Sangha ebhnanael pee aeenAeaae estes eee eee

BOX 372

Compliments of

VALDES LUMBER COMPANY LIMITED

NANAIMO, B.C.

old scouts in the country, white men who
could track and trail better than any Indian.
He learned how to saddle a horse, draw a
nail from a hoof, braid a rope, tie a knot,
make a pine bed, protect himself from snakes
and forest fire, falling trees, and floods; how
to climb and descend precipices without
breaking his neck, how to double on a trail
and cover his own tracks, how to travel in
a given direction, and how to find water
in the desert. His body became hardened
and his mind keen and alert. He neither
drank hard liquor nor smoked. “I am of
a nature that never required either a stimu-
lant or a sedative,” he told the writer in
answer to the query. “Asa scout, I needed
all my five senses and every faculty of my
mind had to be at highest point of efficiency
all the time. I recall one scout who forfeited
his life by his neglect for one instant to
keep in the shade of a small oak tree. He
was safe from sight so long as he kept in
its shadow, but he became so intent on
using his field glasses, that he allowed a
shaft of sunlight to betray him to his enemy.”

Burnham adventured in Missouri, Kan-
sas, Texas and Mexico. One time, when
his horse was stolen and Indians were on
the warpath, he made a 500-mile journey
on. foot, travelling mostly at night. He be-
came an expert in the use of revolver, right
or left hand, from the back of a racing
horse. His life in Arizona was a dangerous
one, among cattle-rustlers, smugglers and
feudists.

When a mere boy, Vasquez, a famous
bandit, awaiting death, gave Burnham his

horse and told him, “You be as great a ban-
dit as Vasquez some day, my son.” And the
momentous day did actually come when
Burnham had to choose between the life
of a cattle-rustler and the cause of justice,
of right, and for the benefit of his less for-
tunate fellows. That was when a young
friend put it up to him to join him. Burn-
ham strove with his conscience all night
and, in the morning, made his decision.
Within two years, that young man was
dead, shot in a fight, and is buried in a
nameless grave on the desert. Major
Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., is alive
and well today in Los Angeles, respected,
rich and loaded with the honours bestowed
on him by his fellow men.

Young Fred learned how to trail, and how
to throw a man off his trail. He could read
every sign of the elements and of men and
beasts. He even had to match his knowledge
and daring, scout against scout, in feuds,
and in the battle of law against disorder,
of white man against Apache.

He turned down an offer to go with
H. M. Stanley to Africa to search for David
Livingstone.

He got married and was able to provide
for his mother and grandparents out of gold
he dynamited from a rock in Casa Grande
in the desert.

Mining prospector for a time, up in
Canada, he hunted for lost mines from
Colorado to Mexico, and let half a dozen
fortunes slip through his fingers.

Then, away in Arizona, he heard of that

_ mighty individual, Cecil J. Rhodes in South

LIMITED

B.C.

Phone Lake Cowichan

HILLCREST LUMBER COMPANY

Manufacturers of British Columbia Lumber

MESACHIE LAKE

Victoria Lumber Company

Chemainus, B. C.

Page Twenty

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Africa, and became infatuated with thi
man who “thought in continents.” So, ir
1893, when 33 years of age, he set out for
Africa to offer his services to Rhodes.

With his wife and little son, he travelled
without escort 1000 miles by mule team,
to join Rhodes, who did not know of the
existence of such a person as Frederick
Burnham. He journeyed to Mashonaland,
across the Drakenburg Mountains, to
Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Not long after Burnham got acclimatized,
trouble broke out in Matabeleland, begin.
ning with a Zulu chief’s son, Chaka, who
became a great leader among his people,
then a conqueror, adding to his territory
time and again as he defeated his enemies.
Chaka had studied the white men’s methods
at close quarters and he held them in a
certain contempt. He became a source of
much worry to the whites and a constant
menace.

At one time, one of Chaka’s warriors,
M’Silikatze, by a ruse, slaughtered 2000
Boer women, children and old men in a
laagar while the fighting Boers were pur
suing another section of the Zulu impi. It
was this Zulu warrior who became first
king of the Matabele. Lobengula was
M’Silikatze’s son.

LoBENGULA—A CRAFTY CHIEF

Lobengula partly succumbed to the spell
of the spellbinder and all-conquering Cecil
Rhodes, selling to Rhodes a large part of
Mashonaland for gold, and guns, and am-
munition, but Lobengula’s warrior chiefs

Compliments of

Limited

THE SHOULDER STRAP