tea. He said I had done well, that he had the authority of theViceroy to take me there as 'Professor' of seamanship and gunnery; inaddition I might be required to teach navigation or nautical astronomy, or drill the cadets in infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I wasto receive what would be in our money $1, 800 per annum, as near as wecan compare it, paid in gold each month. Besides, I will have a housefurnished for my use, and it is their intention, as soon as I _show_that I _know_ something, to considerably increase my pay. They askedthe Viceroy to give me 130 T per month (about $186) and house, but theViceroy said I was _but a boy_; that I had seen no years and had onlycome here a week ago with no one to vouch for me, and that I might turnout an impostor. But he would risk 100 T on me anyhow, and as soon asI was reported favorably on by the college I would be raised--theagreement is to be for three years. For a few months I am to commanda training ship--an ironclad that is in dry dock at present, until acaptain in the English Navy comes out, who has been sent for to commandher. 

"_So Here I am_--twenty-four years old and captain of a man-of-war--abetter 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 myhouse is put in order. I saw it--it has a long veranda, very broad; withflower garden, apricot trees, etc. , just covered with blossoms; a widehall on the front, a room about 18x15, with a 13-foot ceiling; then backanother rather larger, with a cupola skylight in the centre, where Iam going to put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to furnish thehouse with bed, tables, chairs, sideboards, lounges, stove for kitchen. I have grates (American) in the room, but I don't need them. We havesnow, and a good deal of ice in winter, but the thermometer never getsbelow zero. I have to supply my own crockery. I will have two servantsand cook; I will only get one and the cook first--they only cost $4to $5. 50 per month, and their board amounts to very little. I can getalong, don't you think so? Now I want you to get Jim to pack up allmy professional works on gunnery, surveying, seamanship, mathematics, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, calculus, mechanics, and _every_ book of that description I own, including thosepaperbound 'Naval Institute' papers, and put them in a box, togetherwith any photos, etc. , you think I would like--I have none of you or Paor 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 saysit 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 inMongolia, 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 bothseamanship and gunnery, and I must know _everything_, both practicallyand 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 thinkI will get my 'influence' to work, and I want you people at home tolook out, and in case I _am_--if it were represented to the Sec. Thatmy position here was giving me an immense lot of practical knowledgeprofessionally--more than I could get on a ship at sea--I think he wouldgive me two years' leave on half or quarter pay. Or, I would be willingto 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 whichhe announces he has entered foreign service he plans to return tothat of his own country. This hope never left him. You find the samehomesickness for the quarterdeck of an American man-of-war all throughhis later letters. At one time a bill to reinstate the midshipmen whohad been cheated of their commissions was introduced into Congress. Ofthis 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 addsanxiously, "there may be a time limit set in which a man must rejoin, orlose 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 thathad cut him adrift. He settled down at Tien-Tsin and taught the youngcadets how to shoot. Almost all of those who in the Chinese-Japanese Warserved as officers were his pupils. As the navy grew, he grew withit, and his position increased in importance. More Mexican dollars permonth, more servants, larger houses, and buttons of various honorablecolors were given him, and, in return, he established for China a modernnaval college patterned after our own. In those days throughout Chinaand 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, isthe only foreigner with whom the Japanese have not parted, and in Chinathere are none. Of all of those who have gone none served his employersmore faithfully than did McGiffin. At a time when every officialrobbed the people and the Government, and when "squeeze" or "graft"was recognized as a perquisite, McGiffin's hands were clean. The shellspurchased for the Government by him were not loaded with black sand, nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. Once a year hecelebrated the Thanksgiving Day of his own country by inviting to agreat dinner all the Chinese naval officers who had been at least inpart educated in America. It was a great occasion, and to enjoyit officers used to come from as far as Port Arthur, Shanghai, andHong-Kong. So fully did some of them appreciate the efforts of theirhost that previous to his annual dinner, for twenty-four hours, theydelicately starved themselves. 

During ten years McGiffin served as naval constructor and professorof gunnery and seamanship, and on board ships at sea gave practicaldemonstrations in the handling of the new cruisers. In 1894 he appliedfor leave, which was granted, but before he had sailed for home war withJapan was declared and he withdrew his application. He was placedas second in command on board the _Chen Yuen_, a seven-thousand-tonbattleship, a sister ship to the _Ting Yuen_, the flagship of AdmiralTing Ju Chang. On the memorable 17th of September, 1894, the battle ofthe Yalu was fought, and so badly were the Chinese vessels hammered thatthe Chinese navy, for the time being, was wiped out of existence. 

From the start the advantage was with the Japanese fleet. In heavy gunsthe Chinese were the better armed, but in quick-firing guns the Japanesewere vastly superior, and while the Chinese battleships _Ting Yuen_ and_Chen Yuen_, each of 7, 430 tons, were superior to any of the Japanesewarships, the three largest of which were each of 4, 277 tons, the grosstonnage of the Japanese fleet was 36, 000 to 21, 000 of the Chinese. During the progress of the battle the ships engaged on each sidenumbered an even dozen, but at the very start, before a decisive shotwas fired by either contestant, the _Tsi Yuen_, 2, 355 tons, and _KwanChiae_, 1, 300 tons, ran away, and before they had time to get into thegame the _Chao Yung_ and _Yang Wei_ were in flames and had fled to thenearest land. So the battle was fought by eight Chinese ships againsttwelve of the Japanese. Of the Chinese vessels, the flagship, commandedby Admiral Ting, and her sister ship, which immediately after thebeginning of the fight was for four hours commanded by McGiffin, werethe two chief aggressors, and in consequence received the fire of theentire Japanese squadron. Toward the end of the fight, which withoutinterruption lasted for five long hours, the Japanese did not evenconsider the four smaller ships of the enemy, but, sailing around thetwo ironclads in a circle, fired only at them. The Japanese themselvestestified that these two ships never lost their formation, and thatwhen her sister ironclad was closely pressed the _Chen Yuen_, by hermovements 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 almostcontinuously on fire, and was struck by every kind of projectile, fromthe 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 andeyesight were forever wrecked. But he brought the _Chen Yuen_ safelyinto Port Arthur and the remnants of the fleet with her. 

On account of his lack of health he resigned from the Chinese serviceand returned to America. For two years he lived in New York City, suffering in body without cessation the most exquisite torture. Duringthat time his letters to his family show only tremendous courage. On thesplintered, gaping deck of the _Chen Yuen_, with the fires below it, and the shells bursting upon it, he had shown to his Chinese crew thecourage of the white man who knew he was responsible for them and forthe honor of their country. But far greater and more difficult was thecourage he showed while alone in the dark sick-room, and in the privatewards of the hospitals. 

In the letters he dictates from there he still is concerned only lestthose at home shall "worry"; he reassures them with falsehoods, jokesat their fears; of the people he can see from the window of the hospitaltells them foolish stories; for a little boy who has been kind he asksthem to send him his Chinese postage stamps; he plans a trip he willtake 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 afriend he wrote: "I know that I will have to have a piece about threeinches square cut out of my skull, and this nerve cut off near themiddle of the brain, as well as my eye taken out (for a couple of hoursonly, provided it is not mislaid, and can be found). Doctor ------ andhis crowd show a bad memory for failures. As a result of this operationothers have told me--I forget the percentage of deaths, which does notmatter, but--that a large percentage have become insane. And some losttheir sight. "

While threatened with insanity and complete blindness, and hourly fromhis 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 aretroubling me. I cannot see even what I am writing now, and am gettingthe article under difficulties. I yet hope to place it in your hands bythe 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 hisdespatch-box he had secreted his service revolver. On the morning of the11th of February, 1897, he asked for this box, and on some pretext sentthe nurse from the room. When the report of the pistol brought themrunning to his bedside, they found the pain-driven body at peace, andthe 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 JuChang, a gallant soldier and true gentleman. Betrayed by his countrymen, fighting against odds, almost his last official act was to stipulatefor the lives of his officers and men. His own he scorned to save, wellknowing that his ungrateful country would prove less merciful than hishonorable foe. Bitter, indeed, must have been the reflections of theold, wounded hero, in that midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cupthat was to give him rest. "

And bitter indeed must have been the reflections of the young woundedAmerican, robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of the right he hadearned to serve it, and who was driven out to give his best years andhis 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 ofWilliam Walker conveys absolutely nothing. To them, as a name, "WilliamWalker" awakens no pride of race or country. It certainly does notsuggest poetry and adventure. To obtain a place in even this groupof Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the most distinguished of allAmerican Soldiers of Fortune, the one who but for his own countrymenwould have single-handed attained the most far-reaching results, had towait his turn behind adventurers of other lands and boy officers ofhis own. And yet had this man with the plain name, the name thatto-day means nothing, accomplished what he adventured, he would on thiscontinent have solved the problem of slavery, have established an empirein Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have brought usinto war with all of Europe. That is all he would have accomplished. 

In the days of gold in San Francisco among the "Forty-niners" WilliamWalker 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 hiskeenest admirers, and in two of his stories, thinly disguised under amore appealing name, Walker is the hero. When, later, Walker came to NewYork City, in his honor Broadway from the Battery to Madison Square wasbedecked with flags and arches. "It was roses, roses all the way. " Thehouse-tops rocked and swayed. 

In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera he made his firstappearance, for ten minutes the performance came to a pause, while theaudience stood to salute him. 

This happened less than fifty years ago, and there are men who as boyswere out with "Walker of Nicaragua, " and who are still active in thepublic life of San Francisco and New York. 

Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, Tenn. He was the oldest son ofa Scotch banker, a man of a deeply religious mind, and interested ina business which certainly is removed, as far as possible, fromthe profession of arms. Indeed, few men better than William Walkerillustrate the fact that great generals are born, not trained. Everything in Walker's birth, family tradition, and education pointedto his becoming a member of one of the "learned" professions. It wasthe wish of his father that he should be a minister of the PresbyterianChurch, and as a child he was trained with that end in view. He himselfpreferred to study medicine, and after graduating at the University ofTennessee, at Edinburgh he followed a course of lectures, and for twoyears 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 inPhiladelphia, he took down his shingle forever, and proceeded toNew Orleans to study law. In two years he was admitted to the bar ofLouisiana. But because clients were few, or because the red tape of thelaw chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he had abandonedthe Church and Medicine, he abandoned his law practice and becamean editorial writer on the New Orleans _Crescent_. A year later therestlessness which had rebelled against the grave professions led him tothe gold fields of California, and San Francisco. There, in 1852, atthe 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 andglory. 

Up to his twenty-eighth year, except in his restlessness, nothing in hislife foreshadowed what was to follow. Nothing pointed to him as a manfor whom thousands of other men, from every capital of the world, wouldgive up their lives. 

Negatively, by abandoning three separate callings, and in making itplain that a professional career did not appeal to him, Walker hadthrown a certain sidelight on his character; but actively he never hadgiven any hint that under the thoughtful brow of the young doctor andlawyer there was a mind evolving schemes of empire, and an ambitionlimited only by the two great oceans. 

Walker's first adventure was undoubtedly inspired by and in imitationof one which at the time of his arrival in San Francisco had just beenbrought to a disastrous end. This was the De Boulbon expedition intoMexico. The Count Gaston Raoulx de Raousset-Boulbon was a young Frenchnobleman and Soldier of Fortune, a _chasseur d'Afrique_, a duellist, journalist, dreamer, who came to California to dig gold. BaronHarden-Hickey, who was born in San Francisco a few years after Boulbonat the age of thirty was shot in Mexico, also was inspired to dreams ofconquest by this same gentleman adventurer. 

Boulbon was a young man of large ideas. In the rapid growth ofCalifornia he saw a threat to Mexico and proposed to that government, asa "buffer" state between the two republics, to form a French colonyin the Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico whichdirectly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President ofMexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed atGuaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty well-armedFrenchmen. The ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreignsoil 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 thereis evidence that back of Boulbon was the French Government, and thathe was attempting, in his small way, what later was attempted byMaximilian, backed by a French army corps and Louis Napoleon, toestablish in Mexico an empire under French protection. For both thefilibuster and the emperor the end was the same; to be shot by thefusillade against a church wall. 

In 1852, two years before Boulbon's death, which was the finale to hissecond filibustering expedition into Sonora, he wrote to a friend inParis: "Europeans are disturbed by the growth of the United States. Andrightly so. Unless she be dismembered; unless a powerful rival be builtup beside her (_i. E. _, France in Mexico), America will become, throughher commerce, her trade, her population, her geographical position upontwo oceans, the inevitable mistress of the world. In ten years Europedare not fire a shot without her permission. As I write fifty Americansprepare to sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. _Voila lesEtats-Unis_. "

These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of Boulbon, threatened the peaceof Europe, were led by the ex-doctor, ex-lawyer, ex-editor, WilliamWalker, _aged twenty-eight years_. Walker had attempted but had failedto obtain from the Mexican Government such a contract as the one it hadgranted De Boulbon. He accordingly sailed without it, announcing that, whether the Mexican Government asked him to do so or not, he would seethat the women and children on the border of Mexico and Arizona wereprotected from massacre by the Indians. It will be remembered that whenDr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he also went to protect "women andchildren" from massacre by the Boers. Walker's explanation of hisexpedition, in his own words, is as follows. He writes in the thirdperson: "What Walker saw and heard satisfied him that a comparativelysmall body of Americans might gain a position on the Sonora frontierand protect the families on the border from the Indians, and such anact would be one of humanity whether or not sanctioned by the MexicanGovernment. 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 tothe civilization of the continent... And the people of the United Stateswere more immediately responsible before the world for the Apacheoutrages. Northern Sonora was in fact, more under the dominion of theApaches than under the laws of Mexico, and the contributions of theIndians were collected with greater regularity and certainty than thedues of the tax-gatherers. The state of this region furnished the bestdefence for any American aiming to settle there without the formalconsent of Mexico; and, although political changes would certainly havefollowed the establishment of a colony, they might be justified by theplea that any social organization, no matter how secured, is preferableto that in which individuals and families are altogether at the mercy ofsavages. "

While at the time of Jameson's raid the women and children in danger ofmassacre from the Boers were as many as there are snakes in Ireland, atthe time of Walker's raid the women and children were in danger from theIndians, who as enemies, as Walker soon discovered, were as cruel and asgreatly to be feared as he had described them. 

But it was not to save women and children that Walker sought to conquerthe State of Sonora. At the time of his expedition the great question ofslavery was acute; and if in the States next to be admitted to the Unionslavery was to be prohibited, the time had come, so it seemed tothis statesman of twenty-eight years, when the South must extend herboundaries, and for her slaves find an outlet in fresh territory. Sonora already joined Arizona. By conquest her territory could easilybe extended to meet Texas. As a matter of fact, strategically the spotselected by William Walker for the purpose for which he desired it wasalmost perfect. Throughout his brief career one must remember that thespring of all his acts was this dream of an empire where slavery wouldbe recognized. His mother was a slave-holder. In Tennessee he had beenborn and bred surrounded by slaves. His youth and manhood had been spentin Nashville and New Orleans. He believed as honestly, as fanaticallyin the right to hold slaves as did his father in the faith of theCovenanters. To-day one reads his arguments in favor of slavery with themost curious interest. His appeal to the humanity of his reader, to hisheart, to his sense of justice, to his fear of God, and to his beliefin the Holy Bible not to abolish slavery, but to continue it, to thisgeneration is as amusing as the topsy-turvyisms of Gilbert or Shaw. Butto the young man himself slavery was a sacred institution, intended forthe betterment of mankind, a God-given benefit to the black man and aGod-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 pointof Lower California. Lower California, it must be remembered, in spiteof its name, is not a part of our California, but then was, and stillis, a part of Mexico. The fact that he was at last upon the soil of theenemy caused Walker to throw off all pretence; and instead of hasteningto protect women and children, he sailed a few miles farther up thecoast to La Paz. With his forty-five followers he raided the town, madethe Governor a prisoner, and established a republic with himself asPresident. In a proclamation he declared the people free of the tyrannyof 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 anindependent republic. A few weeks later, although he had not yet setfoot there, Walker annexed on paper the State of Sonora, and to bothStates gave the name of the Republic of Sonora. 

As soon as word of this reached San Francisco, his friends busiedthemselves in his behalf, and the danger-loving and adventurous ofall lands were enlisted as "emigrants" and shipped to him in the bark_Anita_. 

Two months later, in November, 1852, three hundred of these joinedWalker. They were as desperate a band of scoundrels as ever robbed asluice, stoned a Chinaman, or shot a "Greaser. " When they found that tocommand them there was only a boy, they plotted to blow up themagazine in which the powder was stored, rob the camp, and march north, supporting themselves by looting the ranches. Walker learned of theirplot, tried the ringleaders by court-martial, and shot them. With aforce as absolutely undisciplined as was his, the act required the mostcomplete personal courage. That was a quality the men with him couldfully 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 wouldpunish so when Walker called upon those who would follow him to Sonorato show their hands, only the original forty-five and about forty ofthe later recruits remained with him. With less than one hundred menhe started to march up the Peninsula through Lower California, and soaround the Gulf to Sonora. 

From the very start the filibusters were overwhelmed with disaster. TheMexicans, with Indian allies, skulked on the flanks and rear. Men whoin the almost daily encounters were killed fell into the hands of theIndians, and their bodies were mutilated. Stragglers and deserters wererun to earth and tortured. Those of the filibusters who were woundeddied from lack of medical care. The only instruments they possessed withwhich to extract the arrow-heads were probes made from ramrods filed toa point. Their only food was the cattle they killed on the march. Thearmy was barefoot, the Cabinet in rags, the President of Sonora wore oneboot and one shoe. 

Unable to proceed farther, Walker fell back upon San Vincente, where hehad left the arms and ammunition of the deserters and a rear-guard ofeighteen men. He found not one of these to welcome him. A dozen haddeserted, and the Mexicans had surprised the rest, lassoing them andtorturing them until they died. Walker now had but thirty-five men. Towait for further re-enforcements from San Francisco, even were he surethat re-enforcements would come, was impossible. He determined by forcedmarches to fight his way to the boundary line of California. Between himand safety were the Mexican soldiers holding the passes, and the Indianshiding on his flanks. When within three miles of the boundary line, atSan Diego, Colonel Melendrez, who commanded the Mexican forces, sent ina flag of truce, and offered, if they would surrender, a safe-conduct toall of the survivors of the expedition except the chief. But the men whofor one year had fought and starved for Walker, would not, within threemiles of home, abandon him. 

Melendrez then begged the commander of the United States troops to orderWalker to surrender. Major McKinstry, who was in command of the UnitedStates Army Post at San Diego, refused. For him to cross the line wouldbe a violation of neutral territory. On Mexican soil he would neitherembarrass the ex-President of Sonora nor aid him; but he saw to it thatif the filibusters reached American soil, no Mexican or Indian shouldfollow them. 

Accordingly, on the imaginary boundary he drew up his troop, and likean impartial umpire awaited the result. Hidden behind rocks and cactus, across the hot, glaring plain, the filibusters could see the Americanflag, and the gay, fluttering guidons of the cavalry. The sight gavethem heart for one last desperate spurt. Melendrez also appreciatedthat for the final attack the moment had come. As he charged, Walker, apparently routed, fled, but concealed in the rocks behind him he hadstationed a rear-guard of a dozen men. As Melendrez rode into thisambush the dozen riflemen emptied as many saddles, and the Mexicans andIndians stampeded. A half hour later, footsore and famished, the littleband that had set forth to found an empire of slaves, staggered acrossthe 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 andfascinatingly interesting and complete: "Years afterward the peonherdsman or prowling Cocupa Indian in the mountain by-paths stumbledover the bleaching skeleton of some nameless one whose resting-place wasmarked by no cross or cairn, but the Colts revolver resting besidehis bones spoke his country and his occupation--the only relic of thewould-be conquistadores of the nineteenth century. "

Under parole to report to General Wood, commanding the Department of thePacific, the filibusters were sent by sailing vessel to San Francisco, where their leader was tried for violating the neutrality laws of theUnited States, and acquitted. 

Walker's first expedition had ended in failure, but for him it had beenan opportunity of tremendous experience, as active service is the bestof 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 theblame for failure upon their leader, stood ready to fight one and allwho doubted his ability or his courage. Later, after five years, many ofthese same men, though ten to twenty years his senior, followed him todeath, and never questioned his judgment nor his right to command. 

At this time in Nicaragua there was the usual revolution. On thesouth the sister republic of Costa Rica was taking sides, on the northHonduras was landing arms and men. There was no law, no government. Adozen political parties, a dozen commanding generals, and not one strongman. 

In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco _Herald_, Walker, searchingthe map for new worlds to conquer, rested his finger upon Nicaragua. 

In its confusion of authority he saw an opportunity to make himselfa power, and in its tropical wealth and beauty, in the laziness andincompetence of its inhabitants, he beheld a greater, fairer, more kindSonora. On the Pacific side from San Francisco he could re-enforce hisarmy 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 theDemocrats. Why they were at war it is not necessary to know. ProbablyWalker did not know; it is not likely that they themselves knew. Butfrom the leader of the Democrats Walker obtained a contract to bringto Nicaragua three hundred Americans, who were each to receive severalhundred acres of land, and who were described as "colonists liable tomilitary duty. " This contract Walker submitted to the Attorney-Generalof the State and to General Wood, who once before had acquitted him offilibustering; and neither of these Federal officers saw anythingwhich seemed to give them the right to interfere. But the rest of SanFrancisco was less credulous, and the "colonists" who joined Walkerhad a very distinct idea that they were not going to Nicaragua to plantcoffee or to pick bananas. 

In May, 1855, just a year after Walker and his thirty-three followershad surrendered to the United States troops at San Diego, with fifty newrecruits and seven veterans of the former expedition he sailed fromSan Francisco in the brig _Vesta_, and in five weeks, after a weary andstormy voyage, landed at Realejo. There he was met by representatives ofthe Provisional Director of the Democrats, who received the Californianswarmly. 

Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achilles Kewen, who had been fightingunder Lopez in Cuba, a lieutenant-colonel, and Timothy Crocker, who hadserved under Walker in the Sonora expedition, a major. The corpswas organized as an independent command and was named "La FalangeAmericana. " At this time the enemy held the route to the Caribbean, andWalker's first orders were to dislodge him. 

Accordingly, a week after landing with his fifty-seven Americans and onehundred and fifty native troops, Walker sailed in the _Vesta_ for Brito, from which port he marched upon Rivas, a city of eleven thousand peopleand garrisoned by some twelve hundred of the enemy. 

The first fight ended in a complete and disastrous fiasco. The nativetroops ran away, and the Americans surrounded by six hundred of theLegitimists' soldiers, after defending themselves for three hours behindsome adobe huts, charged the enemy and escaped into the jungle. Theirloss was heavy, and among the killed were the two men upon whom Walkerchiefly depended: Kewen and Crocker. The Legitimists placed the bodiesof the dead and wounded who were still living on a pile of logs andburned them. After a painful night march, Walker, the next day, reachedSan Juan on the coast, and, finding a Costa Rican schooner in port, seized it for his use. At this moment, although Walker's men weredefeated, bleeding, and in open flight, two "gringos" picked up onthe beach of San Juan, "the Texan Harry McLeod and the Irishman PeterBurns, " asked to be permitted to join him. 

"It was encouraging, " Walker writes, "for the soldiers to find thatsome besides themselves did not regard their fortunes as altogetherdesperate, and small as was this addition to their number it gaveincreased moral as well as material strength to the command. "

Sometimes in reading history it would appear as though for success thefirst requisite must be an utter lack of humor, and inability to lookupon what one is attempting except with absolute seriousness. With fortymen Walker was planning to conquer and rule Nicaragua, a country with apopulation of two hundred and fifty thousand souls and as large as thecombined area of Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. And yet, even seven years later, he records withouta smile that two beach-combers gave his army "moral and materialstrength. " And it is most characteristic of the man that at themoment he was rejoicing over this addition to his forces, to maintaindiscipline two Americans who had set fire to the houses of the enemyhe ordered to be shot. A weaker man would have repudiated the twoAmericans, who, in fact, were not members of the Phalanx, and trustedthat their crimes would not be charged against him. But the success ofWalker lay greatly in his stern discipline. He tried the men, and theyconfessed to their guilt. One got away; and, as it might appear thatWalker had connived at his escape, to the second man was shown nomercy. When one reads how severe was Walker in his punishments, andhow frequently the death penalty was invoked by him against his ownfew followers, the wonder grows that these men, as independent and asunaccustomed to restraint as were those who first joined him, submittedto his leadership. One can explain it only by the personal quality ofWalker himself. 

Among these reckless, fearless outlaws, who, despising their allies, believed and proved that with his rifle one American could account for adozen Nicaraguans, Walker was the one man who did not boast or drink orgamble, who did not even swear, who never looked at a woman, and who, inmoney matters, was scrupulously honest and unself-seeking. In a fight, his followers knew that for them he would risk being shot just asunconcernedly as to maintain his authority he would shoot one of them. 

Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to women, he punished withdeath; 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 rewardedwith instant promotion and higher pay. In no one trait was he ademagogue. One can find no effort on his part to ingratiate himself withhis men. Among the officers of his staff there were no favorites. Hemessed alone, and at all times kept to himself. He spoke little, andthen 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 angerasserted itself, the steady steel-gray eyes flashed so menacingly thatthose 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 hisown writings, from the writings of those who fought with him, is of asilent, student-like young man believing religiously in his "star ofdestiny"; but, in all matters that did not concern himself, possessed ofa grim sense of fun. The sayings of his men that in his history of thewar he records, show a distinct appreciation of the Bret Harte school ofhumor. As, for instance, when he tells how he wished to make one of thema drummer boy and the Californian drawled: "No, thanks, colonel; I neverseen a picture of a battle yet that the first thing in it wasn't a deaddrummer boy with a busted drum. "

In Walker the personal vanity which is so characteristic of the soldierof fortune was utterly lacking. In a land where a captain bedeckshimself like a field-marshal, Walker wore his trousers stuffed in hisboots, a civilian's blue frock-coat, and the slouch hat of the period, with, for his only ornament, the red ribbon of the Democrats. Theauthority he wielded did not depend upon braid or buttons, and only whengoing into battle did he wear his sword. In appearance he was slightlybuilt, rather below the medium height, smooth shaven, and with deep-setgray eyes. These eyes apparently, as they gave him his nickname, werehis most marked feature. 

His followers called him, and later, when he was thirty-two yearsold, he was known all over the United States as the "Gray-Eyed Man ofDestiny. "

From the first Walker recognized that in order to establish himself inNicaragua he must keep in touch with all possible recruits arriving fromSan Francisco and New York, and that to do this he must hold the lineof transit from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. At this time the searoutes to the gold-fields were three: by sailing vessel around the Cape, one over the Isthmus of Panama, and one, which was the shortest, acrossNicaragua. By a charter from the Government of Nicaragua, the right totransport passengers across this isthmus was controlled by the AccessoryTransit Company, of which the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was president. His company owned a line of ocean steamers both on the Pacific sideand on the Atlantic side. Passengers _en route_ from New York to thegold-fields were landed by these latter steamers at Greytown on the westcoast of Nicaragua, and sent by boats of light draught up the San JuanRiver to Lake Nicaragua. There they were met by larger lake steamers andconveyed across the lake to Virgin Bay. From that point, in carriagesand on mule back, they were carried twelve miles overland to the port ofSan Juan del Sud on the Pacific Coast, where they boarded the company'ssteamers to San Francisco. 

During the year of Walker's occupation the number of passengers crossingNicaragua was an average of about two thousand a month. 

It was to control this route that immediately after his first defeatWalker returned to San Juan del Sud, and in a smart skirmish defeatedthe enemy and secured possession of Virgin Bay, the halting place forthe passengers going east or west. In this fight Walker was outnumberedfive to one, but his losses were only three natives killed and a fewAmericans wounded. The Legitimists lost sixty killed and a hundredwounded. This proportion of losses shows how fatally effective was therifle and revolver fire of the Californians. Indeed, so wonderful was itthat when some years ago I visited the towns and cities captured by thefilibusters, I found that the marksmanship of Walker's Phalanx was stilla tradition. Indeed, thanks to the filibusters, to-day in any part ofCentral America a man from the States, if in trouble, has only to showhis gun. No native will wait for him to fire it. 

After the fight at Virgin Bay, Walker received from California fiftyrecruits--a very welcome addition to his force, and as he now commandedabout one hundred and twenty Americans, three hundred Nicaraguans, undera friendly native, General Valle, and two brass cannon, he decided toagain attack Rivas. Rivas is on the lake just above Virgin Bay; stillfurther up is Granada, which was the head-quarters of the Legitimists. 

Fearing Walker's attack upon Rivas, the Legitimist troops were hurriedsouth from Granada to that city, leaving Granada but slightly protected. 

Through intercepted letters Walker learned of this and determined tostrike at Granada. By night, in one of the lake steamers, he skirted theshore, and just before daybreak, with fires banked and all lights out, drew up to a point near the city. The day previous the Legitimists hadgained a victory, and, as good luck or Walker's "destiny" would haveit, the night before Granada had been celebrating the event. Much joyousdancing and much drinking of aguardiente had buried the inhabitants in adrugged slumber. The garrison slept, the sentries slept, the city slept. But when the convent bells called for early mass, the air was shakenwith sharp reports that to the ears of the Legitimists were unfamiliarand disquieting. They were not the loud explosions of their own musketsnor of the smooth bores of the Democrats. The sounds were sharp andcruel like the crack of a whip. The sentries flying from their postsdisclosed the terrifying truth. "The Filibusteros!" they cried. Following them at a gallop came Walker and Valle and behind them the menof the awful Phalanx, whom already the natives had learned to fear: thebearded giants in red flannel shirts who at Rivas on foot had chargedthe artillery with revolvers, who at Virgin Bay when wounded had drawnfrom their boots glittering bowie knives and hurled them like arrows, who at all times shot with the accuracy of the hawk falling upon asquawking hen. 

There was a brief terrified stand in the Plaza, and then a completerout. As was their custom, the native Democrats began at once to lootthe 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 toreturn the goods already stolen. Over a hundred political prisoners inthe cartel were released by Walker, and the ball and chain to which eachwas fastened stricken off. More than two-thirds of them at once enlistedunder 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 ofWalker's, postponed peace for several weeks, and led to unfortunatereprisals. French had made an unauthorized and unsuccessful assaulton San Carlos at the eastern end of the lake, and the Legitimistsretaliated at Virgin Bay by killing half a dozen peaceful passengers, and at San Carlos by firing at a transit steamer. For this the excuse ofthe Legitimists was, that now that Walker was using the lake steamersas transports it was impossible for them to know whether the boats wereoccupied by his men or neutral passengers. As he could not reach theguilty ones, Walker held responsible for their acts their secretaryof state, who at the taking of Granada was among the prisoners. He wastried by court-martial and shot, "a victim of the new interpretation ofthe principles of constitutional government. " While this act of Walker'swas certainly stretching the theory of responsibility to the breakingpoint, its immediate effect was to bring about a hasty surrender and ameeting between the generals of the two political parties. Thus, fourmonths after Walker and his fifty-seven followers landed in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was arranged, and the side for which theAmericans had fought was in power. Walker was made commander-in-chiefof an army of twelve hundred men with salary of six thousand dollars ayear. A man named Rivas was appointed temporary president. 

To Walker this pause in the fight was most welcome. It gave him anopportunity to enlist recruits and to organize his men for the betteraccomplishment of what was the real object of his going to Nicaragua. Henow had under him a remarkable force, one of the most effective knownto military history. For although six months had not yet passed, the organization he now commanded was as unlike the Phalanx ofthe fifty-eight adventurers who were driven back at Rivas, as wereFalstaff's followers from the regiment of picked men commanded byColonel Roosevelt. Instead of the undisciplined and lawless now beingin the majority, the ranks were filled with the pick of the Californiamining camps, with veterans of the Mexican War, with young Southernersof birth and spirit, and with soldiers of fortune from all of the greatarmies of Europe. 

In the Civil War, which so soon followed, and later in the service ofthe Khedive of Egypt, were several of Walker's officers, and for yearsafter his death there was no war in which one of the men trained by himin the jungles of Nicaragua did not distinguish himself. In his memoirs, the Englishman, General Charles Frederic Henningsen, writes that thoughhe had taken part in some of the greatest battles of the Civil War hewould pit a thousand men of Walker's command against any five thousandConfederate or Union soldiers. And General Henningsen was one who spokewith authority. Before he joined Walker he had served in Spain under DonCarlos, in Hungary under Kossuth, and in Bulgaria. 

Of Walker's men, a regiment of which he commanded, he writes: "I oftenhave seen them march with a broken or compound fractured arm insplints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with afractured thigh or wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, shotthemselves. Such men do not turn up in the average of everyday life, nordo I ever expect to see their like again. All military science failedon a suddenly given field before such assailants, who came at a runto close with their revolvers and who thought little of charging a gunbattery, pistol in hand. "

Another graduate of Walker's army was Captain Fred Townsend Ward, anative of Salem, Mass. , who after the death of Walker organized andled the ever victorious army that put down the Tai-Ping rebellion, and performed the many feats of martial glory for which Chinese Gordonreceived the credit. In Shanghai, to the memory of the filibuster, thereare to-day two temples in his honor. 

Joaquin Miller, the poet, miner, and soldier, who but recently was apicturesque figure on the hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was one ofthe young Californians who was "out with Walker, " and who later inhis career by his verse helped to preserve the name of his belovedcommander. I. C. Jamison, living to-day in Guthrie, Oklahoma, was acaptain 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 assuch he was recognized and feared. It was against him, not Rivas, thatin February, 1856, the neighboring republic of Costa Rica declared war. For three months this war continued with varying fortunes until theCosta 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 otherDemocrats also presented themselves, Salazar and Ferrer. TheLegitimists, recognizing in their former enemy the real ruler of thecountry, 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, wasNicaragua governed so justly, so wisely, and so well. But in his successthe neighboring republics saw a menace to their own independence. To thefour other republics of Central America the five-pointed blood-red staron the flag of the filibusters bore a sinister motto: "Five or None. "The meaning was only too unpleasantly obvious. At once, Costa Rica onthe south, and Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras from the north, withthe 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 thebackbone of his army was a magnificently trained body of veterans to thenumber of 2, 000. This was later increased to 3, 500, but it is doubtfulif at any one time it ever exceeded that number. His muster and hospitalrolls show that during his entire occupation of Nicaragua there wereenlisted, at one time or another, under his banner 10, 000 men. While inhis service, of this number, by hostile shots or fever, 5, 000 died. 

To describe the battles with the allies would be interminable andwearying. In every particular they are much alike: the long silentnight march, the rush at daybreak, the fight to gain strategicpositions either of the barracks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza, the hand-to-hand fighting from behind barricades and adobe walls. Theout-come of these fights sometimes varied, but the final result wasnever in doubt, and had no outside influences intervened, in time eachrepublic in Central America would have come under the five-pointed star. 

In Costa Rica there is a marble statue showing that republic representedas a young woman with her foot upon the neck of Walker. Some night atruth-loving American will place a can of dynamite at the foot of thatstatue, and walk hurriedly away. Unaided, neither Costa Rica nor anyother Central American republic could have driven Walker from her soil. His downfall came through his own people, and through an act of hiswhich provoked them. 

When Walker was elected president he found that the Accessory TransitCompany had not lived up to the terms of its concession with theNicaraguan Government. His efforts to hold it to the terms of itsconcession led to his overthrow. By its charter the Transit Companyagreed to pay to Nicaragua ten thousand dollars annually and ten percent. Of the net profits; but the company, whose history the UnitedStates Minister, Squire, characterized as "an infamous career ofdeception and fraud, " manipulated its books in such a fashion as toshow that there never were any profits. Doubting this, Walker sent acommission to New York to investigate. The commission discovered thefraud and demanded in back payments two hundred and fifty thousanddollars. When the company refused to pay this, as security for thedebt Walker seized its steamers, wharves, and storehouses, revoked itscharter, and gave a new charter to two of its directors, Morgan andGarrison, who, in San Francisco, were working against Vanderbilt. Indoing this, while he was legally in the right, he committed a fatalerror. He had made a powerful enemy of Vanderbilt, and he had shut offhis only lines of communication with the United States. For, enragedat the presumption of the filibuster president, Vanderbilt withdrew hisocean steamers, thus leaving Walker without men or ammunition, and asisolated as though upon a deserted island. He possessed Vanderbilt'sboats upon the San Juan River and Nicaragua Lake, but they were of useto him only locally. 

His position was that of a man holding the centre span of a bridge ofwhich every span on either side of him has been destroyed. 

Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing his steamers, but by supportingthe Costa Ricans with money and men, carried the war into CentralAmerica. From Washington he fought Walker through Secretary of StateMarcy, who proved a willing tool. 

Spencer and Webster, and the other soldiers of fortune employed byVanderbilt, closed the route on the Caribbean side, and the man-of-war_St. Marys_, commanded by Captain Davis, was ordered to San Juan on thePacific side. The instructions given to Captain Davis were to aid theallies in forcing Walker out of Nicaragua. Walker claims that theseorders were given to Marcy by Vanderbilt and by Marcy to CommodoreMervin, who was Marcy's personal friend and who issued them to Davis. Davis claims that he acted only in the interest of humanity to saveWalker in spite of himself. In any event, the result was the same. Walker, his force cut down by hostile shot and fever and desertion, tookrefuge in Rivas, where he was besieged by the allied armies. There wasno bread in the city. The men were living on horse and mule meat. Therewas no salt. The hospital was filled with wounded and those strickenwith fever. 

Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, demanded Walker's surrender tothe United States. Walker told him he would not surrender, but thatif the time came when he found he must fly, he would do so in his ownlittle schooner of war, the _Granada_, which constituted his entirenavy, and in her, as a free man, take his forces where he pleased. ThenDavis informed Walker that the force Walker had sent to recapture theGreytown route had been defeated by the janizaries of Vanderbilt; thatthe steamers from San Francisco, on which Walker now counted to bringhim re-enforcements, had also been taken off the line, and finallythat 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 hopedto make a sortie and on board her to escape from the country. But withhis ship taken from him and no longer able to sustain the siege ofthe allies, he surrendered to the forces of the United States. In theagreement drawn up by him and Davis, Walker provided for the care, byDavis, of the sick and wounded, for the protection after his departureof the natives who had fought with him, and for the transportation ofhimself and officers to the United States. 

On his arrival in New York he received a welcome such as later wasextended to Kossuth, and, in our own day, to Admiral Dewey. The citywas decorated with flags and arches; and banquets, fetes, and publicmeetings were everywhere held in his honor. Walker received thesedemonstrations modestly, and on every public occasion announced hisdetermination to return to the country of which he was the president, and from which by force he had been driven. At Washington, where hewent to present his claims, he received scant encouragement. His protestagainst Captain Davis was referred to Congress, where it was allowed todie. 

Within a month Walker organized an expedition with which to regain hisrights in Nicaragua, and as, in his new constitution for that country, he had annulled the old law abolishing slavery, among the slave-holdersof the South he found enough money and recruits to enable him to at onceleave the United States. With one hundred and fifty men he sailed fromNew Orleans and landed at San del Norte on the Caribbean side. While heformed a camp on the harbor of San Juan, one of his officers, with fiftymen, proceeded up the river and, capturing the town of Castillo Viejoand four of the Transit steamers, was in a fair way to obtain possessionof the entire route. At this moment upon the scene arrived the UnitedStates frigate _Wabash_ and Hiram Paulding, who landed a force of threehundred and fifty blue-jackets with howitzers, and turned the guns ofhis 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 bettermen. " To which Walker replied grimly: "If I had a third the number youhave brought against me, I would show you which of us two commands thebetter men. "

For the third time in his history Walker surrendered to the armed forcesof his own country. 

On his arrival in the United States, in fulfilment of his parole toPaulding, Walker at once presented himself at Washington a prisonerof war. But President Buchanan, although Paulding had acted exactly asDavis had done, refused to support him, and in a message to Congressdeclared that that officer had committed a grave error and establishedan unsafe precedent. 

On the strength of this Walker demanded of the United States Governmentindemnity for his losses, and that it should furnish him and hisfollowers transportation even to the very camp from which itsrepresentatives had torn him. This demand, as Walker foresaw, was notconsidered seriously, and with a force of about one hundred men, amongwhom 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 eachside of the Isthmus both American and British men-of-war, Walker, withthe idea of reaching Nicaragua by land, stopped off at Honduras. In hiswar with the allies the Honduranians had been as savage in their attacksupon his men as even the Costa Ricans, and finding his old enemiesnow engaged in a local revolution, on landing, Walker declared for theweaker side and captured the important seaport of Trujillo. He no soonerhad taken it than the British warship _Icarus_ anchored in the harbor, and her commanding officer, Captain Salmon, notified Walker that theBritish Government held a mortgage on the revenues of the port, and thatto protect the interests of his Government he intended to take the town. Walker answered that he had made Trujillo a free port, and that GreatBritain's claims no longer existed. 

The British officer replied that if Walker surrendered himself and hismen he would carry them as prisoners to the United States, and that ifhe 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 washelpless, 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. ThePresident of Nicaragua was found in a little Indian fishing village, andSalmon sent in his shore-boats and demanded his surrender. On leavingTrujillo, Walker had been forced to abandon all his ammunition savethirty rounds a man, and all of his food supplies excepting two barrelsof bread. On the coast of this continent there is no spot more unhealthythan Honduras, and when the Englishmen entered the fishing village theyfound 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 noquarrel. Walker inquired of Salmon if he were asking him to surrender tothe British or to the Honduranian forces, and twice Salmon assured him, "distinctly and specifically, " that he was surrendering to the forces ofher Majesty. With this understanding Walker and his men laid down theirarms 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 excusefor this is now given by his descendants in the Salmon family I do notknow. 

Probably it is a subject they avoid, and, in history, Salmon's versionhas never been given, which for him, perhaps, is an injustice. But thefact remains that he turned over his white brothers to the mercies ofhalf-Indian, half-negro, savages, who were not allies of Great Britain, and in whose quarrels she had no interest. And Salmon did this, knowingthere could be but one end. If he did not know it, his stupidityequalled what now appears to be heartless indifference. So far as tosecure pardon for all except the leader and one faithful follower, Colonel Rudler of the famous Phalanx, Salmon did use his authority, andhe offered, if Walker would ask as an American citizen, to intercede forhim. But Walker, with a distinct sense of loyalty to the country he hadconquered, and whose people had honored him with their votes, refused toaccept life from the country of his birth, the country that had injuredand repudiated him. 

Even in his extremity, abandoned and alone on a strip of glaring coraland noisome swamp land, surrounded only by his enemies, he remained trueto his ideal. 

At thirty-seven life is very sweet, many things still seem possible, andbefore him, could his life be spared, Walker beheld greater conquests, more power, a new South controlling a Nicaragua canal, a network ofbusy railroads, great squadrons of merchant vessels, himself emperor ofCentral America. On the gunboat the gold-braided youth had but to raisehis hand, and Walker again would be a free man. But the gold-braided onewould render this service only on the condition that Walker would appealto 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 hisexecutioners in Spanish, simply and gravely: "I die a Roman Catholic. In making war upon you at the invitation of the people of Ruatan Iwas wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept my punishment withresignation. I would like to think my death will be for the good ofsociety. "

From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers fired at him, but, although each shot took effect, Walker was not dead. So, a sergeantstooped, and with a pistol killed the man who would have made him one ofan empire of slaves. 

Had Walker lived four years longer to exhibit upon the great board ofthe Civil War his ability as a general, he would, I believe, to-day beranked as one of America's greatest fighting men. 

And because the people of his own day destroyed him is no reason that weshould withhold from this American, the greatest of all filibusters, therecognition of his genius. 

MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS

AMONG the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories have been told in this bookwere men who are no longer living, men who, to the United States, arestrangers, and men who were of interest chiefly because in what theyattempted they failed. 

The subject of this article is none of these. His adventures are asremarkable as any that ever led a small boy to dig behind the barn forburied treasure, or stalk Indians in the orchard. But entirely apartfrom his adventures he obtains our interest because in what he hasattempted he has not failed, because he is one of our own people, one ofthe earliest and best types of American, and because, so far from beingdead and buried, he is at this moment very much alive, and engaged inMexico in searching for a buried city. For exercise, he is alternatelychasing, or being chased by, Yaqui Indians. 

In his home in Pasadena, Cal. , where sometimes he rests quietly foralmost a week at a time, the neighbors know him as "Fred" Burnham. InEngland the newspapers crowned him "The King of Scouts. " Later, when hewon an official title, they called him "Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D. S. O. "

Some men are born scouts, others by training become scouts. From hisfather Burnham inherited his instinct for wood-craft, and to thisinstinct, 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 hastrained himself to endure the most appalling fatigues, hunger, thirst, and wounds; has subdued the brain to infinite patience, has learned toforce every nerve in his body to absolute obedience, to still even thebeating of his heart. Indeed, than Burnham no man of my acquaintance tomy knowledge has devoted himself to his life's work more earnestly, morehonestly, and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To him scoutingis as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result thatto-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 youread your morning paper. To him a movement of his horse's ears is asplain a warning as the "Go SLOW" of an automobile sign; and he so savesfrom ambush an entire troop. In the glitter of a piece of quartz in thefirelight he discovers King Solomon's mines. Like the horned cattle, hecan 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, hedistinguishes the muzzle of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the levelled barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock Holmes of allout-of-doors. 

Besides being a scout, he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, andexplorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as ayounger 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 tothe hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, greatand wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa and Mexicoas large as the State of New York. As an explorer in the last few yearsin the course of his expeditions into undiscovered lands, he has addedto this little world many thousands of square miles. 

Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of fiction, and of the WildWest Show, as it is possible for a man to be. He possesses no flowinglocks, his talk is not of "greasers, " "grizzly b'ars, " or "peskyredskins. " In fact, because he is more widely and more thoroughlyinformed, he is much better educated than many who have passed throughone of the "Big Three" universities, and his English is as conventionalas though he had been brought up on the borders of Boston Common, ratherthan on the borders of civilization. 

In appearance he is slight, muscular, bronzed; with a finely formedsquare jaw, and remarkable light blue eyes. These eyes apparently neverleave yours, but in reality they see everything behind you and aboutyou, above and below you. They tell of him that one day, while out witha 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 abloodhound, and pointing out a trail that led back over the way theforce had just marched. When the commanding officer rode up, Burnhamsaid:

"Don't raise your head, sit. On that kopje to the right there is acommando 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 beentrained, the pupils, as in the eyes of animals that see in the dark, are extremely small. Even in the photographs that accompany this articlethis feature of his eyes is obvious, and that he can see in the darkthe Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In manner he is quiet, courteous, talking slowly but well, and, while without any of thatshyness that comes from self-consciousness, extremely modest. Indeed, there could be no better proof of his modesty than the difficulties Ihave encountered in gathering material for this article, which I havebeen five years in collecting. And even now, as he reads it by hiscamp-fire, I can see him squirm with embarrassment. 

Burnham's father was a pioneer missionary in a frontier hamlet calledTivoli 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 waswonderfully skilled in wood-craft. Burnham's mother was a Miss RebeccaRussell of a well-known family in Iowa. She was a woman of greatcourage, which, in those days on that skirmish line of civilization, was a very necessary virtue; and she was possessed of a most gentle andsweet disposition. That was her gift to her son Fred, who was born onMay 11, 1861. 

His education as a child consisted in memorizing many verses of theBible, the "Three R's, " and wood-craft. His childhood was strenuous. Inhis mother's arms he saw the burning of the town of New Ulm, which wasthe funeral pyre for the women and children of that place when they weremassacred 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 shetried to carry him farther they both would be overtaken, she hid himunder a shock of corn. There, the next morning, the Indians having beendriven off, she found her son sleeping as soundly as a night watchman. In these Indian wars, and the Civil War which followed, of the familiesof Burnham and Russell, twenty-two of the men were killed. There is noquestion 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 andboy there was poverty, hard and grinding. To relieve this young Burnhamacted as a mounted messenger. Often he was in the saddle from twelve tofifteen hours, and even in a land where every one rode well, he gainedlocal 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 momentFred refused to go with them, and chose to make his own way. He was thenthirteen 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. ButBurnham, having turned his back on the cities, did not repent. Hewandered 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 aliking to the boy; and his influence upon him was marked and for hisgood. He was an educated man, and had carried into the wilderness a fewbooks. In the cabin of this man Burnham read "The Conquest of Mexicoand Peru" by Prescott, the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, ofLivingstone the explorer, which first set his thoughts toward Africa, and many technical works on the strategy and tactics of war. He had noexperience of military operations on a large scale, but, with the aid ofthe veteran of the Mexican War, with corn-cobs in the sand in front ofthe cabin door, he constructed forts and made trenches, redoubts, and traverses. In Burnham's life this seems to have been a very happyperiod. The big game he hunted and killed he sold for a few dollars tothe men of Nadean's freight outfits, which in those days hauled bullionfrom Cerro Gordo for the man who is now Senator Jones of Nevada. 

At nineteen Burnham decided that there were things in this world heshould 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 apparentlywas not a success. The atmosphere of the town in which he went to schoolwas strictly Puritanical, and the townspeople much given to religiousdiscussion. The son of the pioneer missionary found himself unable tosubscribe to the formulas which to the others seemed so essential, andhe returned to the West with the most bitter feelings, which lasteduntil he was twenty-one. 

"It seems strange now, " he once said to me, "but in those timesreligious questions were as much a part of our daily life as to-day areautomobiles, the Standard Oil, and the insurance scandals, and when Iwent West I was in an unhappy, doubting frame of mind. The trouble wasI had no moral anchors; the old ones father had given me were gone, andthe time for acquiring new ones had not arrived. " This bitterness ofheart, or this disappointment, or whatever the state of mind was thatthe dogmas of the New England town had inspired in the boy from theprairie, made him reckless. For the life he was to lead this was not ahandicap. Even as a lad, in a land-grant war in California, he had beenunder gunfire, and for the next fifteen years he led a life of dangerand of daring; and studied in a school of experience than which, for ascout, if his life be spared, there can be none better. Burnham cameout of it a quiet, manly, gentleman. In those fifteen years he roved theWest from the Great Divide to Mexico. He fought the Apache Indians forthe possession of waterholes, he guarded bullion on stage-coaches, fordays rode in pursuit of Mexican bandits and American horse thieves, took part in county-seat fights, in rustler wars, in cattle wars; he wascowboy, 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 ascout. It was not enough that by merely living the life around him hewas being educated for it. He daily practised and rehearsed those thingswhich some day might mean to himself and others the difference betweenlife and death. To improve his sense of smell he gave up smoking, ofwhich he was extremely fond, nor, for the same reason, does he to thisday use tobacco. He accustomed himself also to go with little sleep, andto subsist on the least possible quantity of food. As a deputy-sheriffthis educated faculty of not requiring sleep aided him in many importantcaptures. Sometimes he would not strike the trail of the bandit or "badman" until the other had several days the start of him. But the endwas the same; for, while the murderer snatched a few hours' rest by thetrail, Burnham, awake and in the saddle, would be closing up the milesbetween them. 

That he is a good marksman goes without telling. At the age of eight hisfather 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 weaponeither in his left or right hand and to shoot, Indian fashion, hangingby one leg from his pony and using it as a cover, and to turn in thesaddle and shoot behind him. I once asked him if he really could shootto 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 tohim to make him decide my pony's so much faster than his that it reallyisn't worth while to follow me. "

Besides perfecting himself in what he tolerantly calls "tricks" ofhorsemanship and marksmanship, he studied the signs of the trail, forestand prairie, as a sailing-master studies the waves and clouds. Theknowledge he gathers from inanimate objects and dumb animals seemslittle less than miraculous. And when you ask him how he knows thesethings he always gives you a reason founded on some fact or habit ofnature that shows him to be a naturalist, mineralogist, geologist, andbotanist, and not merely a seventh son of a seventh son. 

In South Africa he would say to the officers: "There are a dozen Boersfive miles ahead of us riding Basuto ponies at a trot, and leading fiveothers. If we hurry we should be able to sight them in an hour. " Atfirst the officers would smile, but not after a half-hour's gallop, whenthey would see ahead of them a dozen Boers leading five ponies. In theearly 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 havebeen 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 "laya hand on the bridle rein, " as is witnessed by the fact that for nineyears 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, andin every part of South Africa shared her husband's life of travel anddanger. 

In making this move across the sea, Burnham's original idea was to lookfor gold in the territory owned by the German East African Company. Butas in Rhodesia the first Matabele uprising had broken out, he continuedon down the coast, and volunteered for that campaign. This was the realbeginning of his fortunes. The "war" was not unlike the Indian fightingof his early days, and although the country was new to him, withthe kind of warfare then being waged between the Kaffirs under KingLobengula 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'sremarkable work as a scout at once brought him to the notice of Rhodesand Dr. Jameson, who was personally conducting the campaign. The war wastheir own private war, and to them, at such a crisis in the history oftheir settlement, a man like Burnham was invaluable. 

The chief incident of this campaign, the fame of which rang over allGreat Britain and her colonies, was the gallant but hopeless stand madeby Major Alan Wilson and his patrol of thirty-four men. It was Burnham'sattempt to save these men that made him known from Buluwayo to CapeTown. 

King Lobengula and his warriors were halted on one bank of the ShanganiRiver, and on the other Major Forbes, with a picked force of threehundred men, was coming up in pursuit. Although at the moment he didnot know it, he also was being pursued by a force of Matabeles, who weregradually surrounding him. At nightfall Major Wilson and a patrol oftwelve men, with Burnham and his brother-in-law, Ingram, acting asscouts, were ordered to make a dash into the camp of Lobengula and, ifpossible, in the confusion of their sudden attack, and under cover of aterrific thunder-storm that was raging, bring him back a prisoner. 

With the king in their hands the white men believed the rebellion wouldcollapse. To the number of three thousand the Matabeles were sleeping ina succession of camps, through which the fourteen men rode at a gallop. But in the darkness it was difficult to distinguish the trek wagon ofthe king, and by the time they found his laager the Matabeles from theother camps through which they had ridden had given the alarm. Throughthe underbrush from every side the enemy, armed with assegai andelephant guns, charged toward them and spread out to cut off theirretreat. 

At a distance of about seven hundred yards from the camps there wasa giant ant-hill, and the patrol rode toward it. By the aid of thelightning flashes they made their way through a dripping wood and oversoil which the rain had turned into thick black mud. When the partydrew rein at the ant-hill it was found that of the fourteen three weremissing. As the official scout of the patrol and the only one who couldsee in the dark, Wilson ordered Burnham back to find them. Burnham saidhe could do so only by feeling the hoof-prints in the mud and that hewould like some one with him to lead his pony. Wilson said he would leadit. With his fingers Burnham followed the trail of the eleven horses towhere, at right angles, the hoof-prints of the three others separatedfrom it, and so came upon the three men. Still, with nothing but the mudof the jungle to guide him, he brought them back to their comrades. Itwas this feat that established his reputation among British, Boers, andblack men in South Africa. 

Throughout the night the men of the patrol lay in the mud holding thereins of their horses. In the jungle about them, they could hear theenemy splashing through the mud, and the swishing sound of the branchesas they swept back into place. It was still raining. Just beforethe dawn there came the sounds of voices and the welcome clatter ofaccoutrements. The men of the patrol, believing the column had joinedthem, sprang up rejoicing, but it was only a second patrol, underCaptain Borrow, who had been sent forward with twenty men asre-enforcements. They had come in time to share in a gloriousimmortality. No sooner had these men joined than the Kaffirs began theattack; and the white men at once learned that they were trapped in acomplete circle of the enemy. Hidden by the trees, the Kaffirs firedpoint-blank, and in a very little time half of Wilson's force waskilled or wounded. As the horses were shot down the men used them forbreastworks. There was no other shelter. Wilson called Burnham to himand told him he must try and get through the lines of the enemy toForbes. 

"Tell him to come up at once, " he said; "we are nearly finished. " Hedetailed a trooper named Gooding and Ingram to accompany Burnham. "One of you may get through, " he said. Gooding was but lately out fromLondon, 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 themwith their spears. In five minutes they were being fired at from everybush. Then followed a remarkable ride, in which Burnham called to hisaid all he had learned in thirty years of border warfare. As the enemyrushed after them, the three doubled on their tracks, rode in tripleloops, hid in dongas to breathe their horses; and to scatter theirpursuers, separated, joined again, and again separated. The enemyfollowed them to the very bank of the river, where, finding the "drift"covered with the swollen waters, they were forced to swim. They reachedthe other bank only to find Forbes hotly engaged with another force ofthe Matabeles. 

"I have been sent for re-enforcements, " Burnham said to Forbes, "but Ibelieve we are the only survivors of that party. " Forbes himself was toohard pressed to give help to Wilson, and Burnham, his errand over, tookhis place in the column, and began firing upon the new enemy. 

Six weeks later the bodies of Wilson's patrol were found lying in acircle. Each of them had been shot many times. A son of Lobengula, whowitnessed their extermination, and who in Buluwayo had often heard theEnglishmen sing their national anthem, told how the five men who werethe last to die stood up and, swinging their hats defiantly, sang "GodSave the Queen. " The incident will long be recorded in song and story;and in London was reproduced in two theatres, in each of which theman who played "Burnham, the American Scout, " as he rode off forre-enforcements, was as loudly cheered by those in the audience as bythose on the stage. 

Hensman, in his "History of Rhodesia, " says: "One hardly knows which tomost admire, the men who went on this dangerous errand, through brushswarming with natives, or those who remained behind battling againstoverwhelming odds. "

For his help in this war the Chartered Company presented Burnham withthe 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 squareacres. 

After this campaign Burnham led an expedition of ten white men andseventy Kaffirs north of the Zambesi River to explore Barotzelandand other regions to the north of Mashonaland, and to establish theboundaries of the concession given him, Ingram, and Clifford. 

In order to protect Burnham on the march the Chartered Company signeda treaty with the native king of the country through which he wishedto travel, by which the king gave him permission to pass freely andguaranteed him against attack. 

But Latea, the son of the king, refused to recognize the treaty and senthis young men in great numbers to surround Burnham's camp. Burnham hadbeen instructed to avoid a fight, and was torn between his desire toobey the Chartered Company and to prevent a massacre. He decided to makeit 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 whatoccurred, he slipped through the lines of Latea's men, and, kickingdown the fence around the prince's hut, suddenly appeared before him andcovered him with his rifle. 

"Is it peace or war?" Burnham asked. "I have the king your father'sguarantee of protection, but your men surround us. I have told my peopleif they hear shots to open fire. We may all be killed, but you will bethe first to die. "

The missionary also spoke urging Latea to abide by the treaty. Burnhamsays the prince seemed much more impressed by the arguments of themissionary than by the fact that he still was covered by Burnham'srifle. Whichever argument moved him, he called off his warriors. Onthis expedition Burnham discovered the ruins of great granite structuresfifteen feet wide, and made entirely without mortar. They were of aperiod dating before the Phoenicians. He also sought out the ruinsdescribed to him by F. C. Selous, the famous hunter, and by RiderHaggard as King Solomon's Mines. Much to the delight of Mr. Haggard, he brought back for him from the mines of his imagination real goldornaments and a real gold bar. 

On this same expedition, which lasted five months, Burnham endured oneof the severest hardships of his life. Alone with ten Kaffir boys, hestarted on a week's journey across the dried-up basin of what once hadbeen a great lake. Water was carried in goat-skins on the heads of thebearers. The boys, finding the bags an unwieldy burden, and believing, with the happy optimism of their race, that Burnham's warnings wereneedless, and that at a stream they soon could refill the bags, emptiedthe water on the ground. 

The tortures that followed this wanton waste were terrible. Five ofthe boys died, and after several days, when Burnham found water inabundance, the tongues of the others were so swollen that their jawscould not meet. 

On this trip Burnham passed through a region ravaged by the "sleepingsickness, " where his nostrils were never free from the stench of deadbodies, where in some of the villages, as he expressed it, "the hyenaswere mangy with overeating, and the buzzards so gorged they couldnot move out of our way. " From this expedition he brought back manyornaments of gold manufactured before the Christian era, and madeseveral valuable maps of hitherto uncharted regions. It was inrecognition of the information gathered by him on this trip that he waselected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. 

He returned to Rhodesia in time to take part in the second Matabelerebellion. This was in 1896. By now Burnham was a very prominentmember of the "vortrekers" and pioneers at Buluwayo, and Sir FrederickCarrington, 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 nothandle it, imperial troops were sent to assist them. But with even theiraid 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 theexpenses of the investigation which followed the Jameson raid. 

Accordingly, Carrington looked about for some measure by which he couldbring the war to an immediate end. 

It was suggested to him by a young Colonial, named Armstrong, theCommissioner of the district, that this could be done by destroyingthe "god, " or high priest, Umlimo, who was the chief inspiration of therebellion. 

This high priest had incited the rebels to a general massacre of womenand children, and had given them confidence by promising to strike thewhite soldiers blind and to turn their bullets into water. Armstronghad discovered the secret hiding-place of Umlimo, and Carrington orderedBurnham to penetrate the enemy's lines, find the god, capture him, andif that were not possible to destroy him. 

The adventure was a most desperate one. Umlimo was secreted in a caveon the top of a huge kopje. At the base of this was a village where weregathered two regiments, of a thousand men each, of his fighting men. 

For miles around this village the country was patrolled by roving bandsof the enemy. 

Against a white man reaching the cave and returning, the chances were ahundred to one, and the difficulties of the journey are illustrated bythe fact that Burnham and Armstrong were unable to move faster than atthe rate of a mile an hour. In making the last mile they consumed threehours. When they reached the base of the kopje in which Umlimo washiding, they concealed their ponies in a clump of bushes, and on handsand knees began the ascent. 

Directly below them lay the village, so close that they could smell theodors 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 asmotionless as the granite bowlders around or squirmed and crawled overloose stones which a miss of hand or knee would have dislodged and sentclattering into the village. After an hour of this tortuous climbingthe cave suddenly opened before them, and they beheld Umlimo. Burnham recognized that to take him alive from his stronghold was animpossibility, and that even they themselves would leave the place wasequally doubtful. So, obeying orders, he fired, killing the man who hadboasted he would turn the bullets of his enemies into water. The echo ofthe 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 greatshout of anger told them they were discovered. At the same moment twowomen, returning from a stream where they had gone for water, saw theponies, and ran screaming to give the alarm. The race that followedlasted two hours, for so quickly did the Kaffirs spread out on everyside that it was impossible for Burnham to gain ground in any onedirection, and he was forced to dodge, turn, and double. At one timethe white men were driven back to the very kopje from which the race hadstarted. 

But in the end they evaded assegai and gunfire, and in safety reachedBuluwayo. This exploit was one of the chief factors in bringing the warto a close. The Matabeles, finding their leader was only a mortal likethemselves, and so could not, as he had promised, bring miracles totheir aid, lost heart, and when Cecil Rhodes in person made overtures ofpeace, his terms were accepted. During the hard days of the siege, whenrations were few and bad, Burnham's little girl, who had been the firstwhite child born in Buluwayo, died of fever and lack of properfood. This with other causes led him to leave Rhodesia and return toCalifornia. It is possible he then thought he had forever turnedhis back on South Africa, but, though he himself had departed, theimpression he had made there remained behind him. 

Burnham did not rest long in California. In Alaska the hunt for gold hadjust begun, and, the old restlessness seizing him, he left Pasadena andher blue skies, tropical plants, and trolley-car strikes for the new rawland of the Klondike. With Burnham it has always been the place that isbeing made, not the place in being, that attracts. He has helped to makestraight the ways of several great communities--Arizona, California, Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda. As he once said: "It is the constructiveside of frontier life that most appeals to me, the building up of acountry, 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, coveringsix hundred miles. In mining in Alaska he succeeded well, but againstthe country he holds a constant grudge, because it kept him out of thefight with Spain. When war was declared he was in the wilds and knewnothing of it, and though on his return to civilization he telegraphedColonel Roosevelt volunteering for the Rough Riders, and at once startedsouth, by the time he had reached Seattle the war was over. 

Several times has he spoken to me of how bitterly he regretted missingthis chance to officially fight for his country. That he had twiceserved with English forces made him the more keen to show his loyalty tohis own people. 

That he would have been given a commission in the Rough Riders seemsevident from the opinion President Roosevelt has publicly expressed ofhim. 

"I know Burnham, " the President wrote in 1901. "He is a scout and ahunter 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 militaryservice 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 beensix months in Skagway. In that same month Lord Roberts sailed forCape Town to take command of the army, and with him on his staff wasBurnham's former commander, Sir Frederick, now Lord, Carrington. Onenight as the ship was in the Bay of Biscay, Carrington was talking ofBurnham 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 theposition, created especially for him, of chief of scouts of the Britisharmy in the field. 

Probably never before in the history of wars has one nation paid sopleasant 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 twohours and a half before the steamer was listed to start on her returntrip, 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 belongingson board the steamer, and had started on his half-around-the-worldjourney from Alaska to Cape Town. 

A Skagway paper of January 5, 1900, published the day after Burnhamsailed, throws a side light on his character. After telling of his hastydeparture the day before, and of the high compliment that had been paidto "a prominent Skagwayan, " it adds: "Although Mr. Burnham has lived inSkagway since last August, and has been North for many months, he hassaid little of his past, and few have known that he is the man famousover the world as 'the American scout' of the Matabele wars. "

Many a man who went to the Klondike did not, for reasons best known tohimself, talk about his past. But it is characteristic of Burnham that, though he lived there two years, his associates did not know, until theBritish Government snatched him from among them, that he had not alwaysbeen a prospector like themselves. 

I was on the same ship that carried Burnham the latter half of hisjourney, from Southampton to Cape Town, and every night for seventeennights was one of a group of men who shot questions at him. And it wasinteresting to see a fellow-countryman one had heard praised so highlyso completely make good. It was not as though he had a credulousaudience of commercial tourists. Among the officers who each eveninggathered around him were Colonel Gallilet of the Egyptian cavalry, Captain Frazer commanding the Scotch Gillies, Captain Mackie of LordRoberts's staff, each of whom was later killed in action; Colonel SirCharles Hunter of the Royal Rifles, Major Bagot, Major Lord Dudley, andCaptain Lord Valentia. Each of these had either held command in borderfights in India or the Sudan or had hunted big game, and the questionseach asked were the outcome of his own experience and observation. 

Not for a single evening could a faker have submitted to the midnightexamination through which they put Burnham and not have exposed hisignorance. They wanted to know what difference there is in a column ofdust raised by cavalry and by trek wagons, how to tell whether a horsethat has passed was going at a trot or a gallop, the way to throw adiamond hitch, how to make a fire without at the same time making atarget of yourself, how--why--what--and how?

And what made us most admire Burnham was that when he did not know he atonce said so. 

Within two nights he had us so absolutely at his mercy that we wouldhave followed him anywhere; anything he chose to tell us, we would haveaccepted. We were ready to believe in flying foxes, flying squirrels, that wild turkeys dance quadrilles--even that you must never sleep inthe moonlight. Had he demanded: "Do you believe in vampires?" we wouldhave shouted "Yes. " To ask that a scout should on an ocean steamer provehis ability was certainly placing him under a severe handicap. 

As one of the British officers said: "It's about as fair a game asthough we planted the captain of this ship in the Sahara Desert, andtold him to prove he could run a ten-thousand-ton liner. "

Burnham continued with Lord Roberts to the fall of Pretoria, when he wasinvalided home. 

During the advance north he was a hundred times inside the Boer laagers, keeping Headquarters Staff daily informed of the enemy's movements; wastwice captured and twice escaped. 

He was first captured while trying to warn the British from the fataldrift at Thaba'nchu. When reconnoitring alone in the morning mist hecame upon the Boers hiding on the banks of the river, toward which theEnglish were even then advancing. The Boers were moving all about him, and cut him off from his own side. He had to choose between abandoningthe English to the trap or signalling to them, and so exposing himselfto capture. With the red kerchief the scouts carried for that purpose hewigwagged to the approaching soldiers to turn back, that the enemy wereawaiting them. But the column, which was without an advance guard, paidno attention to his signals and plodded steadily on into the ambush, while Burnham was at once made prisoner. In the fight that followed hepretended to receive a wound in the knee and bound it so elaboratelythat not even a surgeon would have disturbed the carefully arrangedbandages. Limping heavily and groaning with pain, he was placed ina trek wagon with the officers who really were wounded, and who, inconsequence, were not closely guarded. Burnham told them who he was and, as he intended to escape, offered to take back to head-quarters theirnames or any messages they might wish to send to their people. Astwenty yards behind the wagon in which they lay was a mounted guard, theofficers told him escape was impossible. He proved otherwise. The trekwagon was drawn by sixteen oxen and driven by a Kaffir boy. Later in theevening, but while it still was moonlight, the boy descended from hisseat and ran forward to belabor the first spans of oxen. This was theopportunity 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 helowered himself and fell between the legs of the oxen on his back in theroad. In an instant the body of the wagon had passed over him, and whilethe dust still hung above the trail he rolled rapidly over into theditch 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 subsistedon one biscuit and two handfuls of "mealies, " or what we call Indiancorn. 

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 andthe Cape boy dare to crawl out to breathe fresh air and to eat the foodtablets they carried in their pockets. On five occasions was Burnhamsent into the Boer lines with dynamite cartridges to blow up therailroad over which the enemy was receiving supplies and ammunition. Oneof these expeditions nearly ended his life. 

On June 2, 1901, while trying by night to blow up the line betweenPretoria and Delagoa Bay, he was surrounded by a party of Boers andcould save himself only by instant flight. He threw himself Indianfashion along the back of his pony, and had all but got away when abullet caught the horse and, without even faltering in its stride, itcrashed to the ground dead, crushing Burnham beneath it and knocking himsenseless. He continued unconscious for twenty-four hours, and when hecame to, both friends and foes had departed. Bent upon carrying out hisorders, although suffering the most acute agony, he crept back to therailroad and destroyed it. Knowing the explosion would soon bring theBoers, on his hands and knees he crept to an empty kraal, where fortwo days and nights he lay insensible. At the end of that time heappreciated that he was sinking and that unless he found aid he woulddie. 

Accordingly, still on his hands and knees, he set forth toward the soundof distant firing. He was indifferent as to whether it came from theenemy or his own people, but, as it chanced, he was picked up by apatrol of General Dickson's Brigade, who carried him to Pretoria. Therethe surgeons discovered that in his fall he had torn apart the musclesof the stomach and burst a blood-vessel. That his life was saved, sothey informed him, was due only to the fact that for three days he hadbeen without food. Had he attempted to digest the least particle of the"staff of life" he would have surely died. His injuries were so seriousthat he was ordered home. 

On leaving the army he was given such hearty thanks and generous rewardsas no other American ever received from the British War Office. He waspromoted to the rank of major, presented with a large sum of money, andfrom Lord Roberts received a personal letter of thanks and appreciation. 

In part the Field-Marshal wrote: "I doubt if any other man in the forcecould have successfully carried out the thrilling enterprises in whichfrom time to time you have been engaged, demanding as they did thetraining of a lifetime, combined with exceptional courage, caution, andpowers of endurance. " On his arrival in England he was commanded to dinewith the Queen and spend the night at Osborne, and a few months later, after her death, King Edward created him a member of the DistinguishedService Order, and personally presented him with the South Africanmedal with five bars, and the cross of the D. S. O. While recoveringhis health Burnham, with Mrs. Burnham, was "passed on" by friends he hadmade in the army from country house to country house; he was made theguest of honor at city banquets, with the Duke of Rutland rode after theBelvoir hounds, and in Scotland made mild excursions after grouse. Butafter six months of convalescence he was off again, this time to thehinterland of Ashanti, on the west coast of Africa, where he went in theinterests of a syndicate to investigate a concession for working goldmines. 

With his brother-in-law, J. C. Blick, he marched and rowed twelvehundred miles, and explored the Volta River, at that date so littlevisited that in one day's journey they counted eleven hippopotamuses. InJuly, 1901, he returned from Ashanti, and a few months later an unknownbut enthusiastic admirer asked in the House of Commons if it weretrue Major Burnham had applied for the post of Instructor of Scouts atAldershot. There is no such post, and Burnham had not applied forany other post. To the Timer he wrote: "I never have thought myselfcompetent to teach Britons how to fight, or to act as an instructorwith officers who have fought in every corner of the world. The questionasked in Parliament was entirely without my knowledge, and I deeplyregret that it was asked. " A few months later, with Mrs. Burnham and hisyounger son, Bruce, he journeyed to East Africa as director of the EastAfrican Syndicate. 

During his stay there the _African Review_ said of him: "Should EastAfrica ever become a possession for England to be proud of, she will owemuch of her prosperity to the brave little band that has faced hardshipsand dangers in discovering her hidden resources. Major Burnham haschosen men from England, Ireland, the United States, and South Africafor sterling qualities, and they have justified his choice. Not theleast 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 notbe found in the five continents. "

Burnham explored a tract of land larger than Germany, penetrating athousand miles through a country, never before visited by white men, to the borders of the Congo Basin. With him he had twenty white men andfive hundred natives. The most interesting result of the expeditionwas the discovery of a lake forty-nine miles square, composed almostentirely of pure carbonate of soda, forming a snowlike crust so thickthat on it the men could cross the lake. 

It is the largest, and when the railroad is built--the Uganda Railroadis now only eighty-eight miles distant--it will be the most valuabledeposit of carbonate of soda ever found. 

A year ago, in the interests of John Hays Hammond, the distinguishedmining engineer of South Africa and this country, Burnham went toSonora, Mexico, to find a buried city and to open up mines of copper andsilver. 

Besides seeking for mines, Hammond and Burnham, with Gardner Williams, another American who also made his fortune in South Africa, are workingtogether on a scheme to import to this country at their own expense manyspecies of South African deer. 

The South African deer is a hardy animal and can live where the Americandeer cannot, and the idea in importing him is to prevent big game inthis country from passing away. They have asked Congress to set asidefor these animals a portion of the forest reserve. Already Congress hasvoted toward the plan $15, 000, and President Roosevelt is one of itsmost enthusiastic supporters. 

We cannot leave Burnham in better hands than those of Hammond andGardner Williams. Than these three men the United States has not sent toBritish 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 realambassadors of their country. 

The last I learned of Burnham is told in the snapshot of him whichaccompanies this article, and which shows him, barefoot, in the YaquiRiver, where he has gone, perhaps, to conceal his trail from theIndians. It came a month ago in a letter which said briefly that whenthe picture was snapped the expedition was "trying to cool off. " Therehis narrative ended. Promising as it does adventures still to come, itseems a good place in which to leave him. 

Meanwhile, you may think of Mrs. Burnham after a year in Mexico keepingthe house open for her husband's return to Pasadena, and of their firstson, Roderick, studying woodcraft with his father, forestry with GiffordPinchot, and playing right guard on the freshman team at the Universityof 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 notworry about him. We know they will not catch him.