REAL SOLDIERS 
 OF FORTUNE
 
 Burnham and Commissioner Armstrong escaping alter shooting the 
 High-Priest Umlimo
 
 REAL SOLDIERS 
 
 OF FORTUNE 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::::::i 9 n
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 nun 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY RONALD DOUGLAS 
 
 MAC!VER i 
 
 BARON JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY 33 
 
 WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 75 
 
 CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGiFFiN .... 119 
 
 GENERAL WILLIAM WALKER, THE KING OF THE 
 
 FILIBUSTERS 145 
 
 MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS .... 189
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Burnham and Commissioner Armstrong escaping after 
 
 shooting the High-Priest Umlimo . . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Major-General Henry Ronald Douglas Maclver as he 
 is to-day 24 
 
 Baron Harden-Hickey, King James I. of Trinidad . 48 
 
 Winston Churchill in the uniform of Lieutenant of 
 
 South African Light Horse 96 
 
 McGiffin as Superintendent of the Chinese Naval 
 
 College, at the age of thirty-two 128 
 
 Commander McGiffin in hospital after the Battle of 
 the Yalu, showing damage to clothes due to con- 
 cussion 142 
 
 General William Walker 160 
 
 Major F. R. Burnham taken on the day the King 
 
 decorated him with the D. S. 224
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY 
 
 RONALD DOUGLAS 
 
 MACIVER
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY RONALD 
 DOUGLAS MACIVER 
 
 A^Y sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, or at 
 night in the table d'hote restaurants of Uni- 
 versity Place, you may meet the soldier of fortune 
 who of all his brothers in arms now living is the 
 most remarkable. You may have noticed him; a 
 stiffly erect, distinguished-looking man, with gray 
 hair, an imperial of the fashion of Louis Napoleon, 
 fierce blue eyes, and across his forehead a sabre 
 cut. 
 
 This is Henry Ronald Douglas Maclver, for 
 some time in India an ensign in the Sepoy mutiny; 
 in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; in Spain, 
 captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, 
 major in the Confederate army; in Mexico, lieu- 
 tenant-colonel under the Emperor Maximilian; 
 colonel under Napoleon III, inspector of cavalry 
 for the Khedive of Egypt, and chief of cavalry and 
 general of brigade of the army of King Milan of 
 Servia. These are only a few of his military titles. 
 In 1884 was published a book giving the story of 
 his life up to that year. It was called "Under 
 
 3
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 Fourteen Flags." If to-day General Maclver 
 were to reprint the book, it would be called "Under 
 Eighteen Flags." 
 
 Maclver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, 
 at sea, a league off the shore of Virginia. His 
 mother was Miss Anna Douglas of that State; 
 Ronald Maclver, his father, was a Scot, a Ross- 
 shire gentleman, a younger son of the chief of the 
 Clan Maclver. Until he was ten years old young 
 Maclver played in Virginia at the home of his 
 father. Then, in order that he might be educated, 
 he was shipped to Edinburgh to an uncle, Gen- 
 eral Donald Graham. After five years his uncle 
 obtained for him a commission as ensign in the 
 Honorable East India Company, and at sixteen, 
 when other boys are preparing for college, Mac- 
 lver was in the Indian Mutiny, fighting, not for a 
 flag, nor a country, but as one fights a wild animal, 
 for his life. He was wounded in the arm, and, 
 with a sword, cut over the head. As a safeguard 
 against the sun the boy had placed inside his hel- 
 met a wet towel. This saved him to fight another 
 day, but even with that protection the sword sank 
 through the helmet, the towel, and into the skull. 
 To-day you can see the scar. He was left in the 
 road for dead, and even after his wounds had 
 healed, was six weeks in the hospital. 
 
 4
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 This rough handling at the very start might have 
 satisfied some men, but in the very next war 
 Maclver was a volunteer and wore the red shirt of 
 Garibaldi. He remained at the front throughout 
 that campaign, and until within a few years there 
 has been no campaign of consequence in which he 
 has not taken part. He served in the Ten Years' 
 War in Cuba, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Crete, in 
 Greece', twice in Spain in Carlist revolutions, in 
 Bosnia, and for four years in our Civil War under 
 Generals Jackson and Stuart around Richmond. 
 In this great war he was four times wounded. 
 
 It was after the surrender of the Confederate 
 army, that, with other Southern officers, he served 
 under Maximilian in Mexico; in Egypt, and in 
 France. Whenever in any part of the world there 
 was fighting, or the rumor of fighting, the proced- 
 ure of the general invariably was the same. He 
 would order himself to instantly depart for the 
 front, and on arriving there would offer to organ- 
 ize a foreign legion. The command of this or- 
 ganization always was given to him. But the for- 
 eign legion was merely the entering wedge. He 
 would soon show that he was fitted for a better 
 command than a band of undisciplined volun- 
 teers, and would receive a commission in the regu- 
 lar army. In almost every command in which he 
 
 5
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 served that is the manner in which promotion 
 came. Sometimes he saw but little fighting, 
 sometimes he should have died several deaths, 
 each of a nature more unpleasant than the others. 
 For in war the obvious danger of a bullet is but a 
 three hundred to one shot, while in the pack 
 against the combatant the jokers are innumer- 
 able. And in the career of the general the un- 
 foreseen adventures are the most interesting. A 
 man who in eighteen campaigns has played his part 
 would seem to have earned exemption from any 
 other risks, but often it was outside the battle-field 
 that Maclver encountered the greatest danger. 
 He fought several duels, in two of which he killed 
 his adversary; several attempts were made to 
 assassinate him, and while on his way to Mexico 
 he was captured by hostile Indians. On returning 
 from an expedition in Cuba he was cast adrift in 
 an open boat and for days was without food. 
 
 Long before I met General Maclver I had 
 read his book and had heard of him from many 
 men who had met him in many different lands 
 while engaged in as many different undertakings. 
 Several of the older war correspondents knew him 
 intimately; Bennett Burleigh of the Telegraph 
 was his friend, and E. F. Knight of the Times was 
 one of those who volunteered for a filibustering 
 
 6
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 expedition which Maclver organized against New 
 Guinea. The late Colonel Ochiltree of Texas told 
 me tales of Maclver's bravery, when as young 
 men they were fellow officers in the Southern 
 army, and Stephen Bonsai had met him when 
 Maclver was United States Consul at Denia in 
 Spain. When Mclver arrived at this post, the 
 ex-consul refused to vacate the Consulate, and 
 Maclver wished to settle the difficulty with duel- 
 ling pistols. As Denia is a small place, the inhabi- 
 tants feared for their safety, and Bonsai, who was 
 our charge d'affaires then, was sent from Madrid 
 to adjust matters. Without bloodshed he got rid 
 of the ex-consul, and later Maclver so endeared 
 himself to the Denians that they begged the State 
 Department to retain him in that place for the 
 remainder of his life. 
 
 Before General Maclver was appointed to a 
 high position at the St. Louis Fair, I saw much of 
 him in New York. His room was in a side street 
 in an old-fashioned boarding-house, and over- 
 looked his neighbor's back yard and a typical 
 New York City sumac tree; but when the general 
 talked one forgot he was within a block of the 
 Elevated, and roamed over all the world. On his 
 bed he would spread out wonderful parchments, 
 with strange, heathenish inscriptions, with great 
 
 7
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 seals, with faded ribbons. These were signed by 
 Sultans, Secretaries of War, Emperors, filibusters. 
 They were military commissions, titles of nobility, 
 brevets for decorations, instructions and com- 
 mands from superior officers. Translated the 
 phrases ran: "Imposing special confidence in," 
 "we appoint," or "create," or "declare," or 
 " In recognition of services rendered to our person," 
 or "country," or "cause," or "For bravery on the 
 field of battle we bestow the Cross 
 
 As must a soldier, the general travels "light," 
 and all his worldly possessions were crowded 
 ready for mobilization into a small compass. He 
 had his sword, his field blanket, his trunk, and the 
 tin despatch boxes that held his papers. From 
 these, like a conjurer, he would draw souvenirs of 
 all the world. From the embrace of faded letters, 
 he would unfold old photographs, daguerrotypes, 
 and miniatures of fair women and adventurous 
 men: women who now are queens in exile, men 
 who, lifted on waves of absinthe, still, across a cafe 
 table, tell how they will win back a crown. 
 
 Once in a written document the general did me 
 the honor to appoint me his literary executor, but 
 as he is young, and as healthy as myself, it never 
 may be my lot to perform such an unwelcome duty. 
 And to-day all one can write of him is what the 
 
 8
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 world can read in "Under Fourteen Flags," and 
 some of the "foot-notes to history'* which I have 
 copied from his scrap-book. This scrap-book is 
 a wonderful volume, but owing to "political" 
 and other reasons, for the present, of the many 
 clippings from newspapers it contains there are 
 only a few I am at liberty to print. And from 
 them it is difficult to make a choice. To sketch 
 in a few thousand words a career that had 
 developed under Eighteen Flags is in its very 
 wealth embarrassing. 
 
 Here is one story, as told by the scrap-book, of 
 an expedition that failed. That it failed was due 
 to a British Cabinet Minister; for had Lord Derby 
 possessed the imagination of the Soldier of Fort- 
 une, his Majesty's dominions might now be the 
 richer by many thousands of square miles and 
 many thousands of black subjects. 
 
 On October 29, 1883, the following appeared 
 in the London Standard: "The New Guinea Ex- 
 ploration and Colonization Company is already 
 chartered, and the first expedition expects to leave 
 before Christmas." "The prospectus states settlers 
 intending to join the first party must contribute 
 one hundred pounds toward the company. This 
 subscription will include all expenses for passage 
 money. Six months' provisions will be provided, 
 
 9
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 together with tents and arms for protection. Each 
 subscriber of one hundred pounds is to obtain a 
 certificate entitling him to one thousand acres." 
 
 The view of the colonization scheme taken by the 
 Times of London, of the same date, is less com- 
 plaisant. "The latest commercial sensation is a 
 proposed company for the seizure of New Guinea. 
 Certain adventurous gentlemen are looking out for 
 one hundred others who have money and a taste for 
 buccaneering. When the company has been com- 
 pleted, its share-holders are to place themselves 
 under military regulations, sail in a body for New 
 Guinea, and without asking anybody's leave, 
 seize upon the island and at once, in some unspeci- 
 fied way, proceed to realize large profits. If the 
 idea does not suggest comparisons with the large 
 designs of Sir Francis Drake, it is at least not un- 
 worthy of Captain Kidd." 
 
 When we remember the manner in which some 
 of the colonies of Great Britain were acquired, the 
 Times seems almost squeamish. 
 
 In a Melbourne paper, June, 1884, is the fol- 
 lowing paragraph: 
 
 "Toward the latter part of 1883 the Government 
 of Queensland planted the flag of Great Britain 
 on the shores of New Guinea. When the news 
 reached England it created a sensation. The Earl 
 
 10
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 of Derby, Secretary for the Colonies, refused, how- 
 ever, to sanction the annexation of New Guinea, 
 and in so doing acted contrary to the sincere wish 
 of every right-thinking Anglo-Saxon under the 
 Southern Cross. 
 
 "While the subsequent correspondence between 
 the Home and Queensland governments was go- 
 ing on, Brigadier-General H. R. Maclver origi- 
 nated and organized the New Guinea Explora- 
 tion and Colonization Company in London, with 
 a view to establishing settlements on the island. 
 The company, presided over by General Beresford 
 of the British Army, and having an eminently 
 representative and influential board of directors, 
 had a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand 
 pounds, and placed the supreme command of the 
 expedition in the hands of General Maclver. 
 Notwithstanding the character of the gentlemen 
 composing the board of directors, and the truly 
 peaceful nature of the expedition, his Lordship 
 informed General Maclver that in the event of the 
 latter' s attempting to land on New Guinea, in- 
 structions would be sent to the officer in command 
 of her Majesty's fleet in the Western Pacific to fir j 
 upon the company's vessel. This meant that the 
 expedition would be dealt with as a filibustering 
 one/' 
 
 In Judy, September 21, 1887, appears: 
 
 "We all recollect the treatment received by 
 Brigadier-General Macl. in the action he took 
 
 ii
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 with respect to the annexation of New Guinea. 
 The General, who is a sort of Pizarro, with a dash 
 of D'Artagnan, was treated in a most scurvy 
 manner by Lord Derby. Had Maclver not been 
 thwarted in his enterprise, the whole of New 
 Guinea would now have been under the British 
 flag, and we should not be cheek-by-jowl with the 
 Germans, as we are in too many places." 
 
 Society, September 3, 1887, says: 
 
 "The New Guinea expedition proved abortive, 
 owing to the blundering shortsightedness of the 
 then Government, for which Lord Derby was 
 chiefly responsible, but what little foothold we 
 possess in New Guinea, is certainly due to General 
 Maclver' s gallant effort." 
 
 Copy of statement made by J. Rintoul Mitchell, 
 June 2, 1887: 
 
 "About the latter and of the year 1883, when 
 I was editor-in-chief of the Englishman in Cal- 
 cutta, I was told by Captain de Deaux, assistant 
 secretary in the Foreign Office of the Indian Gov- 
 ernment, that he had received a telegram from 
 Lord Derby to the effect that if General Maclver 
 ventured to land upon the coast of New Guinea 
 it would become the duty of Lord Ripon, Viceroy, 
 to use the naval forces at his command for the pur- 
 pose of deporting General Macl. Sir Aucland 
 
 12
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 Calvin can certify to this, as it was discussed in 
 the Viceregal Council." 
 
 Just after our Civil War Maclver was interested 
 in another expedition which also failed. Its 
 members called themselves the Knights of Arabia, 
 and their object was to colonize an island much 
 nearer to our shores than New Guinea. Mac- 
 lver, saying that his oath prevented, would never 
 tell me which island this was, but the reader can 
 choose from among Cuba, Haiti, and the Hawaiian 
 group. To have taken Cuba, the "colonizers" 
 would have had to fight not only Spain, but the 
 Cubans themselves, on whose side they were soon 
 fighting in the Ten Years' War; so Cuba may be 
 eliminated. And as the expedition was to sail 
 from the Atlantic side, and not from San Fran- 
 cisco, the island would appear to be the Black 
 Republic. From the records of the times it would 
 seem that the greater number of the Knights of 
 Arabia were veterans of the Confederate army, 
 and there is no question but that they intended to 
 subjugate the blacks of Haiti and form a republic 
 for white men in which slavery would be recog- 
 nized. As one of the leaders of this filibustering 
 expedition, Maclver was arrested by General 
 Phil Sheridan and for a short time cast into jail. 
 
 13
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 This chafed the general's spirit, but he argued 
 philosophically that imprisonment for filibuster- 
 ing, while irksome, brought with it no reproach. 
 And, indeed, sometimes the only difference between 
 a filibuster and a government lies in the fact that 
 the government fights the gun-boats of only the 
 enemy while a filibuster must dodge the boats of 
 the enemy and those of his own countrymen. 
 When the United States went to war with Spain 
 there were many men in jail as filibusters, for 
 doing that which at the time the country secretly 
 approved, and later imitated. And because they 
 attempted exactly the same thing for which Dr. 
 Jameson was imprisoned in Holloway Jail, two 
 hundred thousand of his countrymen are now 
 wearing medals. 
 
 The by-laws of the Knights of Arabia leave but 
 little doubt as to its object. 
 
 By-law No. II reads: 
 
 "We, as Knights of Arabia, pledge ourselves to 
 aid, comfort, and protect all Knights of Arabia, 
 especially those who are wounded in obtaining our 
 grand object. 
 
 "Ill Great care must be taken that no un- 
 believer or outsider shall gain any insight into the 
 mysteries or secrets of the Order. 
 
 "IV The candidate will have to pay one hun- 
 14
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 dred dollars cash to the Captain of the Company, 
 and the candidate will receive from the Secretary 
 a Knight of Arabia bond for one hundred dollars 
 in gold, with ten per cent interest, payable ninety 
 
 days after the recognition of (The Republic of ) 
 
 by the United States, or any government. 
 
 "V All Knights of Arabia will be entitled to 
 one hundred acres of land, location of said land to 
 be drawn for by lottery. The products are coffee, 
 sugar, tobacco, and cotton/' 
 
 A local correspondent of the New York Herald 
 writes of the arrest of Maclver as follows : 
 
 "When Maclver will be tried is at present un- 
 known, as his case has assumed a complicated 
 aspect. He claims British protection as a subject 
 of her British Majesty, and the English Consul has 
 forwarded a statement of his case to Sir Frederick 
 Bruce at Washington, accompanied by a copy of the 
 by-laws. General Sheridan also has forwarded a 
 statement to the Secretary of War, accompanied 
 not only by the by-laws, but very important docu- 
 ments, including letters from Jefferson Davis, Ben- 
 jamin, the Secretary of State of the Confederate 
 States, and other personages prominent in the 
 Rebellion, showing that Maclver enjoyed the 
 highest confidence of the Confederacy." 
 
 As to the last statement, an open letter I found in 
 his scrap-book is an excellent proof. It is as follows : 
 
 15
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 "To officers and members of all camps of 
 United Confederate Veterans: It affords me the 
 greatest pleasure to say that the bearer of this 
 letter, General Henry Ronald Maclver, was an 
 officer of great gallantry in the Confederate Army, 
 serving on the staff at various times of General 
 Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and E. Kirby 
 Smith, and that his official record is one of which 
 any man may be proud. 
 
 "Respectfully, MARCUS J. WRIGHT, 
 
 "Agent for the Collection of Confederate Records. 
 
 "War Records Office, War Department, Washington, July 
 8, 1895." 
 
 At the close of the war duels between officers 
 of the two armies were not infrequent. In the 
 scrap-book there is the account of one of these 
 affairs sent from Vicksburg to a Northern paper 
 by a correspondent who was an eye-witness of the 
 event. It tells how Major Maclver, accom- 
 panied by Major Gillespie, met, just outside of 
 Vicksburg, Captain Tomlin of Vermont, of the 
 United States Artillery Volunteers. The duel was 
 with swords. Maclver ran Tomlin through the 
 body. The correspondent writes: 
 
 "The Confederate officer wiped his sword on 
 his handkerchief. In a few seconds Captain Tom- 
 lin expired. One of Major Maclver' s seconds 
 
 16
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 called to him: 'He is dead; you must go. These 
 gentlemen will look after the body of their 
 friend/ A negro boy brought up the horses, but 
 before mounting Maclver said to Captain Tom- 
 lin's seconds: 'My friends are in haste for me to 
 go. Is there anything I can do ? I hope you con- 
 sider that this matter has been settled honorably ?' 
 "There being no reply, the Confederates rode 
 away." 
 
 In a newspaper of to-day so matter-of-fact an 
 acceptance of an event so tragic would make strange 
 reading. 
 
 From the South Maclver crossed through Texas 
 to join the Royalist army under the Emperor Maxi- 
 milian. It was while making his way, with other 
 Confederate officers, from Galveston to El Paso, 
 that Maclver was captured by the Indians. He 
 was not ill-treated by them, but for three months 
 was a prisoner, until one night, the Indians having 
 camped near the Rio Grande, he escaped into 
 Mexico. There he offered his sword to the Roy- 
 alist commander, General Mejia, who placed him 
 on his staff, and showed him some few skirmishes. 
 At Monterey Maclver saw big fighting, and for 
 his share in it received the title of Count, and the 
 order of Guadaloupe. In June, contrary to all 
 rules of civilized war, Maximilian was executed 
 
 17
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 and the empire was at an end. Maclver escaped 
 to the coast, and from Tampico took a sailing 
 vessel to Rio de Janeiro. Two months later he 
 was wearing the uniform of another emperor, 
 Dom Pedro, and, with the rank of lieutenant- 
 colonel, was in command of the Foreign Legion 
 of the armies of Brazil and Argentina, which at 
 that time as allies were fighting against Para- 
 guay. 
 
 Maclver soon recruited seven hundred men, 
 but only half of these ever reached the front. In 
 Buenos Ayres cholera broke out and thirty thou- 
 sand people died, among the number about half 
 the Legion. Maclver was among those who suf- 
 fered, and before he recovered was six weeks in 
 hospital. During that period, under a junior offi- 
 cer, the Foreign Legion was sent to the front, where 
 it was disbanded. 
 
 On his return to Glasgow, Maclver foregathered 
 with an old friend, Bennett Burleigh, whom he 
 had known when Burleigh was a lieutenant in the 
 navy of the Confederate States. Although to- 
 day known as a distinguished war correspondent, 
 in those days Burleigh was something of a soldier 
 of fortune himself, and was organizing an expedi- 
 tion to assist the Cretan insurgents against the 
 Turks. Between the two men it was arranged 
 
 18
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 that Maclver should precede the expedition to 
 Crete and prepare for its arrival. The Cretans 
 received him gladly, and from the provisional gov- 
 ernment he received a commission in which he 
 was given "full power to make war on land and 
 sea against the enemies of Crete, and particularly 
 against the Sultan of Turkey and the Turkish 
 forces, and to burn, destroy, or capture any vessel 
 bearing the Turkish flag." 
 
 This permission to destroy the Turkish navy 
 single-handed strikes one as more than generous, 
 for the Cretans had no navy, and before one could 
 begin the destruction of a Turkish gun-boat it was 
 first necessary to catch it and tie it to a wharf. 
 
 At the close of the Cretan insurrection Maclver 
 crossed to Athens and served against the brigands 
 in Kisissia on the borders of Albania and Thessaly 
 as volunteer aide to Colonel Corroneus, who had 
 been commander-in-chief of the Cretans against 
 the Turks. Maclver spent three months potting 
 at brigands, and for his services in the mountains 
 was recommended for the highest Greek deco- 
 ration. 
 
 From Greece it was only a step to New York, 
 and almost immediately Maclver appears as one 
 of the Goicouria-Christo expedition to Cuba, of 
 which Goicouria was commander-in-chief, and 
 
 19
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 two famous American officers, Brigadier-General 
 Samuel C. Williams was a general and Colonel 
 Wright Schumburg was chief of staff. 
 
 In the scrap-book I find "General Order No. II 
 of the Liberal Army of the Republic of Cuba, 
 issued at Cedar Keys, October 3, 1869." In it 
 Colonel Maclver is spoken of as in charge of 
 officers not attached to any organized corps of 
 the division. And again: 
 
 "General Order No. V, Expeditionary Division, 
 Republic of Cuba, on board Lilian" announces 
 that the place to which the expedition is bound has 
 been changed, and that General Wright Schum- 
 burg, who now is in command, orders "all officers 
 not otherwise commissioned to join Colonel Mac- 
 Iver's * Corps of Officers/" 
 
 The Lilian ran out of coal, and to obtain fire- 
 wood put in at Cedar Keys. For two weeks the 
 patriots cut wood and drilled upon the beach, 
 when they were captured by a British gun-boat 
 and taken to Nassau. There they were set at 
 liberty, but their arms, boat, and stores were 
 confiscated. 
 
 In a sailing vessel Maclver finally reached 
 Cuba, and under Goicouria, who had made a suc- 
 cessful landing, saw some "help yourself" fighting. 
 Goicouria's force was finally scattered, and Mac- 
 ao
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 Iver escaped from the Spanish soldiery only by 
 putting to sea in an open boat, in which he en- 
 deavored to make Jamaica. 
 
 On the third day out he was picked up by a 
 steamer and again landed at Nassau, from which 
 place he returned to New York. 
 
 At that time in this city there was a very inter- 
 esting man named Thaddeus P. Mott, who had 
 been an officer in our army and later had entered 
 the service of Ismail Pasha. By the Khedive he 
 had been appointed a general of division and had 
 received permission to reorganize the Egyptian 
 army. 
 
 His object in coming to New York was to engage 
 officers for that service. He came at an oppor- 
 tune moment. At that time the city was filled 
 with men who, in the Rebellion, on one side or the 
 other, had held command, and many of these, un- 
 fitted by four years of soldiering for any other 
 calling, readily accepted the commissions which 
 Mott had authority to offer. New York was not 
 large enough to keep Maclver and Mott long 
 apart, and they soon came to an understanding. 
 The agreement drawn up between them is a curi- 
 ous document. It is written in a neat hand on 
 sheets of foolscap tied together like a Commence- 
 ment-day address, with blue ribbon. In it Mac-
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 Iver agrees to serve as colonel of cavalry in the 
 service of the Khedive. With a few legal phrases 
 omitted, the document reads as follows: 
 
 " Agreement entered into this 24th day of March, 
 1870, between the Government of his Royal High- 
 ness and the Khedive of Egypt, represented by 
 General Thaddeus P. Mott of the first part, and 
 H. R. H. Maclver of New York City. 
 
 "The party of the second part, being desirous of 
 entering into the service of party of the first part, 
 in the military capacity of a colonel of cavalry, 
 promises to serve and obey party of the first part 
 faithfully and truly in his military capacity during 
 the space of five years from this date; that the 
 party of the second part waives all claims of protec- 
 tion usually afforded to Americans by consular and 
 diplomatic agents of the United States, and ex- 
 pressly obligates himself to be subject to the orders 
 of the party of the first part, and to make, wage, and 
 vigorously prosecute war against any and all the 
 enemies of party of the first part; that the party of 
 the second part will not under any event be gov- 
 erned, controlled by, or submit to, any order, law, 
 mandate, or proclamation issued by the Govern- 
 ment of the United States of America, forbidding 
 party of the second part to serve party of the first 
 part to make war according to any of the pro- 
 visions herein contained, /'/ being, however, dis- 
 tinctly understood that nothing herein contained 
 shall be construed as obligating party of the second 
 
 22
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 part to bear arms or wage war against the United 
 States of America. 
 
 " Party of the first part promises to furnish party 
 of the second part with horses, rations, and pay 
 him for his services the same salary now paid to 
 colonels of cavalry in United States army, and 
 will furnish him quarters suitable to his rank in 
 army. Also promises, in the case of illness caused 
 by climate, that said party may resign his office 
 and shall receive his expenses to America and two 
 months* pay; that he receives one-fifth of his 
 regular pay during his active service, together with 
 all expenses of every nature attending such enter- 
 prise." 
 
 It also stipulates as to what sums shall be paid 
 his family or children in case of his death. 
 To this Maclver signs this oath: 
 
 " In the presence of the ever-living God, I swear 
 that I will in all things honestly, faithfully, and 
 truly keep, observe, and perform the obligations 
 and promises above enumerated, and endeavor to 
 conform to the wishes and desires of the Govern- 
 ment of his Royal Highness, the Khedive of Egypt, 
 in all things connected with the furtherance of his 
 prosperity, and the maintenance of his throne." 
 
 On arriving at Cairo, Maclver was appointed 
 inspector-general of cavalry, and furnished with a 
 
 23
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 uniform, of which this is a description: "It con- 
 sisted of a blue tunic with gold spangles, embroid- 
 ered in gold up the sleeves and front, neat-fitting 
 red trousers, and high patent-leather boots, while 
 the inevitable fez completed the gay costume." 
 
 The climate of Cairo did not agree with Mac- 
 lver, and, in spite of his "gay costume," after six 
 months he left the Egyptian service. His hon- 
 orable discharge was signed by Stone Bey, who, 
 in the favor of the Khedive, had supplanted Gen- 
 eral Mott. 
 
 It is a curious fact that, in spite of his ill health, 
 immediately after leaving Cairo, Maclver was 
 sufficiently recovered to at once plunge into the 
 Franco-Prussian War. At the battle of Orleans, 
 while on the staff of General Chanzy, he was 
 wounded. In this war his rank was that of a 
 colonel of cavalry of the auxiliary army. 
 
 His next venture was in the Carlist uprising of 
 1873, when he formed a Carlist League, and on 
 several occasions acted as bearer of important 
 messages from the "King," as Don Carlos was 
 called, to the sympathizers with his cause in France 
 and England. 
 
 Maclver was promised, if he carried out success- 
 fully a certain mission upon which he was sent, 
 and if Don Carlos became king, that he would be
 
 Major-General Henry Ronald Douglas Maclver as 
 Is To-day.
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 made a marquis. As Don Carlos is still a pre- 
 tender, Maclver is still a general. 
 
 Although in disposing of his sword Maclver 
 never allowed his personal predilections to weigh 
 with him, he always treated himself to a hearty 
 dislike of the Turks, and we next find him fighting 
 against them in Herzegovina with the Monte- 
 negrins. And when the Servians declared war 
 against the same people, Maclver returned to 
 London to organize a cavalry brigade to fight with 
 the Servian army. 
 
 Of this brigade and of the rapid rise of Mac- 
 lver to highest rank and honors in Servia, the 
 scrap-book is most eloquent. The cavalry brigade 
 was to be called the Knights of the Red Cross. 
 
 In a letter to the editor of the Hour, the gen- 
 eral himself speaks of it in the following terms: 
 
 " It may be interesting to many of your readers 
 to learn that a select corps of gentlemen is at pres- 
 ent in course of organization under the above title 
 with the mission of proceeding to the Levant to take 
 measures in case of emergency for the defense of 
 the Christian population, and more especially of 
 British subjects who are to a great extent unpro- 
 vided with adequate means of protection from the 
 religious furies of the Mussulmans. The lives 
 of Christian women and children are in hourly 
 peril from fanatical hordes. The Knights will be 
 
 25
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 carefully chosen and kept within strict military 
 control, and will be under command of a practical 
 soldier with large experience of the Eastern coun- 
 tries. Templars and all other crusaders are in- 
 vited to give aid and sympathy." 
 
 Apparently Maclver was not successful in en- 
 listing many Knights, for a war correspondent at 
 the capital of Servia, waiting for the war to begin, 
 writes as follows: 
 
 "A Scotch soldier of fortune, Henry Maclver, a 
 colonel by rank, has arrived at Belgrade with a 
 small contingent of military adventurers. Five 
 weeks ago I met him in Fleet Street, London, and 
 had some talk about his 'expedition.' He had 
 received a commission from the Prince of Servia 
 to organize and command an independent cavalry 
 brigade, and he then was busily enrolling his vol- 
 unteers into a body styled 'The Knights of the Red 
 Cross/ I am afraid some of his bold crusaders 
 have earned more distinction for their attacks on 
 Fleet Street bars than they are likely to earn on 
 Servian battle-fields, but then I must not antici- 
 pate history/' 
 
 Another paper tells that at the end of the first 
 week of his service as a Servian officer, Maclver 
 had enlisted ninety men, but that they were scat- 
 tered about the town, many without shelter and 
 rations: 
 
 26
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 "He assembled his men on the Rialto, and 
 in spite of official expostulation, the men were 
 marched up to the Minister's four abreast and 
 they marched fairly well, making a good show. 
 The War Minister was taken by storm, and at once 
 granted everything. It has raised the English 
 colonel's popularity with his men to fever heat." 
 
 This from the Times, London: 
 
 "Our Belgrade correspondent telegraphs last 
 night: 
 
 'There is here at present a gentleman named 
 Maclver. He came from England to offer him- 
 self and his sword to the Servians. The Servian 
 Minister of War gave him a colonel's commission. 
 This morning I saw him drilling about one hun- 
 dred and fifty remarkably fine-looking fellows, 
 all clad in a good serviceable cavalry uniform, and 
 he has horses." 3 
 
 Later we find that: 
 
 "Colonel Maclver's Legion of Cavalry, organ- 
 izing here, now numbers over two hundred men." 
 
 And again: 
 
 " Prince Nica, a Roumanian cousin of the Prin- 
 cess Natalie of Servia, has joined Colonel Mac- 
 lver's cavalry corps." 
 
 27
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 Later, in the Court Journal, October 28, 1876, 
 we read: 
 
 " Colonel Maclver, who a few years ago was very 
 well known in military circles in Dublin, now is 
 making his mark with the Servian army. In the 
 war against the Turks, he commands about one 
 thousand Russo-Servian cavalry." 
 
 He was next to receive the following honors: 
 
 "Colonel Maclver has been appointed com- 
 mander of the cavalry of the Servian armies on the 
 Morava and Timok, and has received the Cross of 
 the Takovo Order from General Tchernaieff for 
 gallant conduct in the field, and the gold medal 
 for valor." 
 
 Later we learn from the Daily News: 
 
 "Mr. Lewis Farley, Secretary of the * League in 
 Aid of Christians of Turkey/ has received the fol- 
 lowing letter, dated Belgrade, October 10, 1876: 
 
 'DEAR SIR: In reference to the embroidered 
 banner so kindly worked by an English lady and 
 forwarded by the League to Colonel Maclver, I 
 have great pleasure in conveying to you the follow- 
 ing particulars. On Sunday morning, the flag 
 having been previously consecrated by the arch- 
 bishop, was conducted by a guard of honor to the 
 palace, and Colonel Maclver, in the presence of 
 
 28
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 Prince Milan and a numerous suite, in the name 
 and on behalf of yourself and the fair donor, de- 
 livered it into the hands of the Princess Natalie. 
 The gallant Colonel wore upon this occasion his 
 full uniform as brigade commander and chief of 
 cavalry of the Servian army, and bore upon his 
 breast the 'Gold Cross of Takovo' which he re- 
 ceived after the battles of the 28th and 3Oth of 
 September, in recognition of the heroism and 
 bravery he displayed upon these eventful days. 
 The beauty of the decoration was enhanced by the 
 circumstances of its bestowal, for on the evening 
 of the battle of the 3oth, General Tchernaieff 
 approached Colonel Maclver, and, unclasping the 
 cross from his own breast, placed it upon that 
 of the Colonel. 
 
 "'(Signed) HUGH JACKSON, 
 "'Member of Council of the League." 
 
 In Servia and in the Servian army Maclver 
 reached what as yet is the highest point of his 
 career, and of his life the happiest period. 
 
 He was general de brigade, which is not what we 
 know as a brigade general, but is one who com- 
 mands a division, a major-general. He was a 
 great favorite both at the palace and with the 
 people, the pay was good, fighting plentiful, and 
 Belgrade gay and amusing. Of all the places he 
 has visited and the countries he has served, it is of 
 
 29
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 this Balkan kingdom that the general seems to 
 speak most fondly and with the greatest feeling. 
 Of Queen Natalie he was and is a most loyal and 
 chivalric admirer, and was ever ready when he 
 found any one who did not as greatly respect the 
 lady, to offer him the choice of swords or pis- 
 tols. Even for Milan he finds an extenuating 
 word. 
 
 After Servia the general raised more foreign 
 legions, planned further expeditions; in Central 
 America reorganized the small armies of the small 
 republics, served as United States Consul, and 
 offered his sword to President McKinley for use 
 against Spain. But with Servia the most active 
 portion of the life of the general ceased, and the 
 rest has been a repetition of what went before. 
 At present his time is divided between New York 
 and Virginia, where he has been offered an execu- 
 tive position in the approaching Jamestown Ex- 
 position. Both North and South he has many 
 friends, many admirers. But his life is, and, from 
 the nature of his profession, must always be, a 
 lonely one. 
 
 While other men remain planted in one spot, 
 gathering about them a home, sons and daughters, 
 an income for old age, Maclver is a rolling stone, 
 a piece of floating sea-weed; as the present King 
 
 30
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 of England called him fondly, "that vagabond 
 soldier." 
 
 To a man who has lived in the saddle and upon 
 transports, "neighbor" conveys nothing, and even 
 " comrade " too often means one who is no longer 
 living. 
 
 With the exception of the United States, of which 
 he now is a naturalized citizen, the general has 
 fought for nearly every country in the world, but 
 if any of those for which he lost his health and 
 blood, and for which he risked his life, remembers 
 him, it makes no sign. And the general is too 
 proud to ask to be remembered. To-day there is 
 no more interesting figure than this man who in 
 years is still young enough to lead an army corps, 
 and who, for forty years, has been selling his 
 sword and risking his life for presidents, pretend- 
 ers, charlatans, and emperors. 
 
 He finds some mighty changes : Cuba, which he 
 fought to free, is free; men of the South, with 
 whom for four years he fought shoulder to 
 shoulder, are now wearing the blue; the empire of 
 Mexico, for which he fought, is a republic; the 
 empire of France, for which he fought, is a repub- 
 lic; the empire of Brazil, for which he fought 
 is a republic; the dynasty in Servia, to which he 
 owes his greatest honors, has been wiped out by
 
 Major-General Maclver 
 
 murder. From none of the eighteen countries 
 he has served has he a pension, berth, or billet, 
 and at sixty he finds himself at home in every land, 
 but with a home in none. 
 
 Still he has his sword, his blanket, and in the 
 event of war, to obtain a commission he has only 
 to open his tin boxes and show the commissions 
 already won. Indeed, any day. in a new uniform, 
 and under the Nineteenth Flag, the general may 
 again be winning fresh victories and honors. 
 
 And so, this brief sketch of him is left unfin- 
 ished. We will mark it To be continued.
 
 BARON 
 JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY
 
 BARON JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY 
 
 THIS is an attempt to tell the story of Baron 
 Harden-Hickey, the Man Who Made Him- 
 self 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 incongru- 
 ous a figure as was the American at the Court of 
 King Arthur; he was as unhappily out of the pict- 
 ure as would be Cyrano de Bergerac on the floor 
 of the Board of Trade. Judged, as at the time 
 he was judged, by writers of comic paragraphs, by 
 presidents of railroads, by amateur "statesmen" 
 at Washington, Harden-Hickey was a joke. To 
 the vacant mind of the village idiot, Rip Van 
 Winkle returning to Falling Water also was a 
 joke. The people of our day had not the time to 
 understand Harden-Hickey; they thought him a 
 charlatan, half a dangerous adventurer and half a 
 fool; and Harden-Hickey certainly did not under- 
 
 35
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 stand them. His last words, addressed to his wife, 
 showed this. They were: "I would rather die 
 a gentleman than live a blackguard like your 
 father." 
 
 As a matter of fact, his father-in-law, although 
 living under the disadvantage of being a Standard 
 Oil magnate, neither was, nor is, a blackguard, 
 and his son-in-law had been treated by him gen- 
 erously and with patience. But for the duellist and 
 soldier of fortune it was impossible to sympathize 
 with a man who took no greater risk in life than 
 to ride on one of his own railroads, and of the 
 views the two men held of each other, that of John 
 H. Flagler was probably the fairer and the more 
 kindly. 
 
 Harden-Hickey was one of the most picturesque, 
 gallant, and pathetic adventurers of our day; but 
 Flagler also deserves our sympathy. 
 
 For an unimaginative and hard-working Stand- 
 ard Oil king to have a D'Artagnan thrust upon 
 him as a son-in-law must be trying. 
 
 James A. Harden-Hickey, James the First of 
 Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, was 
 born on December 8, 1854. As to the date all his- 
 torians agree; as to where the important event 
 took place they differ. That he was born in France 
 his friends are positive, but at the time of his death 
 
 36
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 in El Paso the San Francisco papers claimed him 
 as a native of California. All agree that his an- 
 cestors were Catholics and Royalists who left Ire- 
 land with the Stuarts when they sought refuge in 
 France. The version which seems to be the most 
 probable is that he was born in San Francisco, 
 where as one of the early settlers, his father, E. C. 
 Hickey, was well known, and that early in his life, 
 in order to educate him, the mother took him to 
 Europe. 
 
 There he was educated at the Jesuit College at 
 Namur, then at Leipsic, and later entered the 
 Military College of St. Cyr. 
 
 James the First was one of those boys who never 
 had the misfortune to grow up. To the moment 
 of his death, in all he planned you can trace the 
 effects of his early teachings and environment; the 
 influences of the great Church that nursed him, and 
 of the city of Paris, in which he lived. Under the 
 Second Empire, Paris was at her maddest, baddest, 
 and best. To-day under the republic, without a 
 court, with a society kept in funds by the self- 
 expatriated wives and daughters of our business 
 men, she lacks the reasons for which Baron Hauss- 
 mann bedecked her and made her beautiful. The 
 good Loubet, the worthy Fallieres, except that 
 they furnish the cartoonist with subjects for ridi- 
 
 37
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 cule, do not add to the gayety of Paris. But when 
 Harden-Hickey was a boy, Paris was never so 
 carelessly gay, so brilliant, never so overcharged 
 with life, color, and adventure. 
 
 In those days "the Emperor sat in his box that 
 night," and in the box opposite sat Cora Pearl; 
 veterans of the campaign of Italy, of Mexico, 
 from the desert fights of Algiers, sipped sugar and 
 water in front of Tortoni's, the Cafe Durand, the 
 Cafe Riche; the sidewalks rang with their sabres, 
 the boulevards were filled with the colors of the 
 gorgeous uniforms; all night of each night the 
 Place Vendome shone with the carriage lamps of 
 the visiting pashas from Egypt, of nabobs from 
 India, of rastaquoueres from the sister empire of 
 Brazil; the state carriages, with the outriders and 
 postilions in the green and gold of the Empress, 
 swept through the Champs Elysees, and at the Bal 
 Bulier, and at Mabile the students and "grisettes" 
 introduced the cancan. The men of those days 
 were Hugo, Thiers, Dumas, Daudet, Alfred de 
 Musset; the magnificent blackguard, the Due 
 de Morny, and the great, simple Canrobert, the 
 captain of barricades, who became a marshal of 
 France. 
 
 Over all was the mushroom Emperor, his ante- 
 rooms crowded with the titled charlatans of Eu- 
 
 38
 
 Baron James Harden- Hickey 
 
 rope, his court radiant with countesses created 
 overnight. And it was the Emperor, with his love 
 of theatrical display, of gorgeous ceremonies; with 
 his restless reaching after military glory, the weary, 
 cynical adventurer, that the boy at St. Cyr took as 
 his model. 
 
 Royalist as was Harden-Hickey by birth and 
 tradition, and Royalist as he always remained, it 
 was the court at the Tuileries that filled his imag- 
 ination. The Bourbons, whom he served, hoped 
 some day for a court; at the Tuileries there was a 
 court, glittering before his physical eyes. The 
 Bourbons were pleasant old gentlemen, who later 
 willingly supported him, and for whom always he 
 was equally willing to fight, either with his sword 
 or his pen. But to the last, in his mind, he carried 
 pictures of the Second Empire as he, as a boy, had 
 known it. 
 
 Can you not imagine the future James the 
 First, barelegged, in a black-belted smock, halting 
 with his nurse, or his priest, to gaze up in awe- 
 struck delight at the great, red-breeched Zouaves 
 lounging on guard at the Tuileries ? 
 
 "When I grow up/' said little James to himself, 
 not knowing that he never would grow up, "I 
 shall have Zouaves for my palace guard." 
 
 And twenty years later, when he laid down the 
 39
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 laws for his little kingdom, you find that the officers 
 of his court must wear the mustache, " a la Louis 
 Napoleon," and that the Zouave uniform will be 
 worn by the Palace Guards. 
 
 In 1883, while he still was at the War College, 
 his father died, and when he graduated, which he 
 did with honors, he found himself his own master. 
 His assets were a small income, a perfect knowl- 
 edge of the French language, and the reputation of 
 being one of the most expert swordsmen in Paris. 
 He chose not to enter the army, and instead be- 
 came a journalist, novelist, duellist, an habitue of 
 the Latin Quarter and the boulevards. 
 
 As a novelist the tides of his books suggest 
 their quality. Among them are: "Un Amour 
 Vendeen," "Lettres d'un Yankee," "Un Amour 
 dans le Monde," "Memoires d'un Gommeux," 
 " Merveilleuses Aventures de Nabuchodonosor, 
 Nosebreaker." 
 
 Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, ap- 
 parently with deep conviction, with high enthu- 
 siasm. In her service as a defender of the faith 
 he issued essays, pamphlets, "broadsides." The 
 opponents of the Church in Paris he attacked re- 
 lentlessly. 
 
 As a reward for his championship he received 
 the title of baron. 
 
 40
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 In 1878, while only twenty-four, he married the 
 Countess de Saint-Pery, by whom he had two 
 children, a boy and a girl, and three years later he 
 started Triboulet. It was this paper that made 
 him famous to "all Paris." 
 
 It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the Count 
 de Chambord and published in the interest of the 
 Bourbons. Until 1888 Harden-Hickey was its 
 editor, and even by his enemies it must be said 
 that he served his employers with zeal. During 
 the seven years in which the paper amused Paris 
 and annoyed the republican government, as its 
 editor Harden-Hickey was involved in forty-two 
 lawsuits, for different editorial indiscretions, fined 
 three hundred thousand francs, and was a princi- 
 pal in countless duels. 
 
 To his brother editors his standing interrogation 
 was: "Would you prefer to meet me upon the 
 editorial page, or in the Bois de Boulogne?" 
 Among those who met him in the Bois were 
 Aurelien Scholl, H. Lavenbryon, M. Taine, M. 
 de Cyon, Philippe Du Bois, Jean Moreas. 
 
 In 1888, either because, his patron the Count 
 de Chambord having died, there was no more 
 money to pay the fines, or because the patience of 
 the government was exhausted, Triboulet ceased 
 to exist, and Harden-Hickey, claiming the paper
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 had been suppressed and he himself exiled, crossed 
 to London. 
 
 From there he embarked upon a voyage around 
 the world, which lasted two years, and in the course 
 of which he discovered the island kingdom of which 
 he was to be the first and last king. Previous to 
 his departure, having been divorced from the 
 Countess de Saint-Pery, he placed his boy and girl 
 in the care of a fellow-journalist and very dear 
 friend, the Count de la Boissiere, of whom later 
 we shall hear more. 
 
 Harden-Hickey started around the world on the 
 dstoria, a British merchant vessel bound for India 
 by way of Cape Horn, Captain Jackson com- 
 manding. 
 
 When off" the coast of Brazil the ship touched at 
 the uninhabited island of Trinidad. Historians 
 of James the First say that it was through stress 
 of weather that the Astoria was driven to seek 
 refuge there, but as, for six months of the year, to 
 make a landing on the island is almost impossible, 
 and as at any time, under stress of weather, Trini- 
 dad would be a place to avoid, it is more likely 
 Jackson put in to replenish his water-casks, or to 
 obcain a supply of turtle meat. 
 
 Or it may have been that, having told Har- 
 den-Hickey of the derelict island, the latter per- 
 
 42
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 suaded the captain to allow him to land and ex- 
 plore it. Of this, at least, we are certain, a boat 
 was sent ashore, Harden-Hickey went ashore in it, 
 and before he left the island, as a piece of no man's 
 land, belonging to no country, he claimed it in his 
 own name, and upon the beach raised a flag of his 
 own design. 
 
 The island of Trinidad claimed by Harden- 
 Hickey must not be confused with the larger Trin- 
 idad belonging to Great Britain and lying off 
 Venezuela. 
 
 The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful 
 spot of great tropical beauty; it is one of the fair- 
 est places in the West Indies. At every hour of 
 the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open 
 its arms to vessels of every draught. A governor in 
 a pith helmet, a cricket club, a bishop in gaiters, 
 and a botanical garden go to make it a prosper- 
 ous and contented colony. But the little derelict 
 Trinidad, in latitude 20 30' south, and longitude 
 29 22' west, seven hundred miles from the coast 
 of Brazil, is but a spot upon the ocean. On most 
 maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, 
 turtles, and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; 
 and against the advances of man its shores are for- 
 tified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestone 
 rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even 
 
 43
 
 Baron James Harden- Hickey 
 
 in a dead calm, beats many feet high against the 
 coast. 
 
 In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says 
 he found nothing living but doves and land-crabs. 
 "Saw many green turtles in sea, but by reason of 
 the great surf, could catch none." 
 
 After Halley's visit, in 1700 the island was 
 settled by a few Portuguese from Brazil. The 
 ruins of their stone huts are still in evidence. But 
 Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no 
 mention of the Portuguese; and when, in 1822, 
 Commodore Owen visited Trinidad, he found 
 nothing living there save cormorants, petrels, 
 gannets, man-of-war birds, and "turtles weighing 
 from five hundred to seven hundred pounds." 
 
 In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the Japanese- 
 Russian War represented the London Morning 
 Post, visited Trinidad in his yacht in search of 
 buried treasure. 
 
 Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled 
 "Collection of Voages, chiefly in the Southern 
 Atlantick Ocean, 1775," tells how, in 1700, he 
 "took possession of the island in his Majesty's 
 name as knowing it to be granted by the King's 
 letter patent, leaving a Union Jack flying." 
 
 So it appears that before Harden-Hickey seized 
 the island it already had been claimed by Great 
 
 44
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 Britain, and later, on account of the Portuguese 
 settlement, by Brazil. The answer Harden-Hickey 
 made to these claims was that the English never 
 settled in Trinidad, and that the Portuguese aban- 
 doned it, and, therefore, their claims lapsed. In 
 his "prospectus" of his island, Harden-Hickey 
 himself describes it thus: 
 
 "Trinidad is about five miles long and three 
 miles wide. In spite of its rugged and uninviting 
 appearance, the inland plateaus are rich with 
 luxuriant vegetation. 
 
 "Prominent among this is a peculiar species 
 of bean, which is not only edible, but extremely 
 palatable. The surrounding seas swarm with fish, 
 which as yet are wholly unsuspicious of the hook. 
 Dolphins, rock-cod, pigfish, and blackfish may 
 be caught as quickly as they can be hauled out. 
 I look to the sea birds and the turtles to afford our 
 principal source of revenue. Trinidad is the breed- 
 ing-place of almost the entire feathery population 
 of the South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of 
 guano alone should make my little country pros- 
 perous. Turtles visit the island to deposit eggs, 
 and at certain seasons the beach is literally alive 
 with them. The only drawback to my projected 
 kingdom is the fact that it has no good harbor 
 and can be approached only when the sea is calm." 
 
 45
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 As a matter of fact sometimes months pass 
 before it is possible to effect a landing. 
 
 Another asset of the island held out by the 
 prospectus was its great store of buried treasure. 
 Before Harden-Hickey seized the island, this 
 treasure had made it known. This is the legend. 
 In 1821 a great store of gold and silver plate 
 plundered from Peruvian churches had been con- 
 cealed on the islands by pirates near Sugar Loaf 
 Hill, on the shore of what is known as the South- 
 west Bay. Much of this plate came from the 
 cathedral at Lima, having been carried from 
 there during the war of independence when the 
 Spanish residents fled the country. In their eager- 
 ness to escape they put to sea in any ship that 
 offered, and these unarmed and unseaworthy 
 vessels fell an easy prey to pirates. One of these 
 pirates on his death-bed, in gratitude to his former 
 captain, told him the secret of the treasure. In 
 1892 this captain was still living, in Newcastle, 
 England, and although his story bears a family 
 resemblance to every other story of buried treasure, 
 there were added to the tale of the pirate some 
 corroborative details. These, in twelve years, in- 
 duced five different expeditions to visit the island. 
 The two most important were that of E. F. Knight 
 and one from the Tyne in the bark Aurea. 
 
 46
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 In his "Cruise of the Alerte" Knight gives a 
 full description of the island, and of his attempt 
 to find the treasure. In this, a landslide having 
 covered the place where it was buried, he was 
 unsuccessful. 
 
 But Knight's book is the only source of accurate 
 information concerning Trinidad, and in writing 
 his prospectus it is evident that Harden-Hickey 
 was forced to borrow from it freely. Knight him- 
 self says that the most minute and accurate de- 
 scription of Trinidad is to be found in the "Frank 
 Mildmay" of Captain Marryat. He found it so 
 easy to identify each spot mentioned in the novel 
 that he believes the author of "Midshipman 
 Easy" himself touched there. 
 
 After seizing Trinidad, Harden-Hickey rounded 
 the Cape and made north to Japan, China, and 
 India. In India he became interested in Budd- 
 hism, and remained for over a year questioning 
 the priests of that religion and studying its tenets 
 and history. 
 
 On his return to Paris, in 1890, he met Miss 
 Annie Harper Flagler, daughter of John H. 
 Flagler. A year later, on St. Patrick's Day, 
 1891, at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, 
 Miss Flagler became the Baroness Harden-Hickey. 
 The Rev. John Hall married them. 
 
 47
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 For the next two years Harden-Hickey lived in 
 New York, but so quietly that, except that he lived 
 quietly, it is difficult to find out anything concern- 
 ing him. The man who, a few years before, had 
 delighted Paris with his daily feuilletons, with his 
 duels, with his forty-two lawsuits, who had been 
 the master of revels in the Latin Quarter, in New 
 York lived almost as a recluse, writing a book on 
 Buddhism. While he was in New York I was a 
 reporter on the Evening Sun, but I cannot recall 
 ever having read his name in the newspapers of 
 that day, and I heard of him only twice; once as 
 giving an exhibition of his water-colors at the 
 American Art Galleries, and again as the author 
 of a book I found in a store in Twenty-second 
 Street, just east of Broadway, then the home of the 
 Truth Seeker Publishing Company. 
 
 It was a grewsome compilation and had just ap- 
 peared in print. It was called " Euthanasia, or the 
 Ethics of Suicide." This book was an apology 
 or plea for self-destruction. In it the baron laid 
 down those occasions when he considered suicide 
 pardonable, and when obligatory. To support 
 his arguments and to show that suicide was a 
 noble act, he quoted Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, 
 and even misquoted the Bible. He gave a list of 
 poisons, and the amount of each necessary to kill 
 
 48
 
 Baron Harden-Hickey, King James I. of Trinidad.
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 a human being. To show how one can depart from 
 life with the least pain, he illustrated the text with 
 most unpleasant pictures, drawn by himself. 
 
 The book showed how far Harden-Hickey had 
 strayed from the teachings of the Jesuit College at 
 Namur, and of the Church that had made him 
 "noble." 
 
 All of these two years had not been spent only 
 in New York. Harden-Hickey made excursions 
 to California, to Mexico, and to Texas, and in 
 each of these places bought cattle ranches and 
 mines. The money to pay for these investments 
 came from his father-in-law. But not directly. 
 Whenever he wanted money he asked his wife, 
 or De la Boissiere, who was a friend also of Flagler, 
 to obtain it for him. 
 
 His attitude toward his father-in-law is diffi- 
 cult to explain. It is not apparent that Flagler 
 ever did anything which could justly offend him; 
 indeed, he always seems to have spoken of his 
 son-in-law with tolerance, and often with awe, as 
 one would speak of a clever, wayward child. But 
 Harden-Hickey chose to regard Flagler as his 
 enemy, as a sordid man of business who could 
 not understand the feelings and aspirations of a 
 genius and a gentleman. 
 
 Before Harden-Hickey married, the misunder- 
 49
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 standing between his wife's father and himself 
 began. Because he thought Harden-Hickey was 
 marrying his daughter for her money, Flagler op- 
 posed the union. Consequently, Harden-Hickey 
 married Miss Flagler without "settlements," and 
 for the first few years supported her without aid 
 from her father. But his wife had been accus- 
 tomed to a manner of living beyond the means of 
 the soldier of fortune, and soon his income, and 
 then even his capital, was exhausted. From her 
 mother the baroness inherited a fortune. This 
 was in the hands of her father as executor. When 
 his own money was gone, Harden-Hickey endeav- 
 ored to have the money belonging to his wife 
 placed to her credit, or to his. To this, it is said, 
 Flagler, on the ground that Harden-Hickey was 
 not a man of business, while he was, objected, 
 and urged that he was, and that if it remained in 
 his hands the money would be better invested and 
 better expended. It was the refusal of Flagler to 
 intrust Harden-Hickey with the care of his wife's 
 money that caused the breach between them. 
 
 As I have said, you cannot judge Harden- 
 Hickey as you would a contemporary. With the 
 people among whom he was thrown, his ideas 
 were entirely out of joint. He should have lived 
 in the days of "The Three Musketeers." People 
 
 50
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 who looked upon him as working for his own hand 
 entirely misunderstood him. He was absolutely 
 honest, and as absolutely without a sense of hu- 
 mor. To him, to pay taxes, to pay grocers' bills, 
 to depend for protection upon a policeman, was 
 intolerable. He lived in a world of his own im- 
 agining. And one day, in order to make his 
 imaginings real, and to escape from his father- 
 in-law's unromantic world of Standard Oil and 
 Florida hotels, in a proclamation to the powers he 
 announced himself as King James the First of the 
 Principality of Trinidad. 
 
 The proclamation failed to create a world crisis. 
 Several of the powers recognized his principality 
 and his title; but, as a rule, people laughed, won- 
 dered, and forgot. That the daughter of John 
 Flagler was to rule the new principality gave it a 
 "news interest," and for a few Sundays in the sup- 
 plements she was hailed as the "American Queen." 
 
 When upon the subject of the new kingdom 
 Flagler himself was interviewed, he showed an 
 open mind. 
 
 "My son-in-law is a very determined man," he 
 said; "he will carry out any scheme in which he 
 is interested. Had he consulted me about this, 
 I would have been glad to have aided him with 
 money or advice. My son-in-law is an extremely 
 
 5 1
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 well-read, refined, well-bred man. He does not 
 court publicity. While he was staying in my 
 house he spent nearly all the time in the library 
 translating an Indian book on Buddhism. My 
 daughter has no ambition to be a queen or any- 
 thing else thanwhat she is an American girl. 
 But my son-in-law means to carry on this Trini- 
 dad scheme, and he will." 
 
 From his father-in-law, at least, Harden-Hickey 
 could not complain that he had met with lack of 
 sympathy. 
 
 The rest of America was amused; and after less 
 than nine days, indifferent. But Harden-Hickey, 
 though unobtrusively, none the less earnestly con- 
 tinued to play the part of king. His friend De la 
 Boissiere he appointed his Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, and established in a Chancellery at 217 
 West Thirty-sixth Street, New York, and from 
 there was issued a sort of circular, or prospectus, 
 written by the king, and signed by "Le Grand 
 Chancelier, Secretaire d'Etat pour les Affaires 
 Etrangeres, M. le Comte de la Boissiere." 
 
 The document, written in French, announced 
 that the new state would be governed by a military 
 dictatorship, that the royal standard was a yellow 
 triangle on a red ground, and that the arms of the 
 principality were "d'Or chape de Gueules." It 
 
 52
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 pointed out naively that those who first settled on 
 the island would be naturally the oldest inhabitants, 
 and hence would form the aristocracy. But only 
 those who at home enjoyed social position and 
 some private fortune would be admitted into this 
 select circle. 
 
 For itself the state reserved a monopoly of the 
 guano, of the turtles, and of the buried treasure. 
 And both to discover the treasure and to encourage 
 settlers to dig and so cultivate the soil, a percent- 
 age of the treasure was promised to the one who 
 found it. 
 
 Any one purchasing ten $200 bonds was en- 
 titled to a free passage to the island, and after a 
 year, should he so desire it, a return trip. The 
 hard work was to be performed by Chinese 
 coolies, the aristocracy existing beautifully, and, 
 according to the prospectus, to enjoy "vie d'un 
 genre tout nouveau, et la recherche de sensations 
 nouvelles." 
 
 To reward his subjects for prominence in lit- 
 erature, the arts, and the sciences, his Majesty 
 established an order of chivalry. The official 
 document creating this order reads: 
 
 "We, James, Prince of Trinidad, have resolved 
 to commemorate our accession to the throne of 
 
 53
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 Trinidad by the institution of an Order of Chival- 
 ry, destined to reward literature, industry, science, 
 and the human virtues, and by these presents have 
 established and do institute, with cross and crown, 
 the Order of the Insignia of the Cross of Trinidad, 
 of which we and our heirs and successors shall be 
 the sovereigns. 
 
 "Given in our Chancellery the Eighth of the 
 month of December, one thousand eight hundred 
 and ninety-three, and of our reign, the First Year. 
 
 "JAMES." 
 
 There were four grades : Chevalier, Commander, 
 Grand Officer, and Grand Cross; and the name 
 of each member of the order was inscribed in "The 
 Book of Gold." A pension of one thousand francs 
 was given to a Chevalier, of two thousand francs 
 to a Commander, and of three thousand francs to 
 a Grand Officer. Those of the grade of Grand 
 Cross were content with a plaque of eight diamond- 
 studded rays, with, in the centre, set in red enamel, 
 the arms of Trinidad. The ribbon was red and 
 yellow. 
 
 A rule of the order read: "The costume shall 
 be identical with that of the Chamberlains of the 
 Court of Trinidad, save the buttons, which shall 
 bear the impress of the Crown of the Order." 
 
 For himself, King James commissioned a firm 
 of jewelers to construct a royal crown. In design 
 
 54
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 it was similar to the one which surmounted the 
 cross of Trinidad. It is shown in the photo- 
 graph of the insignia. Also, the king issued a set 
 of postage-stamps on which was a picture of the 
 island. They were of various colors and denomi- 
 nations, and among stamp-collectors enjoyed a 
 certain sale. 
 
 To-day, as I found when I tried to procure one 
 to use in this book, they are worth many times 
 their face value. 
 
 For some time the affairs of the new kingdom 
 progressed favorably. In San Francisco, King 
 James, in person, engaged four hundred coolies 
 and fitted out a schooner which he sent to Trini- 
 dad, where it made regular trips between his prin- 
 cipality and Brazil; an agent was established on 
 the island, and the construction of docks, wharves, 
 and houses was begun, while at the chancellery in 
 West Thirty-sixth Street, the Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs was ready to furnish would-be settlers 
 with information. 
 
 And then, out of a smiling sky, a sudden and 
 unexpected blow was struck at the independence 
 of the little kingdom. It was a blow from which 
 it never recovered. 
 
 In July of 1895, while constructing a cable to 
 Brazil, Great Britain found the Island of Trini- 
 
 55
 
 Baron James Harden -Hickey 
 
 dad lying in the direct line she wished to follow, 
 and, as a cable station, seized it. Objection to 
 this was made by Brazil, and at Bahia a mob with 
 stones pelted the sign of the English Consul- 
 General. 
 
 By right of Halley's discovery, England claimed 
 the island; as a derelict from the main land, 
 Brazil also claimed it. Between the rivals, the 
 world saw a chance for war, and the fact that the 
 island really belonged to our King James for a 
 moment was forgotten. 
 
 But the Minister of Foreign Affairs was at his 
 post. With promptitude and vigor he acted. 
 He addressed a circular note to all the powers of 
 Europe, and to our State Department a protest. 
 It read as follows: 
 
 " GRANDE CHANCELLERIE DE LA PRINCIPAUTE DE TRINIDAD, 
 
 217 WEST THIRTY-SIXTH STREET, 
 
 NEW YORK CITY, U. S. A., 
 
 "NEW YORK, July 30, 1895. 
 
 " To His Excellency Mr. the Secretary of State of 
 the Republic of the United States of North 
 America, Washington, D. C.: 
 
 "EXCELLENCY: I have the honor to recall to 
 your memory: 
 
 "i. That in the course of the month of Sep- 
 tember, 1893, Baron Harden-Hickey officially noti- 
 
 56
 
 Baron James Harden -Hickey 
 
 fied all the Powers of his taking possession of the 
 uninhabited island of Trinidad; and 
 
 "2. That in course of January, 1894, he re- 
 newed to all these Powers the official notification 
 of the said taking of possession, and informed them 
 at the same time that from that date the land would 
 be known as 'Principality of Trinidad'; that he 
 took the title of ' Prince of Trinidad,' and would 
 reign under the name of James I. 
 
 "In consequence of these official notifications 
 several Powers have recognized the new Princi- 
 pality and its Prince, and at all events none thought 
 it necessary at that epoch to raise objections or 
 formulate opposition. 
 
 "The press of the entire world has, on the other 
 hand, often acquainted readers with these facts, 
 thus giving to them all possible publicity. In 
 consequence of the accomplishment of these va- 
 rious formalities, and as the law of nations pre- 
 scribes that 'derelict' territories belong to who- 
 ever will take possesson of them, and as the island 
 of Trinidad, which has been abandoned for years, 
 certainly belongs to the aforesaid category, his 
 Serene Highness Prince James I was authorized 
 to regard his rights on the said island as perfectly 
 valid and indisputible. 
 
 "Nevertheless, your Excellency knows that re- 
 cently, in spite of all the legitimate rights of my 
 august sovereign, an English war-ship has disem- 
 barked at Trinidad a detachment of armed troops 
 and taken possession of the island in the name of 
 England. 
 
 57
 
 Baron James Harden -Hickey 
 
 "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 Gov- 
 ernment of the United States of North America to 
 recognize the Principality of Trinidad as an inde- 
 pendent State, and to come to an understanding 
 with the other American Powers in order to guar- 
 antee its neutrality. 
 
 "Thus the Government of the United States of 
 North America will once more accord its powerful 
 assistance to the cause of right and of justice, mis- 
 understood by England and Brazil, put an end to 
 a situation which threatens to disturb the peace, 
 re-establish concord between two great States 
 ready to appeal to arms, and affirm itself, more- 
 over, as the faithful interpreter of the Monroe 
 Doctrine. 
 
 " In the expectation of your reply please accept, 
 Excellency, the expression of my elevated con- 
 sideration. 
 
 "The Grand Chancellor, Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs, 
 
 "COMTE DE LA BOISSIERE." 
 
 At that time Richard Olney was Secretary of 
 State, and in his treatment of the protest, and of 
 the gentleman who wrote it, he fully upheld the 
 reputation he made while in office of lack of good
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 manners. Saying he was unable to read the hand- 
 writing in which the protest was written, he dis- 
 posed of it in a way that would suggest itself 
 naturally to a statesman and a gentleman. As a 
 "crank" letter he turned it over to the Washington 
 correspondents. You can imagine what they did 
 with it. 
 
 The* day following the reporters in New York 
 swept down upon the chancellery and upon the 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was the "silly 
 season" in August, there was no real news in 
 town, and the troubles of De la Boissiere were 
 allowed much space. 
 
 They laughed at him and at his king, at his 
 chancellery, at his broken English, at his "grave 
 and courtly manners," even at his clothes. But in 
 spite of the ridicule, between the lines you could 
 read that to the man himself it all was terribly real. 
 
 I had first heard of the island of Trinidad from 
 two men I knew who spent three months on it 
 searching for the treasure, and when Harden- 
 Hickey proclaimed himself lord of the island, 
 through the papers I had carefully followed his 
 fortunes. So, partly out of curiosity and partly 
 out of sympathy, I called at the chancellery. 
 
 I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty 
 neighborhood just west of Seventh Avenue, and of 
 
 59
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 where now stands the York Hotel. Three weeks 
 ago I revisited it and found it unchanged. At the 
 time of my first visit, on the jamb of the front door 
 was pasted a piece of paper on which was written 
 in the handwriting of De la Boissiere: "Chancel- 
 lerie de la Principaute de Trinidad." 
 
 The chancellery was not exactly in its proper 
 setting. On its door-step children of the tenements 
 were playing dolls with clothes-pins; in the street a 
 huckster in raucous tones was offering wilted cab- 
 bages to women in wrappers leaning from the fire- 
 escapes; the smells and the heat of New York in 
 midsummer rose from the asphalt. It was a far 
 cry to the wave-swept island off the coast of Brazil. 
 
 De la Boissiere received me with distrust. The 
 morning papers had made him man-shy; but, 
 after a few "Your Excellencies'* and a respectful 
 inquiry regarding "His Royal Highness," his 
 confidence revived. In the situation he saw 
 nothing humorous, not even in an announcement 
 on the wall which read: "Sailings to Trinidad." 
 Of these there were two; on March i, and on 
 October i. On the table were many copies of 
 the royal proclamation, the postage-stamps of the 
 new government, the thousand-franc bonds, and, 
 in pasteboard boxes, the gold and red enamelled 
 crosses of the Order of Trinidad. 
 
 60
 
 Baron James Harden -Hickey 
 
 He talked to me frankly and fondly of Prince 
 James. Indeed, I never met any man who knew 
 Harden-Hickey well who did not speak of him 
 with aggressive loyalty. If at his eccentricities 
 they smiled, it was with the smile of affection. It 
 was easy to see De la Boissiere regarded him not 
 only with the affection of a friend, but with the 
 devotion of a true subject. In his manner he 
 himself was courteous, gentle, and so distinguished 
 that I felt as though I were enjoying, on intimate 
 terms, an audience with one of the prime-min- 
 isters of Europe. 
 
 And he, on his part, after the ridicule of the 
 morning papers, to have any one with outward 
 seriousness accept his high office and his king, 
 was, I believe, not ungrateful. 
 
 I told him I wished to visit Trinidad, and in 
 that I was quite serious. The story of an island 
 filled with buried treasure, and governed by a 
 king, wbose native subjects were turtles and sea- 
 gulls, promised to make interesting writing. 
 
 The count was greatly pleased. I believe in 
 me he saw his first bona-fide settler, and when I 
 rose to go he even lifted one of the crosses of 
 Trinidad and, before my envious eyes, regarded it 
 uncertainly. 
 
 Perhaps, had he known that of all decorations 
 61
 
 Baron James Harden -Hickey 
 
 it was the one I most desired; had I only then and 
 there booked my passage, or sworn allegiance to 
 King James, who knows but that to-day I might 
 be a chevalier, with my name in the "Book of 
 Gold " ? But instead of bending the knee, I 
 reached for my hat; the count replaced the cross 
 in its pasteboard box, and for me the psychologi- 
 cal moment had passed. 
 
 Others, more deserving of the honor, were 
 more fortunate. Among my fellow-reporters who, 
 like myself, came to scoff, and remained to pray, 
 was Henri Pene du Bois, for some time, until his 
 recent death, the brilliant critic of art and music 
 of the American. Then he was on the Times, and 
 Henry N. Gary, now of the Morning Telegraph, 
 was his managing editor. 
 
 When Du Bois reported to Gary on his assign- 
 ment, he said: 'There is nothing funny in that 
 story. It's pathetic. Both those men are in ear- 
 nest. They are convinced they are being robbed 
 of their rights. Their only fault is that they 
 have imagination, and that the rest of us lack it. 
 That's the way it struck me, and that's the way 
 the story ought to be written." 
 
 "Write it that way," said Gary. 
 
 So, of all the New York papers, the Times, for 
 a brief period, became the official organ of the 
 
 62
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 Government of James the First, and in time Gary 
 and Du Bois were created Chevaliers of the Order 
 of Trinidad, and entitled to wear uniforms "simi- 
 lar to those of the Chamberlains of the Court, save 
 that the buttons bear the impress of the Royal 
 Crown." 
 
 The attack made by Great Britain and Brazil 
 upon the independence of the principality, while 
 it left Harden-Hickey in the position of a king in 
 exile, brought him at once another crown, which, 
 by those who offered it to him, was described 
 as of incomparably greater value than that of 
 Trinidad. 
 
 In the first instance the man had sought the 
 throne; in this case the throne sought the man. 
 
 In 1893 in San Francisco, Ralston J. Mar- 
 kowe, a lawyer and a one-time officer of artillery 
 in the United States army, gained renown as one 
 of the Morrow filibustering expedition which at- 
 tempted to overthrow the Dole government in the 
 Hawaiian Isles and restore to the throne Queen 
 Liliuokalani. In San Francisco Markowe was 
 nicknamed the "Prince of Honolulu," as it was 
 understood, should Liliuokalani regain her crown, 
 he would be rewarded with some high office. 
 But in the star of Liliuokalani, Markowe appar- 
 ently lost faith, and thought he saw in Harden- 
 
 63
 
 Baron James Harden -Hickey 
 
 Hickey timber more suitable for king-making. 
 Accordingly, twenty-four days after the "protest" 
 was sent to our State Department, Markowe 
 switched his allegiance to Harden-Hickey, and to 
 him addressed the following letter: 
 
 " SAN FRANCISCO, August 26, 1895. 
 
 "BARON HARDEN-HICKEY, Los ANGELES, CAL.: 
 
 "Monseigneur Your favor of August 16 has 
 been received. 
 
 "i. I am the duly authorized agent of the Roy- 
 alist party in so far as it is possible for any one to 
 occupy that position under existing circumstances. 
 With the Queen in prison and absolutely cut off 
 from all communication with her friends, it is out 
 of the question for me to carry anything like formal 
 credentials. 
 
 "2. Alienating any part of the territory cannot 
 give rise to any constitutional questions, for the 
 reason that the constitutions, like the land tenures, 
 are in a state of such utter confusion that only a 
 strong hand can unravel them, and the restoration 
 will result in the establishment of a strong military 
 government. If I go down with the expedition I 
 have organized I shall be in full control of the situ- 
 ation and in a position to carry out all my contracts. 
 
 "3. It is the island of Kauai on which I propose 
 to establish you as an independent sovereign. 
 
 "4. My plan is to successively occupy all the 
 islands, leaving the capital to the last. When the 
 
 64.
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 others have fallen, the capital, being cut off from 
 all its resources, will be easily taken, and may very 
 likely fall without effort. I don't expect in any 
 case to have to fortify myself or to take the defen- 
 sive, or to have to issue a call to arms, as I shall 
 have an overwhelming force to join me at once, in 
 addition to those who go with me, who by them- 
 selves will be sufficient to carry everything before 
 them without active cooperation from the people 
 there. 
 
 "5. The Government forces consist of about 
 1 60 men and boys, with very imperfect military 
 training, and of whom about forty are officers. 
 They are organized as infantry. There are also 
 about 600 citizens enrolled as a reserve guard, 
 who may be called upon in case of an emergency, 
 and about 150 police. We can fully rely upon the 
 assistance of all the police and from one-quarter 
 to one-half of the other troops. And of the re- 
 mainder many will under no circumstances engage 
 in a sharp fight in defense of the present govern- 
 ment. There are now on the island plenty of men 
 and arms to accomplish our purpose, and if my 
 expedition does not get off very soon the people 
 there will be organized to do the work without 
 other assistance from here than the direction of a 
 few leaders, of which they stand more in need than 
 anything else. 
 
 "6. The tonnage of the vessel is 146. She at 
 present has berth-room for twenty men, but bunks 
 can be arranged in the hold for 256 more, with 
 provision for ample ventilation. She has one 
 
 65
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 complete set of sails and two extra spars. The 
 remaining information in regard to her I will have 
 to obtain and send you to-morrow. I think it 
 must be clear to you that the opportunity now 
 offered you will be of incomparably greater value 
 at once than Trinidad would ever be. Still hoping 
 that I may have an interview with you at an early 
 date, respectfully yours, 
 
 "RALSTON J. MARKOWE." 
 
 What Harden-Hickey thought of this is not 
 known, but as two weeks before he received it he 
 had written Markowe, asking him by what au- 
 thority he represented the Royalists of Honolulu, it 
 seems evident that when the crown of Hawaii was 
 first proffered him he did not at once spurn it. 
 
 He now was in the peculiar position of being a 
 deposed king of an island in the South Atlantic, 
 which had been taken from him, and king-elect 
 of an island in the Pacific, which was his if he could 
 take it. 
 
 This was in August of 1895. For the two 
 years following, Harden-Hickey was a soldier of 
 misfortunes. Having lost his island kingdom, he 
 could no longer occupy himself with plans for 
 its improvement. It had been his toy. They had 
 taken it from him, and the loss and the ridicule 
 which followed hurt him bitterly. 
 
 66
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 And for the lands he really owned in Mexico 
 and California, and which, if he were to live in 
 comfort, it was necessary he should sell, he could 
 find no purchaser; and, moreover, having quar- 
 relled with his father-in-law, he had cut off his 
 former supply of money. The need of it pinched 
 him cruelly. 
 
 The advertised cause of this quarrel was suffi- 
 ciently characteristic to be the real one. Moved 
 by the attack of Great Britain upon his principal- 
 ity, Harden-Hickey decided upon reprisals. It 
 must be remembered that always he was more 
 Irish than French. On paper he organized an 
 invasion of England from Ireland, the home of 
 his ancestors. It was because Flagler refused to 
 give him money for this adventure that he broke 
 with him. His friends say this was the real rea- 
 son of the quarrel, which was a quarrel on the side 
 of Harden-Hickey alone. 
 
 And there were other, more intimate troubles. 
 While not separated from his wife, he now was 
 seldom in her company. When the Baroness was 
 in Paris, Harden-Hickey was in San Francisco; 
 when she returned to San Francisco, he was in 
 Mexico. The fault seems to have been his. He 
 was greatly admired by pretty women. His 
 daughter by his first wife, now a very beautiful 
 
 67
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 girl of sixteen, spent much time with her step- 
 mother; and when not on his father's ranch in 
 Mexico, his son also, for months together, was at 
 her side. The husband approved of this, but he 
 himself saw his wife infrequently. Nevertheless, 
 early in the spring of 1898, the Baroness leased a 
 house in Brockton Square, in Riverside, Cal., 
 where it was understood by herself and by her 
 friends her husband would join her. At that 
 time in Mexico he was trying to dispose of a large 
 tract of land. Had he been able to sell it, the 
 money for a time would have kept one even of 
 his extravagances contentedly rich. At least, he 
 would have been independent of his wife and of 
 her father. Up to February of 1898 his obtain- 
 ing this money seemed probable. 
 
 Early in that month the last prospective pur- 
 chaser decided not to buy. 
 
 There is no doubt that had Harden-Hickey 
 then turned to his father-in-law, that gentle- 
 man, as he had done before, would have opened 
 an account for him. 
 
 But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no 
 longer beg, even for the money belonging to 
 his wife, from the man he had insulted. He 
 could no longer ask his wife to intercede for 
 him. He was without money of his own, with- 
 
 68
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 out the means of obtaining it; from his wife he 
 had ceased to expect even sympathy, and from 
 the world he knew, the fact that he was a self- 
 made king caused him always to be pointed out 
 with ridicule as a charlatan, as a jest. 
 
 The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist 
 and dreamer, the devout Catholic and devout 
 Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of his life only 
 as the meeting-place of many fiascos. 
 
 His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, 
 imaginary slights, imaginary failures. 
 
 This young man, who could paint pictures, write 
 books, organize colonies oversea, and with a 
 sword pick the buttons from a waistcoat, for- 
 got the twenty good years still before him; forgot 
 that men loved him for the mistakes he had made; 
 that in parts of the great city of Paris his name 
 was still spoken fondly, still was famous and 
 familiar. 
 
 In his book on the "Ethics of Suicide," for 
 certain hard places in life he had laid down an 
 inevitable rule of conduct. 
 
 As he saw it he had come to one of those hard 
 places, and he would not ask of others what he 
 himself would not perform. 
 
 From Mexico he set out for California, but 
 not to the house his wife had prepared for him. 
 
 69
 
 Baron James Harden- Hickey 
 
 Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left 
 the train and registered at a hotel. 
 
 At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, 
 and when, on the following morning, they kicked 
 in the door, they found him stretched rigidly upon 
 the bed, like one lying in state, with, near his 
 hand, a half-emptied bottle of poison. 
 
 On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife: 
 
 "Mv DEAREST, No news from you, although 
 you have had plenty of rime to write. Harvey has 
 written me that he has no one in view at present 
 to buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup 
 of bitterness to the very dregs, but I do not com- 
 plain. Good-by. I forgive you your conduct 
 toward me and trust you will be able to forgive 
 yourself. I prefer to be a dead gentleman to a 
 living blackguard like your father." 
 
 And when they searched his open trunk for 
 something that might identify the body on the 
 bed, they found the crown of Trinidad. 
 
 You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, 
 the military figure with its white face and mus- 
 tache, "b la Louis Napoleon," at rest upon the 
 pillow, the startled drummers and chambermaids 
 peering in from the hall, and the landlord, or 
 coroner, or doctor, with a bewildered counte- 
 
 70
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 nance, lifting to view the royal crown of gilt and 
 velvet. 
 
 The other actors in this, as Harold Frederic 
 called it, "Opera BoufFe Monarchy," are still 
 living. 
 
 The Baroness Harden-Hickey makes her home 
 in this country. 
 
 The Count de la Boissiere, ex-Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, is still a leader of the French 
 colony in New York, and a prosperous commis- 
 sion merchant with a suite of offices on Fifty- 
 fourth Street. By the will of Harden-Hickey he 
 is executor of his estate, guardian of his children, 
 and what, for the purpose of this article, is of 
 more importance, in his hands lies the future of 
 the kingdom of Trinidad. When Harden-Hickey 
 killed himself the title to the island was in dis- 
 pute. Should young Harden-Hickey wish to 
 claim it, it still would be in dispute. Meanwhile, 
 by the will of the First James, De la Boissiere is 
 appointed perpetual regent, a sort of "receiver," 
 and executor of the principality. 
 
 To him has been left a royal decree signed and 
 sealed, but blank. In the will the power to fill 
 in this blank with a statement showing the final 
 disposition of the island has been bestowed upon 
 De la Boissiere.
 
 Baron James Harden-Hickey 
 
 So, some day, he may proclaim the accession 
 of a new king, and give a new lease of life to the 
 kingdom of which Harden-Hickey dreamed. 
 
 But unless his son, or wife, or daughter should 
 assert his or her rights, which is not likely to 
 happen, so ends the dynasty of James the First 
 of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire. 
 
 To the wise ones in America he was a fool, and 
 they laughed at him; to the wiser ones, he was a 
 clever rascal who had evolved a new real-estate 
 scheme and was out to rob the people and they 
 respected him. To my mind, of them all, Harden- 
 Hickey was the wisest. 
 
 Granted one could be serious, what could be 
 more delightful than to be your own king on 
 your own island ? 
 
 The comic paragraphers, the business men of 
 "hard, common sense/* the captains of industry 
 who laughed at him and his national resources of 
 buried treasure, turtles* eggs, and guano, with his 
 body-guard of Zouaves and his Grand Cross of 
 Trinidad, certainly possessed many things that 
 Harden-Hickey lacked. But they in turn lacked 
 the things that made him happy; the power to 
 "make believe," the love of romance, the touch of 
 adventure that plucked him by the sleeve. 
 
 When, as boys, we used to say: "Let*s pretend 
 72
 
 Baron James Harden- Hickey 
 
 we're pirates," as a man, Harden-Hickey begged: 
 "Let's pretend I'm a king." 
 
 But the trouble was, the other boys had grown 
 up and would not pretend. 
 
 For some reason his end always reminds me of 
 the closing line of Pinero's play, when the ad- 
 venturess, Mrs. Tanqueray, kills herself, and her 
 virtuous stepchild says: "If we had only been 
 kinder!" 
 
 73
 
 WINSTON SPENCER 
 CHURCHILL
 
 WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 
 
 IN the strict sense of the phrase, a soldier of 
 of fortune is a man who for pay, or for the 
 love of adventure, fights under the flag of any 
 country. 
 
 In the bigger sense he is the kind of man who 
 in any walk of life makes his own fortune, who, 
 when he sees it coming, leaps to meet it, and 
 turns it to his advantage. 
 
 Than Winston Spencer Churchill to-day there 
 are few young men and he is a very young man 
 who have met more varying fortunes, and none 
 who has more frequently bent them to his own 
 advancement. To him it has been indifferent 
 whether, at the moment, the fortune seemed good 
 or evil, in the end always it was good. 
 
 As a boy officer, when other subalterns were 
 playing polo, and at the Gaiety Theatre attend- 
 ing night school, he ran away to Cuba and fought 
 with the Spaniards. For such a breach of mili- 
 tary discipline, any other officer would have been 
 court-martialled. Even his friends feared that by 
 his foolishness his career in the army was at an 
 
 77
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 end. Instead, his escapade was made a question 
 in the House of Commons, and the fact brought 
 him such publicity that the Daily Graphic paid 
 him handsomely to write on the Cuban Revolu- 
 tion, and the Spanish Government rewarded him 
 with the Order of Military Merit. 
 
 At the very outbreak of the Boer war he was 
 taken prisoner. It seemed a climax of misfort- 
 une. With his brother officers he had hoped in 
 that campaign to acquit himself with credit, and 
 that he should lie inactive in Pretoria appeared a 
 terrible calamity. To the others who, through 
 many heart-breaking months, suffered imprison- 
 ment, it continued to be a calamity. But within 
 six weeks of his capture Churchill escaped, and, 
 after many adventures, rejoined his own army to 
 find that the calamity had made him a hero. 
 
 When after the battle of Omdurman, in his 
 book on "The River War," he attacked Lord 
 Kitchener, those who did not like him, and they 
 were many, said: "That's the end of Winston 
 in the army. He'll never get another chance to 
 criticise K. of K." 
 
 But only two years later the chance came, 
 when, no longer a subaltern, but as a member 
 of the House of Commons, he patronized Kitch- 
 ener by defending him from the attacks of others. 
 
 78
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 Later, when his assaults upon the leaders of his 
 own party closed to him, even in his own constitu- 
 ency, the Conservative debating clubs, again his 
 ill-wishers said: "This is the end. He has ridi- 
 culed those who sit in high places. He has 
 offended his cousin and patron, the Duke of 
 Marlborough. Without political friends, without 
 the influence and money of the Marlborough family 
 he is a political nonentity." That was eighteen 
 months ago. To-day, at the age of thirty-two, he 
 is one of the leaders of the Government party, 
 Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and with the 
 Liberals the most popular young man in public life. 
 Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Ed- 
 ward Grey, the new Foreign Secretary, said of 
 him: "Mr. Winston Churchill has achieved dis- 
 tinction in at least five different careers as a 
 soldier, a war correspondent, a lecturer, an author, 
 and last, but not least, as a politician. I have 
 understated it even now, for he has achieved two 
 careers as a politician one on each side of the 
 House. His first career on the Government side 
 was a really distinguished career. I trust the 
 second will be even more distinguished and more 
 prolonged. The remarkable thing is that he has 
 done all this when, unless appearances very 
 much belie him, he has not reached the age of 
 
 79
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 sixty-four, which is the minimum age at which 
 the politician ceases to be young." 
 
 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born 
 thirty-two years ago, in November, 1874. By 
 birth he is half-American. His father was Lord 
 Randolph Churchill, and his mother was Jennie 
 Jerome, of New York. On the father's side he 
 is the grandchild of the seventh Duke of Marl- 
 borough, on the distaff side, of Leonard Jerome. 
 
 To a student of heredity it would be interest- 
 ing to try and discover from which of these an- 
 cestors Churchill drew those qualities which in 
 him are most prominent, and which have led to 
 his success. 
 
 What he owes to his father and mother it is 
 difficult to overestimate, almost as difficult as to 
 overestimate what he has accomplished by his 
 own efforts. 
 
 He was not a child born a full-grown genius of 
 commonplace parents. Rather his fate threatened 
 that he should always be known as the son of his 
 father. And certainly it was asking much of a 
 boy that he should live up to a father who was one 
 of the most conspicuous, clever, and erratic states- 
 men of the later Victorian era, and a mother who 
 is as brilliant as she is beautiful. 
 
 For at no time was the American wife content 
 80
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 to be merely ornamental. Throughout the polit- 
 ical career of her husband she was his helpmate, 
 and as an officer of the Primrose League, as an 
 editor of the Anglo-Saxon Review, as, for many 
 hot, weary months in Durban Harbor, the head 
 of the hospital ship Maine, she has shown an 
 acute mind and real executive power. At the 
 polls many votes that would not respond to the 
 arguments of the husband, and later of the son, 
 were gained over to the cause by the charm and 
 wit of the American woman. 
 
 In his earlier days, if one can have days any 
 earlier than those he now enjoys, Churchill was 
 entirely influenced by two things: the tremendous 
 admiration he felt for his father, which filled him 
 with ambition to follow in his orbit, and the cama- 
 raderie of his mother, who treated him less like a 
 mother than a sister and companion. 
 
 Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious 
 that I cannot recall the time when he was young 
 enough to be Lady Randolph's son; certainly, I 
 cannot recall the time when she was old enough 
 to be his mother. 
 
 When first I knew him he had passed through 
 Harrow and Sandhurst and was a second lieu- 
 tenant in the Queen's Own Hussars. He was 
 just of age, but appeared much younger. 
 
 81
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 He was below medium height, a slight, deli- 
 cate-looking boy; although, as a matter of fact, 
 extremely strong, with blue eyes, many freckles, 
 and hair which threatened to be a decided red, 
 but which now has lost its fierceness. When he 
 spoke it was with a lisp, which also has changed, 
 and which now appears to be merely an intentional 
 hesitation. 
 
 His manner of speaking was nervous, eager, 
 explosive. He used many gestures, some of 
 which were strongly reminiscent of his father, 
 of whom he, unlike most English lads, who 
 shy at mentioning a distinguished parent, con- 
 stantly spoke. 
 
 He even copied his father in his little tricks of 
 manner. Standing with hands shoved under the 
 frock-coat and one resting on each hip as though 
 squeezing in the waist line; when seated, resting 
 the elbows on the arms of the chair and nervously 
 locking and unclasping fingers, are tricks com- 
 mon to both. 
 
 He then had and still has a most embarrassing 
 habit of asking many questions; embarrassing, 
 sometimes, because the questions are so frank, and 
 sometimes because they lay bare the wide ex- 
 panse of one's own ignorance. 
 
 At that time, although in his twenty-first year, 
 82
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 this lad twice had been made a question in the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 That in itself had rendered him conspicuous. 
 When you consider out of Great Britain's four 
 hundred million subjects how many live, die, and 
 are buried without at any age having drawn down 
 upon themselves the anger of the House of Com- 
 mons, to have done so twice, before one has 
 passed his twenty-first year, seems to promise a 
 lurid future. 
 
 The first time Churchill disturbed the august 
 assemblage in which so soon he was to become 
 a leader was when he "ragged" a brother subal- 
 tern named Bruce and cut up his saddle and 
 accoutrements. The second time was when he 
 ran away to Cuba to fight with the Spaniards. 
 
 After this campaign, on the first night of his 
 arrival in London, he made his maiden speech. 
 He delivered it in a place of less dignity than the 
 House of Commons, but one, throughout Great 
 Britain and her colonies, as widely known and as 
 well supported. This was the Empire Music 
 Hall. 
 
 At the time Mrs. Ormiston Chant had raised 
 objections to the presence in the Music Hall of 
 certain young women, and had threatened, unless 
 they ceased to frequent its promenade, to have 
 
 83
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 the license of the Music Hall revoked. As a com- 
 promise, the management ceased selling liquor, 
 and on the night Churchill visited the place the 
 bar in the promenade was barricaded with scant- 
 ling and linen sheets. With the thirst of tropical 
 Cuba still upon him, Churchill asked for a drink, 
 which was denied him, and the crusade, which in 
 his absence had been progressing fiercely, was 
 explained. Any one else would have taken no 
 for his answer, and have sought elsewhere for his 
 drink. Not so Churchill. What he did is inter- 
 esting, because it was so extremely characteristic. 
 Now he would not do it; then he was twenty- 
 one. 
 
 He scrambled to the velvet-covered top of the 
 railing which divides the auditorium from the 
 promenade, and made a speech. It was a plea in 
 behalf of his "Sisters, the Ladies of the Empire 
 Promenade." 
 
 "Where," he asked of the ladies themselves and 
 of their escorts crowded below him in the prome- 
 nade, "does the Englishman in London always 
 find a welcome ? Where does he first go when, 
 battle-scarred and travel-worn, he reaches home ? 
 Who is always there to greet him with a smile, 
 and join him in a drink ? Who is ever faithful, 
 ever true the Ladies of the Empire Promenade." 
 
 84
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 The laughter and cheers that greeted this, and 
 the tears of the ladies themselves, naturally 
 brought the performance on the stage to a stop, 
 and the vast audience turned in the seats and 
 boxes. 
 
 They saw a little red-haired boy in evening 
 clothes, balancing himself on the rail of the bal- 
 cony, and around him a great crowd, cheering, 
 shouting, and bidding him "Go on!'* 
 
 Churchill turned with delight to the larger 
 audience, and repeated his appeal. The house 
 shook with laughter and applause. 
 
 The commissionaires and police tried to reach 
 him and a good-tempered but very determined 
 mob of well-dressed gentlemen and cheering girls 
 fought them back. In triumph Churchill ended 
 his speech by begging his hearers to give "fair 
 play" to the women, and to follow him in a charge 
 upon the barricades. 
 
 The charge was instantly made, the barricades 
 were torn down, and the terrified management 
 ordered that drink be served to its victorious 
 patrons. 
 
 Shortly after striking this blow for the liberty 
 of others, Churchill organized a dinner which 
 illustrated the direction in which at that age his 
 mind was working, and showed that his ambition 
 
 85
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 was already abnormal. The dinner was given 
 to those of his friends and acquaintances who 
 "were under twenty-one years of age, and who in 
 twenty years would control the destinies of the 
 British Empire/' 
 
 As one over the age limit, or because he did 
 not consider me an empire-controlling force, on 
 this great occasion, I was permitted to be present. 
 But except that the number of incipient empire- 
 builders was very great, that they were very hap- 
 py, and that save the host himself none of them 
 took his idea seriously, I would not call it an even- 
 ing of historical interest. But the fact is interest- 
 ing that of all the boys present, as yet, the host 
 seems to be the only one who to any conspicuous 
 extent is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain. 
 However, the others can reply that ten of the 
 twenty years have not yet passed. 
 
 When he was twenty-three Churchill obtained 
 leave of absence from his regiment, and as there 
 was no other way open to him to see fighting, as 
 a correspondent he joined the Malakand Field 
 Force in India. 
 
 It may be truthfully said that by his presence in 
 that frontier war he made it and himself famous. 
 His book on that campaign is his best piece of war 
 reporting. To the civilian reader it has all the 
 
 86
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 delight of one of Kipling's Indian stories, and to 
 writers on military subjects it is a model. But it 
 is a model very few can follow, and which Churchill 
 himself was unable to follow, for the reason that 
 only once is it given a man to be twenty-three 
 years of age. 
 
 The picturesque hand-to-hand fighting, the 
 night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, 
 the retreats made carrying the wounded under 
 constant fire, which he witnessed and in which 
 he bore his part, he never again can see with 
 the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it 
 was absolutely new, and the charm of the book 
 and the value of the book are that with the intol- 
 erance of youth he attacks in the service evils that 
 older men prefer to let lie, and that with the in- 
 genuousness of youth he tells of things which to 
 the veteran have become unimportant, or which 
 through usage he is no longer even able to see. 
 
 In his three later war books, the wonder of it, 
 the horror of it, the quick admiration for brave 
 deeds and daring men, give place, in "The River 
 War," to the critical point of view of the military 
 expert, and in his two books on the Boer war to 
 the rapid impressions of the journalist. In these 
 latter books he tells you of battles he has seen, in 
 the first one he made you see them. 
 
 87
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 For his services with the Malakand Field 
 Force he received the campaign medal with clasp, 
 and, "in despatches," Brigadier-General Jeffreys 
 praises "the courage and resolution of Lieutenant 
 W. L. S. Churchill, Fourth Hussars, with the 
 force as correspondent of the Pioneer" 
 
 From the operations around Malakand, he at 
 once joined Sir William Lockhart as orderly offi- 
 cer, and with the Tirah Expedition went through 
 that campaign. 
 
 For this his Indian medal gained a second 
 clasp. 
 
 This was in the early part of 1898. In spite 
 of the time taken up as an officer and as a cor- 
 respondent, he finished his book on the Malakand 
 Expedition and then, as it was evident Kitchener 
 would soon attack Khartum, he jumped across 
 to Egypt and again as a correspondent took part 
 in the advance upon that city. 
 
 Thus, in one year, he had seen service in three 
 campaigns. 
 
 On the day of the battle his luck followed 
 him. Kitchener had attached him to the Twenty- 
 first Lancers, and it will be remembered the 
 event of the battle was the charge made by that 
 squadron. It was no canter, no easy "pig-stick- 
 ing"; it was a fight to get in and a fight to get 
 
 88
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 out, with frenzied followers of the Khalifa hang- 
 ing to the bridle reins, hacking at the horses' ham- 
 strings, and slashing and firing point-blank at the 
 troopers. Churchill was in that charge. He re- 
 ceived the medal with clasp. 
 
 Then he returned home and wrote "The River 
 War." This book is the last word on the cam- 
 paigns up the Nile. From the death of Gordon 
 in Khartum to the capture of the city by Kitch- 
 ener, it tells the story of the many gallant fights, 
 the wearying failures, the many expeditions into 
 the hot, boundless desert, the long, slow progress 
 toward the final winning of the Sudan. 
 
 The book made a distinct sensation. It was 
 a work that one would expect from a lieutenant- 
 general, when, after years of service in Egypt, 
 he laid down his sword to pen the story of his life's 
 work. From a Second Lieutenant, who had been 
 on the Nile hardly long enough to gain the desert 
 tan, it was a revelation. As a contribution to 
 military history it was so valuable that for the 
 author it made many admirers, but on account 
 of his criticisms of his superior officers it gained 
 him even more enemies. 
 
 This is a specimen of the kind of thing that 
 caused the retired army officer to sit up and 
 choke with apoplexy: 
 
 89
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 "General Kitchener, who never spares himself, 
 cares little for others. He treated all men like 
 machines, from the private soldiers, whose sa- 
 lutes he disdained, to the superior officers, whom 
 he rigidly controlled. The comrade who had 
 served with him and under him for many years, 
 in peace and peril, was flung aside as soon as he 
 ceased to be of use. The wounded Egyptian and 
 even the wounded British soldier did not excite 
 his interest." 
 
 When in the service clubs they read that, the 
 veterans asked each other their favorite question 
 of what is the army coming to, and to their own 
 satisfaction answered it by pointing out that when 
 a lieutenant of twenty-four can reprimand the 
 commanding general the army is going to the 
 dogs. 
 
 To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over 
 their own signatures, on the service club station- 
 ery, wrote violent, furious letters, and the news- 
 papers themselves, besides the ordinary reviews, 
 gave to the book editorial praise and editorial 
 condemnation. 
 
 Equally disgusted were the younger officers 
 of the service. They nicknamed his book "A 
 Subaltern's Advice to Generals," and called 
 Churchill himself a "Medal Snatcher." A medal 
 
 90
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 snatcher is an officer who, whenever there is a 
 rumor of war, leaves his men to the care of any 
 one, and through influence in high places and 
 for the sake of the campaign medal has himself 
 attached to the expeditionary force. But Church- 
 ill never was a medal hunter. The routine of 
 barrack life irked him, and in foreign parts he 
 served his country far better than by remaining 
 at home and inspecting awkward squads and 
 attending guard mount. Indeed, the War Office 
 could cover with medals the man who wrote "The 
 Story of the Malakand Field Force" and "The 
 River War" and still be in his debt. 
 
 In October, 1898, a month after the battle 
 of Omdurman, Churchill made his debut as a 
 political speaker at minor meetings in Dover 
 and Rotherhithe. History does not record that 
 these first speeches set fire to the Channel. Dur- 
 ing the winter he finished and published his 
 "River War," and in the August of the follow- 
 ing summer, 1899, at a by-election, offered him- 
 self as Member of Parliament for Oldham. 
 
 In the Daily Telegraph his letters from the 
 three campaigns in India and Egypt had made 
 his name known, and there was a general desire 
 to hear him and to see him. In one who had 
 attacked Kitchener of Khartum, the men of 
 
 9 1
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 Oldham expected to find a stalwart veteran, 
 bearded, and with a voice of command. When 
 they were introduced to a small red-haired boy 
 with a lisp, they refused to take him seriously. 
 In England youth is an unpardonable thing. 
 Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, Hugh 
 Cecil, and others have made it less reprehensible. 
 But, in spite of a vigorous campaign, in which 
 Lady Randolph took an active part, Oldham de- 
 cided it was not ready to accept young Churchill 
 for a member. Later he was Oldham's only 
 claim to fame. 
 
 A week after he was defeated he sailed for South 
 Africa, where war with the Boers was imminent. 
 He had resigned from his regiment and went 
 south as war correspondent for the Morning Post. 
 
 Later in the war he held a commission as 
 Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, 
 a regiment of irregular cavalry, and on the staffs 
 of different generals acted as galloper and aide- 
 de-camp. To this combination of duties, which 
 was in direct violation of a rule of the War Office, 
 his brother officers and his fellow correspondents 
 objected; but, as in each of his other campaigns 
 he had played this dual role, the press censors 
 considered it a traditional privilege, and winked 
 at it. As a matter of record, Churchill's soldier 
 
 92
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 ing never seemed to interfere with his writing, 
 nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper ever pre- 
 vent him from mixing in as a belligerent. 
 
 War was declared October Qth, and only a 
 month later, while scouting in the armored train 
 along the railroad line between Pietermaritzburg 
 and Colenso, the cars were derailed and Churchill 
 was taken prisoner. 
 
 The train was made up of three flat cars, two 
 armored cars, and between them the engine, 
 with three cars coupled to the cow-catcher and 
 two to the tender. 
 
 On the outward trip the Boers did not show 
 themselves, but as soon as the English passed 
 Frere station they rolled a rock on the track at 
 a point where it was hidden by a curve. On 
 the return trip, as the English approached this 
 curve the Boers opened fire with artillery and 
 pompoms. The engineer, in his eagerness to 
 escape, rounded the curve at full speed, and, as 
 the Boers had expected, hit the rock. The three 
 forward cars were derailed, and one of them was 
 thrown across the track, thus preventing the escape 
 of the engine and the two rear cars. From these 
 Captain Haldane, who was in command, with a 
 detachment of the Dublins, kept up a steady 
 fire on the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear 
 
 93
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 the track. To assist him he had a company of 
 Natal volunteers, and those who had not run away 
 of the train hands and break-down crew. 
 
 "We were not long left in the comparative 
 safety of a railroad accident," Churchill writes 
 to his paper. "The Boers' guns, swiftly chang- 
 ing their position, reopened fire from a distance 
 of thirteen hundred yards before any one had got 
 out of the stage of exclamations. The tapping 
 rifle-fire spread along the hills, until it encircled 
 the wreckage on three sides, and from some high 
 ground on the opposite side of the line a third field- 
 gun came into action." 
 
 For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pom- 
 poms, a wrecked railroad train at thirteen hundred 
 yards was as easy a bull's-eye as the hands of the 
 first baseman to the pitcher, and while the en- 
 gine butted and snorted and the men with their 
 bare hands tore at the massive beams of the 
 freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about 
 them. 
 
 " I have had in the last four years many strange 
 and varied experiences," continues young Church- 
 ill, "but nothing was so thrilling as this; to wait 
 and struggle among these clanging, rending iron 
 boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells, 
 the noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the 
 
 04
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and 
 puffing of the engine poor, tortured thing, ham- 
 mered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, 
 by penetrating the boiler, might have made an 
 end of all the expectation of destruction as a 
 matter of course, the realization of powerlessness 
 all this for seventy minutes by the clock, with 
 only four inches of twisted iron between danger, 
 captivity, and shame on one side and freedom 
 on the other." 
 
 The "protected" train had proved a death- 
 trap, and by the time the line was clear every 
 fourth man was killed or wounded. Only the 
 engine, with the more severely wounded heaped 
 in the cab and clinging to its cow-catcher and 
 foot-rails, made good its escape. Among those 
 left behind, a Tommy, without authority, raised 
 a handkerchief on his rifle, and the Boers instantly 
 ceased firing and came galloping forward to ac- 
 cept surrender. There was a general stampede 
 to escape. Seeing that Lieutenant Franklin was 
 gallantly trying to hold his men, Churchill, who 
 was safe on the engine, jumped from it and ran 
 to his assistance. Of what followed, this is his 
 own account: 
 
 "Scarcely had the locomotive left me than 
 I found myself alone in a shallow cutting, and 
 
 95
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 none of our soldiers, who had all surrendered, 
 to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on 
 the line at the end of the cutting two men not 
 in uniform. * Plate-layers/ I said to myself, 
 and then, with a surge of realization, 'Boers/ 
 My mind retains a momentary impression of these 
 tall figures, full of animated movement, clad in 
 dark flapping clothes, with slouch, storm-driven 
 hats, posing their rifles hardly a hundred yards 
 away. I turned and ran between the rails of the 
 track, and the only thought I achieved was this: 
 'Boer marksmanship/ 
 
 "Two bullets passed, both within a foot, one 
 on either side. I flung myself against the banks 
 of the cutting. But they gave no cover. Another 
 glance at the figures; one was now kneeling to 
 aim. Again I darted forward. Again two soft 
 kisses sucked in the air, but nothing struck me. 
 I must get out of the cutting that damnable 
 corridor. I scrambled up the bank. The earth 
 sprang up beside me, and a bullet touched my 
 hand, but outside the cutting was a tiny depres- 
 sion. I crouched in this, struggling to get my 
 wind. On the other side of the railway a horse- 
 man galloped up, shouting to me and waving his 
 hand. He was scarcely forty yards off. With a 
 rifle I could have killed him easily. I knew 
 
 96
 
 Winston Churchill. 
 
 In the uniform of lieutenant of South African Light Horse.
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 nothing of the white flag, and the bullets had 
 made me savage. I reached down for my Mauser 
 pistol. I had left it in the cab of the engine. Be- 
 tween me and the horseman there was a wire 
 fence. Should I continue to fly ? The idea of 
 another shot at such a short range decided me. 
 Death stood before me, grim and sullen; Death 
 without his light-hearted companion, Chance. 
 So I held up my hand, and like Mr. Jorrock's 
 foxes, cried 'CapivyP Then I was herded with 
 the other prisoners in a miserable group, and 
 about the same time I noticed that my hand was 
 bleeding, and it began to pour with rain. 
 
 "Two days before I had written to an offi- 
 cer at home: 'There has been a great deal too 
 much surrendering in this war, and I hope people 
 who do so will not be encouraged/ ' 
 
 With other officers, Churchill was imprisoned 
 in the State Model Schools, situated in the heart of 
 Pretoria. It was distinctly characteristic that on 
 the very day of his arrival he began to plan to 
 escape. 
 
 Toward this end his first step was to lose his 
 campaign hat, which he recognized was too ob- 
 viously the hat of an English officer. The burgher 
 to whom he gave money to purchase him another 
 innocently brought him a Boer sombrero. 
 
 97
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 Before his chance to escape came a month 
 elapsed, and the opportunity that then offered 
 was less an opportunity to escape than to get 
 himself shot. 
 
 The State Model Schools were surrounded by 
 the children's playgrounds, penned in by a high 
 wall, and at night, while they were used as a 
 prison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. After 
 many nights of observation, ^Churchill discovered 
 that while the sentries were pacing their beats 
 there was a moment when to them a certain por- 
 tion of the wall was in darkness. This was due to 
 cross-shadows cast by the electric lights. On 
 the other side of this wall there was a private 
 house set in a garden filled with bushes. Beyond 
 this was the open street. 
 
 To scale the wall was not difficult; the real 
 danger lay in the fact that at no time were the 
 sentries farther away than fifteen yards, and 
 the chance of being shot by one or both of them 
 was excellent. To a brother officer Churchill 
 confided his purpose, and together they agreed 
 that some night when the sentries had turned from 
 the dark spot on the wall they would scale it and 
 drop among the bushes in the garden. After 
 they reached the garden, should they reach it alive, 
 what they were to do they did not know. How 
 
 98
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 they were to proceed through the streets and out 
 of the city, how they were to pass unchallenged 
 under its many electric lights and before the illu- 
 minated shop windows, how to dodge patrols, 
 and how to find their way through two hundred 
 and eighty miles of a South African wilderness, 
 through an utterly unfamiliar, unfriendly, and 
 sparsely settled country into Portuguese territory 
 and the coast, they left to chance. But with luck 
 they hoped to cover the distance in a fortnight, 
 begging corn at the Kaffir kraals, sleeping by 
 day, and marching under cover of the darkness. 
 
 They agreed to make the attempt on the nth 
 of December, but on that night the sentries did not 
 move from the only part of the wall that was in 
 shadow. On the night following, at the last 
 moment, something delayed Churchill's compan- 
 ion, and he essayed the adventure alone. He 
 writes: "Tuesday, the I2th! Anything was bet- 
 ter than further suspense. Again night came. 
 Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my 
 opportunity, I strolled across the quadrangle and 
 secreted myself in one of the offices. Through a 
 chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour 
 they remained stolid and obstructive. Then sud- 
 denly one turned and walked up to his comrade 
 and they began to talk. Their backs were turned. 
 
 99
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 I darted out of my hiding-place and ran to the 
 wall, seized the top with my hands and drew 
 myself up. Twice I let myself down again in 
 sickly hesitation, and then with a third resolve 
 scrambled up. The top was flat. Lying on it, 
 I had one parting glimpse of the sentries, still 
 talking, still with their backs turned, but, I re- 
 peat, still fifteen yards away. Then I lowered 
 myself into the adjoining garden and crouched 
 among the shrubs. I was free. The first step 
 had been taken, and it was irrevocable." 
 
 Churchill discovered that the house into the 
 garden of which he had so unceremoniously in- 
 troduced himself was brilliantly lighted, and that 
 the owner was giving a party. At one time two 
 of the guests walked into the garden and stood, 
 smoking and chatting, in the path within a few 
 yards of him. 
 
 Thinking his companion might yet join him, 
 for an hour he crouched in the bushes, until 
 from the other side of the wall he heard the 
 voices of his friend and of another officer. 
 
 "It's all up!" his friend whispered. Churchill 
 coughed tentatively. The two voices drew nearer. 
 To confuse the sentries, should they be listening, 
 the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, 
 and quoted Latin phrases, while the other, in a 
 
 IOO
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 low and distinct voice, said: "I cannot get out. 
 The sentry suspects. It's all up. Can you get 
 back again ? " 
 
 To go back was impossible. Churchill now 
 felt that in any case he was sure to be recaptured, 
 and decided he would, as he expresses it, at least 
 have a run for his money. 
 
 "I shall go on alone," he whispered. 
 
 He heard the footsteps of his two friends move 
 away from him across the play yard. At the 
 same moment he stepped boldly out into the gar- 
 den and, passing the open windows of the house, 
 walked down the gravel path to the street. Not 
 five yards from the gate stood a sentry. Most 
 of those guarding the school-house knew him by 
 sight, but Churchill did not turn his head, and 
 whether the sentry recognized him or not, he could 
 not tell. 
 
 For a hundred feet he walked as though on ice, 
 inwardly shrinking as he waited for the sharp 
 challenge, and the rattle of the Mauser thrown to 
 the "Ready." His nerves were leaping, his heart 
 in his throat, his spine of water. And then, as he 
 continued to advance, and still no tumult pursued 
 him, he quickened his pace and turned into one 
 of the main streets of Pretoria. The sidewalks 
 were crowded with burghers, but no one noticed 
 
 101
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 him. This was due probably to the fact that the 
 Boers wore no distinctive uniform, and that with 
 them in their commandoes were many English 
 Colonials who wore khaki riding breeches, and 
 many Americans, French, Germans, and Rus- 
 sians, in every fashion of semi-uniform. 
 
 If observed, Churchill was mistaken for one 
 of these, and the very openness of his movements 
 saved him from suspicion. 
 
 Straight through the town he walked until 
 he reached the suburbs, the open veldt, and a 
 railroad track. As he had no map or compass 
 he knew this must be his only guide, but he knew 
 also that two railroads left Pretoria, the one along 
 which he had been captured, to Pietermaritzburg, 
 and the other, the one leading to the coast and 
 freedom. Which of the two this one was he had 
 no idea, but he took his chance, and a hundred 
 yards beyond a station waited for the first out- 
 going train. About midnight, a freight stopped 
 at the station, and after it had left it and before it 
 had again gathered headway, Churchill swung him- 
 self up upon it, and stretched out upon a pile of 
 coal. Throughout the night the train continued 
 steadily toward the east, and so told him that it 
 was the one he wanted, and that he was on his 
 way to the neutral territory of Portugal. 
 
 102
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 Fearing the daylight, just before the sun rose, 
 as the train was pulling up a steep grade, he 
 leaped off into some bushes. All that day he lay 
 hidden, and the next night he walked. He made 
 but little headway. As all stations and bridges 
 were guarded, he had to make long detours, and 
 the tropical moonlight prevented him from cross- 
 ing in the open. In this way, sleeping by day, 
 walking by night, begging food from the Kaffirs, 
 five days passed. 
 
 Meanwhile, his absence had been at once dis- 
 covered, and, by the Boers, every effort was being 
 made to retake him. Telegrams giving his de- 
 scription were sent along both railways, three 
 thousand photographs of him were distributed, 
 each car of every train was searched, and in dif- 
 ferent parts of the Transvaal men who resembled 
 him were being arrested. It was said he had 
 escaped dressed as a woman; in the uniform of a 
 Transvaal policeman whom he had bribed; that 
 he had never left Pretoria, and that in the disguise 
 of a waiter he was concealed in the house of a 
 British sympathizer. On the strength of this 
 rumor the houses of all suspected persons were 
 searched. 
 
 In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a signifi- 
 cant fact that a week before his escape Churchill 
 
 103
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 had drawn from the library Mill's "Essay on 
 Liberty." 
 
 In England and over all British South Africa 
 the escape created as much interest as it did in 
 Pretoria. Because the attempt showed pluck, 
 and because he had outwitted the enemy, Churchill 
 for the time became a sort of popular hero, and to 
 his countrymen his escape gave as much pleasure 
 as it was a cause of chagrin to the Boers. 
 
 But as days passed and nothing was heard of 
 him, it was feared he had lost himself in the 
 Machadodorp Mountains, or had succumbed to 
 starvation, or, in the jungle toward the coast, to 
 fever, and congratulations gave way to anxiety. 
 
 The anxiety was justified, for at this time 
 Churchill was in a very bad way. During the 
 month in prison he had obtained but little ex- 
 ercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold 
 by night and the terrific heat by day, the long 
 stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental 
 effect upon an extremely nervous, high-strung 
 organization of being hunted, and of having to 
 hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to 
 a condition almost of collapse. 
 
 Even though it were neutral soil, in so exhausted 
 a state he dared not venture into the swamps and 
 waste places of the Portuguese territory; and, sick 
 
 104
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 at heart as well as sick in body, he saw no choice 
 left him save to give himself up. 
 
 But before doing so he carefully prepared a 
 tale which, although most improbable, he hoped 
 might still conceal his identity and aid him to 
 escape by train across the border. 
 
 One night after days of wandering he found 
 himself on the outskirts of a little village near 
 the boundary line of the Transvaal and Portu- 
 guese territory. Utterly unable to proceed fur- 
 ther, he crawled to the nearest zinc-roofed shack, 
 and, fully prepared to surrender, knocked at the 
 door. It was opened by a rough-looking, bearded 
 giant, the first white man to whom in many days 
 Churchill had dared address himself. 
 
 To him, without hope, he feebly stammered 
 forth the speech he had rehearsed. The man 
 listened with every outward mark of disbelief. 
 At Churchill himself he stared with open sus- 
 picion. Suddenly he seized the boy by the shoul- 
 der, drew him inside the hut, and barred the door. 
 
 "You needn't lie to me," he said. "You 
 are Winston Churchill, and I am the only 
 Englishman in this village." 
 
 The rest of the adventure was comparatively 
 easy. The next night his friend in need, an 
 engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 into a freight-car, and hid him under sacks of 
 some soft merchandise. 
 
 At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, 
 for eighteen hours the car in which Churchill 
 lay concealed was left in the sun on a siding, 
 and before it again started it was searched, but 
 the man who was conducting the search lifted 
 only the top layer of sacks, and a few minutes 
 later Churchill heard the hollow roar of the car 
 as it passed over the bridge, and knew that he 
 was across the border. 
 
 Even then he took no chances, and for two days 
 more lay hidden at the bottom of the car. 
 
 When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Marques 
 he at once sought out the English Consul, who, 
 after first mistaking him for a stoker from one of 
 the ships in the harbor, gave him a drink, a bath, 
 and a dinner. 
 
 As good luck would have it, the Induna was 
 leaving that night for Durban, and, escorted 
 by a body-guard of English residents armed with 
 revolvers, and who were taking no chances of his 
 recapture by the Boer agents, he was placed safely 
 on board. Two days later he arrived at Durban, 
 where he was received by the Mayor, the populace, 
 and a brass band playing: "Britons Never, 
 Never, Never shall be Slaves!" 
 
 106
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 For the next month Churchill was bombarded 
 by letters and telegrams from every part of the 
 globe; some invited him to command filibuster- 
 ing expeditions, others sent him woollen comfort- 
 ers, some forwarded photographs of himself to be 
 signed, others photographs of themselves, possibly 
 to be admired, others sent poems, and some bot- 
 tles of whiskey. 
 
 One admirer wrote: "My congratulations on 
 your wonderful and glorious deeds, which will 
 send such a thrill of pride and enthusiasm through 
 Great Britain and the United States of America, 
 that the Anglo-Saxon race will be irresistible." 
 
 Lest so large an order as making the Anglo- 
 Saxon race irresistible might turn the head of 
 a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was also 
 sent him, from London, reading: 
 
 "Best friends here hope you won't go making 
 further ass of yourself. 
 
 " McNEILL." 
 
 One day in camp we counted up the price 
 per word of this cablegram, and Churchill was 
 delighted to find that it must have cost the man 
 who sent it five pounds. 
 
 On the day of his arrival in Durban, with 
 the cheers still in the air, Churchill took the first 
 
 107
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 train to "the front," then at Colenso. Another 
 man might have lingered. After a month's im- 
 prisonment and the hardships of the escape, he 
 might have been excused for delaying twenty-four 
 hours to taste the sweets of popularity and the 
 flesh-pots of the Queen Hotel. But if the reader 
 has followed this brief biography he will know 
 that to have done so would have been out of the 
 part. This characteristic of Churchill's to get on 
 to the next thing explains his success. He has no 
 time to waste on post-mortems, he takes none to 
 rest on his laurels. 
 
 As a war correspondent and officer he con- 
 tinued with Buller until the relief of Ladysmith, 
 and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria. He 
 was in many actions, in all the big engagements, 
 and came out of the war with another medal and 
 clasps for six battles. 
 
 On his return to London he spent the sum- 
 mer finishing his second book on the war, and in 
 October at the general election as a "khaki" 
 candidate, as those were called who favored the 
 war, again stood for Oldham. This time, with 
 his war record to help him, he wrested from the 
 Liberals one of Oldham's two seats. He had been 
 defeated by thirteen hundred votes; he was elected 
 by a majority of two hundred and twenty-seven. 
 
 108
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 The few months that intervened between his 
 election and the opening of the new Parliament 
 were snatched by Churchill for a lecturing tour 
 at home, and in the United States and Canada. 
 His subject was the war and his escape from Pre- 
 toria. 
 
 When he came to this country half of the people 
 here were in sympathy with the Boers, and did 
 not care to listen to what they supposed would be 
 a strictly British version of the war. His mana- 
 ger, without asking permission of those whose 
 names he advertised, organized for Churchill's 
 first appearance in various cities, different recep- 
 tion committees. 
 
 Some of those whose names, without their 
 consent, were used for these committees, wrote 
 indignantly to the papers, saying that while 
 for Churchill, personally, they held every respect, 
 they objected to being used to advertise an anti- 
 Boer demonstration. 
 
 While this was no fault of Churchill's, who, 
 until he reached this country knew nothing of 
 it, it was neither for him nor for the success of 
 his tour the best kind of advance work. 
 
 During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with 
 General Buller's force, Churchill and I had again 
 been together, and later when I joined the Boer 
 
 109
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 army, at the Zand River Battle', the army with 
 which he was a correspondent had chased the 
 army with which I was a correspondent, forty miles. 
 I had been one of those who refused to act on 
 his reception committee, and he had come to this 
 country with a commission from twenty brother 
 officers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture 
 he was using the photographs I had taken of 
 the scene of his escape, and which I had sent 
 him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he 
 arrived I was at the hotel to welcome him, and 
 that same evening three hours after midnight he 
 came, in a blizzard, pounding at our door for 
 food and drink. What is a little thing like a war 
 between friends ? 
 
 During his "tour," except of hotels, parlor- 
 cars, and "Lyceums," he saw very little of this 
 country or of its people, and they saw very little 
 of him. On the trip, which lasted about two 
 months, he cleared ten thousand dollars. This, 
 to a young man almost entirely dependent for an 
 income upon his newspaper work and the sale 
 of his books, nearly repaid him for the two months 
 of "one night stands." On his return to London 
 he took his seat in the new Parliament. 
 
 It was a coincidence that he entered Parlia- 
 ment at the same age as did his father. With 
 
 no
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 two other members, one born six days earlier than 
 himself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among 
 the three youngest members of the new House. 
 
 The fact did not seem to appall him. In the 
 House it is a tradition that young and ambi- 
 tious members sit "below" the gangway; the 
 more modest and less assured are content to 
 place themselves "above" it, at a point farthest 
 removed from the leaders. 
 
 On the day he was sworn in there was much 
 curiosity to see where Churchill would elect 
 to sit. In his own mind there was apparently 
 no doubt. After he had taken the oath, signed 
 his name, and shaken the hand of the Speaker, 
 without hesitation he seated himself on the 
 bench next to the Ministry. Ten minutes later, 
 so a newspaper of the day describes it, he had 
 cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved his hands 
 into his trousers pockets, and was lolling back 
 eying the veterans of the House with critical dis- 
 approval. 
 
 His maiden speech was delivered in May, 
 1901, in reply to David Lloyd George, who had 
 attacked the conduct of British soldiers in South 
 Africa. Churchill defended them, and in a man- 
 ner that from all sides gained him honest admira- 
 tion. In the course of the debate he produced 
 
 in
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 and read a strangely apropos letter which, fifteen 
 years before, had been written by his father to 
 Lord Salisbury. His adroit use of this filled H. 
 W. Massingham, the editor of the Daily News, 
 with enthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary tac- 
 tics, he declared, since Mr. Gladstone died, had 
 been so clever. He proclaimed that Churchill 
 would be Premier. John Dillon, the Nationalist 
 leader, said he never before had seen a young 
 man, by means of his maiden effort, spring into 
 the front rank of parliamentary speakers. He 
 promised that the Irish members would ungrudg- 
 ingly testify to his ability and honesty of purpose. 
 Among others to at once recognize the rising star 
 was T. P. O'Connor, himself for many years of 
 the parliamentary firmament one of the brightest 
 stars. In M. A. P. he wrote: "I am inclined to 
 think that the dash of American blood which he 
 has from his mother has been an improvement 
 on the original stock, and that Mr. Winston 
 Churchill may turn out to be a stronger and abler 
 politician than his father." 
 
 It was all a part of Churchill's "luck" that 
 when he entered Parliament the subject in debate 
 was the conduct of the war. 
 
 Even in those first days of his career in the 
 House, in debates where angels feared to tread, 
 
 112
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 he did not hesitate to rush in, but this subject was 
 one on which he spoke with knowledge. Over 
 the older men who were forced to quote from hear- 
 say or from what they had read, Churchill had the 
 tremendous advantage of being able to protest: 
 "You only read of that. I was there. I saw it." 
 
 In the House he became at once one of the con- 
 spicuous and picturesque figures, one dear to the 
 heart of the caricaturist, and one from the stran- 
 gers' gallery most frequently pointed out. He was 
 called "the spoiled child of the House," and there 
 were several distinguished gentlemen who regretted 
 they were forced to spare the rod. Broderick, the 
 Secretary for War, was one of these. Of him and 
 of his recruits in South Africa, Churchill spoke 
 with the awful frankness of the enfant terrible. 
 And although he addressed them more with sorrow 
 than with anger, to Balfour and Chamberlain he 
 daily administered advice and reproof, while mere 
 generals and field-marshals, like Kitchener and 
 Roberts, blushing under new titles, were held up 
 for public reproof and briefly but severely chas- 
 tened. Nor, when he saw Lord Salisbury going 
 astray, did he hesitate in his duty to the country, 
 but took the Prime Minister by the hand and 
 gently instructed him in the way he should go. 
 
 This did not tend to make him popular, but 
 "3
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 in spite of his unpopularity, in his speeches against 
 national extravagancies he made so good a fight 
 that he forced the Government, unwillingly, to 
 appoint a committee to investigate the need of 
 economy. For a beginner this was a distinct 
 triumph. 
 
 With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian Mal- 
 colm, and other clever young men, he formed in- 
 side the Conservative Party a little group that 
 in its obstructive and independent methods was 
 not unlike the Fourth Party of his father. From 
 its leader and its filibustering, guerilla-like tactics 
 the men who composed it were nicknamed the 
 "Hughligans." The Hughligans were the most 
 active critics of the Ministry and of all in their 
 own party, and as members of the Free Food 
 League they bitterly attacked the fiscal proposals 
 of Mr. Chamberlain. When Balfour made Cham- 
 berlain's fight for fair trade, or for what virtually 
 was protection, a measure of the Conservatives, 
 the lines of party began to break, and men were 
 no longer Conservatives or Liberals, but Protec- 
 tionists or Free Traders. 
 
 Against this Churchill daily protested, against 
 Chamberlain, against his plan, against that plan 
 being adopted by the Tory Party. By tradition, 
 by inheritance, by instinct, Churchill was a Tory. 
 
 114
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 "I am a Tory," he said, "and I have as much 
 right in the party as has anybody else, certainly 
 as much as certain people from Birmingham. 
 They can't turn us out, and we, the Tory Free 
 Traders, have as much right to dictate the policy 
 of the Conservative Party as have any reactionary 
 Fair Traders." In 1904 the Conservative Party 
 already recognized Churchill as one working out- 
 side the breastworks. Just before the Easter 
 vacation of that year, when he rose to speak a re- 
 markable demonstration was made against him 
 by his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising and 
 leaving the House. 
 
 To the Liberals who remained to hear him 
 he stated that if to his constituents his opinions 
 were obnoxious, he was ready to resign his seat. 
 It then was evident he would go over to the Liberal 
 Party. Some thought he foresaw which way the 
 tidal wave was coming, and to being slapped down 
 on the beach and buried in the sand, he preferred 
 to be swept forward on its crest. Others believed 
 he left the Conservatives because he could not 
 honestly stomach the taxed food offered by Mr. 
 Chamberlain. 
 
 In any event, if he were to be blamed for 
 changing from one party to the other, he was 
 only following the distinguished example set him
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 by Gladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his own 
 father. 
 
 It was at the time of this change that he was 
 called "the best hated man in England," but 
 the Liberals welcomed him gladly, and the 
 National Liberal Club paid him the rare com- 
 pliment of giving in his honor a banquet. There 
 were present two hundred members. Up to that 
 time this dinner was the most marked testimony 
 to his importance in the political world. It was 
 about then, a year since, that he prophesied: 
 "Within nine months there will come such a tide 
 and deluge as will sweep through England and 
 Scotland, and completely wash out and effect a 
 much-needed spring cleaning in Downing Street." 
 
 When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. 
 Balfour was defeated, and Churchill was victori- 
 ous, and when the new Government was formed 
 the tidal wave landed Churchill in the office of 
 Under-Secretary for the Colonies. 
 
 While this is being written the English papers 
 say that within a month he again will be pro- 
 moted. For this young man of thirty the only 
 promotion remaining is a position in the Cabinet, 
 in which august body men of fifty are considered 
 young. 
 
 His is a picturesque career. Of any man of 
 116
 
 Winston Spencer Churchill 
 
 his few years speaking our language, his career is 
 probably the most picturesque. And that he is 
 half an American gives all of us an excuse to 
 pretend we share in his successes. 
 
 117
 
 CAPTAIN 
 PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN
 
 CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN 
 
 IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of 
 the Yalu was the first battle fought between 
 warships of modern make, and, except on paper, 
 neither the men who made them nor the men 
 who fought them knew what the ships could do, 
 or what they might not do. For years every naval 
 power had been building these new engines of 
 war, and in the battle which was to test them the 
 whole world was interested. But in this battle 
 Americans had a special interest, a human, family 
 interest, for the reason that one of the Chinese 
 squadron, which was matched against some of 
 the same vessels of Japan which lately swept those 
 of Russia from the sea, was commanded by a 
 young graduate of the American Naval Academy. 
 This young man, who, at the time of the battle of 
 the Yalu, was thirty-three years old, was Captain 
 Philo Norton McGifHn. So it appears that five 
 years before our fleet sailed to victory in Manila 
 Bay another graduate of Annapolis, and one 
 twenty years younger than in 1898 was Admiral 
 
 121
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 Dewey, had commanded in action a modern 
 battleship, which, in tonnage, in armament, and 
 in the number of the ships' company, far out- 
 classed Dewey's Olympia. 
 
 McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 
 1860, came of fighting stock. Back in Scot- 
 land the family is descended from the Clan Mac- 
 Gregor and the Clan MacAIpine. 
 
 "These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true, 
 And, Saxon I am Roderick Dhu." 
 
 McGiffin's great-grandfather, born in Scotland, 
 emigrated to this country and settled in "Little 
 Washington," near Pittsburg, Pa. In the Revolu- 
 tionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives 
 fought in the War of 1812, one of them holding 
 a commission as major. McGiffin's own father 
 was Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served in the 
 Mexican War, and in the Civil War was Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania 
 Volunteers. So McGiffin inherited his love for 
 arms. 
 
 In Washington he went to the high school and 
 at the Washington Jefferson College had passed 
 through his freshman year. But the honors that 
 might accrue to him if he continued to live on in 
 the quiet and pretty old town of Washington did 
 
 122
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 not tempt him. To escape into the world he 
 wrote his Congressman, begging him to obtain 
 for him an appointment to Annapolis. The Con- 
 gressman liked the letter, and wrote Colonel Mc- 
 Giffin to ask if the application of his son had his 
 approval. Colonel McGiffin was willing, and in 
 1877 his son received his commission as cadet 
 midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy 
 with whom in vacation time I went coon hunting 
 in the woods outside of Washington. For his 
 age he was a very tall boy, and in his midship- 
 man undress uniform, to my youthful eyes, ap- 
 peared a most bold and adventurous spirit. 
 
 At Annapolis his record seems to show he was 
 pretty much like other boys. According to his 
 classmates, with all of whom I find he was very 
 popular, he stood high in the practical studies, 
 such as seamanship, gunnery, navigation, and 
 steam engineering, but in all else he was near 
 the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade 
 was risky and reckless he was always one of the 
 leaders. To him discipline was extremely irksome. 
 He could maintain it among others, but when it 
 applied to himself it bored him. On the floor of 
 the Academy building on which was his room 
 there was a pyramid of cannon balls relics of the 
 War of 1812. They stood at the head of the
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 stairs, and one warm night, when he could not 
 sleep, he decided that no one else should do so, 
 and, one by one, rolled the cannon balls down 
 the stairs. They tore away the banisters and 
 bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off 
 into the lower halls. For any one who might 
 think of ascending to discover the motive power 
 back of the bombardment they were extremely 
 dangerous. But an officer approached McGiffin 
 in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, 
 he was sent to the prison ship. There he made 
 good friends with his jailer, an old man-of-wars- 
 man named "Mike." He will be remembered 
 by many naval officers who as midshipmen served 
 on the Santee. McGiffin so won over Mike that 
 when he left the ship he carried with him six 
 charges of gunpowder. These he loaded into 
 the six big guns captured in the Mexican War, 
 which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy 
 grounds, and at midnight on the eve of July 1st 
 he fired a salute. It aroused the entire garrison, 
 and for a week the empty window frames kept 
 the glaziers busy. 
 
 About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in 
 Ireland. The people of New York City con- 
 tributed provisions for the sufferers, and to carry 
 the supplies to Ireland the Government authorized 
 
 124
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 the use of the old Constellation. At the time 
 the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed 
 to consider himself as having been placed in com- 
 mand of the Constellation and to write a report 
 on the preparations made for the voyage, on the 
 loading of the vessel, and on the distribution of 
 the stores. This exercise was intended for the 
 instruction of the cadets; first in the matter of 
 seamanship and navigation, and second in mak- 
 ing official reports. At that time it was a very 
 difficult operation to get a gun out of the port 
 of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. 
 To do this the necessary tackles had to be rigged 
 from the yard-arm and the yard and mast properly 
 braced and stayed, and then the lower block of 
 the tackle carried in through the gun port, which, 
 of course, gave the fall a very bad reeve. The 
 first part of McGiffin's report dealt with a new 
 method of dismounting the guns and carrying 
 them through the gun ports, and so admirable was 
 his plan, so simple and ingenious, that it was used 
 whenever it became necessary to dismount a gun 
 from one of the old sailing ships. Having, how- 
 ever, offered this piece of good work, McGiffin's 
 report proceeded to tell of the division of the ship 
 into compartments that were filled with a miscel- 
 laneous assortment of stores, which included the 
 
 125
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 old "fifteen puzzles," at that particular time very 
 popular. The report terminated with a descrip- 
 tion of the joy of the famished Irish as they re- 
 ceived the puzzle-boxes. At another time the 
 cadets were required to write a report telling of 
 the suppression of the insurrection on the Isthmus 
 of Panama. McGiffin won great praise for the 
 military arrangements and disposition of his men, 
 but, in the same report, he went on to describe 
 how he armed them with a new gun known as 
 Baines's Rhetoric and told of the havoc he wrought 
 in the enemy's ranks when he fired these guns 
 loaded with similes and metaphors and hyper- 
 boles. 
 
 Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he 
 was sent to the Santee and given an opportun- 
 ity to meditate. 
 
 On another occasion, when one of the instruc- 
 tors lectured to the cadets, he required them to 
 submit a written statement embodying all that 
 they could recall of what had been said at the 
 lecture. One of the rules concerning this report 
 provided that there should be no erasures or inter- 
 lineations, but that when mistakes were made the 
 objectionable or incorrect expressions should be 
 included within parentheses; and that the matter 
 so enclosed within parentheses would not be con- 
 
 126
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 sidered a part of the report. McGiffin wrote an 
 excellent resume of the lecture, but he interspersed 
 through it in parentheses such words as "ap- 
 plause," "cheers," "cat-calls," and "groans," 
 and as these words were enclosed within paren- 
 theses he insisted that they did not count, and 
 made a very fair plea that he ought not to be 
 punished for words which slipped in by mistake, 
 and which he had officially obliterated by what he 
 called oblivion marks. 
 
 He was not always on mischief bent. On one 
 occasion, when the house of a professor caught 
 fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and carried out 
 two children, for which act he was commended 
 by the Secretary of the Navy. 
 
 It was an act of Congress that determined 
 that the career of McGiffin should be that of a 
 soldier of fortune. This was a most unjust act, 
 which provided that only as many midshipmen 
 should receive commissions as on the warships 
 there were actual vacancies. In those days, in 
 1884, our navy was very small. To-day there 
 is hardly a ship having her full complement of 
 officers, and the difficulty is not to get rid of 
 those we have educated, but to get officers to 
 educate. To the many boys who, on the promise 
 that they would be officers of the navy, had worked 
 
 127
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 for four years at the Academy and served two 
 years at sea, the act was most unfair. Out of a 
 class of about ninety, only the first twelve were 
 given commissions and the remaining eighty 
 turned adrift upon the uncertain seas of civil life. 
 As a sop, each was given one thousand dollars. 
 
 McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. 
 In the final examinations on the list he was well 
 toward the tail. But without having studied 
 many things, and without remembering the 
 greater part of them, no one graduates from An- 
 napolis, even last on the list; and with his one 
 thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also this 
 six years of education at what was then the best 
 naval college in the world. This was his only 
 asset his education and as in his own country 
 it was impossible to dispose of it, for possible pur- 
 chasers he looked abroad. 
 
 At that time the Tong King war was on be- 
 tween France and China, and he decided, before 
 it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to the follow- 
 ers of the Yellow Dragon. In those days that 
 was a hazard of new fortunes that meant much 
 more than it does now. To-day the East is as 
 near as San Francisco; the Japanese-Russian War, 
 our occupation of the Philippines, the part played 
 by our troops in the Boxer trouble, have made the 
 
 128
 
 McGiffin as Superintendent of the Chinese Naval College, 
 at the age of thirty-two.
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 affairs of China part of the daily reading of every 
 one. Now, one can step into a brass bed at Forty- 
 second Street and in four days at the Coast get 
 into another brass bed, and in twelve more be 
 spinning down the Bund of Yokohama in a 
 rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter 
 months as they used to go to Cairo. 
 
 But in 1885 it was no such light undertak- 
 ing, certainly not for a young man who had been 
 brought up in the quiet atmosphere of an inland 
 town, where generations of his family and other 
 families had lived and intermarried, content with 
 their surroundings. 
 
 With very few of his thousand dollars left 
 him, McGiffin arrived in February, 1885, in San 
 Francisco. From there his letters to his family 
 give one the picture of a healthy, warm-hearted 
 youth, chiefly anxious lest his mother and sister 
 should "worry." In our country nearly every 
 family knows that domestic tragedy when the 
 son and heir "breaks home ties/' and starts out 
 to earn a living; and if all the world loves a lover, 
 it at least sympathizes with the boy who is "look- 
 ing for a job." The boy who is looking for the 
 job may not think so, but each of those who 
 has passed through the same hard place gives him, 
 if nothing else, his good wishes. McGiffin's letters 
 
 129
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 at this period gain for him from those who have 
 had the privilege to read them the warmest good 
 feeling. 
 
 They are filled with the same cheery optimism, 
 the same slurring over of his troubles, the same 
 homely jokes, the same assurances that he is feel- 
 ing "bully," and that it all will come out right, 
 that every boy, when he starts out in the world, 
 sends back to his mother. 
 
 " I am in first-rate health and spirits, so I don't 
 want you to fuss about me. I am big enough 
 and ugly enough to scratch along somehow, and 
 I will not starve." 
 
 To his mother he proudly sends his name 
 written in Chinese characters, as he had been 
 taught to write it by the Chinese Consul-General 
 in San Francisco, and a pen-picture of two ele- 
 phants. "I am going to bring you home two of 
 these," he writes, not knowing that in the strange 
 and wonderful country to which he is going ele- 
 phants are as infrequent as they are in Pittsburg. 
 
 He reached China in April, and from Naga- 
 saki on his way to Shanghai the steamer that 
 carried him was chased by two French gun- 
 boats. But, apparently much to his disappoint- 
 ment, she soon ran out of range of their guns. 
 Though he did not know it then, with the enemy 
 
 130
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 he had travelled so far to fight this was his first 
 and last hostile meeting; for already peace was 
 in the air. 
 
 Of that and of how, in spite of peace, he ob- 
 tained the "job" he wanted, he must tell you 
 himself in a letter home : 
 
 " TIEN-TSIN, CHINA, April 13, 1885. 
 
 "Mv DEAR MOTHER I have not felt much in 
 the humor for writing, for I did not know what was 
 going to happen. I spent a good deal of money 
 coming out, and when I got here, I knew, unless 
 something turned up, I was a gone coon. We got 
 off Taku forts Sunday evening and the next morn- 
 ing we went inside; the channel is very narrow 
 and sown with torpedoes. We struck one an 
 electric one in coming up, but it didn't go off. 
 We were until 10.30 P.M. in coming up to Tien- 
 Tsin thirty miles in a straight line, but nearly 
 seventy by the river, which is only about one hun- 
 dred feet wide and we grounded ten times. 
 
 "Well at last we moored and went ashore. 
 Brace Girdle, an engineer, and I went to the hotel, 
 and the first thing we heard was that peace was 
 declared! I went back on board ship, and I didn't 
 sleep much I never was so blue in my life. I 
 knew if they didn't want me that I might as well 
 give up the ghost, for I could never get away from 
 China. Well I worried around all night without 
 sleep, and in the morning I felt as if I had been
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 drawn through a knot-hole. I must have lost ten 
 pounds. I went around about 10 A.M. and gave 
 my letters to Pethick, an American U. S. Vice- 
 Consul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He 
 said he would fix them for me. Then I went 
 back to the ship, and as our captain was going up 
 to see Li Hung Chang, I went along out of des- 
 peration. We got in, and after a while were taken 
 in through corridor after corridor of the Viceroy's 
 palace until we got into the great Li, when we sat 
 down and had tea and tobacco and talked through 
 an interpreter. When it came my turn he asked: 
 'Why did you come to China ?' I said: 'To enter 
 the Chinese service for the war/ 'How do you 
 expect to enter ? * 'I expect you to give me a com- 
 mission!' 'I have no place to offer you.' 'I think 
 you have I have come all the way from America 
 to get it/ 'What would you like?' 'I would 
 like to get the new torpedo-boat and go down the 
 Yang-tse-Kiang to the blockading squadron/ 
 ' Will you do that ? ' 'Of course/ 
 
 "He thought a little and said: 'I will see what 
 can be done. Will you take $100 a month for a 
 start?' I said: 'That depends/ (Of course I 
 would take it.) Well, after parley, he said he 
 would put me on the flagship, and if I did well he 
 would promote me. Then he looked at me and 
 said: 'How old are you?' When I told him I 
 was twenty-four I thought he would faint for in 
 China a man is a boy until he is over thirty. He 
 said I would never do I was a child. I could not 
 know anything at all. I could not convince him, 
 
 132
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 but at last he compromised I was to pass an 
 examination at the Arsenal at the Naval College, 
 in all branches, and if they passed me I would have 
 a show. So we parted. I reported for examina- 
 tion next day, but was put off same the next day. 
 But to-day I was told to come, and sat down to a 
 stock of foolscap, and had a pretty stiff exam. 
 I am only just through. I had seamanship, gun- 
 nery, navigation, nautical astronomy, algebra, 
 geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, curve 
 tracing, differential and integral calculus. I had 
 only three questions out of five to answer in each 
 branch, but in the first three I answered all five. 
 After that I only had time for three, but at the end 
 he said I need not finish, he was perfectly satisfied. 
 I had done remarkably well, and he would report 
 to the Viceroy to-morrow. He examined my first 
 papers seamanship said I was perfect in it, so 
 I will get along, you need not fear. I told the 
 Consul he was very well pleased he is a nice 
 man. 
 
 "I feel pretty well now have had dinner and 
 am smoking a good Manila cheroot. I wrote hard 
 all day, wrote fifteen sheets of foolscap and made 
 about a dozen drawings got pretty tired. 
 
 " I have had a hard scramble for the service and 
 only got in by the skin of my teeth. I guess I will 
 go to bed I will sleep well to-night Thursday. 
 
 "I did not hear from the Naval Secretary, 
 Tuesday, so yesterday morning I went up to the 
 Admiralty and sent in my card. He came out 
 and received me very well said I had passed a
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 'very splendid examination'; had been recom- 
 mended very strongly to the Viceroy, who was 
 very much pleased; that the Director of the Naval 
 College over at the Arsenal had wanted me and 
 would I go over at once ? I would. It was about 
 five miles. We (a friend, who is a great rider 
 here) went on steeplechase ponies we were fer- 
 ried across the Pei Ho in a small scow and then 
 had a long ride. There is a path but Pritchard 
 insisted on taking all the ditches, and as my pony 
 jumped like a cat, it wasn't nice at first, but I didn't 
 squeal and kept my seat and got the swing of it at 
 last and rather liked it. I think I will keep a horse 
 here you can hire one and a servant together for 
 $7 a month; that is $5.60 of our money, and 
 pony and man found in everything. 
 
 "Well at last we got to the Arsenal a place 
 about four miles around, fortified, where all sorts 
 of arms cartridges, shot and shell, engines, and 
 everything are made. The Naval College is in- 
 side surrounded by a moat and wall. I thought 
 to myself, if the cadet here is like to the thing I 
 used to be at the U. S. N. A. that won't keep him 
 in. I went through a lot of yards till I was ush- 
 ered into a room finished in black ebony and was 
 greeted very warmly by the Director. We took 
 seats on a raised platform Chinese style and 
 pretty soon an interpreter came, one of the Chinese 
 professors, who was educated abroad, and we 
 talked and drank tea. He said I had done well, 
 that he had the authority of the Viceroy to take 
 me there as 'Professor' of seamanship and gun-
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 nery; in addition I might be required to teach 
 navigation or nautical astronomy, or drill the cadets 
 in infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I was 
 to receive what would be in our money $1,800 
 per annum, as near as we can compare it, paid in 
 gold each month. Besides, I will have a house 
 furnished for my use, and it is their intention, as 
 soon as I show that I know something, to consid- 
 erably increase my pay. They asked the Viceroy 
 to give me 130 T per month (about $186) and 
 house, but the Viceroy said I was but a boy; that 
 I had seen no years and had only come here a 
 week ago with no one to vouch for me, and that I 
 might turn out an impostor. But he would risk 
 100 T on me anyhow, and as soon as I was re- 
 ported favorably on by the college I would be 
 raised the agreement is to be for three years. 
 For a few months I am to command a training 
 ship an ironclad that is in dry dock at present, 
 until a captain in the English Navy comes out, 
 who has been sent for to command her. 
 
 "So Here I Am twenty-four years old and 
 captain of a man-of-war a better one than any 
 in our own navy only for a short time, of course, 
 but I would be a pretty long time before I would 
 command one at home. Well I accepted and 
 will enter on my duties in a week, as soon as my 
 house is put in order. I saw it it has a long ve- 
 randa, very broad; with flower garden, apricot 
 trees, etc., just covered with blossoms; a wide hall 
 on the front, a room about 18x15, with a I3~foot 
 ceiling; then back another rather larger, with a
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 cupola skylight in the centre, where I am going to 
 put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to 
 furnish the house with bed, tables, chairs, side- 
 boards, lounges, stove for kitchen. I have grates 
 (American) in the room, but I don't need them. 
 We have snow, and a good deal of ice in winter, 
 but the thermometer never gets below zero. I 
 have to supply my own crockery. I will have two 
 servants and cook; I will only get one and the 
 cook first they only cost $4 to $5.50 per month, 
 and their board amounts to very little. I can get 
 along, don't you think so ? Now I want you to 
 get Jim to pack up all my professional works 
 on gunnery, surveying, seamanship, mathematics, 
 astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic 
 sections, calculus, mechanics, and every book of 
 that description I own, including those paper- 
 bound 'Naval Institute' papers, and put them in a 
 box, together with any photos, etc., you think I 
 would like I have none of you or Pa or the fam- 
 ily (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 get- 
 ting low; I would not have had anything before 
 long. The U. S. Consul, General Bromley, is much 
 pleased. The interpreter says it was all in the 
 way I did with the Viceroy in the interview. 
 
 " I will have a chance to go to Peking and later 
 to a tiger hunt in Mongolia, but for the present I 
 am going to study, work, and stroke these manda- 
 rins till I get a raise. I am the only instructor in 
 both seamanship and gunnery, and I must know 
 
 136
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 everything, both practically and theoretically. But 
 it will be good for me and the only thing is, 
 that if I were put back into the Navy I would be 
 in a dilemma. I think I will get my 'influence' 
 to work, and I want you people at home to look 
 out, and in case I am if it were represented to the 
 Sec. that my position here was giving me an im- 
 mense lot of practical knowledge professionally 
 more than I could get on a ship at sea I think 
 he would give me two years' leave on half or 
 quarter pay. Or, I would be willing to do with- 
 out pay only to be kept on the register in my 
 rank. 
 
 "I will write more about this. Love to all." 
 
 It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the 
 very same letter in which he announces he has 
 entered foreign service he plans to return to that 
 of his own country. This hope never left him. 
 You find the same homesickness for the quarter- 
 deck of an American man-of-war all through his 
 later letters. At one time a bill to reinstate the 
 midshipmen who had been cheated of their com- 
 missions was introduced into Congress. Of this 
 McG ; ffin writes frequently as "our bill." "It 
 may pass," he writes, "but I am tired hoping. 
 I have hoped so long. And if it should," he adds 
 anxiously, "there may be a time limit set in which 
 a man must rejoin, or lose his chance, so do
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 not fail to let me know as quickly as you can." 
 But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never 
 returned to the navy that had cut him adrift. 
 He settled down at Tien-Tsin and taught the 
 young cadets how to shoot. Almost all of those 
 who in the Chinese-Japanese War served as offi- 
 cers were his pupils. As the navy grew, he grew 
 with it, and his position increased in importance. 
 More Mexican dollars per month, more servants, 
 larger houses, and buttons of various honorable 
 colors were given him, and, in return, he estab- 
 lished for China a modern naval college patterned 
 after our own. In those days throughout China 
 and Japan you could find many of these foreign 
 advisers. Now, in Japan, the Hon. W. H. Den- 
 nison of the Foreign Office, one of our own peo- 
 ple, is the only foreigner with whom the Japanese 
 have not parted, and in China there are none. 
 Of all of those who have gone none served his em- 
 ployers more faithfully than did McGiffin. At a 
 time when every official robbed the people and the 
 Government, and when "squeeze" or "graft" was 
 recognized as a perquisite, McGiffin's hands were 
 clean. The shells purchased for the Govern- 
 ment by him were not loaded with black sand, 
 nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. 
 Once a year he celebrated the Thanksgiving Day 
 
 138
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 of his own country by inviting to a great dinner 
 all the Chinese naval officers who had been at 
 least in part educated in America. It was a great 
 occasion, and to enjoy it officers used to come from 
 as far as Port Arthur, Shanghai, and Hong-Kong. 
 So fully did some of them appreciate the efforts 
 of their host that previous to his annual dinner, for 
 twenty-four hours, they delicately starved them- 
 selves. 
 
 During ten years McGiffin served as naval 
 constructor and professor of gunnery and sea- 
 manship, and on board ships at sea gave practi- 
 cal demonstrations in the handling of the new 
 cruisers. In 1894 he applied for leave, which was 
 granted, but before he had sailed for home war 
 with Japan was declared and he withdrew his 
 application. He was placed as second in com- 
 mand on board the Chen Yuen, a seven-thousand- 
 ton battleship, a sister ship to the Ting Yuen, 
 the flagship of Admiral Ting Ju Chang. On the 
 memorable iyth of September, 1894, the battle of 
 the Yalu was fought, and so badly were the Chi- 
 nese vessels hammered that the Chinese navy, 
 for the time being, was wiped out of existence. 
 
 From the start the advantage was with the Jap- 
 anese fleet. In heavy guns the Chinese were the 
 better armed, but in quick-firing guns the Japan-
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 ese were vastly superior, and while the Chinese 
 battleships Ting Yuen and Chen Yuen, each of 
 7,430 tons, were superior to any of the Japanese 
 warships, the three largest of which were each 
 of 4,277 tons, the gross tonnage of the Japanese 
 fleet was 36,000 to 21,000 of the Chinese. During 
 the progress of the battle the ships engaged on 
 each side numbered an even dozen, but at the 
 very start, before a decisive shot was fired by 
 either contestant, the Tsi Yuen, 2,355 tons > an ^ 
 Kwan Chiae, 1,300 tons, ran away, and before 
 they had time to get into the game the Chao Yung 
 and Yang Wei were in flames and had fled to the 
 nearest land. So the battle was fought by eight 
 Chinese ships against twelve of the Japanese. 
 Of the Chinese vessels, the flagship, commanded 
 by Admiral Ting, and her sister ship, which im- 
 mediately after the beginning of the fight was for 
 four hours commanded by McGiffin, were the two 
 chief aggressors, and in consequence received the 
 fire of the entire Japanese squadron. Toward 
 the end of the fight, which without interruption 
 lasted for five long hours, the Japanese did not 
 even consider the four smaller ships of the enemy, 
 but, sailing around the two ironclads in a circle, 
 fired only at them. The Japanese themselves 
 testified that these two ships never lost their 
 
 140
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 formation, and that when her sister ironclad was 
 closely pressed the Chen Yuen, by her movements 
 and gun practice, protected the Ting Yuen, and, 
 in fact, while she could not prevent the heavy 
 loss the fleet encountered, preserved it from an- 
 nihilation. During the fight this ship was almost 
 continuously on fire, and was struck by every 
 kind of projectile, from the thirteen-inch Canet 
 shells to a rifle bullet, four hundred times. Mc- 
 GifHn himself was so badly wounded, so beaten 
 about by concussions, so burned, and so bruised 
 by steel splinters, that his health and eyesight 
 were forever wrecked. But he brought the Chen 
 Yuen safely into Port Arthur and the remnants 
 of the fleet with her. 
 
 On account of his lack of health he resigned 
 from the Chinese service and returned to America. 
 For two years he lived in New York City, suffer- 
 ing in body without cessation the most exquisite 
 torture. During that time his letters to his family 
 show only tremendous courage. On the splin- 
 tered, gaping deck of the Chen Yuen, with the 
 fires below it, and the shells bursting upon it, he 
 had shown to his Chinese crew the courage of the 
 white man who knew he was responsible for 
 them and for the honor of their country. But 
 far greater and more difficult was the courage he 
 
 141
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 showed while alone in the dark sick-room, and in 
 the private wards of the hospitals. 
 
 In the letters he dictates from there he still is 
 concerned only lest those at home shall "worry"; 
 he reassures them with falsehoods, jokes at their 
 fears; of the people he can see from the window 
 of the hospital tells them foolish stories; for a 
 little boy who has been kind he asks them to send 
 him his Chinese postage stamps; he plans a trip 
 he will take with them when he is stronger, know- 
 ing he never will be stronger. The doctors had 
 urged upon him a certain operation, and of it 
 to a friend he wrote: "I know that I will have 
 to have a piece about three inches square cut 
 out of my skull, and this nerve cut off near the 
 middle of the brain, as well as my eye taken out 
 (for a couple of hours only, provided it is not mis- 
 laid, and can be found). Doctor - - and his 
 crowd show a bad memory for failures. As a 
 result of this operation others have told me I 
 forget the percentage of deaths, which does not 
 matter, but that a large percentage have become 
 insane. And some lost their sight." 
 
 While threatened with insanity and complete 
 blindness, and hourly from his wounds suffering 
 a pain drugs could not master, he dictated for the 
 Century Magazine the only complete account of 
 
 142
 
 Commander McGiffin in Hospital After the Battle 
 of the Yalu. 
 
 Showing damage to clothes due to concussion.
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGiffin 
 
 the battle of the Yalu. In a letter to Mr. Rich- 
 ard Watson Gilder he writes: "... my eyes are 
 troubling me. 1 cannot see even what I am writ- 
 ing now, and am getting the article under difficul- 
 ties. I yet hope to place it in your hands by the 
 2 ist, still, if my eyes grow worse " 
 
 " Still, if my eyes grow worse 
 
 The unfinished sentence was grimly prophetic. 
 
 Unknown to his attendants at the hospital, 
 among the papers in his despatch-box he had 
 secreted his service revolver. On the morning of 
 the nth of February, 1897, he asked for this 
 box, and on some pretext sent the nurse from the 
 room. When the report of the pistol brought 
 them running to his bedside, they found the pain- 
 driven body at peace, and the tired eyes dark 
 forever. 
 
 In the article in the Century on the battle of 
 the Yalu, he had said: 
 
 "Chief among those who have died for their 
 country is Admiral Ting Ju Chang, a gallant sol- 
 dier and true gentleman. Betrayed by his country- 
 men, fighting against odds, almost his last official 
 act was to stipulate for the lives of his officers 
 and men. His own he scorned to save, well 
 knowing that his ungrateful country would prove 
 less merciful than his honorable foe. Bitter, in-
 
 Captain Philo Norton McGifhn 
 
 deed, must have been the reflections of the old, 
 wounded hero, in that midnight hour, as he 
 drank the poisoned cup that was to give him rest." 
 And bitter indeed must have been the reflections 
 of the young wounded American, robbed, by the 
 parsimony of his country, of the right he had 
 earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give 
 his best years and his life for a strange people un- 
 der a strange flag. 
 
 '44
 
 WILLIAM WALKER, THE KING 
 OF THE FILIBUSTERS
 
 WILLIAM WALKER, THE KING OF THE 
 FILIBUSTERS 
 
 IT is safe to say that to members of the younger 
 generation the name of William Walker con- 
 veys absolutely nothing. To them, as a name, 
 "William Walker" awakens no pride of race or 
 country. It certainly does not suggest poetry and 
 adventure. To obtain a place in even this group 
 of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the most 
 distinguished of all American Soldiers of For- 
 tune, the one who but for his own countrymen 
 would have single-handed attained the most far- 
 reaching results, had to wait his turn behind ad- 
 venturers of other lands and boy officers of his own. 
 And yet had this man with the plain name, the 
 name that to-day means nothing, accomplished 
 what he adventured, he would on this continent 
 have solved the problem of slavery, have estab- 
 lished an empire in Mexico and in Central Amer- 
 ica, and, incidentally, have brought us into war 
 with all of Europe. That is all he would have 
 accomplished.
 
 William Walker 
 
 In the days of gold in San Francisco among 
 the "Forty-niners" William Walker was one of 
 the most famous, most picturesque and popular 
 figures. Jack Oakhurst, gambler; Colonel Star- 
 bottle, duellist; Yuba Bill, stage-coach driver, were 
 his contemporaries. Bret Harte was one of his 
 keenest admirers, and in two of his stories, thinly 
 disguised under a more appealing name, Walker 
 is the hero. When, later, Walker came to New 
 York City, in his honor Broadway from the 
 Battery to Madison Square was bedecked with 
 flags and arches. "It was roses, roses all the 
 way." The house-tops rocked and swayed. 
 
 In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera 
 he made his first appearance, for ten minutes the 
 performance came to a pause, while the audience 
 stood to salute him. 
 
 This happened less than fifty years ago, and 
 there are men who as boys were out with " Walker 
 of Nicaragua," and who are still active in the 
 public life of San Francisco and New York. 
 
 Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, Tenn. 
 He was the oldest son of a Scotch banker, a man 
 of a deeply religious mind, and interested in a 
 business which certainly is removed, as far as 
 possible, from the profession of arms. Indeed, 
 few men better than William Walker illustrate 
 
 148
 
 William Walker 
 
 the fact that great generals are born, not trained. 
 Everything in Walker's birth, family tradition, 
 and education pointed to his becoming a member 
 of one of the "learned" professions. It was the 
 wish of his father that he should be a minister of 
 the Presbyterian Church, and as a child he was 
 trained with that end in view. He himself pre- 
 ferred to study medicine, and after graduating at 
 the University of Tennessee, at Edinburgh he 
 followed a course of lectures, and for two years 
 travelled in Europe, visiting many of the great 
 hospitals. 
 
 Then having thoroughly equipped himself to 
 practise as a physician, after a brief return to his 
 native city, and as short a stay in Philadelphia, he 
 took down his shingle forever, and proceeded to 
 New Orleans to study law. In two years he was 
 admitted to the bar of Louisiana. But because 
 clients were few, or because the red tape of the 
 law chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he 
 had abandoned the Church and Medicine, he 
 abandoned his law practice and became an edi- 
 torial writer on the New Orleans Crescent. A 
 year later the restlessness which had rebelled 
 against the grave professions led him to the gold 
 fields of California, and San Francisco. There, in 
 1852, at the age of only twenty-eight, as editor 
 
 149
 
 William Walker 
 
 of the San Francisco Herald, Walker began his 
 real life which so soon was to end in both disaster 
 and glory. 
 
 Up to his twenty-eighth year, except in his rest- 
 lessness, nothing in his life foreshadowed what was 
 to follow. Nothing pointed to him as a man for 
 whom thousands of other men, from every capital 
 of the world, would give up their lives. 
 
 Negatively, by abandoning three separate call- 
 ings, and in making it plain that a professional 
 career did not appeal to him, Walker had thrown 
 a certain sidelight on his character; but actively he 
 never had given any hint that under the thoughtful 
 brow of the young doctor and lawyer there was 
 a mind evolving schemes of empire, and an am- 
 bition limited only by the two great oceans. 
 
 Walker's first adventure was undoubtedly in- 
 spired by and in imitation of one which at the time 
 of his arrival in San Francisco had just been 
 brought to a disastrous end. This was the De 
 Boulbon expedition into Mexico. The Count 
 Gaston Raoulx de Raousset-Boulbon was a young 
 French nobleman and Soldier of Fortune, a chas- 
 seur d'Afrique, a duellist, journalist, dreamer, who 
 came to California to dig gold. Baron Har- 
 den-Hickey, who was born in San Francisco a 
 few years after Boulbon at the age of thirty was
 
 William Walker 
 
 shot in Mexico, also was inspired to dreams of 
 conquest by this same gentleman adventurer. 
 
 Boulbon was a young man of large ideas. In 
 the rapid growth of California he saw a threat to 
 Mexico and proposed to that government, as a 
 "buffer" state between the two republics, to form 
 a French colony in the Mexican State of Sonora. 
 Sonora is that part of Mexico which directly joins 
 on the south with our State of Arizona. The Pres- 
 ident of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to at- 
 tempt this, and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in 
 the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty 
 well-armed Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of 
 Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was his con- 
 tract with the President under which his "emi- 
 grants" were hired to protect other foreigners 
 working in the "Restauradora" mines from the 
 attacks of Apache Indians from our own Arizona. 
 But there is evidence that back of Boulbon was 
 the French Government, and that he was attempt- 
 ing, in his small way, what later was attempted 
 by Maximilian, backed by a French army corps 
 and Louis Napoleon, to establish in Mexico an 
 empire under French protection. For both the 
 filibuster and the emperor the end was the same; 
 to be shot by the fusillade against a church 
 wall.
 
 William Walker 
 
 In 1852, two years before Boulbon's death, 
 which was the finale to his second filibustering 
 expedition into Sonora, he wrote to a friend in 
 Paris: "Europeans are disturbed by the growth 
 of the United States. And rightly so. Unless 
 she be dismembered; unless a powerful rival be 
 built up beside her (/'. e., France in Mexico), Amer- 
 ica will become, through her commerce her trade, 
 her population, her geographical position upon 
 two oceans, the inevitable mistress Df ihe world. 
 In ten years Europe dare not fire a shot without 
 her permission. As I write fifty Americans ore- 
 pare to sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. 
 Voila les Etats-Unis." 
 
 These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of 
 Boulbon, threatened the peace of Europe, were 
 led by the ex-doctor, ex-lawyer, ex-editor, William 
 Walker, aged twenty-eight years. Walker had at- 
 tempted but had failed to obtain from the Mexi- 
 can Government such a contract as the one it had 
 granted De Boulbon. He accordingly sailed with- 
 out it, announcing that, whether the Mexican 
 Government asked him to do so or not, he would 
 see that the women and children on the border 
 of Mexico and Arizona were protected from 
 massacre by the Indians. It will be remembered 
 that when Dr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he 
 
 152
 
 William Walker 
 
 also went to protect "women and children" from 
 massacre by the Boers. Walker's explanation of 
 his expedition, in his own words, is as follows. 
 He writes in the third person: "What Walker 
 saw and heard satisfied him that a comparatively 
 small body of Americans might gain a position on 
 the Sonora frontier and protect the families on 
 the border from the Indians, and such an act 
 would be one of humanity whether or not sanc- 
 tioned by the Mexican Government. The condi- 
 tion of the upper part of Sonora was at that time, 
 and still is [he was writing eight years later, in 
 1860], a disgrace to the civilization of the conti- 
 nent . . . and the people of the United States 
 were more immediately responsible before the 
 world for the Apache outrages. Northern Sonora 
 was in fact, more under the dominion of the 
 Apaches than under the laws of Mexico, and the 
 contributions of the Indians were collected with 
 greater regularity and certainty than the dues of 
 the tax-gatherers. The state of this region fur- 
 nished the best defence for any American aiming to 
 settle there without the formal consent of Mexico; 
 and, although political changes would certainly 
 have followed the establishment of a colony, they 
 might be justified by the plea that any social or- 
 ganization, no matter how secured, is preferable
 
 William Walker 
 
 to that in which individuals and families are alto- 
 gether at the mercy of savages." 
 
 While at the time of Jameson's raid the women 
 and children in danger of massacre from the Boers 
 were as many as there are snakes in Ireland, at 
 the time of Walker's raid the women and children 
 were in danger from the Indians, who as enemies, 
 as Walker soon discovered, were as cruel and as 
 greatly to be feared as he had described them. 
 
 But it was not to save women and children that 
 Walker sought to conquer the State of Sonora. 
 At the time of his expedition the great question 
 of slavery was acute; and if in the States next to 
 be admitted to the Union slavery was to be pro- 
 hibited, the time had come, so it seemed to this 
 statesman of twenty-eight years, when the South 
 must extend her boundaries, and for her slaves 
 find an outlet in fresh territory. Sonora already 
 joined Arizona. By conquest her territory could 
 easily be extended to meet Texas. As a matter of 
 fact, strategically the spot selected by William 
 Walker for the purpose for which he desired it 
 was almost perfect. Throughout his brief career 
 one must remember that the spring of all his acts 
 was this dream of an empire where slavery would 
 be recognized. His mother was a slare-holder. 
 In Tennessee he had been born and bred sur-
 
 William Walker 
 
 rounded by slaves. His youth and manhood had 
 been spent in Nashville and New Orleans. He 
 believed as honestly, as fanatically in the right 
 to hold slaves as did his father in the faith of the 
 Covenanters. To-day one reads his arguments 
 in favor of slavery with the most curious inter- 
 est. His appeal to the humanity of his reader, 
 to his heart, to his sense of justice, to his fear of 
 God, and to his belief in the Holy Bible not to 
 abolish slavery, but to continue it, to this genera- 
 tion is as amusing as the topsy-turvyisms of Gil- 
 bert or Shaw. But to the young man himself 
 slavery was a sacred institution, intended for the 
 betterment of mankind, a God-given benefit to 
 the black man and a God-given right of his white 
 master. 
 
 White brothers in the South, with perhaps 
 less exalted motives, contributed funds to fit out 
 Walker's expedition, and in October, 1852, with 
 forty-five men, he landed at Cape St. Lucas, at 
 the extreme point of Lower California. Lower 
 California, it must be remembered, in spite of 
 its name, is not a part of our California, but then 
 was, and still is, a part of Mexico. The fact that 
 he was at last upon the soil of the enemy caused 
 Walker to throw off all pretence; and instead of 
 hastening to protect women and children, he 
 
 155
 
 William Walker 
 
 sailed a few miles farther up the coast to La Paz. 
 With his forty-five followers he raided the town, 
 made the Governor a prisoner, and established 
 a republic with himself as President. In a proc- 
 lamation he declared the people free of the tyr- 
 anny of Mexico. They had no desire to be free, 
 but Walker was determined, and, whether they 
 liked it or not, they woke up to find themselves 
 an independent republic. A few weeks later, 
 although he had not yet set foot there, Walker 
 annexed on paper the State of Sonora, and to both 
 States gave the name of the Republic of Sonora. 
 
 As soon as word of this reached San Fran- 
 cisco, his friends busied themselves in his behalf, 
 and the danger-loving and adventurous of all lands 
 were enlisted as "emigrants" and shipped to him 
 in the bark Anita. 
 
 Two months later, in November, 1852, three 
 hundred of these joined Walker. They were as 
 desperate a band of scoundrels as ever robbed a 
 sluice, stoned a Chinaman, or shot a "Greaser." 
 When they found that to command them there 
 was only a boy, they plotted to blow up the maga- 
 zine in which the powder was stored, rob the 
 camp, and march north, supporting themselves 
 by looting the ranches. Walker learned of their 
 plot, tried the ringleaders by court-martial, and 
 
 156
 
 William Walker 
 
 shot them. With a force as absolutely undisci- 
 plined as was his, the act required the most com- 
 plete personal courage. That was a quality the 
 men with him could fully appreciate. They saw 
 they had as a leader one who could fight, and one 
 who would punish. The majority did not want a 
 leader who would punish; so when Walker called 
 upon those who would follow him to Sonora to 
 show their hands, only the original forty-five and 
 about forty of the later recruits remained with 
 him. With less than one hundred men he started 
 to march up the Peninsula through Lower Cali- 
 fornia, and so around the Gulf to Sonora. 
 
 From the very start the filibusters were over- 
 whelmed with disaster. The Mexicans, with 
 Indian allies, skulked on the flanks and rear. 
 Men who in the almost daily encounters were 
 killed fell into the hands of the Indians, and their 
 bodies were mutilated. Stragglers and deserters 
 were run to earth and tortured. Those of the 
 filibusters who were wounded died from lack of 
 medical care. The only instruments they pos- 
 sessed with which to extract the arrow-heads were 
 probes made from ramrods filed to a point. Their 
 only food was the cattle they killed on the march. 
 The army was barefoot, the Cabinet in rags, the 
 President of Sonora wore one boot and one shoe.
 
 William Walker 
 
 Unable to proceed farther, Walker fell back upon 
 San Vincente, where he had left the arms and 
 ammunition of the deserters and a rear-guard of 
 eighteen men. He found not one of these to 
 welcome him. A dozen had deserted, and the 
 Mexicans had surprised the rest, lassoing them 
 and torturing them until they died. Walker now 
 had but thirty-five men. To wait for further re- 
 enforcements from San Francisco, even were he 
 sure that re-enforcements would come, was im- 
 possible. He determined by forced marches to 
 fight his way to the boundary line of California. 
 Between him and safety were the Mexican soldiers 
 holding the passes, and the Indians hiding on his 
 flanks. When within three miles of the boundary 
 line, at San Diego, Colonel Melendrez, who com- 
 manded the Mexican forces, sent in a flag of truce, 
 and offered, if they would surrender, a safe-con- 
 duct to all of the survivors of the expedition ex- 
 cept the chief. But the men who for one year had 
 fought and starved for Walker, would not, within 
 three miles of home, abandon him. 
 
 Melendrez then begged the commander of the 
 United States troops to order Walker to surrender. 
 Major McKinstry, who was in command of the 
 United States Army Post at San Diego, refused. 
 For him to cross the line would be a violation 
 
 158
 
 William Walker 
 
 of neutral territory. On Mexican soil he would 
 neither embarrass the ex-President of Sonora nor 
 aid him; but he saw to it that if the filibusters 
 reached American soil, no Mexican or Indian 
 should follow them. 
 
 Accordingly, on the imaginary boundary he 
 drew up his troop, and like an impartial umpire 
 awaited the result. Hidden behind rocks and 
 cactus, across the hot, glaring plain, the filibusters 
 could see the American flag, and the gay, flutter- 
 ing guidons of the cavalry. The sight gave them 
 heart for one last desperate spurt. Melendrez 
 also appreciated that for the final attack the mo- 
 ment had come. As he charged, Walker, appa- 
 rently routed, fled, but concealed in the rocks be- 
 hind him he had stationed a rear-guard of a dozen 
 men. As Melendrez rode into this ambush the 
 dozen riflemen emptied as many saddles, and the 
 Mexicans and Indians stampeded. A half hour 
 later, footsore and famished, the little band that 
 had set forth to found an empire of slaves, stag- 
 gered across the line and surrendered to the forces 
 of the United States. 
 
 Of this expedition James Jeffrey Roche says, 
 in his "Byways of War," which is of all books 
 published about Walker the most intensely and 
 fascinatingly interesting and complete: " Years
 
 William Walker 
 
 afterward the peon herdsman or prowling Cocupa 
 Indian in the mountain by-paths stumbled over 
 the bleaching skeleton of some nameless one whose 
 resting-place was marked by no cross or cairn, 
 but the Colts revolver resting beside his bones 
 spoke his country and his occupation the only 
 relic of the would-be conquistadores of the nine- 
 teenth century." 
 
 Under parole to report to General Wood, com- 
 manding the Department of the Pacific, the fili- 
 busters were sent by sailing vessel to San Fran- 
 cisco, where their leader was tried for violating the 
 neutrality laws of the United States, and acquitted. 
 
 Walker's first expedition had ended in failure, 
 but for him it had been an opportunity of tre- 
 mendous experience, as active service is the best 
 of all military academies, and for the kind of 
 warfare he was to wage, the best preparation. 
 Nor was it inglorious, for his fellow survivors, 
 contrary to the usual practice, instead of in bar- 
 rooms placing the blame for failure upon their 
 leader, stood ready to fight one and all who 
 doubted his ability or his courage. Later, after 
 five years, many of these same men, though ten to 
 twenty years his senior, followed him to death, 
 and never questioned his judgment nor his right 
 to command. 
 
 1 60
 
 General William Walker.
 
 William Walker 
 
 At this time in Nicaragua there was the usual 
 revolution. On the south the sister republic of 
 Costa Rica was taking sides, on the north Hon- 
 duras was landing arms and men. There was no 
 law, no government. A dozen political parties, a 
 dozen commanding generals, and not one strong 
 man. 
 
 In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco 
 Herald, Walker, searching the map for new 
 worlds to conquer, rested his finger upon Nica- 
 ragua. 
 
 In its confusion of authority he saw an oppor- 
 tunity to make himself a power, and in its trop- 
 ical wealth and beauty, in the laziness and incom- 
 petence of its inhabitants, he beheld a greater, 
 fairer, more kind Sonora. On the Pacific side 
 from San Francisco he could re-enforce his army 
 with men and arms; on the Caribbean side from 
 New Orleans he could, when the moment arrived, 
 people his empire with slaves. 
 
 The two parties at war in Nicaragua were the 
 Legitimists and the Democrats. Why they were 
 at war it is not necessary to know. Probably 
 Walker did not know; it is not likely that they 
 themselves knew. But from the leader of the 
 Democrats Walker obtained a contract to bring 
 to Nicaragua three hundred Americans, who were 
 
 161
 
 William Walker 
 
 each to receive several hundred acres of land, and 
 who were described as "colonists liable to military 
 duty." This contract Walker submitted to the 
 Attorney-General of the State and to General 
 Wood, who once before had acquitted him of fili- 
 bustering; and neither of these Federal officers saw 
 anything which seemed to give them the right 
 to interfere. But the rest of San Francisco was 
 less credulous, and the "colonists" who joined 
 Walker had a very distinct idea that they were 
 not going to Nicaragua to plant coffee or to pick 
 bananas. 
 
 In May, 1855, just a year after Walker and 
 his thirty-three followers had surrendered to the 
 United States troops at San Diego, with fifty 
 new recruits and seven veterans of the former 
 expedition he sailed from San Francisco in the 
 brig Vesta y and in five weeks, after a weary and 
 stormy voyage, landed at Realejo. There he was 
 met by representatives of the Provisional Director 
 of the Democrats, who received the Californians 
 warmly. 
 
 Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achilles 
 Kewen, who had been fighting under Lopez in 
 Cuba, a lieutenant-colonel, and Timothy Crocker, 
 who had served under Walker in the Sonora ex- 
 pedition, a major. The corps was organized as 
 
 162
 
 William Walker 
 
 an independent command and was named "La 
 Falange Americana." At this time the enemy 
 held the route to the Caribbean, and Walker's 
 first orders were to dislodge him. 
 
 Accordingly, a week after landing with his 
 fifty-seven Americans and one hundred and fifty 
 native troops, Walker sailed in the Vesta for 
 Brito, from which port he marched upon Rivas, 
 a city of eleven thousand people and garrisoned 
 by some twelve hundred of the enemy. 
 
 The first fight ended in a complete and disas- 
 trous fiasco. The native troops ran away, and 
 the Americans surrounded by six hundred of the 
 Legitimists* soldiers, after defending themselves 
 for three hours behind some adobe huts, charged 
 the enemy and escaped into the jungle. Their 
 loss was heavy, and among the killed were the 
 two men upon whom Walker chiefly depended: 
 Kewen and Crocker. The Legitimists placed the 
 bodies of the dead and wounded who were still 
 living on a pile of logs and burned them. After 
 a painful night march, Walker, the next day, 
 reached San Juan on the coast, and, finding a 
 Costa Rican schooner in port, seized it for his use. 
 At this moment, although Walker's men were de- 
 feated, bleeding, and in open flight, two "grin- 
 gos" picked up on the beach of San Juan, "the 
 
 163
 
 William Walker 
 
 Texan Harry McLeod and the Irishman Peter 
 Burns," asked to be permitted to join him. 
 
 "It was encouraging," Walker writes, "for the 
 soldiers to find that some besides themselves did 
 not regard their fortunes as altogether desperate, 
 and small as was this addition to their number it 
 gave increased moral as well as material strength 
 to the command." 
 
 Sometimes in reading history it would appear 
 as though for success the first requisite must be an 
 utter lack of humor, and inability to look upon 
 what one is attempting except with absolute se- 
 riousness. With forty men Walker was planning 
 to conquer and rule Nicaragua, a country with a 
 population of two hundred and fifty thousand 
 souls and as large as the combined area of Massa- 
 chusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hamp- 
 shire, and Connecticut. And yet, even seven 
 years later, he records without a smile that two 
 beach-combers gave his army "moral and material 
 strength." And it is most characteristic of the 
 man that at the moment he was rejoicing over 
 this addition to his forces, to maintain discipline 
 two Americans who had set fire to the houses of 
 the enemy he ordered to be shot. A weaker 
 man would have repudiated the two Americans, 
 who, in fact, were not members of the Phalanx, 
 
 164
 
 William Walker 
 
 and trusted that their crimes would not be charged 
 against him. But the success of Walker lay 
 greatly in his stern discipline. He tried the men, 
 and they confessed to their guilt. One got away; 
 and, as it might appear that Walker had connived 
 at his escape, to the second man was shown no 
 mercy. When one reads how severe was Walker 
 in his punishments, and how frequently the death 
 penalty was invoked by him against his own 
 few followers, the wonder grows that these men, 
 as independent and as unaccustomed to restraint 
 as were those who first joined him, submitted to 
 his leadership. One can explain it only by the 
 personal quality of Walker himself. 
 
 Among these reckless, fearless outlaws, who, 
 despising their allies, believed and proved that 
 with his rifle one American could account for a 
 dozen Nicaraguans, Walker was the one man 
 who did not boast or drink or gamble, who did 
 not even swear, who never looked at a woman, 
 and who, in money matters, was scrupulously 
 honest and unself-seeking. In a fight, his fol- 
 lowers knew that for them he would risk being 
 shot just as unconcernedly as to maintain his 
 authority he would shoot one of them. 
 
 Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to 
 women, he punished with death; but to the 
 
 165
 
 William Walker 
 
 wounded, either of his own or of the enemy's 
 forces, he was as gentle as a nursing sister; and 
 the brave and able he rewarded with instant pro- 
 motion and higher pay. In no one trait was he 
 a demagogue. One can find no effort on his part 
 to ingratiate himself with his men. Among the 
 officers of his staff there were no favorites. He 
 messed alone, and at all times kept to himself. 
 He spoke little, and then with utter lack of self- 
 consciousness. In the face of injustice, perjury, 
 or physical danger, he was always calm, firm, 
 dispassionate. But it is said that on those in- 
 frequent occasions when his anger asserted itself, 
 the steady steel-gray eyes flashed so menacingly 
 that those who faced them would as soon look 
 down the barrel of his Colt. 
 
 The impression one gets of him gathered from 
 his recorded acts, from his own writings, from the 
 writings of those who fought with him, is of a silent, 
 student-like young man believing religiously in 
 his "star of destiny"; but, in all matters that did 
 not concern himself, possessed of a grim sense of 
 fun. The sayings of his men that in his history 
 of the war he records, show a distinct apprecia- 
 tion of the Bret Harte school of humor. As, for 
 instance, when he tells how he wished to make 
 one of them a drummer boy and the Californian 
 
 166
 
 William Walker 
 
 drawled: "No, thanks, colonel; I never seen a 
 picture of a battle yet that the first thing in it 
 wasn't a dead drummer boy with a busted drum." 
 
 In Walker the personal vanity which is so 
 characteristic of the soldier of fortune was utterly 
 lacking. In a land where a captain bedecks him- 
 self like a field-marshal, Walker wore his trousers 
 stuffed in his boots, a civilian's blue frock-coat, 
 and the slouch hat of the period, with, for his 
 only ornament, the red ribbon of the Democrats. 
 The authority he wielded did not depend upon 
 braid or buttons, and only when going into battle 
 did he wear his sword. In appearance he was 
 slightly built, rather below the medium height, 
 smooth shaven, and with deep-set gray eyes. 
 These eyes apparently, as they gave him his nick- 
 name, were his most marked feature. 
 
 His followers called him, and later, when he 
 was thirty-two years old, he was known all over 
 the United States as the "Gray-Eyed Man of 
 Destiny." 
 
 From the first Walker recognized that in order 
 to establish himself in Nicaragua he must keep in 
 touch with all possible recruits arriving from San 
 Francisco and New York, and that to do this he 
 must hold the line of transit from the Caribbean 
 Sea to the Pacific. At this time the sea routes to 
 
 167
 
 William Walker 
 
 the gold-fields were three: by sailing vessel around 
 the Cape, one over the Isthmus of Panama, and 
 one, which was the shortest, across Nicaragua. 
 By a charter from the Government of Nicaragua, 
 the right to transport passengers across this isth- 
 mus was controlled by the Accessory Transit 
 Company, of which the first Cornelius Vander- 
 bilt was president. His company owned a line 
 of ocean steamers both on the Pacific side and 
 on the Atlantic side. Passengers en route from 
 New York to the gold-fields were landed by these 
 latter steamers at Greytown on the west coast of 
 Nicaragua, and sent by boats of light draught 
 up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua. There 
 they were met by larger lake steamers and con- 
 veyed across the lake to Virgin Bay. From that 
 point, in carriages and on mule back, they were 
 carried twelve miles overland to the port of San 
 Juan del Sud on the Pacific Coast, where they 
 boarded the company's steamers to San Francisco. 
 
 During the year of Walker's occupation the 
 number of passengers crossing Nicaragua was an 
 average of about two thousand a month. 
 
 It was to control this route that immediately 
 after his first defeat Walker returned to San 
 Juan del Sud, and in a smart skirmish defeated 
 the enemy and secured possession of Virgin Bay, 
 
 168
 
 William Walker 
 
 the halting place for the passengers going east or 
 west. In this fight Walker was outnumbered 
 five to one, but his losses were only three natives 
 killed and a few Americans wounded. The Le- 
 gitimists lost sixty killed and a hundred wounded. 
 This proportion of losses shows how fatally effec- 
 tive was the rifle and revolver fire of the Cali- 
 fornians. Indeed, so wonderful was it that when 
 some years ago I visited the towns and cities 
 captured by the filibusters, I found that the marks- 
 manship of Walker's Phalanx was still a tra- 
 dition. Indeed, thanks to the filibusters, to-day 
 in any part of Central America a man from the 
 States, if in trouble, has only to show his gun. 
 No native will wait for him to fire it. 
 
 After the fight at Virgin Bay, Walker received 
 from California fifty recruits a very welcome 
 addition to his force, and as he now commanded 
 about one hundred and twenty Americans, three 
 hundred Nicaraguans, under a friendly native, 
 General Valle, and two brass cannon, he decided 
 to again attack Rivas. Rivas is on the lake just 
 above Virgin Bay; still further up is Granada, 
 which was the head-quarters of the Legitimists. 
 
 Fearing Walker's attack upon Rivas, the Legiti- 
 mist troops were hurried south from Granada to 
 that city, leaving Granada but slightly protected. 
 
 169
 
 William Walker 
 
 Through intercepted letters Walker learned of this 
 and determined to strike at Granada. By night, 
 in one of the lake steamers, he skirted the shore, 
 and just before daybreak, with fires banked and 
 all lights out, drew up to a point near the city. 
 The day previous the Legitimists had gained a 
 victory, and, as good luck or Walker's "destiny" 
 would have it, the night before Granada had been 
 celebrating the event. Much joyous dancing and 
 much drinking of aguardiente had buried the in- 
 habitants in a drugged slumber. The garrison 
 slept, the sentries slept, the city slept. But when 
 the convent bells called for early mass, the air 
 was shaken with sharp reports that to the ears of 
 the Legitimists were unfamiliar and disquieting. 
 They were not the loud explosions of their own 
 muskets nor of the smooth bores of the Democrats. 
 The sounds were sharp and cruel like the crack 
 of a whip. The sentries flying from their posts 
 disclosed the terrifying truth. "The Filibusre- 
 ros!" they cried. Following them at a gallop 
 came Walker and Valle and behind them the men 
 of the awful Phalanx, whom already the natives 
 had learned to fear: the bearded giants in red 
 flannel shirts who at Rivas on foot had charged 
 the artillery with revolvers, who at Virgin Bay 
 when wounded had drawn from their boots glit- 
 
 170
 
 William Walker 
 
 tering bowie knives and hurled them like arrows, 
 who at all times shot with the accuracy of the 
 hawk falling upon a squawking hen. 
 
 There was a brief terrified stand in the Plaza, 
 and then a complete rout. As was their custom, 
 the native Democrats began at once to loot the 
 city. But Walker put his sword into the first 
 one of these he met, and ordered the Americans to 
 arrest all others found stealing, and to return the 
 goods already stolen. Over a hundred political 
 prisoners in the cartel were released by Walker, 
 and the ball and chain to which each was fas- 
 tened stricken off. More than two-thirds of them 
 at once enlisted under Walker's banner. 
 
 He now was in a position to dictate to the en- 
 emy his own terms of peace, but a fatal blunder 
 on the part of Parker H. French, a lieutenant 
 of Walker's, postponed peace for several weeks, 
 and led to unfortunate reprisals. French had 
 made an unauthorized and unsuccessful assault 
 on San Carlos at the eastern end of the lake, and 
 the Legitimists retaliated at Virgin Bay by killing 
 half a dozen peaceful passengers, and at San Car- 
 los by firing at a transit steamer. For this the 
 excuse of the Legitimists was, that now that 
 
 o 7 
 
 Walker was using the lake steamers as transports 
 it was impossible for them to know whether the 
 
 171
 
 William Walker 
 
 boats were occupied by his men or neutral passen- 
 gers. As he could not reach the guilty ones, 
 Walker held responsible for their acts their secre- 
 tary of state, who at the taking of Granada was 
 among the prisoners. He was tried by court-mar- 
 tial and shot, "a victim of the new interpretation 
 of the principles of constitutional government." 
 While this act of Walker's was certainly stretching 
 the theory of responsibility to the breaking point, 
 its immediate effect was to bring about a hasty 
 surrender and a meeting between the generals 
 of the two political parties. Thus, four months 
 after Walker and his fifty-seven followers landed 
 in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was ar- 
 ranged, and the side for which the Americans 
 
 O ' 
 
 had fought was in power. Walker was made 
 commander-in-chief of an army of twelve hundred 
 men with salary of six thousand dollars a year. 
 A man named Rivas was appointed temporary 
 president. 
 
 To Walker this pause in the fight was most 
 welcome. It gave him an opportunity to enlist 
 recruits and to organize his men for the better 
 accomplishment of what was the real object of his 
 going to Nicaragua. He now had under him a 
 remarkable force, one of the most effective known 
 to military history. For although six months had 
 
 172
 
 William Walker 
 
 not yet passed, the organization he now commanded 
 was as unlike the Phalanx of the fifty-eight ad- 
 venturers who were driven back at Rivas, as were 
 FalstafFs followers from the regiment of picked 
 men commanded by Colonel Roosevelt. Instead 
 of the undisciplined and lawless now being in the 
 majority, the ranks were filled with the pick of 
 the California mining camps, with veterans of the 
 Mexican War, with young Southerners of birth 
 and spirit, and with soldiers of fortune from all 
 of the great armies of Europe. 
 
 In the Civil War, which so soon followed, and 
 later in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, were 
 several of Walker's officers, and for years after 
 his death there was no war in which one of the 
 men trained by him in the jungles of Nicaragua 
 did not distinguish himself. In his memoirs, the 
 Englishman, General Charles Frederic Henning- 
 sen, writes that though he had taken part in some 
 of the greatest battles of the Civil War he would 
 pit a thousand men of Walker's command against 
 any five thousand Confederate or Union soldiers. 
 And General Henningsen was one who spoke 
 with authority. Before he joined Walker he had 
 served in Spain under Don Carlos, in Hungary 
 under Kossuth, and in Bulgaria. 
 
 Of Walker's men, a regiment of which he com-
 
 William Walker 
 
 manded, he writes: "I often have seen them 
 march with a broken or compound fractured arm 
 in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle 
 or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh or 
 wounds which rendered them incapable of re- 
 moval, shot themselves. Such men do not turn 
 up in the average of everyday life, nor do I ever 
 expect to see their like again. All military sci- 
 ence failed on a suddenly given field before such 
 assailants, who came at a run to close with their 
 revolvers and who thought little of charging a 
 gun battery, pistol in hand." 
 
 Another graduate of Walker's army was Cap- 
 tain Fred Townsend Ward, a native of Salem, 
 Mass., who after the death of Walker organized 
 and led the ever victorious army that put down 
 the Tai-Ping rebellion, and performed the many 
 feats of martial glory for which Chinese Gordon 
 received the credit. In Shanghai, to the memory 
 of the filibuster, there are to-day two temples in 
 his honor. 
 
 Joaquin Miller, the poet, miner, and soldier, 
 who but recently was a picturesque figure on the 
 hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was one of the 
 young Californians who was "out with Walker," 
 and who later in his career by his verse helped 
 to preserve the name of his beloved commander.
 
 William Walker 
 
 I. C. Jamison, living to-day in Guthrie, Okla- 
 homa, was a captain under Walker. When war 
 again came, as it did within four months, these 
 were the men who made Walker President of 
 Nicaragua. 
 
 During the four months in all but title he had 
 been president, and as such he was recognized 
 and feared. It was against him, not Rivas, that 
 in February, 1856, the neighboring republic of 
 Costa Rica declared war. For three months this 
 war continued with varying fortunes until the 
 Costa Ricans were driven across the border. 
 
 In June of the same year Rivas called a gen- 
 eral election for president, announcing himself 
 as the candidate of the Democrats. Two other 
 Democrats also presented themselves, Salazar and 
 Ferrer. The Legitimists, recognizing in their for- 
 mer enemy the real ruler of the country, nominated 
 Walker. By an overwhelming majority he was 
 elected, receiving 15,835 votes to 867 cast for 
 Rivas. Salazar received 2,087; Ferrer, 4,447. 
 
 Walker now was the legal as well as the actual 
 ruler of the country, and at no time in its history, 
 as during Walker's administration, was Nicaragua 
 governed so justly, so wisely, and so well. But 
 in his success the neighboring republics saw a 
 menace to their own independence. To the four
 
 William Walker 
 
 other republics of Central America the five-pointed 
 blood-red star on the flag of the filibusters bore 
 a sinister motto: "Five or None." The mean- 
 ing was only too unpleasantly obvious. At once, 
 Costa Rica on the south, and Guatemala, Salva- 
 dor, and Honduras from the north, with the mal- 
 contents 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 elec- 
 tion as president the backbone of his army was a 
 magnificently trained body of veterans to the num- 
 ber of 2,000. This was later increased to 3,500, 
 but it is doubtful if at any one time it ever ex- 
 ceeded that number. His muster and hospital 
 rolls show that during his entire occupation of 
 Nicaragua there were enlisted, at one time or an- 
 other, under his banner 10,000 men. While in 
 his service, of this number, by hostile shots or 
 fever, 5,000 died. 
 
 To describe the battles with the allies would be 
 interminable and wearying. In every particular 
 they are much alike: the long silent night march, 
 the rush at daybreak, the fight to gain strategic 
 positions either of the barracks, or of the Cathe- 
 dral in the Plaza, the hand-to-hand fighting from 
 behind barricades and adobe walls. The out- 
 
 176
 
 William Walker 
 
 come of these fights sometimes varied, but the 
 final result was never in doubt, and had no out- 
 side influences intervened, in time each republic 
 in Central America would have come under the 
 five-pointed star. 
 
 In Costa Rica there is a marble statue show- 
 ing that republic represented as a young woman 
 with her foot upon the neck of Walker. Some 
 night a truth-loving American will place a can of 
 dynamite at the foot of that statue, and walk 
 hurriedly away. Unaided, neither Costa Rica 
 nor any other Central American republic could 
 have driven Walker from her soil. His downfall 
 came through his own people, and through an act 
 of his which provoked them. 
 
 When Walker was elected president he found 
 that the Accessory Transit Company had not 
 lived up to the terms of its concession with the 
 Nicaraguan Government. His efforts to hold it 
 to the terms of its concession led to his overthrow. 
 By its charter the Transit Company agreed to pay 
 to Nicaragua ten thousand dollars annually and 
 ten per cent, of the net profits; but the company, 
 whose history the United States Minister, Squire, 
 characterized as "an infamous career of decep- 
 tion and fraud," manipulated its books in such a 
 fashion as to show that there never were any 
 
 177
 
 William Walker 
 
 profits. Doubting this, Walker sent a commis- 
 sion to New York to investigate. The commis- 
 sion discovered the fraud and demanded in back 
 payments two hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
 lars. When the company refused to pay this, as 
 security for the debt Walker seized its steamers, 
 wharves, and storehouses, revoked its charter, and 
 gave a new charter to two of its directors, Mor- 
 gan and Garrison, who, in San Francisco, were 
 working against Vanderbilt. In doing this, while 
 he was legally in the right, he committed a fatal 
 error. He had made a powerful enemy of Van- 
 derbilt, and he had shut off his only lines of 
 communication with the United States. For, 
 enraged at the presumption of the filibuster pres- 
 ident, Vanderbilt withdrew his ocean steamers, 
 thus leaving Walker without men or ammunition, 
 and as isolated as though upon a deserted island. 
 He possessed Vanderbilt's boats upon the San 
 Juan River and Nicaragua Lake, but they were 
 of use to him only locally. 
 
 His position was that of a man holding the 
 centre span of a bridge of which every span on 
 either side of him has been destroyed. 
 
 Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing his 
 steamers, but by supporting the Costa Ricans 
 with money and men, carried the war into Central 
 
 178
 
 William Walker 
 
 America. From Washington he fought Walker 
 through Secretary of State Marcy, who proved 
 a willing tool. 
 
 Spencer and Webster, and the other soldiers of 
 fortune employed by Vanderbilt, closed the route 
 on the Caribbean side, and the man-of-war St. 
 Marys, commanded by Captain Davis, was or- 
 dered to San Juan on the Pacific side. The in- 
 structions given to Captain Davis were to aid 
 the allies in forcing Walker out of Nicaragua. 
 Walker claims that these orders were given to 
 Marcy by Vanderbilt and by Marcy to Commo- 
 dore Mervin, who was Marcy's personal friend 
 and who issued them to Davis. Davis claims 
 that he acted only in the interest of humanity to 
 save Walker in spite of himself. In any event, 
 the result was the same. Walker, his force cut 
 down by hostile shot and fever and desertion, 
 took refuge in Rivas, where he was besieged by 
 the allied armies. There was no bread in the city. 
 The men were living on horse and mule meat. 
 
 O 
 
 There was no salt. The hospital was filled with 
 wounded and those stricken with fever. 
 
 Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, de- 
 manded Walker's surrender to the United States. 
 Walker told him he would not surrender, but that 
 if the time came when he found he must fly, he 
 
 179
 
 William Walker 
 
 would do so in his own little schooner of war, the 
 Granada, which constituted his entire navy, and 
 in her, as a free man, take his forces where he 
 pleased. Then Davis informed Walker that the 
 force Walker had sent to recapture the Greytown 
 route had been defeated by the janizaries of 
 Vanderbilt; that the steamers from San Francisco, 
 on which Walker now counted to bring him re- 
 enforcements, had also been taken off the line, 
 and finally that it was his "unalterable and de- 
 liberate intention" to seize the Granada. On 
 this point his orders left him no choice. The 
 Granada was the last means of transportation still 
 left to Walker. He had hoped to make a sortie 
 and on board her to escape from the country. 
 But with his ship taken from him and no longer 
 able to sustain the siege of the allies, he surren- 
 dered to the forces of the United States. In the 
 agreement drawn up by him and Davis, Walker 
 provided for the care, by Davis, of the sick and 
 wounded, for the protection after his departure 
 of the natives who had fought with him, and for 
 the transportation of himself and officers to the 
 United States. 
 
 On his arrival in New York he received a wel- 
 come such as later was extended to Kossuth, and, 
 in our own day, to Admiral Dewey. The city 
 
 180
 
 William Walker 
 
 was decorated with flags and arches; and ban- 
 quets, fetes, and public meetings were everywhere 
 held in his honor. Walker received these demon- 
 strations modestly, and on every public occasion 
 announced his determination to return to the 
 country of which he was the president, and from 
 which by force he had been driven. At Washing- 
 ton, where he went to present his claims, he re- 
 ceived scant encouragement. His protest against 
 Captain Davis was referred to Congress, where it 
 was allowed to die. 
 
 Within a month Walker organized an expedi- 
 tion with which to regain his rights in Nicaragua, 
 and as, in his new constitution for that country, 
 he had annulled the old law abolishing slavery, 
 among the slave-holders of the South he found 
 enough money and recruits to enable him to at 
 once leave the United States. With one hundred 
 and fifty men he sailed from New Orleans and 
 landed at San del Norte on the Caribbean side. 
 While he formed a camp on the harbor of San 
 Juan, one of his officers, with fifty men, proceeded 
 up the river and, capturing the town of Castillo 
 Viejo and four of the Transit steamers, was in a 
 fair way to obtain possession of the entire route. 
 At this moment upon the scene arrived the United 
 States frigate Wabash and Hiram Paulding, who 
 
 181
 
 William Walker 
 
 landed a force of three hundred and fifty blue- 
 jackets with howitzers, and turned the guns of 
 his frigate upon the camp of the President of Nic- 
 aragua. Captain Engel, who presented the terms 
 of surrender to Walker, said to him: "General, 
 I am sorry to see you here. A man like you is 
 worthy to command better men." To which 
 Walker replied grimly: "If I had a third the 
 number you have brought against me, I would 
 show you which of us two commands the better 
 men." 
 
 For the third time in his history Walker sur- 
 rendered to the armed forces of his own country. 
 
 On his arrival in the United States, in fulfil- 
 ment of his parole to Paulding, Walker at once 
 presented himself at Washington a prisoner of war. 
 But President Buchanan, although Paulding had 
 acted exactly as Davis had done, refused to sup- 
 port him, and in a message to Congress declared 
 that that officer had committed a grave error and 
 established an unsafe precedent. 
 
 On the strength of this Walker demanded of 
 the United States Government indemnity for his 
 losses, and that it should furnish him and his 
 followers transportation even to the very camp 
 from which its representatives had torn him. This 
 demand, as Walker foresaw, was not considered 
 
 182
 
 William Walker 
 
 seriously, and with a force of about one hundred 
 men, among whom were many of his veterans, 
 he again set sail from New Orleans. Owing to 
 the fact that, to prevent his return, there now 
 were on each side of the Isthmus both American 
 and British men-of-war, Walker, with the idea 
 of reaching Nicaragua by land, stopped off at 
 Honduras. In his war with the allies the Hondu- 
 ranians had been as savage in their attacks upon 
 his men as even the Costa Ricans, and finding 
 his old enemies now engaged in a local revolution, 
 on landing, Walker declared for the weaker side 
 and captured the important seaport of Trujillo. 
 He no sooner had taken it than the British war- 
 ship Icarus anchored in the harbor, and her com- 
 manding officer, Captain Salmon, notified Walker 
 that the British Government held a mortgage on 
 the revenues of the port, and that to protect the 
 interests of his Government he intended to take 
 the town. Walker answered that he had made 
 Trujillo a free port, and that Great Britain's 
 claims no longer existed. 
 
 The British officer replied that if Walker sur- 
 rendered himself and his men he would carry 
 them as prisoners to the United States, and that 
 if he did not, he would bombard the town. At 
 this moment General Alvarez, with seven hun- 
 
 183
 
 William Walker 
 
 dred Honduranians, from the land side surrounded 
 Trujillo, and prepared to attack. Against such 
 odds by sea and land Walker was helpless, and he 
 determined to fly. That night, with seventy men, 
 he left the town and proceeded down the coast 
 toward Nicaragua. The Icarus, having taken on 
 board Alvarez, started in pursuit. The President 
 of Nicaragua was found in a little Indian fishing 
 village, and Salmon sent in his shore-boats and 
 demanded his surrender. On leaving Trujillo, 
 Walker had been forced to abandon all his ammu- 
 nition save thirty rounds a man, and all of his 
 food supplies excepting two barrels of bread. 
 On the coast of this continent there is no spot 
 more unhealthy than Honduras, and when the 
 Englishmen entered the fishing village they found 
 Walker's seventy men lying in the palm huts help- 
 less with fever, and with no stomach to fight Brit- 
 ish blue-jackets with whom they had no quarrel. 
 Walker inquired of Salmon if he were asking him 
 to surrender to the British or to the Honduranian 
 forces, and twice Salmon assured him, "distinctly 
 and specifically," that he was surrendering to the 
 forces of her Majesty. With this understanding 
 Walker and his men laid down their arms and 
 were conveyed to the Icarus. But on arriving at 
 Trujillo, in spite of their protests and demands for 
 
 184
 
 William Walker 
 
 trial by a British tribunal, Salmon turned over 
 his prisoners to the Honduranian general. What 
 excuse for this is now given by his descendants in 
 
 TTc'"e s T A T e a 
 
 Routes of Walker's Three Filibustering Expeditions 
 
 the Salmon family I do not know. Probably it is 
 a subject they avoid, and, in history, Salmon's 
 version has never been given, which for him, per- 
 haps, is an injustice. But the fact remains that 
 
 185
 
 William Walker 
 
 he turned over his white brothers to the mercies 
 of half-Indian, half-negro, savages, who were not 
 allies of Great Britain, and in whose quarrels 
 she had no interest. And Salmon did this, know- 
 ing there could be but one end. If he did not 
 know it, his stupidity equalled what now ap- 
 pears to be heartless indifference. So far as to 
 secure pardon for all except the leader and one 
 faithful follower, Colonel Rudler of the famous 
 Phalanx, Salmon did use his authority, and he 
 offered, if Walker would ask as an American citi- 
 zen, to intercede for him. But Walker, with a 
 distinct sense of loyalty to the country he had con- 
 quered, and whose people had honored him with 
 their votes, refused to accept life from the country 
 of his birth, the country that had injured and re- 
 pudiated him. 
 
 Even in his extremity, abandoned and alone on 
 a strip of glaring coral and noisome swamp land, 
 surrounded only by his enemies, he remained true 
 to his ideal. 
 
 At thirty-seven life is very sweet, many things 
 still seem possible, and before him, could his 
 life be spared, Walker beheld greater conquests, 
 more power, a new South controlling a Nicaragua 
 canal, a network of busy railroads, great squad- 
 rons of merchant vessels, himself emperor of Cen- 
 
 186
 
 William Walker 
 
 tral America. On the gunboat the gold-braided 
 youth had but to raise his hand, and Walker 
 again would be a free man. But the gold-braided 
 one would render this service only on the condition 
 that Walker would appeal to him as an Ameri- 
 can; it was not enough that Walker was a human 
 being. The condition Walker could not grant. 
 
 "The President of Nicaragua," he said, "is a 
 citizen of Nicaragua." 
 
 They led him out at sunrise to a level piece of 
 sand along the beach, and as the priest held the 
 crucifix in front of him he spoke to his execution- 
 ers in Spanish, simply and gravely: "I die a 
 Roman Catholic. In making war upon you at 
 the invitation of the people of Ruatan I was 
 wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept 
 my punishment with resignation. I would like 
 to think my death will be for the good of society." 
 
 From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers 
 fired at him, but, although each shot took effect, 
 Walker was not dead. So, a sergeant stooped, 
 and with a pistol killed the man who would have 
 made him one of an empire of slaves. 
 
 Had Walker lived four years longer to exhibit 
 upon the great board of the Civil War his ability 
 as a general, he would, I believe, to-day be ranked 
 as one of America's greatest fighting men. 
 
 187
 
 William Walker 
 
 And because the people of his own day de- 
 stroyed him is no reason that we should with- 
 hold from this American, the greatest of all fili- 
 busters, the recognition of his genius. 
 
 188
 
 MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF 
 OF SCOUTS
 
 MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS 
 
 AMONG the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories 
 have been told in this book were men who 
 are no longer living, men who, to the United 
 States, are strangers, and men who were of in- 
 terest chiefly because in what they attempted 
 they failed. 
 
 The subject of this article is none of these. 
 His adventures are as remarkable as any that ever 
 led a small boy to dig behind the barn for buried 
 treasure, or stalk Indians in the orchard. But 
 entirely apart from his adventures he obtains our 
 interest because in what he has attempted he has 
 not failed, because he is one of our own people, 
 one of the earliest and best types of American, 
 and because, so far from being dead and buried, 
 he is at this moment very much alive, and en- 
 gaged in Mexico in searching for a buried city. 
 For exercise, he is alternately chasing, or being 
 chased by, Yaqui Indians. 
 
 In his home in Pasadena, Cal., where some- 
 times he rests quietly for almost a week at a time,
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 the neighbors know him as "Fred" Burnharn. 
 In England the newspapers crowned him "The 
 King of Scouts." Later, when he won an official 
 title, they called him "Major Frederick Russell 
 Burnham, D. S. O." 
 
 Some men are born scouts, others by training 
 become scouts. From his father Burnham in- 
 herited his instinct for wood-craft, and to this 
 instinct, which in him is as keen as in a wild deer 
 or a mountain lion, he has added, in the jungle 
 and on the prairie and mountain ranges, years of 
 the hardest, most relentless schooling. In those 
 years he has trained himself to endure the most 
 appalling fatigues, hunger, thirst, and wounds; 
 has subdued the brain to infinite patience, has 
 learned to force every nerve in his body to abso- 
 lute obedience, to still even the beating of his 
 heart. Indeed, than Burnham no man of my ac- 
 quaintance to my knowledge has devoted himself 
 to his life's work more earnestly, more honestly, 
 and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To 
 him scouting is as exact a study as is the piano 
 to Paderewski, with the result that to-day what 
 the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to 
 all other "trackers," woodmen, and scouts. He 
 reads "the face of Nature" as you read your 
 morning paper. To him a movement of his 
 
 192
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 horse's ears is as plain a warning as the "Go 
 SLOW" of an automobile sign; and he so saves 
 from ambush an entire troop. In the glitter of a 
 piece of quartz in the firelight he discovers King 
 Solomon's mines. Like the horned cattle, he can 
 tell by the smell of it in the air the near presence 
 of water, and where, glaring in the sun, you can 
 see only a bare kopje, he distinguishes the muzzle 
 of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the 
 levelled barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock 
 Holmes of all out-of-doors. 
 
 Besides being a scout, he is soldier, hunter, 
 mining expert, and explorer. Within the last ten 
 years the educated instinct that as a younger man 
 taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the 
 "spoor" of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now 
 leads him as a mining expert to the hiding-places 
 of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, 
 great and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts 
 of land in Africa and Mexico as large as the State 
 of New York. As an explorer in the last few years 
 in the course of his expeditions into undiscovered 
 lands, he has added to this little world many 
 thousands of square miles. 
 
 Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of 
 fiction, and of the Wild West Show, as it is pos- 
 sible for a man to be. He possesses no flowing 
 
 193
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 locks, his talk is not of "greasers," "grizzly 
 b'ars," or "pesky redskins." In fact, because he 
 is more widely and more thoroughly informed, he 
 is much better educated than many who have 
 passed through one of the "Big Three" univer- 
 sities, and his English is as conventional as though 
 he had been brought up on the borders of Boston 
 Common, rather than on the borders of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 In appearance he is slight, muscular, bronzed; 
 with a finely formed square jaw, and remarkable 
 light blue eyes. These eyes apparently never 
 leave yours, but in reality they see everything 
 behind you and about you, above and below you. 
 They tell of him that one day, while out with a 
 patrol on the veldt, he said he had lost the trail 
 and, dismounting, began moving about on his 
 hands and knees, nosing the ground like a blood- 
 hound, and pointing out a trail that led back 
 over the way the force had just marched. When 
 the commanding officer rode up, Burnham said: 
 
 "Don't raise your head, sir. On that kopje 
 to the right there is a commando of Boers." 
 
 "When did you see them ?" asked the officer. 
 
 "I see them now," Burnham answered. 
 
 "But I thought you were looking for a lost 
 trail?" 
 
 194
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 "That's what the Boers on the kopje think," 
 said Burnham. 
 
 In his eyes, possibly, owing to the uses to 
 which they have been trained, the pupils, as in 
 the eyes of animals that see in the dark, are ex- 
 tremely small. Even in the photographs that ac- 
 company this article this feature of his eyes is 
 obvious, and that he can see in the dark the 
 Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In man- 
 ner he is quiet, courteous, talking slowly but well, 
 and, while without any of that shyness that comes 
 from self-consciousness, extremely modest. In- 
 deed, there could be no better proof of his modesty 
 than the difficulties I have encountered in gather- 
 ing material for this article, which I have been 
 five years in collecting. And even now, as he 
 reads it by his camp-fire, I can see him squirm 
 with embarrassment. 
 
 Burnham's father was a pioneer missionary in 
 a frontier hamlet called Tivoli on the edge of the 
 Indian reserve of Minnesota. He was a stern, 
 severely religious man, born in Kentucky, but edu- 
 cated in New York, where he graduated from the 
 Union Theological Seminary. He was wonder- 
 fully skilled in wood-craft. Burnham's mother 
 was a Miss Rebecca Russell of a well-known family 
 in Iowa. She was a woman of great courage,
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 which, in those days on that skirmish line of civili- 
 zation, was a very necessary virtue; and she was 
 possessed of a most gentle and sweet disposition. 
 That was her gift to her son Fred, who was born 
 on May 11, 1861. 
 
 His education as a child consisted in memo- 
 rizing many verses of the Bible, the "Three R's," 
 and wood-craft. His childhood was strenuous. 
 In his mother's arms he saw the burning of the 
 town of New Ulm, which was the funeral pyre 
 for the women and children of that place when 
 they were massacred by Red Cloud and his braves. 
 
 On another occasion Fred's mother fled for her 
 life from the Indians, carrying the boy with her. 
 He was a husky lad, and knowing that if she tried 
 to carry him farther they both would be over- 
 taken, she hid him under a shock of corn. There, 
 the next morning, the Indians having been driven 
 off, she found her son sleeping as soundly as a 
 night watchman. In these Indian wars, and the 
 Civil War which followed, of the families of Burn- 
 ham and Russell, twenty-two of the men were 
 killed. There is no question that Burnham 
 comes of fighting stock. 
 
 In 1870, when Fred was nine years old, his 
 father moved to Los Angeles, Cal., where two 
 years later he died; and for a time for both mother 
 
 196
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 and boy there was poverty, hard and grinding. 
 To relieve this young Burnham acted as a mounted 
 messenger. Often he was in the saddle from 
 twelve to fifteen hours, and even in a land where 
 every one rode well, he gained local fame as a 
 hard rider. In a few years a kind uncle offered 
 to Mrs. Burnham and a younger brother a home 
 in the East, but at the last moment Fred refused 
 to go with them, and chose to make his own way. 
 He was then thirteen years old, and he had de- 
 termined to be a scout. 
 
 At that particular age many boys have set forth 
 determined to be scouts, and are generally brought 
 home the next morning by a policeman. But 
 Burnham, having turned his back on the cities, 
 did not repent. He wandered over Mexico, Ari- 
 zona, California. He met Indians, bandits, pro- 
 spectors, hunters of all kinds of big game; and 
 finally a scout who, under General Taylor, had 
 served in the Mexican War. This man took a 
 liking to the boy; and his influence upon him was 
 marked and for his good. He was an educated 
 man, and had carried into the wilderness a few 
 books. In the cabin of this man Burnham read 
 "The Conquest of Mexico and Peru" by Pres- 
 cott, the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, 
 of Livingstone the explorer, which first set his 
 
 197
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 thoughts toward Africa, and many technical works 
 on the strategy and tactics of war. He had no 
 experience of military operations on a large scale, 
 but, with the aid of the veteran of the Mexican 
 War, with corn-cobs in the sand in front of the 
 cabin door, he constructed forts and made trenches, 
 redoubts, and traverses. In Burnham's life this 
 seems to have been a very happy period. The 
 big game he hunted and killed he sold for a few 
 dollars to the men of Nadean's freight outfits, 
 which in those days hauled bullion from Cerro 
 Gordo for the man who is now Senator Jones of 
 Nevada. 
 
 At nineteen Burnham decided that there were 
 things in this world he should know that could 
 not be gleaned from the earth, trees, and sky; 
 and with the few dollars he had saved he came 
 East. The visit apparently was not a success. 
 The atmosphere of the town in which he went to 
 school was strictly Puritanical, and the towns- 
 people much given to religious discussion. The 
 son of the pioneer missionary found himself un- 
 able to subscribe to the formulas which to the 
 others seemed so essential, and he returned to 
 the West with the most bitter feelings, which 
 lasted until he was twenty-one. 
 
 "It seems strange now," he once said to me, 
 198
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 "but in those times religious questions were as 
 much a part of our daily life as to-day are auto- 
 mobiles, the Standard Oil, and the insurance 
 scandals, and when I went West I was in an un- 
 happy, doubting frame of mind. The trouble was 
 I had no moral anchors; the old ones father had 
 given me were gone, and the time for acquiring 
 new ones had not arrived." This bitterness of 
 heart, or this disappointment, or whatever the 
 state of mind was that the dogmas of the New Eng- 
 land town had inspired in the boy from the prairie, 
 made him reckless. For the life he was to lead 
 this was not a handicap. Even as a lad, in a land- 
 grant war in California, he had been under gun- 
 fire, and for the next fifteen years he led a life of 
 danger and of daring; and studied in a school of 
 experience than which, for a scout, if his life be 
 spared, there can be none better. Burnham came 
 out of it a quiet, manly, gentleman. In those 
 fifteen years he roved the West from the Great 
 Divide to Mexico. He fought the Apache Ind- 
 ians for the possession of waterholes, he guarded 
 bullion on stage-coaches, for days rode in pur- 
 suit of Mexican bandits and American horse- 
 thieves, took part in county-seat fights, in rustler 
 wars, in cattle wars; he was cowboy, miner, 
 deputy-sheriff", and in time throughout the West 
 
 199
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 the name of "Fred" Burnham became signifi- 
 cant and familiar. 
 
 During this period Burnham was true to his 
 boyhood ideal of becoming a scout. It was not 
 enough that by merely living the life around him 
 he was being educated for it. He daily practised 
 and rehearsed those things which some day might 
 mean to himself and others the difference between 
 life and death. To improve his sense of smell he 
 gave up smoking, of which he was extremely fond, 
 nor, for the same reason, does he to this day use 
 tobacco. He accustomed himself also to go with 
 little sleep, and to subsist on the least possible 
 quantity of food. As a deputy-sheriff this edu- 
 cated faculty of not requiring sleep aided him in 
 many important captures. Sometimes he would 
 not strike the trail of the bandit or "bad man" 
 until the other had several days the start of him. 
 But the end was the same; for, while the mur- 
 derer snatched a few hours' rest by the trail, Burn- 
 ham, awake and in the saddle, would be closing 
 up the miles between them. 
 
 That he is a good marksman goes without 
 telling. At the age of eight his father gave him 
 a rifle of his own, and at twelve, with either a 
 "gun" or a Winchester, he was an expert. He 
 taught himself to use a weapon either in his left or 
 
 200
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 right hand and to shoot, Indian fashion, hanging 
 by one leg from his pony and using it as a cover, 
 and to turn in the saddle and shoot behind him. 
 I once asked him if he really could shoot to the 
 rear with a galloping horse under him and hit a 
 man. 
 
 "Well," he said, "maybe not to hit him, but I 
 can come near enough to him to make him de- 
 cide my pony's so much faster than his that it 
 really isn't worth while to follow me." 
 
 Besides perfecting himself in what he toler- 
 antly calls "tricks" of horsemanship and marks- 
 manship, he studied the signs of the trail, forest 
 and prairie, as a sailing-master studies the waves 
 and clouds. The knowledge he gathers from 
 inanimate objects and dumb animals seems little 
 less than miraculous. And when you ask him 
 how he knows these things he always gives you a 
 reason founded on some fact or habit of nature 
 that shows him to be a naturalist, mineralogist, 
 geologist, and botanist, and not merely a seventh 
 son of a seventh son. 
 
 In South Africa he would say to the officers: 
 "There are a dozen Boers five miles ahead of 
 us riding Basuto ponies at a trot, and leading 
 five others. If we hurry we should be able to 
 sight them in an hour." At first the officers 
 
 2OI
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 would smile, but not after a half-hour's gallop, 
 when they would see ahead of them a dozen Boers 
 leading five ponies. In the early days of Salem, 
 Burnham would have been burned as a witch. 
 
 When twenty-three years of age he married Miss 
 Blanche Blick, of Iowa. They had known each 
 other from childhood, and her brothers-in-law 
 have been Burnham's aids and companions in 
 every part of Africa and the West. Neither at 
 the time of their marriage nor since did Mrs. 
 Burnham "lay a hand on the bridle rein," as is 
 witnessed by the fact that for nine years after his 
 marriage Burnham continued his career as sheriff, 
 scout, mining prospector. And in 1893, when 
 Burnham and his brother-in-law, Ingram, started 
 for South Africa, Mrs. Burnham went with them, 
 and in every part of South Africa shared her hus- 
 band's life of travel and danger. 
 
 In making this move across the sea, Burn- 
 ham's original idea was to look for gold in the 
 territory owned by the German East African 
 Company. But as in Rhodesia the first Matabele 
 uprising had broken out, he continued on down 
 the coast, and volunteered for that campaign. 
 This was the real beginning of his fortunes. The 
 "war" was not unlike the Indian fighting of his 
 early days, and although the country was new to 
 
 202
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 him, with the kind of warfare then being waged 
 between the Kaffirs under King Lobengula and 
 the white settlers of the British South Africa Com- 
 pany, the chartered company of Cecil Rhodes, he 
 was intimately familiar. 
 
 It does not take big men long to recognize other 
 big men, and Burnham's remarkable work as a 
 scout at once brought him to the notice of Rhodes 
 and Dr. Jameson, who was personally conducting 
 the campaign. The war was their own private war, 
 and to them, at such a crisis in the history of their 
 settlement, a man like Burnham was invaluable. 
 
 The chief incident of this campaign, the fame 
 of which rang over all Great Britain and her colo- 
 nies, was the gallant but hopeless stand made by 
 Major Alan Wilson and his patrol of thirty-four 
 men. It was Burnham's attempt to save these 
 men that made him known from Buluwayo to 
 Cape Town. 
 
 King Lobengula and his warriors were halted 
 on one bank of the Shangani River, and on the 
 other Major Forbes, with a picked force of three 
 hundred men, was coming up in pursuit. Al- 
 though at the moment he did not know it, he also 
 was being pursued by a force of Matabeles, who 
 were gradually surrounding him. At nightfall 
 Major Wilson and a patrol of twelve men, with 
 
 203
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 Burnham and his brother-in-law, Ingram, acting 
 as scouts, were ordered to make a dash into the 
 camp of Lobengula and, if possible, in the con- 
 fusion of their sudden attack, and under cover 
 of a terrific thunder-storm that was raging, bring 
 him back a prisoner. 
 
 With the king in their hands the white men 
 believed the rebellion would collapse. To the 
 number of three thousand the Matabeles were 
 sleeping in a succession of camps, through which 
 the fourteen men rode at a gallop. But in the 
 darkness it was difficult to distinguish the trek 
 wagon of the king, and by the time they found 
 his laager the Matabeles from the other camps 
 through which they had ridden had given the 
 alarm. Through the underbrush from every side 
 the enemy, armed with assegai and elephant guns, 
 charged toward them and spread out to cut off 
 their retreat. 
 
 At a distance of about seven hundred yards 
 from the camps there was a giant ant-hill, and 
 the patrol rode toward it. By the aid of the 
 lightning flashes they made their way through 
 a dripping wood and over soil which the rain 
 had turned into thick black mud. When the 
 party drew rein at the ant-hill it was found that of 
 the fourteen three were missing. As the official 
 
 204
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 scout of the patrol and the only one who could see 
 in the dark, Wilson ordered Burnham back to 
 find them. Burnham said he could do so only 
 by feeling the hoof-prints in the mud and that he 
 would like some one with him to lead his pony. 
 Wilson said he would lead it. With his fingers 
 Burnham followed the trail of the eleven horses 
 to where, at right angles, the hoof-prints of the 
 three others separated from it, and so came upon 
 the three men. Still, with nothing but the mud 
 of the jungle to guide him, he brought them back 
 to their comrades. It was this feat that estab- 
 lished his reputation among British, Boers, and 
 black men in South Africa. 
 
 Throughout the night the men of the patrol lay 
 in the mud holding the reins of their horses. In 
 the jungle about them, they could hear the enemy 
 splashing through the mud, and the swishing 
 sound of the branches as they swept back into 
 place. It was still raining. Just before the dawn 
 there came the sounds of voices and the welcome 
 clatter of accoutrements. The men of the patrol, 
 believing the column had joined them, sprang up 
 rejoicing, but it was only a second patrol, under 
 Captain Borrow, who had been sent forward with 
 twenty men as re-enforcements. They had come 
 in time to share in a glorious immortality. No 
 
 205
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 sooner had these men joined than the Kaffirs 
 began the attack; and the white men at once 
 learned that they were trapped in a complete 
 circle of the enemy. Hidden by the trees, the 
 Kaffirs fired point-blank, and in a very little time 
 half of Wilson's force was killed or wounded. 
 As the horses were shot down the men used them 
 for breastworks. There was no other shelter. 
 Wilson called Burnham to him and told him he 
 must try and get through the lines of the enemy 
 to Forbes. 
 
 "Tell him to come up at once," he said; "we 
 are nearly finished." He detailed a trooper named 
 Gooding and Ingram to accompany Burnham. 
 "One of you may get through," he said. Good- 
 ing was but lately out from London, and knew 
 nothing of scouting, so Burnham and Ingram 
 warned him, whether he saw the reason for it or 
 not, to act exactly as they did. The three men 
 had barely left the others before the enemy sprang 
 at them with their spears. In five minutes they 
 were being fired at from every bush. Then fol- 
 lowed a remarkable ride, in which Burnham called 
 to his aid all he had learned in thirty years of bor- 
 der warfare. As the enemy rushed after them, 
 the three doubled on their tracks, rode in triple 
 loops, hid in dongas to breathe their horses; and 
 
 206
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 to scatter their pursuers, separated, joined again, 
 and again separated. The enemy followed them 
 to the very bank of the river, where, finding the 
 "drift" covered with the swollen waters, they were 
 forced to swim. They reached the other bank 
 only to find Forbes hotly engaged with another 
 force of the Matabeles. 
 
 "I have been sent for re-enforcements," Burn- 
 ham said to Forbes, "but I believe we are the only 
 survivors of that party." Forbes himself was too 
 hard pressed to give help to Wilson, and Burnham, 
 his errand over, took his place in the column, and 
 began firing upon the new enemy. 
 
 Six weeks later the bodies of Wilson's patrol 
 were found lying in a circle. Each of them had 
 been shot many times. A son of Lobengula, 
 who witnessed their extermination, and who in 
 Buluwayo had often heard the Englishmen sing 
 their national anthem, told how the five men who 
 were the last to die stood up and, swinging their 
 hats defiantly, sang "God Save the Queen." 
 The incident will long be recorded in song and 
 story; and in London was reproduced in two 
 theatres, in each of which the man who played 
 "Burnham, the American Scout," as he rode off 
 for re-enforcements, was as loudly cheered by those 
 in the audience as by those on the stage. 
 
 207
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 Hensman, in his "History of Rhodesia," says: 
 "One hardly knows which to most admire, the 
 men who went on this dangerous errand, through 
 brush swarming with natives, or those who re- 
 mained behind battling against overwhelming 
 odds." 
 
 For his help in this war the Chartered Com- 
 pany presented Burnham with the campaign 
 medal, a gold watch engraved with words of 
 appreciation; and at the suggestion of Cecil 
 Rhodes gave him, Ingram, and the Hon. Maurice 
 Clifford, jointly, a tract of land of three hundred 
 square acres. 
 
 After this campaign Burnham led an expedi- 
 tion of ten white men and seventy Kaffirs north 
 of the Zambesi River to explore Barotzeland and 
 other regions to the north of Mashonaland, and 
 to establish the boundaries of the concession given 
 him, Ingram, and Clifford. 
 
 In order to protect Burnham on the march 
 the Chartered Company signed a treaty with 
 the native king of the country through which 
 he wished to travel, by which the king gave him 
 permission to pass freely and guaranteed him 
 against attack. 
 
 But Latea, the son of the king, refused to recog- 
 nize the treaty and sent his young men in great 
 
 208
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 number to surround Burnham's camp. Burnham 
 had been instructed to avoid a fight, and was 
 torn between his desire to obey the Chartered 
 Company and to prevent a massacre. He de- 
 cided to make it a sacrifice either of himself or of 
 Latea. As soon as night fell, with only three 
 companions and a missionary to act as a witness 
 of what occurred, he slipped through the lines of 
 Latea' s men, and, kicking down the fence around 
 the prince's hut, suddenly appeared before him 
 and covered him with his rifle. 
 
 "Is it peace or war?" Burnham asked. "I 
 have the king your father's guarantee of protec- 
 tion, but your men surround us. I have told my 
 people if they hear shots to open fire. We may 
 all be killed, but you will be the first to die." 
 
 The missionary also spoke urging Latea to 
 abide by the treaty. Burnham says the prince 
 seemed much more impressed by the arguments 
 of the missionary than by the fact that he still 
 was covered by Burnham's rifle. Whichever ar- 
 gument moved him, he called off his warriors. 
 On this expedition Burnham discovered the ruins 
 of great granite structures fifteen feet wide, and 
 made entirely without mortar. They were of a 
 period dating before the Phoenicians. He also 
 sought out the ruins described to him by F. C. 
 
 209
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 Selous, the famous hunter, and by Rider Haggard 
 as King Solomon's Mines. Much to the delight 
 of Mr. Haggard, he brought back for him from 
 the mines of his imagination real gold ornaments 
 and a real gold bar. 
 
 On this same expedition, which lasted five 
 months, Burnham endured one of the severest 
 hardships of his life. Alone with ten Kaffir boys, 
 he started on a week's journey across the dried-up 
 basin of what once had been a great lake. Water 
 was carried in goat-skins on the heads of the 
 bearers. The boys, finding the bags an un- 
 wieldy burden, and believing, with the happy 
 optimism of their race, that Burnham's warnings 
 were needless, and that at a stream they soon 
 could refill the bags, emptied the water on the 
 ground. 
 
 The tortures that followed this wanton waste 
 were terrible. Five of the boys died, and after 
 several days, when Burnham found water in abun- 
 dance, the tongues of the others were so swollen 
 that their jaws could not meet. 
 
 On this trip Burnham passed through a region 
 ravaged by the "sleeping sickness," where his 
 nostrils were never free from the stench of dead 
 bodies, where in some of the villages, as he ex- 
 pressed it, "the hyenas were mangy with over- 
 
 210
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 eating, and the buzzards so gorged they could not 
 move out of our way/' From this expedition he 
 brought back many ornaments of gold manufac- 
 tured before the Christian era, and made several 
 valuable maps of hitherto uncharted regions. It 
 was in recognition of the information gathered by 
 him on this trip that he was elected a Fellow of 
 the Royal Geographical Society. 
 
 He returned to Rhodesia in time to take part 
 in the second Matabele rebellion. This was in 
 1896. By now Burnham was a very prominent 
 member of the "vortrekers" and pioneers at Bu- 
 luwayo, and Sir Frederick Carrington, who was in 
 command of the forces, attached him to his staff. 
 This second outbreak was a more serious upris- 
 ing than the one of 1893, and as it was evident 
 the forces of the Chartered Company could not 
 handle it, imperial troops were sent to assist them. 
 But with even their aid the war dragged on until 
 it threatened to last to the rainy season, when the 
 troops must have gone into winter quarters. Had 
 they done so, the cost of keeping them would 
 have fallen on the Chartered Company, already a 
 sufferer in pocket from the ravages of the rinder- 
 pest and the expenses of the investigation which 
 followed the Jameson raid. 
 
 Accordingly, Carrington looked about for some 
 
 211
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 measure by which he could bring the war to an 
 immediate end. 
 
 It was suggested to him by a young Colonial, 
 named Armstrong, the Commissioner of the dis- 
 trict, that this could be done by destroying the 
 "god," or high priest, Umlimo, who was the chief 
 inspiration of the rebellion. 
 
 This high priest had incited the rebels to a gen- 
 eral massacre of women and children, and had 
 given them confidence by promising to strike the 
 white soldiers blind and to turn their bullets into 
 water. Armstrong had discovered the secret 
 hiding-place of Umlimo, and Carrington ordered 
 Burnham to penetrate the enemy's lines, find the 
 god, capture him, and if that were not possible 
 to destroy him. 
 
 The adventure was a most desperate one. Um- 
 limo was secreted in a cave on the top of a huge 
 kopje. At the base of this was a village where 
 were gathered two regiments, of a thousand men 
 each, of his fighting men. 
 
 For miles around this village the country was 
 patrolled by roving bands of the enemy. 
 
 Against a white man reaching the cave and re- 
 turning, the chances were a hundred to one, and 
 the difficulties of the journey are illustrated by the 
 fact that Burnham and Armstrong were unable to 
 
 212
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 move faster than at the rate of a mile an hour. 
 In making the last mile they consumed three 
 hours. When they reached the base of the kopje 
 in which Umlimo was hiding, they concealed their 
 ponies in a clump of bushes, and on hands and 
 knees began the ascent. 
 
 Directly below them lay the village, so close 
 that they could smell the odors of cooking from 
 the huts, and hear, rising drowsily on the hot, 
 noonday air, voices of the warriors. For minutes 
 at a time they lay as motionless as the granite 
 bowlders around or squirmed and crawled over 
 loose stones which a miss of hand or knee would 
 have dislodged and sent clattering into the village. 
 After an hour of this tortuous climbing the cave 
 suddenly opened before them, and they beheld 
 Umlimo. Burnham recognized that to take him 
 alive from his stronghold was an impossibility, 
 and that even they themselves would leave the 
 place was equally doubtful. So, obeying orders, 
 he fired, killing the man who had boasted he 
 would turn the bullets of his enemies into water. 
 The echo of the shot aroused the village as would 
 a stone hurled into an ant-heap. In an instant 
 the veldt below was black with running men, and 
 as, concealment being no longer possible, the 
 white men rose to fly a great shout of anger told 
 
 213
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 them they were discovered. At the same mo- 
 ment two women, returning from a stream where 
 they had gone for water, saw the ponies, and ran 
 screaming to give the alarm. The race that fol- 
 lowed lasted two hours, for so quickly did the 
 Kaffirs spread out on every side that it was im- 
 possible for Burnham to gain ground in any one 
 direction, and he was forced to dodge, turn, and 
 double. At one time the white men were driven 
 back to the very kopje from which the race had 
 started. 
 
 But in the end they evaded assegai and gun- 
 fire, and in safety reached Buluwayo. This ex- 
 ploit was one of the chief factors in bringing the 
 war to a close. The Matabeles, finding their 
 leader was only a mortal like themselves, and so 
 could not, as he had promised, bring miracles to 
 their aid, lost heart, and when Cecil Rhodes in 
 person made overtures of peace, his terms were 
 accepted. During the hard days of the siege, 
 when rations were few and bad, Burnham's little 
 girl, who had been the first white child born in 
 Buluwayo, died of fever and lack of proper food. 
 This with other causes led him to leave Rhodesia 
 and return to California. It is possible he then 
 thought he had forever turned his back on South 
 Africa, but, though he himself had departed, the 
 
 214
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 impression he had made there remained behind 
 him. 
 
 Burnham did not rest long in California. In 
 Alaska the hunt for gold had just begun, and, the 
 old restlessness seizing him, he left Pasadena and 
 her blue skies, tropical plants, and trolley-cai 
 strikes for the new raw land of the Klondike. 
 
 With Burnham it has always been the place 
 that is being made, not the place in being, that 
 attracts. He has helped to make straight the 
 ways of several great communities Arizona, Cal- 
 ifornia, Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda. As he 
 once said: "It is the constructive side of frontier 
 life that most appeals to me, the building up of 
 a country, where you see the persistent drive and 
 force of the white man; when the place is finally 
 settled I don't seem to enjoy it very long." 
 
 In Alaska he did much prospecting, and, with 
 a sled and only two dogs, for twenty-four days 
 made one long fight against snow and ice, cover- 
 ing six hundred miles. In mining in Alaska he 
 succeeded well, but against the country he holds 
 a constant grudge, because it kept him out of the 
 fight with Spain. When war was declared he was 
 in the wilds and knew nothing of it, and though 
 on his return to civilization he telegraphed Colo- 
 nel Roosevelt volunteering for the Rough Riders, 
 
 215
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 and at once started south, by the time he had 
 reached Seattle the war was over. 
 
 Several times has he spoken to me of how bit- 
 terly he regretted missing this chance to officially 
 fight for his country. That he had twice served 
 with English forces made him the more keen to 
 show his loyalty to his own people. 
 
 That he would have been given a commission in 
 the Rough Riders seems evident from the opinion 
 President Roosevelt has publicly expressed of him. 
 
 "I know Burnham," the President wrote in 
 1901. "He is a scout and a hunter of courage 
 and ability, a man totally without fear, a sure 
 shot, and a fighter. He is the ideal scout, and 
 when enlisted in the military service of any coun- 
 try he is bound to be of the greatest benefit." 
 
 The truth of this Burnham was soon to prove. 
 
 In 1899 he had returned to the Klondike, and 
 in January of 1900 had been six months in Skag- 
 way. In that same month Lord Roberts sailed 
 for Cape Town to take command of the army, 
 and with him on his staff was Burnham's former 
 commander, Sir Frederick, now Lord, Carring- 
 ton. One night as the ship was in the Bay of 
 Biscay, Carrington was talking of Burnham and 
 giving instances of his marvellous powers as a 
 "tracker." 
 
 216
 
 Major Burnnam, Chief of Scouts 
 
 "He is the best scout we ever had in South 
 Africa!" Carrington declared. 
 
 'Then why don't we get him back there?" 
 said Roberts. 
 
 What followed is well known. 
 
 From Gibraltar a cable was sent to Skagway, 
 offering Burnham the position, created especially 
 for him, of chief of scouts of the British army in 
 the field. 
 
 Probably never before in the history of wars 
 has one nation paid so pleasant a tribute to the 
 abilities of a man of another nation. 
 
 The sequel is interesting. The cablegram 
 reached Skagway by the steamer City of Seattle. 
 The purser left it at the post-office, and until two 
 hours and a half before the steamer was listed to 
 start on her return trip, there it lay. Then Burn- 
 ham, in asking for his mail, received it. In two 
 hours and a half he had his family, himself, and 
 his belongings on board the steamer, and had 
 started on his half-around-the-world journey from 
 Alaska to Cape Town. 
 
 A Skagway paper of January 5, 1900, pub- 
 lished the day after Burnham sailed, throws a 
 side light on his character. After telling of his 
 hasty departure the day before, and of the high 
 compliment that had been paid to "a prominent 
 
 217
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 Skagwayan," it adds: "Although Mr. Burnham 
 has lived in Skagway since last August, and has 
 been North for many months, he has said little 
 of his past, and few have known that he is the 
 man famous over the world as 'the American 
 scout* of the Matabele wars." 
 
 Many a man who went to the Klondike did not, 
 for reasons best known to himself, talk about 
 his past. But it is characteristic of Burnham that, 
 though he lived there two years, his associates did 
 not know, until the British Government snatched 
 him from among them, that he had not always 
 been a prospector like themselves. 
 
 I was on the same ship that carried Burnham 
 the latter half of his journey, from Southampton 
 to Cape Town, and every night for seventeen 
 nights was one of a group of men who shot 
 questions at him. And it was interesting to see 
 a fellow-countryman one had heard praised so 
 highly so completely make good. It was not as 
 though he had a credulous audience of commer- 
 cial tourists. Among the officers who each even- 
 ing gathered around him were Colonel Gallilet 
 of the Egyptian cavalry, Captain Frazer com- 
 manding the Scotch Gillies, Captain Mackie of 
 Lord Roberts's staff, each of whom was later killed 
 in action; Colonel Sir Charles Hunter of the 
 
 218
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 Royal Rifles, Major Bagot, Major Lord Dudley, 
 and Captain Lord Valentia. Each of these had 
 either held command in border fights in India or 
 the Sudan or had hunted big game, and the ques- 
 tions each asked were the outcome of his own 
 experience and observation. 
 
 Not for a single evening could a faker have 
 submitted to the midnight examination through 
 which they put Burnham and not have exposed 
 his ignorance. They wanted to know what dif- 
 ference there is in a column of dust raised by 
 cavalry and by trek wagons, how to tell whether 
 a horse that has passed was going at a trot or a 
 gallop, the way to throw a diamond hitch, how 
 to make a fire without at the same time making 
 a target of yourself, how why what and how ? 
 
 And what made us most admire Burnham was 
 that when he did not know he at once said so. 
 
 Within two nights he had us so absolutely at 
 his mercy that we would have followed him any- 
 where; anything he chose to tell us, we would 
 have accepted. We were ready to believe in fly- 
 ing foxes, flying squirrels, that wild turkeys dance 
 quadrilles even that you must never sleep in 
 the moonlight. Had he demanded: "Do you 
 believe in vampires?" we would have shouted 
 "Yes." To ask that a scout should on an ocean 
 
 219
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 steamer prove his ability was certainly placing 
 him under a severe handicap. 
 
 As one of the British officers said: "It's about 
 as fair a game as though we planted the captain 
 of this ship in the Sahara Desert, and told him to 
 prove he could run a ten-thousand-ton liner/* 
 
 Burnham continued with Lord Roberts to the 
 fall of Pretoria, when he was invalided home. 
 
 During the advance north he was a hundred 
 times inside the Boer laagers, keeping Headquar- 
 ters Staff daily informed of the enemy's move- 
 ments; was twice captured and twice escaped. 
 
 He was first captured while trying to warn the 
 British from the fatal drift at Thaba'nchu. When 
 reconnoitring alone in the morning mist he came 
 upon the Boers hiding on the banks of the river, 
 toward which the English were even then advanc- 
 ing. The Boers were moving all about him, and 
 cut him off from his own side. He had to choose 
 between abandoning the English to the trap or 
 signalling to them, and so exposing himself to 
 capture. With the red kerchief the scouts carried 
 for that purpose he wigwagged to the approach- 
 ing soldiers to turn back, that the enemy were 
 awaiting them. But the column, which was with- 
 out an advance guard, paid no attention to his 
 signals and plodded steadily on into the ambush, 
 
 27O
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 while Burnham was at once made prisoner. In 
 the fight that followed he pretended to receive a 
 wound in the knee and bound it so elaborately 
 that not even a surgeon would have disturbed 
 the carefully arranged bandages. Limping heav- 
 ily and groaning with pain, he was placed in 
 a trek wagon with the officers who really were 
 wounded, and who, in consequence, were not 
 closely guarded. Burnham told them who he was 
 and, as he intended to escape, offered to take back 
 to head-quarters their names or any messages they 
 might wish to send to their people. As twenty 
 yards behind the wagon in which they lay was 
 a mounted guard, the officers told him escape 
 was impossible. He proved otherwise. The trek 
 wagon was drawn by sixteen oxen and driven by 
 a Kaffir boy. Later in the evening, but while it 
 still was moonlight, the boy descended from his 
 seat and ran forward to belabor the first spans of 
 oxen. This was the opportunity for which Burn- 
 ham had been waiting. 
 
 Slipping quickly over the driver's seat, he 
 dropped between the two "wheelers" to the dis- 
 selboom, or tongue, of the trek wagon. From 
 this he lowered himself and fell between the legs 
 of the oxen on his back in the road. In an in- 
 stant the body of the wagon had passed over him,
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 and while the dust still hung above the trail he 
 rolled rapidly over into the ditch at the side of the 
 road and lay motionless. 
 
 It was four days before he was able to re-enter 
 the British lines, during which time he had been 
 lying in the open veldt, and had subsisted on one 
 biscuit and two handfuls of "mealies," or what 
 we call Indian corn. 
 
 Another time when out scouting he and his 
 Kaffir boy while on foot were "jumped" by a 
 Boer commando and forced to hide in two great 
 ant-hills. The Boers went into camp on every 
 side of them, and for two days, unknown to them- 
 selves, held Burnham a prisoner. Only at night 
 did he and the Cape boy dare to crawl out to 
 breathe fresh air and to eat the food tablets they 
 carried in their pockets. On five occasions was 
 Burnham sent into the Boer lines with dynamite 
 cartridges to blow up the railroad over which the 
 enemy was receiving supplies and ammunition. 
 One of these expeditions nearly ended his life. 
 
 On June 2, 1901, while trying by night to blow 
 up the line between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay, 
 he was surrounded by a party of Boers and could 
 save himself only by instant flight. He threw 
 himself Indian fashion along the back of his pony, 
 and had all but got away when a bullet caught 
 
 222
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 the horse and, without even faltering in its stride, 
 it crashed to the ground dead, crushing Burn- 
 ham beneath it and knocking him senseless. He 
 continued unconscious for twenty-four hours, and 
 when he came to, both friends and foes had de- 
 parted. Bent upon carrying out his orders, al- 
 though suffering the most acute agony, he crept 
 back to the railroad and destroyed it. Knowing 
 the explosion would soon bring the Boers, on his 
 hands and knees he crept to an empty kraal, where 
 for two days and nights he lay insensible. At the 
 end of that time he appreciated that he was sink- 
 ing and that unless he found aid he would die. 
 
 Accordingly, still on his hands and knees, he 
 set forth toward the sound of distant firing. He 
 was indifferent as to whether it came from the 
 enemy or his own people, but, as it chanced, he 
 was picked up by a patrol of General Dickson's 
 Brigade, who carried him to Pretoria. There the 
 surgeons discovered that in his fall he had torn 
 apart the muscles of the stomach and burst a 
 blood-vessel. That his life was saved, so they 
 informed him, was due only to the fact that for 
 three days he had been without food. Had he 
 attempted to digest the least particle of the "staff 
 of life " he would have surely died. His injuries 
 were so serious that he was ordered home. 
 
 223
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 On leaving the army he was given such hearty 
 thanks and generous rewards as no other Ameri- 
 can ever received from the British War Office. 
 He was promoted to the rank of major, presented 
 with a large sum of money, and from Lord Rob- 
 erts received a personal letter of thanks and ap- 
 preciation. 
 
 In part the Field-Marshal wrote: "I doubt if 
 any other man in the force could have success- 
 fully carried out the thrilling enterprises in which 
 from time to time you have been engaged, de- 
 manding as they did the training of a lifetime, 
 combined with exceptional courage, caution, and 
 powers of endurance." On his arrival in England 
 he was commanded to dine with the Queen and 
 spend the night at Osborne, and a few months 
 later, after her death, King Edward created him 
 a member of the Distinguished Service Order, 
 and personally presented him with the South 
 African medal with five bars, and the cross of the 
 D. S. O. While recovering his health Burnham, 
 with Mrs. Burnham, was "passed on" by friends 
 he had made in the army from country house to 
 country house; he was made the guest of honor 
 at city banquets, with the Duke of Rutland rode 
 after the Belvoir hounds, and in Scotland made 
 mild excursions after grouse. But after six 
 
 224
 
 holograph by Elliott & Fry. 
 
 Major F. R. Burnham. 
 
 Taken on the day the King decorated him with the D.S.O. 
 (Distinguished Service Order).
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 months of convalescence he was off again, this 
 time to the hinterland of Ashanti, on the west 
 coast of Africa, where he went in the interests of 
 ^ syndicate to investigate a concession for work- 
 ing gold mines. 
 
 With his brother-in-law, J. C. Blick, he marched 
 and rowed twelve hundred miles, and explored 
 the Volta River, at that date so little visited that 
 in one day's journey they counted eleven hip- 
 popotamuses. In July, 1901, he returned from 
 Ashanti, and a few months later an unknown but 
 enthusiastic admirer asked in the House of Com- 
 mons if it were true Major Burnham had applied 
 for the post of Instructor of Scouts at Aldershot. 
 There is no such post, and Burnham had not ap- 
 plied for any other post. To the Times he wrote: 
 "I never have thought myself competent to teach 
 Britons how to fight, or to act as an instructor 
 with officers who have fought in every corner of 
 the world. The question asked in Parliament 
 was entirely without my knowledge, and I deeply 
 regret that it was asked." A few months later, 
 with Mrs. Burnham and his younger son, Bruce, 
 he journeyed to East Africa as director of the 
 East African Syndicate. 
 
 During his stay there the African Review said 
 of him: "Should East Africa ever become a pos- 
 
 225
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 session for England to be proud of, she will owe 
 much of her prosperity to the brave little band 
 that has faced hardships and dangers in discover- 
 ing her hidden resources. Major Burnham has 
 chosen men from England, Ireland, the United 
 States, and South Africa for sterling qualities, and 
 they have justified his choice. Not the least like 
 a hero is the retiring, diffident little major him- 
 self, though a finer man for a friend or a better 
 man to serve under would not be found in the 
 five continents." 
 
 Burnham explored a tract of land larger than 
 Germany, penetrating a thousand miles through a 
 country, never before visited by white men, to 
 the borders of the Congo Basin. With him he 
 had twenty white men and five hundred natives. 
 The most interesting result of the expedition was 
 the discovery of a lake forty-nine miles square, 
 composed almost entirely of pure carbonate of 
 soda, forming a snowlike crust so thick that on it 
 the men could cross the lake. 
 
 It is the largest, and when the railroad is built 
 the Uganda Railroad is now only eighty-eight 
 miles distant it will be the most valuable deposit 
 of carbonate of soda ever found. 
 
 A year ago, in the interests of John Hays Ham- 
 mond, the distinguished mining engineer of South 
 
 226
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 Africa and this country, Burnham went to Sonora, 
 Mexico, to find a buried city and to open up 
 mines of copper and silver. 
 
 Besides seeking for mines, Hammond and Burn- 
 ham, with Gardner Williams, another American 
 who also made his fortune in South Africa, are 
 working together on a scheme to import to this 
 country at their own expense many species of 
 South African deer. 
 
 The South African deer is a hardy animal and 
 can live where the American deer cannot, and 
 the idea in importing him is to prevent big game 
 in this country from passing away. They have 
 asked Congress to set aside for these animals a 
 portion of the forest reserve. Already Congress 
 has voted toward the plan $15,000, and Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt is one of its most enthusiastic sup- 
 porters. 
 
 We cannot leave Burnham in better hands 
 than those of Hammond and Gardner Williams. 
 Than these three men the United States has not 
 sent to British Africa any Americans of whom she 
 has better reason to be proud. Such men abroad 
 do for those at home untold good. They are the 
 real ambassadors of their country. 
 
 The last I learned of Burnham is told in the 
 
 snapshot of him which accompanies this article, 
 
 227
 
 Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts 
 
 and which shows him, barefoot, in the Yaqui 
 River, where he has gone, perhaps, to conceal his 
 trail from the Indians. It came a month ago in 
 a letter which said briefly that when the picture 
 was snapped the expedition was "trying to cool 
 off." There his narrative ended. Promising as 
 it does adventures still to come, it seems a good 
 place in which to leave him. 
 
 Meanwhile, you may think of Mrs. Burnham 
 after a year in Mexico keeping the house open 
 for her husband's return to Pasadena, and of 
 their first son, Roderick, studying woodcraft with 
 his father, forestry with Gifford Pinchot, and 
 playing right guard on the freshman team at the 
 University of California. 
 
 But Burnham himself we will leave "cooling 
 off" in the Yaqui River, maybe, with Indians 
 hunting for him along the banks. And we need 
 not worry about him. We know they will not 
 catch him. 
 
 228
 
 CT 
 
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