Real Soldiers of Fortune .....................................................................................................................................1

Richard Harding Davis............................................................................................................................1

MAJORGENERAL HENRY RONALD DOUGLAS MACIVER ......................................................1

BARON JAMES HARDENHICKEY ................................................................................................10

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL ..................................................................................................23

CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN ............................................................................................36

GENERAL WILLIAM WALKER, THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS .........................................43

MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS .......................................................................................54

ANY sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, or at night in the table d'hote restaurants of University Place, you

may meet the soldier of fortune who of all his brothers in arms now living is the most remarkable. You may

have noticed him; a stiffly erect, distinguishedlooking man, with gray hair, an imperial of the fashion of

This is Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver, for some time in India an ensign in the Sepoy mutiny; in Italy,

lieutenant under Garibaldi; in Spain, captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, major in the Confederate

army; in Mexico, lieutenantcolonel under the Emperor Maximilian; colonel under Napoleon III, inspector of

cavalry for the Khedive of Egypt, and chief of cavalry and general of brigade of the army of King Milan of

Servia. These are only a few of his military titles. In 1884 was published a book giving the story of his life up

to that year. It was called "Under Fourteen Flags." If today General MacIver were to reprint the book, it

MacIver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, at sea, a league off the shore of Virginia. His mother was Miss

Anna Douglas of that State; Ronald MacIver, his father, was a Scot, a Rossshire gentleman, a younger son of

the chief of the Clan MacIver. Until he was ten years old young MacIver played in Virginia at the home of

his father. Then, in order that he might be educated, he was shipped to Edinburgh to an uncle, General

Donald Graham. After five years his uncle obtained for him a commission as ensign in the Honorable East

India Company, and at sixteen, when other boys are preparing for college, MacIver was in the Indian Mutiny,

fighting, not for a flag, nor a country, but as one fights a wild animal, for his life. He was wounded in the

arm, and, with a sword, cut over the head. As a safeguard against the sun the boy had placed inside his helmet

a wet towel. This saved him to fight another day, but even with that protection the sword sank through the

helmet, the towel, and into the skull. Today you can see the scar. He was left in the road for dead, and even

This tough handling at the very start might have satisfied some men, but in the very next war MacIver was a

volunteer and wore the red shirt of Garibaldi. He remained at the front throughout that campaign, and until

within a few years there has been no campaign of consequence in which he has not taken part. He served in

the Ten Years' War in Cuba, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Crete, in Greece, twice in Spain in Carlist revolutions,

in Bosnia, and for four years in our Civil War under Generals Jackson and Stuart around Richmond. In this

It was after the surrender of the Confederate army, that, with other Southern officers, he served under

Maximilian in Mexico; in Egypt, and in France. Whenever in any part of the world there was fighting, or the

rumor of fighting, the procedure of the general invariably was the same. He would order himself to instantly

depart for the front, and on arriving there would offer to organize a foreign legion. The command of this

organization always was given to him. But the foreign legion was merely the entering wedge. He would soon

show that he was fitted for a better command than a band of undisciplined volunteers, and would receive a

commission in the regular army. In almost every command in which he served that is the manner in which

promotion came. Sometimes he saw but little fighting, sometimes he should have died several deaths, each of

a nature more unpleasant than the others. For in war the obvious danger of a bullet is but a three hundred to

one shot, while in the pack against the combatant the jokers are innumerable. And in the career of the general

the unforeseen adventures are the most interesting. A man who in eighteen campaigns has played his part

would seem to have earned exemption from any other risks, but often it was outside the battlefield that

MacIver encountered the greatest danger. He fought several duels, in two of which he killed his adversary;

several attempts were made to assassinate him, and while on his way to Mexico he was captured by hostile

Indians. On returning from an expedition in Cuba he was cast adrift in an open boat and for days was without

Long before I met General MacIver I had read his book and had heard of him from many men who had met

him in many different lands while engaged in as many different undertakings. Several of the older war

correspondents knew him intimately; Bennett Burleigh of the Telegraph was his friend, and E. F. Knight of

the Times was one of those who volunteered for a filibustering expedition which MacIver organized against

New Guinea. The late Colonel Ochiltree of Texas told me tales of MacIver's bravery, when as young men

they were fellow officers in the Southern army, and Stephen Bonsal had met him when MacIver was United

States Consul at Denia in Spain. When MacIver arrived at this post, the exconsul refused to vacate the

Consulate, and MacIver wished to settle the difficulty with duelling pistols. As Denia is a small place, the

inhabitants feared for their safety, and Bonsal, who was our charge d'affaires then, was sent from Madrid to

adjust matters. Without bloodshed he got rid of the exconsul, and later MacIver so endeared himself to the

Denians that they begged the State Department to retain him in that place for the remainder of his life.

Before General MacIver was appointed to a high position at the St. Louis Fair, I saw much of him in New

York. His room was in a side street in an oldfashioned boardinghouse, and overlooked his neighbor's back

yard and a typical New York City sumac tree; but when the general talked one forgot he was within a block

of the Elevated, and roamed over all the world. On his bed he would spread out wonderful parchments, with

strange, heathenish inscriptions, with great seals, with faded ribbons. These were signed by Sultans,

Secretaries of War, Emperors, filibusters. They were military commissions, titles of nobility, brevets for

decorations, instructions and commands from superior officers. Translated the phrases ran: "Imposing special

confidence in," "we appoint," or "create," or "declare," or "In recognition of services rendered to our person,"

or "country," or "cause," or "For bravery on the field of battle we bestow the Cross"

As must a soldier, the general travels "light," and all his worldly possessions were crowded ready for

mobilization into a small compass. He had his sword, his field blanket, his trunk, and the tin despatch boxes

that held his papers. From these, like a conjurer, he would draw souvenirs of all the world. From the embrace

of faded letters, he would unfold old photographs, daguerrotypes, and miniatures of fair women and

adventurous men: women who now are queens in exile, men who, lifted on waves of absinthe, still, across a

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 today all

one can write of him is what the world can read in "Under Fourteen Flags," and some of the "footnotes to

history" which I have copied from his scrapbook. This scrapbook 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 scrapbook, of an expedition that failed. That it failed was due to a British

Cabinet Minister; for had Lord Derby possessed the imagination of the Soldier of Fortune, his Majesty's

dominions might now be the richer by many thousands of square miles and many thousands of black subjects.

On October 29, 1883, the following appeared in the London Standard: "The New Guinea Exploration and

Colonization Company is already chartered, and the first expedition expects to leave before Christmas." "The

prospectus states settlers intending to join the first party must contribute one hundred pounds toward the

company. This subscription will include all expenses for passage money. Six months' provisions will be

provided, together with tents and arms for protection. Each subscriber of one hundred pounds is to obtain a

The view of the colonization scheme taken by the Times of London, of the same date, is less complaisant.

"The latest commercial sensation is a proposed company for the seizure of New Guinea. Certain adventurous

gentlemen are looking out for one hundred others who have money and a taste for buccaneering. When the

company has been completed, its shareholders are to place themselves under military regulations, sail in a

body for New Guinea, and without asking anybody's leave, seize upon the island and at once, in some

unspecified way, proceed to realize large profits. If the idea does not suggest comparisons with the large

When we remember the manner in which some of the colonies of Great Britain were acquired, the Times

"Toward the latter part of 1883 the Government of Queensland planted the flag of Great Britain on the shores

of New Guinea. When the news reached England it created a sensation. The Earl of Derby, Secretary for the

Colonies, refused, however, to sanction the annexation of New Guinea, and in so doing acted contrary to the

"While the subsequent correspondence between the Home and Queensland governments was going on,

BrigadierGeneral H. R. MacIver originated and organized the New Guinea Exploration and Colonization

Company in London, with a view to establishing settlements on the island. The company, presided over by

General Beresford of the British Army, and having an eminently representative and influential board of

directors, had a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and placed the supreme command of the

expedition in the hands of General MacIver. Notwithstanding the character of the gentlemen composing the

board of directors, and the truly peaceful nature of the expedition, his Lordship informed General MacIver

that in the event of the latter's attempting to land on New Guinea, instructions would be sent to the officer in

command of her Majesty's fleet in the Western Pacific to fire upon the company's vessel. This meant that the

"We all recollect the treatment received by BrigadierGeneral MacI. in the action he took with respect to the

annexation of New Guinea. The General, who is a sort of Pizarro, with a dash of D'Artagnan, was treated in a

most scurvy manner by Lord Derby. Had MacIver not been thwarted in his enterprise, the whole of New

Guinea would now have been under the British flag, and we should not be cheekbyjowl with the Germans,

"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

"About the latter end of the year 1883, when I was editorinchief of the Englishman in Calcutta, I was told

by Captain de Deaux, assistant secretary in the Foreign Office of the Indian Government, that he had received

a telegram from Lord Derby to the effect that if General MacIver ventured to land upon the coast of New

Guinea it would become the duty of Lord Ripon, Viceroy, to use the naval forces at his command for the

purpose of deporting General MacI. Sir Aucland Calvin can certify to this, as it was discussed in the

Just after our Civil War MacIver was interested in another expedition which also failed. Its members called

themselves the Knights of Arabia, and their object was to colonize an island much nearer to our shores than

New Guinea. MacIver, saying that his oath prevented, would never tell me which island this was, but the

reader can choose from among Cuba, Haiti, and the Hawaiian group. To have taken Cuba, the "colonizers"

would have had to fight not only Spain, but the Cubans themselves, on whose side they were soon fighting in

the Ten Years' War; so Cuba may be eliminated. And as the expedition was to sail from the Atlantic side, and

not from San Francisco, the island would appear to be the Black Republic. From the records of the times it

would seem that the greater number of the Knights of Arabia were veterans of the Confederate army, and

there is no question but that they intended to subjugate the blacks of Haiti and form a republic for white men

in which slavery would be recognized. As one of the leaders of this filibustering expedition, MacIver was

This chafed the general's spirit, but he argued philosophically that imprisonment for filibustering, while

irksome, brought with it no reproach. And, indeed, sometimes the only difference between a filibuster and a

government lies in the fact that the government fights the gunboats 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.

"We, as Knights of Arabia, pledge ourselves to aid, comfort, and protect all Knights of Arabia, especially

"IIIGreat care must be taken that no unbeliever or outsider shall gain any insight into the mysteries or

"IVThe candidate will have to pay one hundred dollars cash to the Captain of the Company, and the

candidate will receive from the Secretary a Knight of Arabia bond for one hundred dollars in gold, with ten

per cent interest, payable ninety days after the recognition of (The Republic of) by the United States, or

"VAll Knights of Arabia will be entitled to one hundred acres of land, location of said land to be drawn for

A local correspondent of the New York Herald writes of the arrest of MacIver as follows:

"When MacIver will be tried is at present unknown, as his case has assumed a complicated aspect. He claims

British protection as a subject of her British Majesty, and the English Consul has forwarded a statement of his

case to Sir Frederick Bruce at Washington, accompanied by a copy of the bylaws. General Sheridan also has

forwarded a statement to the Secretary of War, accompanied not only by the bylaws, but very important

documents, including letters from Jefferson Davis, Benjamin, the Secretary of State of the Confederate

States, and other personages prominent in the Rebellion, showing that MacIver enjoyed the highest

As to the last statement, an open letter I found in his scrapbook is an excellent proof. It is as follows: "To

officers and members of all camps of United Confederate Veterans: It affords me the greatest pleasure to say

that the bearer of this letter, General Henry Ronald MacIver, was an officer of great gallantry in the

Confederate Army, serving on the staff at various times of General Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and E.

"Respectfully, MARCUS J. WRIGHT, "Agent for the Collection of Confederate Records.

At the close of the war duels between officers of the two armies were not infrequent. In the scrapbook there

is the account of one of these affairs sent from Vicksburg to a Northern paper by a correspondent who was an

eyewitness of the event. It tells how Major MacIver, accompanied by Major Gillespie, met, just outside of

Vicksburg, Captain Tomlin of Vermont, of the United States Artillery Volunteers. The duel was with swords.

"The Confederate officer wiped his sword on his handkerchief. In a few seconds Captain Tomlin expired.

One of Major MacIver's seconds called to him: 'He is dead; you must go. These gentlemen will look after the

body of their friend.' A negro boy brought up the horses, but before mounting MacIver said to Captain

Tomlin's seconds: 'My friends are in haste for me to go. Is there anything I can do? I hope you consider that

In a newspaper of today so matteroffact an acceptance of an event so tragic would make strange reading.

From the South MacIver crossed through Texas to join the Royalist army under the Emperor Maximilian. It

was while making his way, with other Confederate officers, from Galveston to El Paso, that MacIver was

captured by the Indians. He was not illtreated by them, but for three months was a prisoner, until one night,

the Indians having camped near the Rio Grande, he escaped into Mexico. There he offered his sword to the

Royalist commander, General Mejia, who placed him on his staff, and showed him some few skirmishes. At

Monterey MacIver saw big fighting, and for his share in it received the title of Count, and the order of

Guadaloupe. In June, contrary to all rules of civilized war, Maximilian was executed and the empire was at an

end. MacIver escaped to the coast, and from Tampico took a sailing vessel to Rio de Janeiro. Two months

later he was wearing the uniform of another emperor, Dom Pedro, and, with the rank of lieutenantcolonel,

was in command of the Foreign Legion of the armies of Brazil and Argentina, which at that time as allies

MacIver soon recruited seven hundred men, but only half of these ever reached the front. In Buenos Ayres

cholera broke out and thirty thousand people died, among the number about half the Legion. MacIver was

among those who suffered, and before he recovered was six weeks in hospital. During that period, under a

junior officer, the Foreign Legion was sent to the front, where it was disbanded.

On his return to Glasgow, MacIver foregathered with an old friend, Bennett Burleigh, whom he had known

when Burleigh was a lieutenant in the navy of the Confederate States. Although today known as a

distinguished war correspondent, in those days Burleigh was something of a soldier of fortune himself, and

was organizing an expedition to assist the Cretan insurgents against the Turks. Between the two men it was

arranged that MacIver should precede the expedition to Crete and prepare for its arrival. The Cretans received

him gladly, and from the provisional government he received a commission in which he was given "full

power to make war on land and sea against the enemies of Crete, and particularly against the Sultan of

Turkey and the Turkish forces, and to burn, destroy, or capture any vessel bearing the Turkish flag."

This permission to destroy the Turkish navy singlehanded strikes one as more than generous, for the Cretans

had no navy, and before one could begin the destruction of a Turkish gunboat it was first necessary to catch

At the close of the Cretan insurrection MacIver crossed to Athens and served against the brigands in Kisissia

on the borders of Albania and Thessaly as volunteer aide to Colonel Corroneus, who had been

commanderinchief of the Cretans against the Turks. MacIver spent three months potting at brigands, and

for his services in the mountains was recommended for the highest Greek decoration.

From Greece it was only a step to New York, and almost immediately MacIver appears as one of the

GoicouriaChristo expedition to Cuba, of which Goicouria was commanderinchief, and two famous

American officers, BrigadierGeneral Samuel C. Williams was a general and Colonel Wright Schumburg

In the scrapbook I find "General Order No. 11 of the Liberal Army of the Republic of Cuba, issued at Cedar

Keys, October 3, 1869." In it Colonel MacIver is spoken of as in charge of officers not attached to any

"General Order No. V, Expeditionary Division, Republic of Cuba, on board Lilian," announces that the place

to which the expedition is bound has been changed, and that General Wright Schumburg, who now is in

command, orders "all officers not otherwise commissioned to join Colonel MacIver's 'Corps of Officers.'"

The Lilian ran out of coal, and to obtain firewood put in at Cedar Keys. For two weeks the patriots cut wood

and drilled upon the beach, when they were captured by a British gunboat and taken to Nassau. There they

In a sailing vessel MacIver finally reached Cuba, and under Goicouria, who had made a successful landing,

saw some "help yourself" fighting. Goicouria's force was finally scattered, and MacIver escaped from the

Spanish soldiery only by putting to sea in an open boat, in which he endeavored to make Jamaica.

On the third day out he was picked up by a steamer and again landed at Nassau, from which place he returned

At that time in this city there was a very interesting man named Thaddeus P. Mott, who had been an officer in

our army and later had entered the service of Ismail Pasha. By the Khedive he had been appointed a general

His object in coming to New York was to engage officers for that service. He came at an opportune moment.

At that time the city was filled with men who, in the Rebellion, on one side or the other, had held command,

and many of these, unfitted by four years of soldiering for any other calling, readily accepted the

commissions which Mott had authority to offer. New York was not large enough to keep MacIver and Mott

long apart, and they soon came to an understanding. The agreement drawn up between them is a curious

document. It is written in a neat hand on sheets of foolscap tied together like a Commencementday address,

with blue ribbon. In it MacIver agrees to serve as colonel of cavalry in the service of the Khedive. With a few

"Agreement entered into this 24th day of March, 1870, between the Government of his Royal Highness and

the Khedive of Egypt, represented by General Thaddeus P. Mott of the first part, and H. R. H. MacIver of

"The party of the second part, being desirous of entering into the service of party of the first part, in the

military capacity of a colonel of cavalry, promises to serve and obey party of the first part faithfully and truly

in his military capacity during the space of five years from this date; that the party of the second part waives

all claims of protection usually afforded to Americans by consular and diplomatic agents of the United States,

and expressly obligates himself to be subject to the orders of the party of the first part, and to make, wage,

and vigorously prosecute war against any and all the enemies of party of the first part; that the party of the

second part will not under any event be governed, controlled by, or submit to, any order, law, mandate, or

proclamation issued by the Government of the United States of America, forbidding party of the second part

to serve party of the first part to make war according to any of the provisions herein contained, it being,

however, distinctly understood that nothing herein contained shall be construed as obligating party of the

"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 onefifth of

his regular pay during his active service, together with all expenses of every nature attending such

It also stipulates as to what sums shall be paid his family or children in case of his death.

"In the presence of the everliving God, I swear that I will in all things honestly, faithfully, and truly keep,

observe, and perform the obligations and promises above enumerated, and endeavor to conform to the wishes

and desires of the Government of his Royal Highness, the Khedive of Egypt, in all things connected with the

On arriving at Cairo, MacIver was appointed inspectorgeneral of cavalry, and furnished with a uniform, of

which this is a description: "It consisted of a blue tunic with gold spangles, embroidered in gold up the

sleeves and front, neatfitting red trousers, and high patentleather boots, while the inevitable fez completed

The climate of Cairo did not agree with MacIver, and, in spite of his "gay costume," after six months he left

the Egyptian service. His honorable discharge was signed by Stone Bey, who, in the favor of the Khedive,

It is a curious fact that, in spite of his ill health, immediately after leaving Cairo, MacIver was sufficiently

recovered to at once plunge into the FrancoPrussian 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

MacIver was promised, if he carried out successfully a certain mission upon which he was sent, and if Don

Carlos became king, that he would be made a marquis. As Don Carlos is still a pretender, MacIver is still a

general. Although in disposing of his sword MacIver never allowed his personal predilections to weigh with

him, he always treated himself to a hearty dislike of the Turks, and we next find him fighting against them in

Herzegovina with the Montenegrins. And when the Servians declared war against the same people, MacIver

returned to London to organize a cavalry brigade to fight with the Servian army.

Of this brigade and of the rapid rise of MacIver to highest rank and honors in Servia, the scrapbook is most

In a letter to the editor of the Hour, the general himself speaks of it in the following terms:

"It may be interesting to many of your readers to learn that a select corps of gentlemen is at present in course

of organization under the above title with the mission of proceeding to the Levant to take measures in case of

emergency for the defense of the Christian population, and more especially of British subjects who are to a

great extent unprovided with adequate means of protection from the religious furies of the Mussulmans. The

lives of Christian women and children are in hourly peril from fanatical hordes. The Knights will be carefully

chosen and kept within strict military control, and will be under command of a practical soldier with large

experience of the Eastern countries. Templars and all other crusaders are invited to give aid and sympathy."

Apparently MacIver was not successful in enlisting many Knights, for a war correspondent at the capital of

"A Scotch soldier of fortune, Henry MacIver, a colonel by rank, has arrived at Belgrade with a small

contingent of military adventurers. Five weeks ago I met him in Fleet Street, London, and had some talk

about his 'expedition.' He had received a commission from the Prince of Servia to organize and command an

independent cavalry brigade, and he then was busily enrolling his volunteers into a body styled 'The Knights

of the Red Cross.' I am afraid some of his bold crusaders have earned more distinction for their attacks on

Fleet Street bars than they are likely to earn on Servian battlefields, but then I must not anticipate history."

Another paper tells that at the end of the first week of his service as a Servian officer, MacIver had enlisted

ninety men, but that they were scattered about the town, many without shelter and rations:

"He assembled his men on the Rialto, and in spite of official expostulation, the men were marched up to the

Minister's four abreastand 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

"'There is here at present a gentleman named MacIver. He came from England to offer himself and his sword

to the Servians. The Servian Minister of War gave him a colonel's commission. This morning I saw him

drilling about one hundred and fifty remarkably finelooking fellows, all clad in a good serviceable cavalry

"Colonel MacIver's Legion of Cavalry, organizing here, now numbers over two hundred men."

"Prince Nica, a Roumanian cousin of the Princess Natalie of Servia, has joined Colonel MacIver's cavalry

"Colonel MacIver, who a few years ago was very well known in military circles in Dublin, now is making his

mark with the Servian army. In the war against the Turks, he commands about one thousand RussoServian

"Colonel MacIver has been appointed commander of the cavalry of the Servian armies on the Morava and

Timok, and has received the Cross of the Takovo Order from General Tchemaieff for gallant conduct in the

"Mr. Lewis Farley, Secretary of the 'League in Aid of Christians of Turkey,' has received the following letter,

"'DEAR SIR: In reference to the embroidered banner so kindly worked by an English lady and forwarded by

the League to Colonel MacIver, I have great pleasure in conveying to you the following particulars. On

Sunday morning, the flag having been previously consecrated by the archbishop, was conducted by a guard

of honor to the palace, and Colonel MacIver, in the presence of Prince Milan and a numerous suite, in the

name and on behalf of yourself and the fair donor, delivered it into the hands of the Princess Natalie. The

gallant Colonel wore upon this occasion his full uniform as brigade commander and chief of cavalry of the

Servian army, and bore upon his breast the 'Gold Cross of Takovo' which he received after the battles of the

28th and 30th of September, in recognition of the heroism and bravery he displayed upon these eventful days.

The beauty of the decoration was enhanced by the circumstances of its bestowal, for on the evening of the

battle of the 30th, General Tchernaieff approached Colonel MacIver, and, unclasping the cross from his own

In Servia and in the Servian army MacIver reached what as yet is the highest point of his career, and of his

He was general de brigade, which is not what we know as a brigade general, but is one who commands a

division, a majorgeneral. He was a great favorite both at the palace and with the people, the pay was good,

fighting plentiful, and Belgrade gay and amusing. Of all the places he has visited and the countries he has

served, it is of this Balkan kingdom that the general seems to speak most fondly and with the greatest feeling.

Of Queen Natalie he was and is a most loyal and chivalric admirer, and was ever ready, when he found any

one who did not as greatly respect the lady, to offer him the choice of swords or pistols. Even for Milan he

After Servia the general raised more foreign legions, planned further expeditions; in Central America

reorganized the small armies of the small republics, served as United States Consul, and offered his sword to

President McKinley for use against Spain. But with Servia the most active portion of the life of the general

ceased, and the rest has been a repetition of what went before. At present his time is divided between New

York and Virginia, where he has been offered an executive position in the approaching Jamestown

Exposition. Both North and South he has many friends, many admirers. But his life is, and, from the nature of

While other men remain planted in one spot, gathering about them a home, sons and daughters, an income for

old age, MacIver is a rolling stone, a piece of floating seaweed; as the present King of England called him

To a man who has lived in the saddle and upon transports, "neighbor" conveys nothing, and even "comrade"

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.

Today there is no more interesting figure than this man who in years is still young enough to lead an army

corps, and who, for forty years, has been selling his sword and risking his life for presidents, pretenders,

He finds some mighty changes: Cuba, which he fought to free, is free; men of the South, with whom for four

years he fought shoulder to shoulder, are now wearing the blue; the empire of Mexico, for which he fought, is

a republic; the empire of France, for which he fought, is a republic; the empire of Brazil, for which he fought

is a republic; the dynasty in Servia, to which he owes his greatest honors, has been wiped out by murder.

From none of the eighteen countries he has served has he a pension, berth, or billet, and at sixty he finds

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

And so, this brief sketch of him is left unfinished. We will mark itTo be continued.

THIS is an attempt to tell the story of Baron HardenHickey, the Man Who Made Himself King, the man

If the reader, knowing something of the strange career of HardenHickey, wonders why one writes of him

appreciatively rather than in amusement, he is asked not to judge HardenHickey as one judges a

HardenHickey, in our day, was as incongruous a figure as was the American at the Court of King Arthur; he

was as unhappily out of the picture as would be Cyrano de Bergerac on the floor of the Board of Trade.

Judged, as at the time he was judged, by writers of comic paragraphs, by presidents of railroads, by amateur

"statesmen" at Washington, HardenHickey 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

HardenHickey; they thought him a charlatan, half a dangerous adventurer and half a fool; and

HardenHickey certainly did not under stand them. His last words, addressed to his wife, showed this. They

As a matter of fact, his fatherinlaw, although living under the disadvantage of being a Standard Oil

magnate, neither was, nor is, a blackguard, and his soninlaw had been treated by him generously and with

patience. But for the duellist and soldier of fortune it was impossible to sympathize with a man who took no

greater risk in life than to ride on one of his own railroads, and of the views the two men held of each other,

HardenHickey was one of the most picturesque, gallant, and pathetic adventurers of our day; but Flagler

For an unimaginative and hardworking Standard Oil king to have a D'Artagnan thrust upon him as a

James A. HardenHickey, James the First of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, was born on

December 8, 1854. As to the date all historians agree; as to where the important event took place they differ.

That he was born in France his friends are positive, but at the time of his death in El Paso the San Francisco

papers claimed him as a native of California. All agree that his ancestors were Catholics and Royalists who

left Ireland with the Stuarts when they sought refuge in France. The version which seems to be the most

probable is that he was born in San Francisco, where as one of the early settlers, his father, E. C. Hickey, was

well known, and that early in his life, in order to educate him, the mother took him to Europe.

There he was educated at the Jesuit College at Namur, then at Leipsic, and later entered the Military College

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. Today under the republic, without a court, with a society kept in funds by

the selfexpatriated wives and daughters of our business men, she lacks the reasons for which Baron

Haussmann bedecked her and made her beautiful. The good Loubet, the worthy Fallieres, except that they

furnish the cartoonist with subjects for ridicule, do not add to the gayety of Paris. But when HardenHickey

was a boy, Paris was never so carelessly gay, so brilliant, never so overcharged with life, color, and

In those days "the Emperor sat in his box that night," and in the box opposite sat Cora Pearl; veterans of the

campaign of Italy, of Mexico, from the desert fights of Algiers, sipped sugar and water in front of Tortoni's,

the Cafe Durand, the Cafe Riche; the sidewalks rang with their sabres, the boulevards were filled with the

colors of the gorgeous uniforms; all night of each night the Place Vendome shone with the carriage lamps of

the visiting pashas from Egypt, of nabobs from India, of rastaquoueres from the sister empire of Brazil; the

state carriages, with the outriders and postilions in the green and gold of the Empress, swept through the

Champs Elysees, and at the Bal Bulier, and at Mabile the students and "grisettes" introduced the cancan. The

men of those days were Hugo, Thiers, Dumas, Daudet, Alfred de Musset; the magnificent blackguard, the

Duc de Morny, and the great, simple Canrobert, the captain of barricades, who became a marshal of France.

Over all was the mushroom Emperor, his anterooms crowded with the titled charlatans of Europe, his court

radiant with countesses created overnight. And it was the Emperor, with his love of theatrical display, of

gorgeous ceremonies; with his restless reaching after military glory, the weary, cynical adventurer, that the

Royalist as was HardenHickey by birth and tradition, and Royalist as he always remained, it was the court at

the Tuileries that filled his imagination. The Bourbons, whom he served, hoped some day for a court; at the

Tuileries there was a court, glittering before his physical eyes. The Bourbons were pleasant old gentlemen,

who later willingly supported him, and for whom always he was equally willing to fight, either with his

sword or his pen. But to the last, in his mind, he carried pictures of the Second Empire as he, as a boy, had

Can you not imagine the future James the First, barelegged, in a blackbelted smock, halting with his nurse,

or his priest, to gaze up in awestruck delight at the great, redbreeched Zouaves lounging on guard at the

"When I grow up," said little James to himself, not knowing that he never would grow up, "I shall have

And twenty years later, when he laid down the laws for his little kingdom, you find that the officers of his

court must wear the mustache, "a la Louis Napoleon," and that the Zouave uniform will be worn by the

In 1883, while he still was at the War College, his father died, and when he graduated, which he did with

honors, he found himself his own master. His assets were a small income, a perfect knowledge of the French

language, and the reputation of being one of the most expert swordsman in Paris. He chose not to enter the

army, and instead became a journalist, novelist, duellist, an habitue of the Latin Quarter and the boulevards.

As a novelist the titles of his books suggest their quality. Among them are: "Un Amour Vendeen," "Lettres

d'un Yankee," "Un Amour dans le Monde," "Memoires d'un Gommeux," "Merveilleuses Aventures de

Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, apparently with deep conviction, with high enthusiasm. In her

service as a defender of the faith he issued essays, pamphlets, "broadsides." The opponents of the Church in

In 1878, while only twentyfour, he married the Countess de SaintPery, 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

It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the Count de Chambord and published in the interest of the Bourbons.

Until 1888 HardenHickey 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 HardenHickey was involved in fortytwo lawsuits, for different editorial

indiscretions, fined three hundred thousand francs, and was a principal in countless duels.

To his brother editors his standing interrogation was: "Would you prefer to meet me upon the editorial page,

or in the Bois de Boulogne?" Among those who met him in the Bois were Aurelien Scholl, H. Lavenbryon,

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

HardenHickey, claiming the paper had been suppressed and he himself exiled, crossed to London.

From there he embarked upon a voyage around the world, which lasted two years, and in the course of which

he discovered the island kingdom of which he was to be the first and last king. Previous to his departure,

having been divorced from the Countess de SaintPery, he placed his boy and girl in the care of a

fellowjournalist and very dear friend, the Count de la Boissiere, of whom later we shall hear more.

HardenHickey started around the world on the Astoria, a British merchant vessel bound for India by way of

When off the coast of Brazil the ship touched at the uninhabited island of Trinidad. Historians of James the

First say that it was through stress of weather that the Astoria was driven to seek refuge there, but as, for six

months of the year, to make a landing on the island is almost impossible, and as at any time, under stress of

weather, Trinidad would be a place to avoid, it is more likely Jackson put in to replenish his watercasks, or

Or it may have been that, having told HardenHickey of the derelict island, the latter persuaded the captain to

allow him to land and explore it. Of this, at least, we are certain, a boat was sent ashore, HardenHickey 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

The island of Trinidad claimed by HardenHickey must not be confused with the larger Trinidad belonging

The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful spot of great tropical beauty; it is one of the fairest places in the

West Indies. At every hour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open its arms to vessels of every

draught. A governor in a pith helmet, a cricket club, a bishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden go to make it

a prosperous and contented colony. But the little derelict Trinidad, in latitude 20 degrees 30 minutes south,

and longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes west, seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, is but a spot upon

the ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, and hideous landcrabs, it is

uninhabited; and against the advances of man its shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged

limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many feet high against the

In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says he found nothing living but doves and landcrabs. "Saw many

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, manofwar birds, and "turtles weighing from five hundred to seven hundred pounds."

In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the JapaneseRussian War represented the London Morning Post, visited

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

So it appears that before HardenHickey seized the island it already had been claimed by Great Britain, and

later, on account of the Portuguese settlement, by Brazil. The answer HardenHickey made to these claims

was that the English never settled in Trinidad, and that the Portuguese abandoned it, and, therefore, their

claims lapsed. In his "prospectus" of his island, HardenHickey himself describes it thus:

"Trinidad is about five miles long and three miles wide. In spite of its rugged and uninviting appearance, the

"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, rockcod,

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 breedingplace of almost the entire feathery

population of the South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of guano alone should make my little country

prosperous. Turtles visit the island to deposit eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is literally alive with

them. The only drawback to my projected kingdom is the fact that it has no good harbor and can be

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

HardenHickey seized the island, this treasure had made it known. This is the legend. In 1821 a great store of

gold and silver plate plundered from Peruvian churches had been concealed on the islands by pirates near

Sugar Loaf Hill, on the shore of what is known as the Southwest Bay. Much of this plate came from the

cathedral at Lima, having been carried from there during the war of independence when the Spanish residents

fled the country. In their eagerness to escape they put to sea in any ship that offered, and these unarmed and

unseaworthy vessels fell an easy prey to pirates. One of these pirates on his deathbed, in gratitude to his

former captain, told him the secret of the treasure. In 1892 this captain was still living, in Newcastle,

England, and although his story bears a family resemblance to every other story of buried treasure, there were

added to the tale of the pirate some corroborative details. These, in twelve years, induced five different

expeditions to visit the island. The two most important were that of E. F. Knight and one from the Tyne in the

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 HardenHickey was forced to borrow from it freely. Knight himself says that the

most minute and accurate description of Trinidad is to be found in the "Frank Mildmay" of Captain Marryat.

He found it so easy to identify each spot mentioned in the novel that he believes the author of "Midshipman

After seizing Trinidad, HardenHickey rounded the Cape and made north to Japan, China, and India. In India

he became interested in Buddhism, and remained for over a year questioning the priests of that religion and

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

For the next two years HardenHickey lived in New York, but so quietly that, except that he lived quietly, it

is difficult to find out anything concerning him. The man who, a few years before, had delighted Paris with

his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his fortytwo 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 watercolors at the American Art

Galleries, and again as the author of a book I found in a store in Twentysecond Street, just east of

It was a grewsome compilation and had just appeared in print. It was called "Euthanasia, or the Ethics of

Suicide." This book was an apology or plea for selfdestruction. In it the baron laid down those occasions

when he considered suicide pardonable, and when obligatory. To support his arguments and to show that

suicide was a noble act, he quoted Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, and even misquoted the Bible. He gave a list

of poisons, and the amount of each necessary to kill a human being. To show how one can depart from life

with the least pain, he illustrated the text with most unpleasant pictures, drawn by himself.

The book showed how far HardenHickey had strayed from the teachings of the Jesuit College at Namur, and

All of these two years had not been spent only in New York. HardenHickey 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 fatherinlaw. 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 fatherinlaw is difficult to explain. It is not apparent that Flagler ever did anything

which could justly offend him; indeed, he always seems to have spoken of his soninlaw with tolerance,

and often with awe, as one would speak of a clever, wayward child. But HardenHickey chose to regard

Flagler as his enemy, as a sordid man of business who could not understand the feelings and aspirations of a

Before HardenHickey married, the misunderstanding between his wife's father and himself began. Because

he thought HardenHickey was marrying his daughter for her money, Flagler opposed the union.

Consequently, HardenHickey married Miss Flagler without "settlements," and for the first few years

supported her without aid from her father. But his wife had been accustomed to a manner of living beyond

the means of the soldier of fortune, and soon his income, and then even his capital, was exhausted. From her

mother the baroness inherited a fortune. This was in the hands of her father as executor. When his own

money was gone, HardenHickey endeavored to have the money belonging to his wife placed to her credit,

or to his. To this, it is said, Flagler, on the ground that HardenHickey 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 HardenHickey with the care of his wife's money

As I have said, you cannot judge HardenHickey as you would a contemporary. With the people among

whom he was thrown, his ideas were entirely out of joint. He should have lived in the days of "The Three

Musketeers." People who looked upon him as working for his own hand entirely misunderstood him. He was

absolutely honest, and as absolutely without a sense of humor. To him, to pay taxes, to pay grocers' bills, to

depend for protection upon a policeman, was intolerable. He lived in a world of his own imagining. And one

day, in order to make his imaginings real, and to escape from his fatherinlaw's unromantic world of

Standard Oil and Florida hotels, in a proclamation to the powers he announced himself as King James the

The proclamation failed to create a world crisis. Several of the powers recognized his principality and his

title; but, as a rule, people laughed, wondered, and forgot. That the daughter of John Flagler was to rule the

new principality gave it a "news interest," and for a few Sundays in the supplements she was hailed as the

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

"My soninlaw 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

soninlaw is an extremely wellread, refined, wellbred man. He does not court publicity. While he was

staying in my house he spent nearly all the time in the library translating an Indian book on Buddhism. My

daughter has no ambition to be a queen or anything else than what she isan American girl. But my

From his fatherinlaw, at least, HardenHickey 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 HardenHickey, though

unobtrusively, none the less earnestly continued to play the part of king. His friend De la Boissiere he

appointed his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and established in a Chancellery at 217 West Thirtysixth Street,

New York, and from there was issued a sort of circular, or prospectus, written by the king, and signed by "Le

Grand Chancelier, Secretaire d'Etat pour les Affaires Etrangeres, M. le Comte de la Boissiere."

The document, written in French, announced that the new state would be governed by a military dictatorship,

that the royal standard was a yellow triangle on a red ground, and that the arms of the principality were "d'Or

chape de Gueules." It pointed out naively that those who first settled on the island would be naturally the

oldest inhabitants, and hence would form the aristocracy. But only those who at home enjoyed social position

For itself the state reserved a monopoly of the guano, of the turtles, and of the buried treasure. And both to

discover the treasure and to encourage settlers to dig and so cultivate the soil, a percentage of the treasure was

Any one purchasing ten $200 bonds was entitled to a free passage to the island, and after a year, should he so

desire it, a return trip. The hard work was to be performed by Chinese coolies, the aristocracy existing

beautifully, and, according to the prospectus, to enjoy "vie d'un genre tout nouveau, et la recherche de

To reward his subjects for prominence in literature, the arts, and the sciences, his Majesty established an

"We, James, Prince of Trinidad, have resolved to commemorate our accession to the throne of Trinidad by

the institution of an Order of Chivalry, destined to reward literature, industry, science, and the human virtues,

and by these presents have established and do institute, with cross and crown, the Order of the Insignia of the

Cross of Trinidad, of which we and our heirs and successors shall be the sovereigns.

"Given in our Chancellery the Eighth of the month of December, one thousand eight hundred and

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 diamondstudded rays, with, in the centre, set

A rule of the order read: "The costume shall be identical with that of the Chamberlains of the Court of

Trinidad, save the buttons, which shall bear the impress of the Crown of the Order."

For himself, King James commissioned a firm of jewelers to construct a royal crown. In design it was similar

to the one which surmounted the cross of Trinidad. It is shown in the photograph of the insignia. Also, the

king issued a set of postagestamps on which was a picture of the island. They were of various colors and

Today, as I found when I tried to procure one to use in this book, they are worth many times their face

For some time the affairs of the new kingdom progressed favorably. In San Francisco, King James, in person,

engaged four hundred coolies and fitted out a schooner which he sent to Trinidad, where it made regular trips

between his principality and Brazil; an agent was established on the island, and the construction of docks,

wharves, and houses was begun, while at the chancellery in West Thirtysixth Street, the Minister of Foreign

And then, out of a smiling sky, a sudden and unexpected blow was struck at the independence of the little

In July of 1895, while constructing a cable to Brazil, Great Britain found the Island of Trinidad lying in the

direct line she wished to follow, and, as a cable station, seized it. Objection to this was made by Brazil, and at

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

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:

"To His Excellency Mr. the Secretary of State of the Republic of the United States of North America,

"1. That in the course of the month of September, 1893, Baron HardenHickey officially notified all the

"2. That in course of January, 1894, he renewed to all these Powers the official notification of the said taking

of possession, and informed them at the same time that from that date the land would be known as

'Principality of Trinidad'; that he took the title of 'Prince of Trinidad,' and would reign under the name of

"In consequence of these official notifications several Powers have recognized the new Principality and its

Prince, and at all events none thought it necessary at that epoch to raise objections or formulate opposition.

"The press of the entire world has, on the other hand, often acquainted readers with these facts, thus giving to

them all possible publicity. In consequence of the accomplishment of these various formalities, and as the law

of nations prescribes that 'derelict' territories belong to whoever will take possession of them, and as the

island of Trinidad, which has been abandoned for years, certainly belongs to the aforesaid category, his

Serene Highness Prince James I was authorized to regard his rights on the said island as perfectly valid and

"Nevertheless, your Excellency knows that recently, in spite of all the legitimate rights of my august

sovereign, an English warship has disembarked at Trinidad a detachment of armed troops and taken

"Following this assumption of territory, the Brazilian Government, invoking a right of ancient Portuguese

occupation (long ago outlawed), has notified the English Government to surrender the island to Brazil.

"I beg of your Excellency to ask of the Government of the United States of North America to recognize the

Principality of Trinidad as an independent State, and to come to an understanding with the other American

"Thus the Government of the United States of North America will once more accord its powerful assistance

to the cause of right and of justice, misunderstood by England and Brazil, put an end to a situation which

threatens to disturb the peace, reestablish concord between two great States ready to appeal to arms, and

"In the expectation of your reply please accept, Excellency, the expression of my elevated consideration.

At that time Richard Olney was Secretary of State, and in his treatment of the protest, and of the gentleman

who wrote it, he fully upheld the reputation he made while in office of lack of good manners. Saying he was

unable to read the handwriting in which the protest was written, he disposed of it in a way that would suggest

itself naturally to a statesman and a gentleman. As a "crank" letter he turned it over to the Washington

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

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

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 HardenHickey 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

I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty neighborhood just west of Seventh Avenue, and of where now

stands the York Hotel. Three weeks ago I revisited it and found it unchanged. At the time of my first visit, on

the jamb of the front door was pasted a piece of paper on which was written in the handwriting of De la

The chancellery was not exactly in its proper setting. On its doorstep children of the tenements were playing

dolls with clothespins; in the street a huckster in raucous tones was offering wilted cabbages to women in

wrappers leaning from the fire escapes; the smells and the heat of New York in midsummer rose from the

De la Boissiere received me with distrust. The morning papers had made him manshy; but, after a few

"Your Excellencies" and a respectful inquiry regarding "His Royal Highness," his confidence revived. In the

situation he saw nothing humorous, not even in an announcement on the wall which read: "Sailings to

Trinidad." Of these there were two; on March 1, and on October 1. On the table were many copies of the

royal proclamation, the postagestamps of the new government, the thousandfranc bonds, and, in

He talked to me frankly and fondly of Prince James. Indeed, I never met any man who knew HardenHickey

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 primeministers of Europe.

And he, on his part, after the ridicule of the morning papers, to have any one with outward seriousness accept

I told him I wished to visit Trinidad, and in that I was quite serious. The story of an island filled with buried

treasure, and governed by a king, whose native subjects were turtles and seagulls, promised to make

The count was greatly pleased. I believe in me he saw his first bonafide settler, and when I rose to go he

even lifted one of the crosses of Trinidad and, before my envious eyes, regarded it uncertainly.

Perhaps, had he known that of all decorations it was the one I most desired; had I only then and there booked

my passage, or sworn allegiance to King James, who knows but that today 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

Others, more deserving of the honor, were more fortunate. Among my fellowreporters who, like myself,

came to scoff, and remained to pray, was Henri Pene du Bois, for some time, until his recent death, the

brilliant critic of art and music of the American. Then he was on the Times, and Henry N. Cary, now of the

When Du Bois reported to Cary on his assignment, he said: "There is nothing funny in that story. It's pathetic.

Both those men are in earnest. They are convinced they are being robbed of their rights. Their only fault is

that they have imagination, and that the rest of us lack it. That's the way it struck me, and that's the way the

So, of all the New York papers, the Times, for a brief period, became the official organ of the Government of

James the First, and in time Cary and Du Bois were created Chevaliers of the Order of Trinidad, and entitled

to wear uniforms "Similar to those of the Chamberlains of the Court, save that the buttons bear the impress of

The attack made by Great Britain and Brazil upon the independence of the principality, while it left

HardenHickey in the position of a king in exile, brought him at once another crown, which, by those who

offered it to him, was described as of incomparably greater value than that of Trinidad.

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

In 1893 in San Francisco, Ralston J. Markowe, a lawyer and a onetime officer of artillery in the United

States army, gained renown as one of the Morrow filibustering expedition which attempted to overthrow the

Dole government in the Hawaiian Isles and restore to the throne Queen Liliuokalani. In San Francisco

Markowe was nicknamed the "Prince of Honolulu," as it was understood, should Liliuokalani regain her

crown, he would be rewarded with some high office. But in the star of Liliuokalani, Markowe apparently lost

faith, and thought he saw in HardenHickey timber more suitable for kingmaking. Accordingly,

twentyfour days after the "protest" was sent to our State Department, Markowe switched his allegiance to

"1. I am the duly authorized agent of the Royalist party in so far as it is possible for any one to occupy that

position under existing circumstances. With the Queen in prison and absolutely cut off from all

communication with her friends, it is out of the question for me to carry anything like formal credentials.

"2. Alienating any part of the territory cannot give rise to any constitutional questions, for the reason that the

constitutions, like the land tenures, are in a state of such utter confusion that only a strong hand can unravel

them, and the restoration will result in the establishment of a strong military government. If I go down with

the expedition I have organized I shall be in full control of the situation and in a position to carry out all my

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

"4. My plan is to successively occupy all the islands, leaving the capital to the last. When the others have

fallen, the capital, being cut off from all its resources, will be easily taken, and may very likely fall without

effort. I don't expect in any case to have to fortify myself or to take the defensive, or to have to issue a call to

arms, as I shall have an overwhelming force to join me at once, in addition to those who go with me, who by

themselves will be sufficient to carry everything before them without active cooperation from the people

"5. The Government forces consist of about 160 men and boys, with very imperfect military training, and of

whom about forty are officers. They are organized as infantry. There are also about 600 citizens enrolled as a

reserve guard, who may be called upon in case of an emergency, and about 150 police. We can fully rely

upon the assistance of all the police and from onequarter to onehalf of the other troops. And of the

remainder many will under no circumstances engage in a sharp fight in defense of the present government.

There are now on the island plenty of men and arms to accomplish our purpose, and if my expedition does

not get off very soon the people there will be organized to do the work without other assistance from here

than the direction of a few leaders, of which they stand more in need than anything else.

"6. The tonnage of the vessel is 146. She at present has berthroom for twenty men, but bunks can be

arranged in the hold for 256 more, with provision for ample ventilation. She has one complete set of sails and

two extra spars. The remaining information in regard to her I will have to obtain and send you tomorrow. 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,

What HardenHickey thought of this is not known, but as two weeks before he received it he had written

Markowe, asking him by what authority he represented the Royalists of Honolulu, it seems evident that when

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 kingelect 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, HardenHickey was a soldier of misfortunes.

Having lost his island kingdom, he could no longer occupy himself with plans for its improvement. It had

been his toy. They had taken it from him, and the loss and the ridicule which followed hurt him bitterly.

And for the lands he really owned in Mexico and California, and which, if he were to live in comfort, it was

necessary he should sell, he could find no purchaser; and, moreover, having quarrelled with his

fatherinlaw, he had cut off his former supply of money. The need of it pinched him cruelly.

The advertised cause of this quarrel was sufficiently characteristic to be the real one. Moved by the attack of

Great Britain upon his principality, HardenHickey decided upon reprisals. It must be remembered that

always he was more Irish than French. On paper he organized an invasion of England from Ireland, the home

of his ancestors. It was because Flagler refused to give him money for this adventure that he broke with him.

His friends say this was the real reason of the quarrel, which was a quarrel on the side of HardenHickey

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, HardenHickey was in San Francisco; when she returned to San

Francisco, he was in Mexico. The fault seems to have been his. He was greatly admired by pretty women. His

daughter by his first wife, now a very beautiful girl of sixteen, spent much time with her stepmother; and

when not on his father's ranch in Mexico, his son also, for months together, was at her side. The husband

approved of this, but he himself saw his wife infrequently. Nevertheless, early in the spring of 1898, the

Baroness leased a house in Brockton Square, in Riverside, Cal., where it was understood by herself and by

her friends her husband would join her. At that time in Mexico he was trying to dispose of a large tract of

land. Had he been able to sell it, the money for a time would have kept one even of his extravagances

contentedly rich. At least, he would have been independent of his wife and of her father. Up to February of

There is no doubt that had HardenHickey then turned to his fatherinlaw, that gentleman, as he had done

But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no longer beg, even for the money belonging to his wife, from the

man he had insulted. He could no longer ask his wife to intercede for him. He was without money of his own,

with out the means of obtaining it; from his wife he had ceased to expect even sympathy, and from the world

he knew, the fact that he was a selfmade king caused him always to be pointed out with ridicule as a

The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist and dreamer, the devout Catholic and devout Buddhist, saw the

His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights, imaginary failures.

This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize colonies oversea, and with a sword pick the

buttons from a waistcoat, forgot the twenty good years still before him; forgot that men loved him for the

mistakes he had made; that in parts of the great city of Paris his name was still spoken fondly, still was

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

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

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

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

At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the following morning, they kicked in the door,

they found him stretched rigidly upon the bed, like one lying in state, with, near his hand, a halfemptied

"My DEAREST,No news from you, although you have had plenty of time to write. Harvey has written me

that he has no one in view at present to buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup of bitterness to the very

dregs, but I do not complain. Goodby. 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

You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, the military figure with its white face and mustache, "a la Louis

Napoleon," at rest upon the pillow, the startled drummers and chambermaids peering in from the hall, and the

landlord, or coroner, or doctor, with a bewildered countenance, lifting to view the royal crown of gilt and

The other actors in this, as Harold Frederic called it, "Opera Bouffe Monarchy," are still living.

The Count de la Boissiere, exMinister of Foreign Affairs, is still a leader of the French colony in New York,

and a prosperous commission merchant with a suite of offices on Fiftyfourth Street. By the will of

HardenHickey 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 HardenHickey killed

himself the title to the island was in dispute. Should young HardenHickey 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

To him has been left a royal decree signed and sealed, but blank. In the will the power to fill in this blank

with a statement showing the final disposition of the island has been bestowed upon De la Boissiere.

So, some day, he may proclaim the accession of a new king, and give a new lease of life to the kingdom of

But unless his son, or wife, or daughter should assert his or her rights, which is not likely to happen, so ends

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 realestate scheme and was out to rob the peopleand they respected him. To my

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 bodyguard of Zouaves

and his Grand Cross of Trinidad, certainly possessed many things that HardenHickey lacked. But they in

turn lacked the things that made him happy; the power to "make believe," the love of romance, the touch of

When, as boys, we used to say: "Let's pretend we're pirates," as a man, HardenHickey begged: "Let's

For some reason his end always reminds me of the closing line of Pinero's play, when the adventuress, Mrs.

Tanqueray, kills herself, and her virtuous stepchild says: "If we had only been kinder!"

IN the strict sense of the phrase, a soldier of fortune is a man who for pay, or for the love of adventure, fights

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

Than Winston Spencer Churchill today there are few young menand he is a very young manwho have

met more varying fortunes, and none who has more frequently bent them to his own advancement. To him it

has been indifferent whether, at the moment, the fortune seemed good or evil, in the end always it was good.

As a boy officer, when other subalterns were playing polo, and at the Gaiety Theatre attending night school,

he ran away to Cuba and fought with the Spaniards. For such a breach of military discipline, any other officer

would have been courtmartialled. Even his friends feared that by his foolishness his career in the army was

at an end. Instead, his escapade was made a question in the House of Commons, and the fact brought him

such publicity that the Daily Graphic paid him handsomely to write on the Cuban Revolution, and the

At the very outbreak of the Boer war he was taken prisoner. It seemed a climax of misfortune. With his

brother officers he had hoped in that campaign to acquit himself with credit, and that he should lie inactive in

Pretoria appeared a terrible calamity. To the others who, through many heartbreaking months, suffered

imprisonment, it continued to be a calamity. But within six weeks of his capture Churchill escaped, and, after

many adventures, rejoined his own army to find that the calamity had made him a hero.

When after the battle of Omdurman, in his book on "The River War," he attacked Lord Kitchener, those who

did not like him, and they were many, said: "That's the end of Winston in the army. He'll never get another

But only two years later the chance came, when, no longer a subaltern, but as a member of the House of

Later, when his assaults upon the leaders of his own party closed to him, even in his own constituency, the

Conservative debating clubs, again his illwishers said: "This is the end. He has ridiculed those who sit in

high places. He has offended his cousin and patron, the Duke of Marlborough. Without political friends,

without the influence and money of the Marlborough family he is a political nonentity." That was eighteen

months ago. Today, at the age of thirtytwo, he is one of the leaders of the Government party,

UnderSecretary for the Colonies, and with the Liberals the most popular young man in public life.

Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Edward Grey, the new Foreign Secretary, said of him: "Mr. Winston

Churchill has achieved distinction in at least five different careersas 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 politicianone 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 distinguishedand 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 sixtyfour, which is the minimum age at which the politician ceases to be young."

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born thirtytwo years ago, in November, 1874. By birth he is

halfAmerican. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, and his mother was Jennie Jerome, of New York.

On the father's side he is the grandchild of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, on the distaff side, of Leonard

To a student of heredity it would be interesting to try and discover from which of these ancestors Churchill

drew those qualities which in him are most prominent, and which have led to his success.

What he owes to his father and mother it is difficult to overestimate, almost as difficult as to overestimate

He was not a child born a fullgrown genius of commonplace parents. Rather his fate threatened that he

should always be known as the son of his father. And certainly it was asking much of a boy that he should

live up to a father who was one of the most conspicuous, clever, and erratic statesmen of the later Victorian

For at no time was the American wife content to be merely ornamental. Throughout the political career of her

husband she was his helpmate, and as an officer of the Primrose League, as an editor of the AngloSaxon

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

In his earlier days, if one can have days any earlier than those he now enjoys, Churchill was entirely

influenced by two things: the tremendous admiration he felt for his father, which filled him with ambition to

follow in his orbit, and the camaraderie of his mother, who treated him less like a mother than a sister and

Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious that I cannot recall the time when he was young enough to be

Lady Randolph's son; certainly, I cannot recall the time when she was old enough to be his mother.

When first I knew him he had passed through Harrow and Sandhurst and was a second lieutenant in the

He was below medium height, a slight, delicatelooking 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

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

He even copied his father in his little tricks of manner. Standing with hands shoved under the frockcoat and

one resting on each hip as though squeezing in the waist line; when seated, resting the elbows on the arms of

the chair and nervously locking and unclasping fingers, are tricks common to both.

He then had and still has a most embarrassing habit of asking many questions; embarrassing, sometimes,

because the questions are so frank, and sometimes because they lay bare the wide expanse of one's own

At that time, although in his twentyfirst year, this lad twice had been made a question in the House of

That in itself had rendered him conspicuous. When you consider out of Great Britain's four hundred million

subjects how many live, die, and are buried without at any age having drawn down upon themselves the

anger of the House of Commons, to have done so twice, before one has passed his twentyfirst year, seems to

The first time Churchill disturbed the august assemblage in which so soon he was to become a leader was

when he "ragged" a brother subaltern named Bruce and cut up his saddle and accoutrements. The second time

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

At the time Mrs. Ormiston Chant had raised objections to the presence in the Music Hall of certain young

women, and had threatened, unless they ceased to frequent its promenade, to have the license of the Music

Hall revoked. As a compromise, the management ceased selling liquor, and on the night Churchill visited the

place the bar in the promenade was barricaded with scantling and linen sheets. With the thirst of tropical

Cuba still upon him, Churchill asked for a drink, which was denied him, and the crusade, which in his

absence had been progressing fiercely, was explained. Any one else would have taken no for his answer, and

have sought elsewhere for his drink. Not so Churchill. What he did is interesting, because it was so extremely

He scrambled to the velvetcovered top of the railing which divides the auditorium from the promenade, and

made a speech. It was a plea in behalf of his "Sisters, the Ladies of the Empire Promenade."

"Where," he asked of the ladies themselves and of their escorts crowded below him in the promenade, "does

the Englishman in London always find a welcome? Where does he first go when, battlescarred and

travelworn, he reaches home? Who is always there to greet him with a smile, and join him in a drink? Who

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 redhaired boy in evening clothes, balancing himself on the rail of the balcony, and around

Churchill turned with delight to the larger audience, and repeated his appeal. The house shook with laughter

The commissionaires and police tried to reach him and a goodtempered but very determined mob of

welldressed 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

Shortly after striking this blow for the liberty of others, Churchill organized a dinner which illustrated the

direction in which at that age his mind was working, and showed that his ambition was already abnormal.

The dinner was given to those of his friends and acquaintances who "were under twentyone years of age,

As one over the age limit, or because he did not consider me an empirecontrolling force, on this great

occasion, I was permitted to be present. But except that the number of incipient empirebuilders was very

great, that they were very happy, and that save the host himself none of them took his idea seriously, I would

not call it an evening of historical interest. But the fact is interesting that of all the boys present, as yet, the

host seems to be the only one who to any conspicuous extent is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain.

When he was twentythree Churchill obtained leave of absence from his regiment, and as there was no other

way open to him to see fighting, as a correspondent he joined the Malakand Field Force in India.

It may be truthfully said that by his presence in that frontier war he made it and himself famous. His book on

that campaign is his best piece of war reporting. To the civilian reader it has all the delight of one of Kipling's

Indian stories, and to writers on military subjects it is a model. But it is a model very few can follow, and

which Churchill himself was unable to follow, for the reason that only once is it given a man to be

The picturesque handtohand fighting, the night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, the retreats made

carrying the wounded under constant fire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never again

can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it was absolutely new, and the charm of the book and

the value of the book are that with the intolerance of youth he attacks in the service evils that older men

prefer to let lie, and that with the ingenuousness of youth he tells of things which to the veteran have become

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

For his services with the Malakand Field Force he received the campaign medal with clasp, and, "in

despatches," BrigadierGeneral Jeffreys praises "the courage and resolution of Lieutenant W. L. S. Churchill,

From the operations around Malakand, he at once joined Sir William Lockhart as orderly officer, and with the

This was in the early part of 1898. In spite of the time taken up as an officer and as a correspondent, he

finished his book on the Malakand Expedition and then, as it was evident Kitchener would soon attack

Khartum, he jumped across to Egypt and again as a correspondent took part in the advance upon that city.

On the day of the battle his luck followed him. Kitchener had attached him to the Twentyfirst Lancers, and

it will be remembered the event of the battle was the charge made by that squadron. It was no canter, no easy

"pigsticking"; it was a fight to get in and a fight to get out, with frenzied followers of the Khalifa hanging to

the bridle reins, hacking at the horses' hamstrings, and slashing and firing pointblank at the troopers.

Then he returned home and wrote "The River War." This book is the last word on the campaigns up the Nile.

From the death of Gordon in Khartum to the capture of the city by Kitchener, it tells the story of the many

gallant fights, the wearying failures, the many expeditions into the hot, boundless desert, the long, slow

The book made a distinct sensation. It was a work that one would expect from a lieutenantgeneral, 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

This is a specimen of the kind of thing that caused the retired army officer to sit up and choke with apoplexy:

"General Kitchener, who never spares himself, cares little for others. He treated all men like machines, from

the private soldiers, whose salutes he disdained, to the superior officers, whom he rigidly controlled. The

comrade who had served with him and under him for many years, in peace and peril, was flung aside as soon

as he ceased to be of use. The wounded Egyptian and even the wounded British soldier did not excite his

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

To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over their own signatures, on the service club stationery, wrote violent,

furious letters, and the newspapers themselves, besides the ordinary reviews, gave to the book editorial praise

Equally disgusted were the younger officers of the service. They nicknamed his book "A Subaltern's Advice

to Generals," and called Churchill himself a "Medal Snatcher." A medal snatcher is an officer who, whenever

there is a rumor of war, leaves his men to the care of any one, and through influence in high places and for

the sake of the campaign medal has himself attached to the expeditionary force. But Churchill never was a

medal hunter. The routine of barrack life irked him, and in foreign parts he served his country far better than

by remaining at home and inspecting awkward squads and attending guard mount. Indeed, the War Office

could cover with medals the man who wrote "The Story of the Malakand Field Force" and "The River War"

In October, 1898, a month after the battle of Omdurman, Churchill made his debut as a political speaker at

minor meetings in Dover and Rotherhithe. History does not record that these first speeches set fire to the

Channel. During the winter he finished and published his "River War," and in the August of the following

summer, 1899, at a byelection, offered himself as Member of Parliament for Oldham.

In the Daily Telegraph his letters from the three campaigns in India and Egypt had made his name known,

and there was a general desire to hear him and to see him. In one who had attacked Kitchener of Khartum, the

men of Oldham expected to find a stalwart veteran, bearded, and with a voice of command. When they were

introduced to a small redhaired boy with a lisp, they refused to take him seriously. In England youth is an

unpardonable thing. Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, Hugh Cecil, and others have made it less

reprehensible. But, in spite of a vigorous campaign, in which Lady Randolph took an active part, Oldham

decided it was not ready to accept young Churchill for a member. Later he was Oldham's only claim to fame.

A week after he was defeated he sailed for South Africa, where war with the Boers was imminent. He had

resigned from his regiment and went south as war correspondent for the Morning Post.

Later in the war he held a commission as Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, a regiment of irregular

cavalry, and on the staffs of different generals acted as galloper and aidedecamp. To this combination of

duties, which was in direct violation of a rule of the War Office, his brother officers and his fellow

correspondents objected; but, as in each of his other campaigns he had played this dual role, the press censors

considered it a traditional privilege, and winked at it. As a matter of record, Churchill's soldiering never

seemed to interfere with his writing, nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper ever prevent him from mixing in

War was declared October 9th, and only a month later, while scouting in the armored train along the railroad

line between Pietermaritzburg and Colenso, the cars were derailed and Churchill was taken prisoner.

The train was made up of three flat cars, two armored cars, and between them the engine, with three cars

On the outward trip the Boers did not show themselves, but as soon as the English passed Frere station they

rolled a rock on the track at a point where it was hidden by a curve. On the return trip, as the English

approached this curve the Boers opened fire with artillery and pompoms. The engineer, in his eagerness to

escape, rounded the curve at full speed, and, as the Boers had expected, hit the rock. The three forward cars

were derailed, and one of them was thrown across the track, thus preventing the escape of the engine and the

two rear cars. From these Captain Haldane, who was in command, with a detachment of the Dublins, kept up

a steady fire on the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear the track. To assist him he had a company of

Natal volunteers, and those who had not run away of the train hands and breakdown crew.

"We were not long left in the comparative safety of a railroad accident," Churchill writes to his paper. "The

Boers' guns, swiftly changing their position, reopened fire from a distance of thirteen hundred yards before

any one had got out of the stage of exclamations. The tapping riflefire 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

For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked railroad train at thirteen hundred yards was as

easy a bull'seye as the hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine butted and snorted and

the men with their bare bands tore at the massive beams of the freightcar, the bullets and shells beat about

"I have had in the last four years many strange and varied experiences," continues young Churchill, "but

nothing was so thrilling as this; to wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with the

repeated explosions of the shells, the noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in the

air, the grunting and puffing of the enginepoor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any

one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of allthe expectation of destruction as a

matter of course, the realization of powerlessnessall this for seventy minutes by the clock, with only four

inches of twisted iron between danger, captivity, and shame on one sideand freedom on the other."

The "protected" train had proved a deathtrap, and by the time the line was clear every fourth man was killed

or wounded. Only the engine, with the more severely wounded heaped in the cab and clinging to its

cowcatcher and footrails, made good its escape. Among those left behind, a Tommy, without authority,

raised a handkerchief on his rifle, and the Boers instantly ceased firing and came galloping forward to accept

surrender. There was a general stampede to escape. Seeing that Lieutenant Franklin was gallantly trying to

hold his men, Churchill, who was safe on the engine, jumped from it and ran to his assistance. Of what

"Scarcely had the locomotive left me than I found myself alone in a shallow cutting, and none of our soldiers,

who had all surrendered, to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on the line at the end of the cutting two

men not in uniform. 'Platelayers,' 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, stormdriven 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 cuttingthat damnable

corridor. I scrambled up the bank. The earth sprang up beside me, and a bullet touched my hand, but outside

the cutting was a tiny depression. I crouched in this, struggling to get my wind. On the other side of the

railway a horseman galloped up, shouting to me and waving his hand. He was scarcely forty yards off. With a

rifle I could have killed him easily. I knew nothing of the white flag, and the bullets had made me savage. I

reached down for my Mauser pistol. I had left it in the cab of the engine. Between me and the horseman there

was a wire fence. Should I continue to fly? The idea of another shot at such a short range decided me. Death

stood before me, grim and sullen; Death without his lighthearted companion, Chance. So I held up my hand,

and like Mr. Jorrock's foxes, cried 'Capivy!' Then I was herded with the other prisoners in a miserable group,

and about the same time I noticed that my hand was bleeding, and it began to pour with rain.

"Two days before I had written to an officer at home: 'There has been a great deal too much surrendering in

With other officers, Churchill was imprisoned in the State Model Schools, situated in the heart of Pretoria. It

was distinctly characteristic that on the very day of his arrival he began to plan to escape.

Toward this end his first step was to lose his campaign hat, which he recognized was too obviously the hat of

an English officer. The burgher to whom he gave money to purchase him another innocently brought him a

Before his chance to escape came a month elapsed, and the opportunity that then offered was less an

The State Model Schools were surrounded by the children's playgrounds, penned in by a high wall, and at

night, while they were used as a prison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. After many nights of observation,

Churchill discovered that while the sentries were pacing their beats there was a moment when to them a

certain portion of the wall was in darkness. This was due to crossshadows 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

To scale the wall was not difficult; the real danger lay in the fact that at no time were the sentries farther

away than fifteen yards, and the chance of being shot by one or both of them was excellent. To a brother

officer Churchill confided his purpose, and together they agreed that some night when the sentries had turned

from the dark spot on the wall they would scale it and drop among the bushes in the garden. After they

reached the garden, should they reach it alive, what they were to do they did not know. How they were to

proceed through the streets and out of the city, how they were to pass unchallenged under its many electric

lights and before the illuminated shop windows, how to dodge patrols, and how to find their way through two

hundred and eighty miles of a South African wilderness, through an utterly unfamiliar, unfriendly, and

sparsely settled country into Portuguese territory and the coast, they left to chance. But with luck they hoped

to cover the distance in a fortnight, begging corn at the Kaffir kraals, sleeping by day, and marching under

They agreed to make the attempt on the 11th of December, but on that night the sentries did not move from

the only part of the wall that was in shadow. On the night following, at the last moment, something delayed

Churchill's companion, and he essayed the adventure alone. He writes: "Tuesday, the 12th! Anything was

better than further suspense. Again night came. Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity, I

strolled across the quadrangle and secreted myself in one of the offices. Through a chink I watched the

sentries. For half an hour they remained stolid and obstructive. Then suddenly one turned and walked up to

I darted out of my hidingplace and ran to the wall, seized the top with my hands and drew myself up. Twice

I let myself down again in sickly hesitation, and then with a third resolve scrambled up. The top was flat.

Lying on it, I had one parting glimpse of the sentries, still talking, still with their backs turned, but, I repeat,

still fifteen yards away. Then I lowered myself into the adjoining garden and crouched among the shrubs. I

Churchill discovered that the house into the garden of which he had so unceremoniously introduced himself

was brilliantly lighted, and that the owner was giving a party. At one time two of the guests walked into the

Thinking his companion might yet join him, for an hour he crouched in the bushes, until from the other side

"It's all up!" his friend whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively. The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the

sentries, should they be listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted Latin phrases,

while the other, in a low and distinct voice, said: " I cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It's all up. Can you

To go back was impossible. Churchill now felt that in any case he was sure to be recaptured, and decided he

He heard the footsteps of his two friends move away from him across the play yard. At the same moment he

stepped boldly out into the garden and, passing the open windows of the house, walked down the gravel path

to the street. Not five yards from the gate stood a sentry. Most of those guarding the schoolhouse knew him

by sight, but Churchill did not turn his head, and whether the sentry recognized him or not, he could not tell.

For a hundred feet he walked as though on ice, inwardly shrinking as he waited for the sharp challenge, and

the rattle of the Mauser thrown to the "Ready." His nerves were leaping, his heart in his throat, his spine of

water. And then, as he continued to advance, and still no tumult pursued him, he quickened his pace and

turned into one of the main streets of Pretoria. The sidewalks were crowded with burghers, but no one noticed

him. This was due probably to the fact that the Boers wore no distinctive uniform, and that with them in their

commandoes were many English Colonials who wore khaki riding breeches, and many Americans, French,

If observed, Churchill was mistaken for one of these, and the very openness of his movements saved him

Straight through the town he walked until he reached the suburbs, the open veldt, and a railroad track. As he

had no map or compass he knew this must be his only guide, but he knew also that two railroads left Pretoria,

the one along which he had been captured, to Pietermaritzburg, and the other, the one leading to the coast and

freedom. Which of the two this one was he had no idea, but he took his chance, and a hundred yards beyond a

station waited for the first outgoing train. About midnight, a freight stopped at the station, and after it had left

it and before it had again gathered headway, Churchill swung himself up upon it, and stretched out upon a

pile of coal. Throughout the night the train continued steadily toward the east, and so told him that it was the

Fearing the daylight, just before the sun rose, as the train was pulling up a steep grade, he leaped off into

some bushes. All that day he lay hidden, and the next night he walked. He made but little headway. As all

stations and bridges were guarded, he had to make long detours, and the tropical moonlight prevented him

from crossing in the open. In this way, sleeping by day, walking by night, begging food from the Kaffirs, five

Meanwhile, his absence had been at once discovered, and, by the Boers, every effort was being made to

retake him. Telegrams giving his description were sent along both railways, three thousand photographs of

him were distributed, each car of every train was searched, and in different parts of the Transvaal men who

resembled him were being arrested. It was said he had escaped dressed as a woman; in the uniform of a

Transvaal policeman whom he had bribed; that he had never left Pretoria, and that in the disguise of a waiter

he was concealed in the house of a British sympathizer. On the strength of this rumor the houses of all

In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a significant fact that a week before his escape Churchill had drawn

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

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

The anxiety was justified, for at this time Churchill was in a very bad way. During the month in prison he had

obtained but little exercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold by night and the terrific heat by day, the

long stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental effect upon an extremely nervous, highstrung

organization of being hunted, and of having to hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to a condition

Even though it were neutral soil, in so exhausted a state he dared not venture into the swamps and waste

places of the Portuguese territory; and, sick at heart as well as sick in body, he saw no choice left him save to

But before doing so he carefully prepared a tale which, although most improbable, he hoped might still

One night after days of wandering he found himself on the outskirts of a little village near the boundary line

of the Transvaal and Portuguese territory. Utterly unable to proceed further, he crawled to the nearest

zincroofed shack, and, fully prepared to surrender, knocked at the door. It was opened by a roughlooking,

bearded giant, the first white man to whom in many days Churchill had dared address himself.

To him, without hope, he feebly stammered forth the speech he had rehearsed. The man listened with every

outward mark of disbelief. At Churchill himself he stared with open suspicion. Suddenly he seized the boy by

"You needn't lie to me," he said. "You are Winston Churchill, and Iam the only Englishman in this

The rest of the adventure was comparatively easy. The next night his friend in need, an engineer named

Howard, smuggled Churchill Into a freightcar, and hid him under sacks of some soft merchandise.

At KomatiePoort, 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

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 bodyguard of

English residents armed with revolvers, and who were taking no chances of his recapture by the Boer agents,

he was placed safely on board. Two days later he arrived at Durban, where he was received by the Mayor, the

populace, and a brass band playing: "Britons Never, Never, Never shall be Slaves!"

For the next month Churchill was bombarded by letters and telegrams from every part of the globe, some

invited him to command filibustering expeditions, others sent him woollen comforters, some forwarded

photographs of himself to be signed, others photographs of themselves, possibly to be admired, others sent

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 AngloSaxon race

Lest so large an order as making the AngloSaxon race irresistible might turn the head of a subaltern, an

One day in camp we counted up the price per word of this cablegram, and Churchill was delighted to find that

On the day of his arrival in Durban, with the cheers still in the air, Churchill took the first train to "the front,"

then at Colenso. Another man might have lingered. After a month's imprisonment and the hardships of the

escape, he might have been excused for delaying twentyfour hours to taste the sweets of popularity and the

fleshpots of the Queen Hotel. But if the reader has followed this brief biography he will know that to have

done so would have been out of the part. This characteristic of Churchill's to get on to the next thing explains

his success. He has no time to waste on postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels.

As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until the relief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts

until the fall of Pretoria. He was in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out of the war with

On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second book on the war, and in October at the

general election as a "khaki" candidate, as those were called who favored the war, again stood for Oldham.

This time, with his war record to help him, he wrested from the Liberals one of Oldham's two seats. He had

been defeated by thirteen hundred votes; he was elected by a majority of two hundred and twentyseven.

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

When he came to this country half of the people here were in sympathy with the Boers, and did not care to

listen to what they supposed would be a strictly British version of the war. His manager, without asking

permission of those whose names he advertised, organized for Churchill's first appearance in various cities,

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

While this was no fault of Churchill's, who, until he reached this country knew nothing of it, it was neither for

During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with General Buller's force, Churchill and I had again been

together, and later when I joined the Boer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with which he was a

correspondent had chased the army with which I was a correspondent, forty miles. I had been one of those

who refused to act on his reception committee, and he had come to this country with a commission from

twenty brother officers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture he was using the photographs I had taken of

the scene of his escape, and which I had sent him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he arrived I was at

the hotel to welcome him, and that same evening three hours after midnight he came, in a blizzard, pounding

at our door for food and drink. What is a little thing like a war between friends?

During his "tour," except of hotels, parlorcars, 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

It was a coincidence that he entered Parliament at the same age as did his father. With two other members,

one born six days earlier than himself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among the three youngest members

The fact did not seem to appall him. In the House it is a tradition that young and ambitious members sit

"below" the gangway; the more modest and less assured are content to place themselves "above" it, at a point

On the day he was sworn in there was much curiosity to see where Churchill would elect to sit. In his own

mind there was apparently no doubt. After he had taken the oath, signed his name, and shaken the hand of the

Speaker, without hesitation he seated himself on the bench next to the Ministry. Ten minutes later, so a

newspaper of the day describes it, he had cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved his hands into his trousers

pockets, and was lolling back eying the veterans of the House with critical disapproval.

His maiden speech was delivered in May, 1901, in reply to David Lloyd George, who had attacked the

conduct of British soldiers in South Africa. Churchill defended them, and in a manner that from all sides

gained him honest admiration. In the course of the debate he produced and read a strangely apropos letter

which, fifteen years before, had been written by his father to Lord Salisbury. His adroit use of this filled H.

W. Massingham, the editor of the Daily News, with enthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary tactics, he

declared, since Mr. Gladstone died, had been so clever. He proclaimed that Churchill would be Premier. John

Dillon, the Nationalist leader, said he never before had seen a young man, by means of his maiden effort,

spring into the front rank of parliamentary speakers. He promised that the Irish members would ungrudgingly

testify to his ability and honesty of purpose. Among others to at once recognize the rising star was T. P.

O'Connor, himself for many years of the parliamentary firmament one of the brightest stars. In M. A. P. he

wrote: "I am inclined to think that the dash of American blood which he has from his mother has been an

improvement on the original stock, and that Mr. Winston Churchill may turn out to be a stronger and abler

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

Even in those first days of his career in the House, in debates where angels feared to tread, he did not hesitate

to rush in, but this subject was one on which he spoke with knowledge. Over the older men who were forced

to quote from hearsay or from what they had read, Churchill had the tremendous advantage of being able to

In the House he became at once one of the conspicuous and picturesque figures, one dear to the heart of the

caricaturist, and one from the strangers' gallery most frequently pointed out. He was called "the spoiled child

of the House," and there were several distinguished gentlemen who regretted they were forced to spare the

rod. Broderick, the Secretary for War, was one of these. Of him and of his recruits in South Africa, Churchill

spoke with the awful frankness of the enfant terrible. And although he addressed them more with sorrow than

with anger, to Balfour and Chamberlain he daily administered advice and reproof, while mere generals and

fieldmarshals, like Kitchener and Roberts, blushing under new titles, were held up for public reproof and

briefly but severely chastened. Nor, when he saw Lord Salisbury going astray, did he hesitate in his duty to

the country, but took the Prime Minister by the hand and gently instructed him in the way he should go.

This did not tend to make him popular, but in spite of his unpopularity, in his speeches against national

extravagancies he made so good a fight that he forced the Government, unwillingly, to appoint a committee

With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian Malcolm, and other clever young men, he formed inside the

Conservative Party a little group that in its obstructive and independent methods was not unlike the Fourth

Party of his father. From its leader and its filibustering, guerillalike tactics the men who composed it were

nicknamed the "Hughligans." The Hughligans were the most active critics of the Ministry and of all in their

own party, and as members of the Free Food League they bitterly attacked the fiscal proposals of Mr.

Chamberlain. When Balfour made Chamberlain's fight for fair trade, or for what virtually was protection, a

measure of the Conservatives, the lines of party began to break, and men were no longer Conservatives or

Against this Churchill daily protested, against Chamberlain, against his plan, against that plan being adopted

by the Tory Party. By tradition, by inheritance, by instinct, Churchill was a Tory.

"I am a Tory," he said, "and I have as much right in the party as has anybody else, certainly as much as

certain people from Birmingham. They can't turn us out, and we, the Tory Free Traders, have as much right

to dictate the policy of the Conservative Party as have any reactionary Fair Traders." In 1904 the

Conservative Party already recognized Churchill as one working outside the breastworks. Just before the

Easter vacation of that year, when he rose to speak a remarkable demonstration was made against him by his

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

In any event, if he were to be blamed for changing from one party to the other, he was only following the

distinguished example set him by Gladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his own father.

It was at the time of this change that he was called "the best hated man in England," but the Liberals

welcomed him gladly, and the National Liberal Club paid him the rare compliment of giving in his honor a

banquet. There were present two hundred members. Up to that time this dinner was the most marked

testimony to his importance in the political world. It was about then, a year since, that he prophesied: "Within

nine months there will come such a tide and deluge as will sweep through England and Scotland, and

When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. Balfour was defeated, and Churchill was victorious, and when the

new Government was formed the tidal wave landed Churchill in the office of UnderSecretary for the

While this is being written the English papers say that within a month he again will be promoted. For this

young man of thirty the only promotion remaining is a position in the Cabinet, in which august body men of

His is a picturesque career. Of any man of his few years speaking our language, his career is probably the

most picturesque. And that he is half an American gives all of us an excuse to pretend we share in his

IN the ChineseJapanese 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 thirtythree years old, was Captain Philo Norton McGiffin. So it appears that five

years before our fleet sailed to victory in Manila Bay another graduate of Annapolis, and one twenty years

younger than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey, had commanded in action a modern battleship, which, in tonnage,

in armament, and in the number of the ships' company, far outclassed Dewey's Olympia.

McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 1860, came of fighting stock. Back in Scotland the family is

McGiffin's greatgrandfather, born in Scotland, emigrated to this country and settled in "Little Washington,"

near Pittsburg, Pa. In the Revolutionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives fought in the War of 1812, one

of them holding a commission as major. McGiffin's own father was Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served in

the Mexican War, and in the Civil War was LieutenantColonel of the Eightyfifth Pennsylvania Volunteers.

In Washington he went to the high school and at the Washington Jefferson College had passed through his

freshman year. But the honors that might accrue to him if he continued to live on in the quiet and pretty old

town of Washington did not tempt him. To escape into the world he wrote his Congressman, begging him to

obtain for him an appointment to Annapolis. The Congressman liked the letter, and wrote Colonel McGiffin

to ask if the application of his son had his approval. Colonel McGiffin was willing, and in 1877 his son

received his commission as cadet midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in vacation time I

went coon hunting in the woods outside of Washington. For his age he was a very tall boy, and in his

midshipman undress uniform, to my youthful eyes, appeared a most bold and adventurous spirit.

At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like other boys. According to his classmates, with

all of whom I find he was very popular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as seamanship, gunnery,

navigation, and steam engineering, but in all else he was near the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade

was risky and reckless he was always one of the leaders. To him discipline was extremely irksome. He could

maintain it among others, but when it applied to himself it bored him. On the floor of the Academy building

on which was his room there was a pyramid of cannon ballsrelics of the War of 1812. They stood at the

head of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could not sleep, he decided that no one else should do so,

and, one by one, rolled the cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters and bumped through

the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower halls. For any one who might think of ascending to discover

the motive power back of the bombardment they were extremely dangerous. But an officer approached

McGiffin in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, he was sent to the prison ship. There he made good

friends with his jailer, an old manofwarsman named "Mike." He will be remembered by many naval

officers who as midshipmen served on the Santee. McGiffin so won over Mike that when he left the ship he

carried with him six charges of gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the Mexican

War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and at midnight on the eve of July 1st he

fired a salute. It aroused the entire garrison, and for a week the empty window frames kept the glaziers busy.

About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland. The people of New York City contributed provisions for

the sufferers, and to carry the supplies to Ireland the Government authorized the use of the old Constellation.

At the time the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed to consider himself as having been placed in

command of the Constellation and to write a report on the preparations made for the voyage, on the loading

of the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. This exercise was intended for the instruction of the cadets;

first in the matter of seamanship and navigation, and second in making official reports. At that time it was a

very difficult operation to get a gun out of the port of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do

this the necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yardarm and the yard and mast properly braced and

stayed, and then the lower block of the tackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave the fall a

very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin's report dealt with a new method of dismounting the guns and

carrying them through the gun ports, and so admirable was his plan, so simple and ingenious, that it was used

whenever it became necessary to dismount a gun from one of the old sailing ships. Having, however, offered

this piece of good work, McGiffin's report proceeded to tell of the division of the ship into compartments that

were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores, which included the old "fifteen puzzles," at that

particular time very popular. The report terminated with a description of the joy of the famished Irish as they

received the puzzleboxes. 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

Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he was sent to the Santee and given an opportunity to meditate.

On another occasion, when one of the instructors lectured to the cadets, he required them to submit a written

statement embodying all that they could recall of what had been said at the lecture. One of the rules

concerning this report provided that there should be no erasures or interlineations, but that when mistakes

were made the objectionable or incorrect expressions should be included within parentheses; and that the

matter so enclosed within parentheses would not be considered a part of the report. McGiffin wrote an

excellent resume of the lecture, but he interspersed through it in parentheses such words as "applause,"

"cheers," "catcalls," and "groans," and as these words were enclosed within parentheses he insisted that they

did not count, and made a very fair plea that he ought not to be punished for words which slipped in by

mistake, and which he had officially obliterated by what he called oblivion marks.

He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the house of a professor caught fire, McGiffin

ran into the flames and carried out two children, for which act he was commended by the Secretary of the

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. Today there is

hardly a ship having her full complement of officers, and the difficulty is not to get rid of those we have

educated, but to get officers to educate. To the many boys who, on the promise that they would be officers of

the navy, had worked for four years at the Academy and served two years at sea, the act was most unfair. Out

of a class of about ninety, only the first twelve were given commissions and the remaining eighty turned

adrift upon the uncertain seas of civil life. As a sop, each was given one thousand dollars.

McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. In the final examinations on the list he was well toward the tail.

But without having studied many things, and without remembering the greater part of them, no one graduates

from Annapolis, even last on the list; and with his one thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also this six

years of education at what was then the best naval college in the world. This was his only assethis

educationand as in his own country it was impossible to dispose of it, for possible purchasers he looked

At that time the Tong King war was on between France and China, and he decided, before it grew rusty, to

offer his knowledge to the followers of the Yellow Dragon. In those days that was a hazard of new fortunes

that meant much more than it does now. Today the East is as near as San Francisco; the JapaneseRussian

War, our occupation of the Philippines, the part played by our troops in the Boxer trouble, have made the

affairs of China part of the daily reading of every one. Now, one can step into a brass bed at Fortysecond

Street and in four days at the Coast get into another brass bed, and in twelve more be spinning down the Bund

of Yokohama in a rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter months as they used to go to Cairo.

But in 1885 it was no such light undertaking, certainly not for a young man who had been brought up in the

quiet atmosphere of an inland town, where generations of his family and other families had lived and

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, warmhearted youth, chiefly anxious lest his

mother and sister should "worry." In our country nearly every family knows that domestic tragedy when the

son and heir "breaks home ties," and starts out to earn a living; and if all the world loves a lover, it at least

sympathizes with the boy who is "looking for a job." The boy who is looking for the job may not think so, but

each of those who has passed through the same hard place gives him, if nothing else, his good wishes.

McGiffin's letters at this period gain for him from those who have had the privilege to read them the warmest

They are filled with the same cheery optimism, the same slurring over of his troubles, the same homely jokes,

the same assurances that he is feeling "bully," and that it all will come out right, that every boy, when he

"I am in firstrate health and spirits, so I don't want you to fuss about me. I am big enough and ugly enough

To his mother he proudly sends his name written in Chinese characters, as he had been taught to write it by

the Chinese ConsulGeneral in San Francisco, and a penpicture of two elephants. "I am going to bring you

home two of these," he writes, not knowing that in the strange and wonderful country to which he is going

He reached China in April, and from Nagasaki on his way to Shanghai the steamer that carried him was

chased by two French gunboats. But, apparently much to his disappointment, she soon ran out of range of

their guns. Though he did not know it then, with the enemy he had travelled so far to fight this was his first

Of that and of how, in spite of peace, he obtained the "job" he wanted, he must tell you himself in a letter

"MY DEAR MOTHERI have not felt much in the humor for writing, for I did not know what was going to

happen. I spent a good deal of money coming out, and when I got here, I knew, unless something turned up, I

was a gone coon. We got off Taku forts Sunday evening and the next morning we went inside; the channel is

very narrow and sown with torpedoes. We struck onean electric onein coming up, but it didn't go off.

We were until 10.30 P.M. in coming up to TienTsinthirty miles in a straight line, but nearly seventy by

"Wellat last we moored and went ashore. Brace Girdle, an engineer, and I went to the hotel, and the first

thing we heard wasthat peace was declared! I went back on board ship, and I didn't sleep muchI 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. WellI worried around all night without sleep, and in the morning I felt as if I had

been drawn through a knothole. I must have lost ten pounds. I went around about 10 A.M. and gave my

letters to Pethick, an American U. S. ViceConsul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He said he would fix

them for me. Then I went back to the ship, and as our captain was going up to see Li Hung Chang, I went

along out of desperation. We got in, and after a while were taken in through corridor after corridor of the

Viceroy's palace until we got into the great Li, when we sat down and had tea and tobacco and talked through

an interpreter. When it came my turn he asked: 'Why did you come to China?' I said: 'To enter the Chinese

service for the war.' 'How do you expect to enter?' 'I expect you to give me a commission!' 'I have no place to

offer you.' 'I think you haveI have come all the way from America to get it.' 'What would you like?' 'I

would like to get the new torpedoboat and go down the YangtseKiang to the blockading squadron.' 'Will

"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

twentyfour I thought he would faintfor in China a man is a boy until he is over thirty. He said I would

never doI was a child. I could not know anything at all. I could not convince him, but at last he

compromisedI was to pass an examination at the Arsenal at the Naval College, in all branches, and if they

passed me I would have a show. So we parted. I reported for examination next day, but was put offsame

the next day. But today I was told to come, and sat down to a stock of foolscap, and had a pretty stiff exam.

I am only just through. I had seamanship, gunnery, navigation, nautical astronomy, algebra, geometry,

trigonometry, conic sections, curve tracing, differential and integral calculus. I had only three questions out of

five to answer in each branch, but in the first three I answered all five. After that I only had time for three, but

at the end he said I need not finish, he was perfectly satisfied. I had done remarkably well, and he would

report to the Viceroy tomorrow. He examined my first papersseamanshipsaid I was perfect in it, so I

will get along, you need not fear. I told the Consulhe was very well pleasedhe is a nice man.

"I feel pretty well nowhave had dinner and am smoking a good Manila cheroot. I wrote hard all day, wrote

"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 bedI

"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 wellsaid I had passed a 'very splendid examination'; had

been recommended very strongly to the Viceroy, who was very much pleased; that the Director of the Naval

College over at the Arsenal had wanted me and would I go over at once? I would. It was about five miles. We

(a friend, who is a great rider here) went on steeplechase ponieswe were ferried across the Pei Ho in a

small scow and then had a long ride. There is a pathbut 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 hereyou can hire one and a servant together for $7 a

"Wellat last we got to the Arsenala place about four miles around, fortified, where all sorts of

armscartridges, shot and shell, engines, and everythingare made. The Naval College is inside

surrounded by a moat and wall. I thought to myself, if the cadet here is like to the thing I used to be at the U.

S. N. A. that won't keep him in. I went through a lot of yards till I was ushered into a room finished in black

ebony and was greeted very warmly by the Director. We took seats on a raised platformChinese style and

pretty soon an interpreter came, one of the Chinese professors, who was educated abroad, and we talked and

drank tea. He said I had done well, that he had the authority of the Viceroy to take me there as 'Professor' of

seamanship and gunnery; in addition I might be required to teach navigation or nautical astronomy, or drill

the cadets in infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I was to receive what would be in our money $1,800 per

annum, as near as we can compare it, paid in gold each month. Besides, I will have a house furnished for my

use, and it is their intention, as soon as I show that I know something, to considerably increase my pay. They

asked the Viceroy to give me 130 T per month (about $186) and house, but the Viceroy said I was but a boy;

that I had seen no years and had only come here a week ago with no one to vouch for me, and that I might

turn out an impostor. But he would risk 100 T on me anyhow, and as soon as I was reported favorably on by

the college I would be raisedthe agreement is to be for three years. For a few months I am to command a

training shipan ironclad that is in dry dock at present, until a captain in the English Navy comes out, who

"So Here I amtwentyfour years old and captain of a manofwara better one than any in our own

navyonly for a short time, of course, but I would be a pretty long time before I would command one at

home. WellI accepted and will enter on my duties in a week, as soon as my house is put in order. I saw

itit has a long veranda, very broad; with flower garden, apricot trees, etc., just covered with blossoms; a

wide hall on the front, a room about 18x15, with a 13foot ceiling; then back another rather larger, with a

cupola skylight in the centre, where I am going to put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to furnish the

house with bed, tables, chairs, sideboards, lounges, stove for kitchen. I have grates (American) in the room,

but I don't need them. We have snow, and a good deal of ice in winter, but the thermometer never gets below

zero. I have to supply my own crockery. I will have two servants and cook; I will only get one and the cook

firstthey only cost $4 to $5.50 per month, and their board amounts to very little. I can get along, don't you

think so? Now I want you to get Jim to pack up all my professional works on gunnery, surveying,

seamanship, mathematics, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, calculus, mechanics,

and every book of that description I own, including those paperbound 'Naval Institute' papers, and put them in

a box, together with any photos, etc., you think I would likeI have none of you or Pa or the family

"I just got in in timedidn't I? Another week would have been too late. My funds were getting low; I would

not have had anything before long. The U. S. Consul, General Bromley, is much pleased. The interpreter says

"I will have a chance to go to Peking and later to a tiger hunt in Mongolia, but for the present I am going to

study, work, and stroke these mandarins till I get a raise. I am the only instructor in both seamanship and

gunnery, and I must know everything, both practically and theoretically. But it will be good for me and the

only thing is, that if I were put back into the Navy I would be in a dilemma. I think I will get my 'influence' to

work, and I want you people at home to look out, and in case I amif it were represented to the Sec. that my

position here was giving me an immense lot of practical knowledge professionallymore than I could get on

a ship at seaI think he would give me two years' leave on half or quarter pay. Or, I would be willing to do

It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the very same letter in which he announces he has entered foreign

service he plans to return to that of his own country. This hope never left him. You find the same

homesickness for the quarterdeck of an American manofwar all through his later letters. At one time a bill

to reinstate the midshipmen who had been cheated of their commissions was introduced into Congress. Of

this McGiffin writes frequently as "our bill." "It may pass," he writes, "but I am tired hoping. I have hoped so

long. And if it should," he adds anxiously, "there may be a time limit set in which a man must rejoin, or lose

his chance, so do not fail to let me know as quickly as you can." But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never

returned to the navy that had cut him adrift. He settled down at TienTsin and taught the young cadets how to

shoot. Almost all of those who in the ChineseJapanese War served as officers were his pupils. As the navy

grew, he grew with it, and his position increased in importance. More Mexican dollars per month, more

servants, larger houses, and buttons of various honorable colors were given him, and, in return, he established

for China a modem naval college patterned after our own. In those days throughout China and Japan you

could find many of these foreign advisers. Now, in Japan, the Hon. W. H. Dennison of the Foreign Office,

one of our own people, is the only foreigner with whom the Japanese have not parted, and in China there are

none. Of all of those who have gone none served his employers more faithfully than did McGiffin. At a time

when every official robbed the people and the Government, and when "squeeze" or "graft" was recognized as

a perquisite, McGiffin's hands were clean. The shells purchased for the Government by him were not loaded

with black sand, nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. Once a year he celebrated the

Thanksgiving Day of his own country by inviting to a great dinner all the Chinese naval officers who had

been at least in part educated in America. It was a great occasion, and to enjoy it officers used to come from

as far as Port Arthur, Shanghai, and HongKong. So fully did some of them appreciate the efforts of their

host that previous to his annual dinner, for twentyfour hours, they delicately starved themselves.

During ten years McGiffin served as naval constructor and professor of gunnery and seamanship, and on

board ships at sea gave practical demonstrations in the handling of the new cruisers. In 1894 he applied for

leave, which was granted, but before he had sailed for home war with Japan was declared and he withdrew

his application. He was placed as second in command on board the Chen Yuen, a seventhousandton

battleship, a sister ship to the Ting Yuen, the flagship of Admiral Ting Ju Chang. On the memorable 17th of

September, 1894, the battle of the Yalu was fought, and so badly were the Chinese vessels hammered that the

From the start the advantage was with the Japanese fleet. In heavy guns the Chinese were the better armed,

but in quickfiring guns the Japanese were vastly superior, and while the Chinese battleships Ting Yuen and

Chen Yuen, each of 7,430 tons, were superior to any of the Japanese warships, the three largest of which

were each of 4,277 tons, the gross tonnage of the Japanese fleet was 36,000 to 21,000 of the Chinese. During

the progress of the battle the ships engaged on each side numbered an even dozen, but at the very start, before

a decisive shot was fired by either contestant, the Tsi Yuen, 2,355 tons, and Kwan Chiae, 1,300 tons, ran

away, and before they had time to get into the game the Chao Yung and Yang Wei were in flames and had

fled to the nearest land. So the battle was fought by eight Chinese ships against twelve of the Japanese. Of the

Chinese vessels, the flagship, commanded by Admiral Ting, and her sister ship, which immediately after the

beginning of the fight was for four hours commanded by McGiffin, were the two chief aggressors, and in

consequence received the fire of the entire Japanese squadron. Toward the end of the fight, which without

interruption lasted for five long hours, the Japanese did not even consider the four smaller ships of the enemy,

but, sailing around the two ironclads in a circle, fired only at them. The Japanese themselves testified that

these two ships never lost their formation, and that when her sister ironclad was closely pressed the Chen

Yuen, by her movements and gun practice, protected the Ting Yuen, and, in fact, while she could not prevent

the heavy loss the fleet encountered, preserved it from annihilation. During the fight this ship was almost

continuously on fire, and was struck by every kind of projectile, from the thirteeninch Canet shells to a rifle

bullet, four hundred times. McGiffin himself was so badly wounded, so beaten about by concussions, so

burned, and so bruised by steel splinters, that his health and eyesight were forever wrecked. But he brought

On account of his lack of health he resigned from the Chinese service and returned to America. For two years

he lived in New York City, suffering in body without cessation the most exquisite torture. During that time

his letters to his family show only tremendous courage. On the splintered, gaping deck of the Chen Yuen,

with the fires below it, and the shells bursting upon it, he had shown to his Chinese crew the courage of the

white man who knew he was responsible for them and for the honor of their country. But far greater and more

difficult was the courage he showed while alone in the dark sickroom, and in the private wards of the

In the letters he dictates from there he still is concerned only lest those at home shall "worry"; he reassures

them with falsehoods, jokes at their fears; of the people he can see from the window of the hospital tells them

foolish stories; for a little boy who has been kind he asks them to send him his Chinese postage stamps; he

plans a trip he will take with them when he is stronger, knowing he never will be stronger. The doctors had

urged upon him a certain operation, and of it to a friend he wrote: "I know that I will have to have a piece

about three inches square cut out of my skull, and this nerve cut off near the middle of the brain, as well as

my eye taken out (for a couple of hours only, provided it is not mislaid, and can be found). Doctor

and his crowd show a bad memory for failures. As a result of this operation others have told meI forget the

percentage of deaths, which does not matter, butthat a large percentage have become insane. And some

While threatened with insanity and complete blindness, and hourly from his wounds suffering a pain drugs

could not master, he dictated for the Century Magazine the only complete account of the battle of the Yalu. In

a letter to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder he writes: "...my eyes are troubling me. I cannot see even what I am

writing now, and am getting the article under difficulties. I yet hope to place it in your hands by the 21st, still,

Unknown to his attendants at the hospital, among the papers in his despatchbox he had secreted his service

revolver. On the morning of the 11th of February, 1897, he asked for this box, and on some pretext sent the

nurse from the room. When the report of the pistol brought them running to his bedside, they found the

"Chief among those who have died for their country is Admiral Ting Ju Chang, a gallant soldier and true

gentleman. Betrayed by his countrymen, fighting against odds, almost his last official act was to stipulate for

the lives of his officers and men. His own he scorned to save, well knowing that his ungrateful country would

prove less merciful than his honorable foe. Bitter, indeed, must have been the reflections of the old, wounded

hero, in that midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cup that was to give him rest."

And bitter indeed must have been the reflections of the young wounded American, robbed, by the parsimony

of his country, of the right he had earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give his best years and his life

IT is safe to say that to members of the younger generation the name of William Walker conveys absolutely

nothing. To them, as a name, "William Walker" awakens no pride of race or country. It certainly does not

suggest poetry and adventure. To obtain a place in even this group of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker,

the most distinguished of all American Soldiers of Fortune, the one who but for his own countrymen would

have singlehanded attained the most farreaching results, had to wait his turn behind adventurers of other

lands and boy officers of his own. And yet had this man with the plain name, the name that today means

nothing, accomplished what he adventured, he would on this continent have solved the problem of slavery,

have established an empire in Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have brought us into war

In the days of gold in San Francisco among the "Fortyniners" William Walker was one of the most famous,

most picturesque and popular figures. Jack Oakhurst, gambler; Colonel Starbottle, duellist; Yuba Bill,

stagecoach 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.

In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera he made his first appearance, for ten minutes the performance

This happened less than fifty years ago, and there are men who as boys were out with "Walker of Nicaragua,"

Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, Tenn. He was the oldest son of a Scotch banker, a man of a deeply

religious mind, and interested in a business which certainly is removed, as far as possible, from the profession

of arms. Indeed, few men better than William Walker illustrate the fact that great generals are born, not

trained. Everything in Walker's birth, family tradition, and education pointed to his becoming a member of

one of the "learned" professions. It was the wish of his father that he should be a minister of the Presbyterian

Church, and as a child he was trained with that end in view. He himself preferred to study medicine, and after

graduating at the University of Tennessee, at Edinburgh he followed a course of lectures, and for two years

Then having thoroughly equipped himself to practise as a physician, after a brief return to his native city, and

as short a stay in Philadelphia, he took down his shingle forever, and proceeded to New Orleans to study law.

In two years he was admitted to the bar of Louisiana. But because clients were few, or because the red tape of

the law chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he had abandoned the Church and Medicine, he abandoned

his law practice and became an editorial writer on the New Orleans Crescent. A year later the restlessness

which had rebelled against the grave professions led him to the gold fields of California, and San Francisco.

There, in 1852, at the age of only twentyeight, as editor of the San Francisco Herald, Walker began his real

Up to his twentyeighth year, except in his restlessness, nothing in his life foreshadowed what was to follow.

Nothing pointed to him as a man for whom thousands of other men, from every capital of the world, would

Negatively, by abandoning three separate callings, and in making it plain that a professional career did not

appeal to him, Walker had thrown a certain sidelight on his character; but actively he never had given any

hint that under the thoughtful brow of the young doctor and lawyer there was a mind evolving schemes of

Walker's first adventure was undoubtedly inspired by and in imitation of one which at the time of his arrival

in San Francisco had just been brought to a disastrous end. This was the De Boulbon expedition into Mexico.

The Count Gaston Raoulx de RaoussetBoulbon was a young French nobleman and Soldier of Fortune, a

chasseur d'Afrique, a duellist, journalist, dreamer, who came to California to dig gold. Baron HardenHickey,

who was born in San Francisco a few years after Boulbon at the age of thirty was shot in Mexico, also was

Boulbon was a young man of large ideas. In the rapid growth of California he saw a threat to Mexico and

proposed to that government, as a "buffer" state between the two republics, to form a French colony in the

Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of

Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at

Guaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty wellarmed Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse

of Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was his contract with the President under which his "emigrants"

were hired to protect other foreigners working in the "Restauradora" mines from the attacks of Apache

Indians from our own Arizona. But there is evidence that back of Boulbon was the French Government, and

that he was attempting, in his small way, what later was attempted by Maximilian, backed by a French army

corps and Louis Napoleon, to establish in Mexico an empire under French protection. For both the filibuster

and the emperor the end was the same; to be shot by the fusillade against a church wall.

In 1852, two years before Boulbon's death, which was the finale to his second filibustering expedition into

Sonora, he wrote to a friend in Paris: "Europeans are disturbed by the growth of the United States. And

rightly so. Unless she be dismembered; unless a powerful rival be built up beside her (i .e., France in

Mexico), America will become, through her commerce, her trade, her population, her geographical position

upon two oceans, the inevitable mistress of the world. In ten years Europe dare not fire a shot without her

permission. As I write fifty Americans prepare to sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. Voila les

These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of Boulbon, threatened the peace of Europe, were led by the

exdoctor, exlawyer, exeditor, William Walker, aged twentyeight years. Walker had attempted but had

failed to obtain from the Mexican Government such a contract as the one it had granted De Boulbon. He

accordingly sailed without it, announcing that, whether the Mexican Government asked him to do so or not,

he would see that the women and children on the border of Mexico and Arizona were protected from

massacre by the Indians. It will be remembered that when Dr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he also went to

protect "women and children" from massacre by the Boers. Walker's explanation of his expedition, in his own

words, is as follows. He writes in the third person: "What Walker saw and heard satisfied him that a

comparatively small body of Americans might gain a position on the Sonora frontier and protect the families

on the border from the Indians, and such an act would be one of humanity whether or not sanctioned by the

Mexican Government. The condition of the upper part of Sonora was at that time, and still is [he was writing

eight years later, in 1860], a disgrace to the civilization of the continent...and the people of the United States

were more immediately responsible before the world for the Apache outrages. Northern Sonora was in fact,

more under the dominion of the Apaches than under the laws of Mexico, and the contributions of the Indians

were collected with greater regularity and certainty than the dues of the taxgatherers. The state of this region

furnished the best defence for any American aiming to settle there without the formal consent of Mexico;

and, although political changes would certainly have followed the establishment of a colony, they might be

justified by the plea that any social organization, no matter how secured, is preferable to that in which

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

But it was not to save women and children that Walker sought to conquer the State of Sonora. At the time of

his expedition the great question of slavery was acute; and if in the States next to be admitted to the Union

slavery was to be prohibited, the time had come, so it seemed to this statesman of twentyeight 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 slaveholder. In Tennessee he had been born and bred

surrounded by slaves. His youth and manhood had been spent in Nashville and New Orleans. He believed as

honestly, as fanatically in the right to hold slaves as did his father in the faith of the Covenanters. Today one

reads his arguments in favor of slavery with the most curious interest. His appeal to the humanity of his

reader, to his heart, to his sense of justice, to his fear of God, and to his belief in the Holy Bible not to abolish

slavery, but to continue it, to this generation is as amusing as the topsyturvyisms of Gilbert or Shaw. But to

the young man himself slavery was a sacred institution, intended for the betterment of mankind, a Godgiven

White brothers in the South, with perhaps less exalted motives, contributed funds to fit out Walker's

expedition, and in October, 1852, with fortyfive men, he landed at Cape St. Lucas, at the extreme point of

Lower California. Lower California, it must be remembered, in spite of its name, is not a part of our

California, but then was, and still is, a part of Mexico. The fact that he was at last upon the soil of the enemy

caused Walker to throw off all pretence; and instead of hastening to protect women and children, he sailed a

few miles farther up the coast to La Paz. With his fortyfive followers he raided the town, made the

Governor a prisoner, and established a republic with himself as President. In a proclamation he declared the

people free of the tyranny of Mexico. They had no desire to be free, but Walker was determined, and,

whether they liked it or not, they woke up to find themselves an independent republic. A few weeks later,

although he had not yet set foot there, Walker annexed on paper the State of Sonora, and to both States gave

As soon as word of this reached San Francisco, his friends busied themselves in his behalf, and the

dangerloving and adventurous of all lands were enlisted as "emigrants" and shipped to him in the bark

Two months later, in November, 1852, three hundred of these joined Walker. They were as desperate a band

of scoundrels as ever robbed a sluice, stoned a Chinaman, or shot a "Greaser." When they found that to

command them there was only a boy, they plotted to blow up the magazine in which the powder was stored,

rob the camp, and march north, supporting themselves by looting the ranches. Walker learned of their plot,

tried the ringleaders by courtmartial, and shot them. With a force as absolutely undisciplined as was his, the

act required the most complete personal courage. That was a quality the men with him could fully appreciate.

They saw they had as a leader one who could fight, and one who would punish. The majority did not want a

leader who would punish so when Walker called upon those who would follow him to Sonora to show their

hands, only the original fortyfive and about forty of the later recruits remained with him. With less than one

hundred men he started to march up the Peninsula through Lower California, and so around the Gulf to

From the very start the filibusters were overwhelmed with disaster. The Mexicans, with Indian allies, skulked

on the flanks and rear. Men who in the almost daily encounters were killed fell into the hands of the Indians,

and their bodies were mutilated. Stragglers and deserters were run to earth and tortured. Those of the

filibusters who were wounded died from lack of medical care. The only instruments they possessed with

which to extract the arrowheads 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

Unable to proceed farther, Walker fell back upon San Vincente, where he had left the arms and ammunition

of the deserters and a rearguard 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 thirtyfive men. To wait for further reenforcements from San Francisco, even were he sure that

reenforcements would come, was impossible. He determined by forced marches to fight his way to the

boundary line of California. Between him and safety were the Mexican soldiers holding the passes, and the

Indians hiding on his flanks. When within three miles of the boundary line, at San Diego, Colonel Melendrez,

who commanded the Mexican forces, sent in a flag of truce, and offered, if they would surrender, a

safeconduct to all of the survivors of the expedition except the chief. But the men who for one year had

fought and starved for Walker, would not, within three miles of home, abandon him.

Melendrez then begged the commander of the United States troops to order Walker to surrender. Major

McKinstry, who was in command of the United States Army Post at San Diego, refused. For him to cross the

line would be a violation of neutral territory. On Mexican soil he would neither embarrass the exPresident

of Sonora nor aid him; but he saw to it that if the filibusters reached American soil, no Mexican or Indian

Accordingly, on the imaginary boundary he drew up his troop, and like an impartial umpire awaited the

result. Hidden behind rocks and cactus, across the hot, glaring plain, the filibusters could see the American

flag, and the gay, fluttering guidons of the cavalry. The sight gave them heart for one last desperate spurt.

Melendrez also appreciated that for the final attack the moment had come. As he charged, Walker, apparently

routed, fled, but concealed in the rocks behind him he had stationed a rearguard of a dozen men. As

Melendrez rode into this ambush the dozen riflemen emptied as many saddles, and the Mexicans and Indians

stampeded. A half hour later, footsore and famished, the little band that had set forth to found an empire of

slaves, staggered across the line and surrendered to the forces of the United States.

Of this expedition James Jeffrey Roche says, in his "Byways of War," which is of all books published about

Walker the most intensely and fascinatingly interesting and complete: "Years afterward the peon herdsman or

prowling Cocupa Indian in the mountain bypaths stumbled over the bleaching skeleton of some nameless

one whose restingplace was marked by no cross or cairn, but the Colts revolver resting beside his bones

spoke his country and his occupationthe only relic of the wouldbe conquistadores of the nineteenth

Under parole to report to General Wood, commanding the Department of the Pacific, the filibusters were sent

by sailing vessel to San Francisco, where their leader was tried for violating the neutrality laws of the United

Walker's first expedition had ended in failure, but for him it had been an opportunity of tremendous

experience, as active service is the best of all military academies, and for the kind of warfare he was to wage,

the best preparation. Nor was it inglorious, for his fellow survivors, contrary to the usual practice, instead of

in barrooms placing the blame for failure upon their leader, stood ready to fight one and all who doubted his

ability or his courage. Later, after five years, many of these same men, though ten to twenty years his senior,

followed him to death, and never questioned his judgment nor his right to command.

At this time in Nicaragua there was the usual revolution. On the south the sister republic of Costa Rica was

taking sides, on the north Honduras was landing arms and men. There was no law, no government. A dozen

In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco Herald, Walker, searching the map for new worlds to conquer,

In its confusion of authority he saw an opportunity to make himself a power, and in its tropical wealth and

beauty, in the laziness and incompetence of its inhabitants, he beheld a greater, fairer, more kind Sonora. On

the Pacific side from San Francisco he could reenforce his army with men and arms; on the Caribbean side

from New Orleans he could, when the moment arrived, people his empire with slaves.

The two parties at war in Nicaragua were the Legitimists and the Democrats. Why they were at war it is not

necessary to know. Probably Walker did not know; it is not likely that they themselves knew. But from the

leader of the Democrats Walker obtained a contract to bring to Nicaragua three hundred Americans, who

were each to receive several hundred acres of land, and who were described as "colonists liable to military

duty." This contract Walker submitted to the AttorneyGeneral of the State and to General Wood, who once

before had acquitted him of filibustering; and neither of these Federal officers saw anything which seemed to

give them the right to interfere. But the rest of San Francisco was less credulous, and the "colonists" who

joined Walker had a very distinct idea that they were not going to Nicaragua to plant coffee or to pick

In May, 1855, just a year after Walker and his thirtythree followers had surrendered to the United States

troops at San Diego, with fifty new recruits and seven veterans of the former expedition he sailed from San

Francisco in the brig Vesta, and in five weeks, after a weary and stormy voyage, landed at Realejo. There he

was met by representatives of the Provisional Director of the Democrats, who received the Californians

Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achilles Kewen, who had been fighting under Lopez in Cuba, a

lieutenantcolonel, and Timothy Crocker, who had served under Walker in the Sonora expedition, a major.

The corps was organized as an independent command and was named "La Falange Americana." At this time

the enemy held the route to the Caribbean, and Walker's first orders were to dislodge him.

Accordingly, a week after landing with his fiftyseven 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

The first fight ended in a complete and disastrous fiasco. The native troops ran away, and the Americans

surrounded by six hundred of the Legitimists' soldiers, after defending themselves for three hours behind

some adobe huts, charged the enemy and escaped into the jungle. Their loss was heavy, and among the killed

were the two men upon whom Walker chiefly depended: Kewen and Crocker. The Legitimists placed the

bodies of the dead and wounded who were still living on a pile of logs and burned them. After a painful night

march, Walker, the next day, reached San Juan on the coast, and, finding a Costa Rican schooner in port,

seized it for his use. At this moment, although Walker's men were defeated, bleeding, and in open flight, two

"gringos " picked up on the beach of San Juan, "the Texan Harry McLeod and the Irishman Peter Burns,"

"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

Sometimes in reading history it would appear as though for success the first requisite must be an utter lack of

humor, and inability to look upon what one is attempting except with absolute seriousness. With forty men

Walker was planning to conquer and rule Nicaragua, a country with a population of two hundred and fifty

thousand souls and as large as the combined area of Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire,

and Connecticut. And yet, even seven years later, he records without a smile that two beachcombers gave

his army "moral and material strength." And it is most characteristic of the man that at the moment he was

rejoicing over this addition to his forces, to maintain discipline two Americans who had set fire to the houses

of the enemy he ordered to be shot. A weaker man would have repudiated the two Americans, who, in fact,

were not members of the Phalanx, and trusted that their crimes would not be charged against him. But the

success of Walker lay greatly in his stern discipline. He tried the men, and they confessed to their guilt. One

got away; and, as it might appear that Walker had connived at his escape, to the second man was shown no

mercy. When one reads how severe was Walker in his punishments, and how frequently the death penalty

was invoked by him against his own few followers, the wonder grows that these men, as independent and as

unaccustomed to restraint as were those who first joined him, submitted to his leadership. One can explain it

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 unselfseeking. In a fight, his followers knew that for them he would risk being shot

Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to women, he punished with death; but to the wounded, either of

his own or of the enemy's forces, he was as gentle as a nursing sister and the brave and able he rewarded with

instant promotion and higher pay. In no one trait was he a demagogue. One can find no effort on his part to

ingratiate himself with his men. Among the officers of his staff there were no favorites. He messed alone, and

at all times kept to himself. He spoke little, and then with utter lack of selfconsciousness. In the face of

injustice, perjury, or physical danger, he was always calm, firm, dispassionate. But it is said that on those

infrequent occasions when his anger asserted itself, the steady steelgray eyes flashed so menacingly that

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, studentlike young man believing religiously in his "star of

destiny"; but, in all matters that did not concern himself, possessed of a grim sense of fun. The sayings of his

men that in his history of the war he records, show a distinct appreciation of the Bret Harte school of humor.

As, for instance, when he tells how he wished to make one of them a drummer boy and the Californian

drawled: "No, thanks, colonel; I never seen a picture of a battle yet that the first thing in it wasn't a dead

In Walker the personal vanity which is so characteristic of the soldier of fortune was utterly lacking. In a land

where a captain bedecks himself like a fieldmarshal, Walker wore his trousers stuffed in his boots, a

civilian's blue frockcoat, 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 deepset gray eyes. These eyes apparently, as they gave him his nickname, were his most marked

His followers called him, and later, when he was thirtytwo years old, he was known all over the United

From the first Walker recognized that in order to establish himself in Nicaragua he must keep in touch with

all possible recruits arriving from San Francisco and New York, and that to do this he must hold the line of

transit from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. At this time the sea routes to the goldfields were three: by

sailing vessel around the Cape, one over the Isthmus of Panama, and one, which was the shortest, across

Nicaragua. By a charter from the Government of Nicaragua, the right to transport passengers across this

isthmus was controlled by the Accessory Transit Company, of which the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was

president. His company owned a line of ocean steamers both on the Pacific side and on the Atlantic side.

Passengers en route from New York to the goldfields were landed by these latter steamers at Greytown on

the west coast of Nicaragua, and sent by boats of light draught up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua.

There they were met by larger lake steamers and conveyed across the lake to Virgin Bay. From that point, in

carriages and on mule back, they were carried twelve miles overland to the port of San Juan del Sud on the

During the year of Walker's occupation the number of passengers crossing Nicaragua was an average of

It was to control this route that immediately after his first defeat Walker returned to San Juan del Sud, and in

a smart skirmish defeated the enemy and secured possession of Virgin Bay, the halting place for the

passengers going east or west. In this fight Walker was outnumbered five to one, but his losses were only

three natives killed and a few Americans wounded. The Legitimists lost sixty killed and a hundred wounded.

This proportion of losses shows how fatally effective was the rifle and revolver fire of the Californians.

Indeed, so wonderful was it that when some years ago I visited the towns and cities captured by the

filibusters, I found that the marksmanship of Walker's Phalanx was still a tradition. Indeed, thanks to the

filibusters, today in any part of Central America a man from the States, if in trouble, has only to show his

After the fight at Virgin Bay, Walker received from California fifty recruitsa 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 headquarters of the Legitimists.

Fearing Walker's attack upon Rivas, the Legitimist troops were hurried south from Granada to that city,

Through intercepted letters Walker learned of this and determined to strike at Granada. By night, in one of

the lake steamers, he skirted the shore, and just before daybreak, with fires banked and all lights out, drew up

to a point near the city. The day previous the Legitimists had gained a victory, and, as good luck or Walker's

"destiny" would have it, the night before Granada had been celebrating the event. Much joyous dancing and

much drinking of aguardiente had buried the inhabitants in a drugged slumber. The garrison slept, the sentries

slept, the city slept. But when the convent bells called for early mass, the air was shaken with sharp reports

that to the ears of the Legitimists were unfamiliar and disquieting. They were not the loud explosions of their

own muskets nor of the smooth bores of the Democrats. The sounds were sharp and cruel like the crack of a

whip. The sentries flying from their posts disclosed the terrifying truth. "The Filibusteros!" they cried.

Following them at a gallop came Walker and Valle and behind them the men of the awful Phalanx, whom

already the natives had learned to fear: the bearded giants in red flannel shirts who at Rivas on foot had

charged the artillery with revolvers, who at Virgin Bay when wounded had drawn from their boots glittering

bowie knives and hurled them like arrows, who at all times shot with the accuracy of the hawk falling upon a

There was a brief terrified stand in the Plaza, and then a complete rout. As was their custom, the native

Democrats began at once to loot the city. But Walker put his sword into the first one of these he met, and

ordered the Americans to arrest all others found stealing, and to return the goods already stolen. Over a

hundred political prisoners in the cartel were released by Walker, and the ball and chain to which each was

fastened stricken off. More than twothirds of them at once enlisted under Walker's banner.

He now was in a position to dictate to the enemy his own terms of peace, but a fatal blunder on the part of

Parker H. French, a lieutenant of Walker's, postponed peace for several weeks, and led to unfortunate

reprisals. French had made an unauthorized and unsuccessful assault on San Carlos at the eastern end of the

lake, and the Legitimists retaliated at Virgin Bay by killing half a dozen peaceful passengers, and at San

Carlos by firing at a transit steamer. For this the excuse of the Legitimists was, that now that Walker was

using the lake steamers as transports it was impossible for them to know whether the boats were occupied by

his men or neutral passengers. As he could not reach the guilty ones, Walker held responsible for their acts

their secretary of state, who at the taking of Granada was among the prisoners. He was tried by courtmartial

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 fiftyseven followers landed in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was

arranged, and the side for which the Americans had fought was in power. Walker was made

commanderinchief of an army of twelve hundred men with salary of six thousand dollars a year. A man

To Walker this pause in the fight was most welcome. It gave him an opportunity to enlist recruits and to

organize his men for the better accomplishment of what was the real object of his going to Nicaragua. He

now had under him a remarkable force, one of the most effective known to military history. For although six

months had not yet passed, the organization he now commanded was as unlike the Phalanx of the fiftyeight

adventurers who were driven back at Rivas, as were Falstaff's followers from the regiment of picked men

commanded by Colonel Roosevelt. Instead of the undisciplined and lawless now being in the majority, the

ranks were filled with the pick of the California mining camps, with veterans of the Mexican War, with

young Southerners of birth and spirit, and with soldiers of fortune from all of the great armies of Europe.

In the Civil War, which so soon followed, and later in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, were several of

Walker's officers, and for years after his death there was no war in which one of the men trained by him in

the jungles of Nicaragua did not distinguish himself. In his memoirs, the Englishman, General Charles

Frederic Henningsen, writes that though he had taken part in some of the greatest battles of the Civil War he

would pit a thousand men of Walker's command against any five thousand Confederate or Union soldiers.

And General Henningsen was one who spoke with authority. Before he joined Walker he had served in Spain

Of Walker's men, a regiment of which he commanded, he writes: "I often have seen them march with a

broken or compound fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a

fractured thigh or wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, shot themselves. Such men do not turn

up in the average of everyday life, nor do I ever expect to see their like again. All military science failed on a

suddenly given field before such assailants, who came at a run to close with their revolvers and who thought

Another graduate of Walker's army was Captain Fred Townsend Ward, a native of Salem, Mass., who after

the death of Walker organized and led the ever victorious army that put down the TaiPing rebellion, and

performed the many feats of martial glory for which Chinese Gordon received the credit. In Shanghai, to the

Joaquin Miller, the poet, miner, and soldier, who but recently was a picturesque figure on the hotel porch at

Saratoga Springs, was one of the young Californians who was "out with Walker," and who later in his career

by his verse helped to preserve the name of his beloved commander. I. C. Jamison, living today in Guthrie,

Oklahoma, was a captain under Walker. When war again came, as it did within four months, these were the

During the four months in all but title he had been president, and as such he was recognized and feared. It

was against him, not Rivas, that in February, 1856, the neighboring republic of Costa Rica declared war. For

three months this war continued with varying fortunes until the Costa Ricans were driven across the border.

In June of the same year Rivas called a general election for president, announcing himself as the candidate of

the Democrats. Two other Democrats also presented themselves, Salazar and Ferrer. The Legitimists,

recognizing in their former enemy the real ruler of the country, nominated Walker. By an overwhelming

majority he was elected, receiving 15,835 votes to 867 cast for Rivas. Salazar received 2,087; Ferrer, 4,447.

Walker now was the legal as well as the actual ruler of the country, and at no time in its history, as during

Walker's administration, was Nicaragua governed so justly, so wisely, and so well. But in his success the

neighboring republics saw a menace to their own independence. To the four other republics of Central

America the fivepointed bloodred star on the flag of the filibusters bore a sinister motto: "Five or None."

The meaning was only too unpleasantly obvious. At once, Costa Rica on the south, and Guatemala, Salvador,

and Honduras from the north, with the malcontents of Nicaragua, declared war against the foreign invader.

Again Walker was in the field with opposed to him 21,000 of the allies. The strength of his own force varied.

On his election as president the backbone of his army was a magnificently trained body of veterans to the

number of 2,000. This was later increased to 3,500, but it is doubtful if at any one time it ever exceeded that

number. His muster and hospital rolls show that during his entire occupation of Nicaragua there were

enlisted, at one time or another, under his banner 10,000 men. While in his service, of this number, by hostile

To describe the battles with the allies would be interminable and wearying. In every particular they are much

alike: the long silent night march, the rush at daybreak, the fight to gain strategic positions either of the

barracks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza, the handtohand fighting from behind barricades and adobe walls.

The outcome of these fights sometimes varied, but the final result was never in doubt, and had no outside

influences intervened, in time each republic in Central America would have come under the fivepointed

In Costa Rica there is a marble statue showing that republic represented as a young woman with her foot

upon the neck of Walker. Some night a truthloving 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

When Walker was elected president he found that the Accessory Transit Company had not lived up to the

terms of its concession with the Nicaraguan Government. His efforts to hold it to the terms of its concession

led to his overthrow. By its charter the Transit Company agreed to pay to Nicaragua ten thousand dollars

annually and ten per cent. of the net profits; but the company, whose history the United States Minister,

Squire, characterized as "an infamous career of deception and fraud," manipulated its books in such a fashion

as to show that there never were any profits. Doubting this, Walker sent a commission to New York to

investigate. The commission discovered the fraud and demanded in back payments two hundred and fifty

thousand dollars. When the company refused to pay this, as security for the debt Walker seized its steamers,

wharves, and storehouses, revoked its charter, and gave a new charter to two of its directors, Morgan and

Garrison, who, in San Francisco, were working against Vanderbilt. In doing this, while he was legally in the

right, he committed a fatal error. He had made a powerful enemy of Vanderbilt, and he had shut off his only

lines of communication with the United States. For, enraged at the presumption of the filibuster president,

Vanderbilt withdrew his ocean steamers, thus leaving Walker without men or ammunition, and as isolated as

though upon a deserted island. He possessed Vanderbilt's boats upon the San Juan River and Nicaragua Lake,

His position was that of a man holding the centre span of a bridge of which every span on either side of him

Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing his steamers, but by supporting the Costa Ricans with money and men,

carried the war into Central America. From Washington he fought Walker through Secretary of State Marcy,

Spencer and Webster, and the other soldiers of fortune employed by Vanderbilt, closed the route on the

Caribbean side, and the manofwar St. Marys, commanded by Captain Davis, was ordered to San Juan on

the Pacific side. The instructions given to Captain Davis were to aid the allies in forcing Walker out of

Nicaragua. Walker claims that these orders were given to Marcy by Vanderbilt and by Marcy to Commodore

Mervin, who was Marcy's personal friend and who issued them to Davis. Davis claims that he acted only in

the interest of humanity to save Walker in spite of himself. In any event, the result was the same. Walker, his

force cut down by hostile shot and fever and desertion, took refuge in Rivas, where he was besieged by the

allied armies. There was no bread in the city. The men were living on horse and mule meat. There was no

Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, demanded Walker's surrender to the United States. Walker told him

he would not surrender, but that if the time came when he found he must fly, he would do so in his own little

schooner of war, the Granada, which constituted his entire navy, and in her, as a free man, take his forces

where he pleased. Then Davis informed Walker that the force Walker had sent to recapture the Greytown

route had been defeated by the janizaries of Vanderbilt; that the steamers from San Francisco, on which

Walker now counted to bring him reenforcements, had also been taken off the line, and finally that it was

his "unalterable and deliberate intention" to seize the Granada. On this point his orders left him no choice.

The Granada was the last means of transportation still left to Walker. He had hoped to make a sortie and on

board her to escape from the country. But with his ship taken from him and no longer able to sustain the siege

of the allies, he surrendered to the forces of the United States. In the agreement drawn up by him and Davis,

Walker provided for the care, by Davis, of the sick and wounded, for the protection after his departure of the

natives who had fought with him, and for the transportation of himself and officers to the United States.

On his arrival in New York he received a welcome such as later was extended to Kossuth, and, in our own

day, to Admiral Dewey. The city was decorated with flags and arches; and banquets, fetes, and public

meetings were everywhere held in his honor. Walker received these demonstrations modestly, and on every

public occasion announced his determination to return to the country of which he was the president, and from

which by force he had been driven. At Washington, where he went to present his claims, he received scant

encouragement. His protest against Captain Davis was referred to Congress, where it was allowed to die.

Within a month Walker organized an expedition with which to regain his rights in Nicaragua, and as, in his

new constitution for that country, he had annulled the old law abolishing slavery, among the slaveholders of

the South he found enough money and recruits to enable him to at once leave the United States. With one

hundred and fifty men he sailed from New Orleans and landed at San del Norte on the Caribbean side. While

he formed a camp on the harbor of San Juan, one of his officers, with fifty men, proceeded up the river and,

capturing the town of Castillo Viejo and four of the Transit steamers, was in a fair way to obtain possession

of the entire route. At this moment upon the scene arrived the United States frigate Wabash and Hiram

Paulding, who landed a force of three hundred and fifty bluejackets with howitzers, and turned the guns of

his frigate upon the camp of the President of Nicaragua. Captain Engel, who presented the terms of surrender

to Walker, said to him: "General, I am sorry to see you here. A man like you is worthy to command better

men." To which Walker replied grimly: "If I had a third the number you have brought against me, I would

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

On his arrival in the United States, in fulfilment of his parole to Paulding, Walker at once presented himself

at Washington a prisoner of war. But President Buchanan, although Paulding had acted exactly as Davis had

done, refused to support him, and in a message to Congress declared that that officer had committed a grave

On the strength of this Walker demanded of the United States Government indemnity for his losses, and that

it should furnish him and his followers transportation even to the very camp from which its representatives

had torn him. This demand, as Walker foresaw, was not considered seriously, and with a force of about one

hundred men, among whom were many of his veterans, he again set sail from New Orleans. Owing to the fact

that, to prevent his return, there now were on each side of the Isthmus both American and British

menofwar, Walker, with the idea of reaching Nicaragua by land, stopped off at Honduras. In his war with

the allies the Honduranians had been as savage in their attacks upon his men as even the Costa Ricans, and

finding his old enemies now engaged in a local revolution, on landing, Walker declared for the weaker side

and captured the important seaport of Trujillo. He no sooner had taken it than the British warship Icarus

anchored in the harbor, and her commanding officer, Captain Salmon, notified Walker that the British

Government held a mortgage on the revenues of the port, and that to protect the interests of his Government

he intended to take the town. Walker answered that he had made Trujillo a free port, and that Great Britain's

The British officer replied that if Walker surrendered himself and his men he would carry them as prisoners

to the United States, and that if he did not, he would bombard the town. At this moment General Alvarez,

with seven hundred Honduranians, from the land side surrounded Trujillo, and prepared to attack. Against

such odds by sea and land Walker was helpless, and he determined to fly. That night, with seventy men, he

left the town and proceeded down the coast toward Nicaragua. The Icarus, having taken on board Alvarez,

started in pursuit. The President of Nicaragua was found in a little Indian fishing village, and Salmon sent in

his shoreboats and demanded his surrender. On leaving Trujillo, Walker had been forced to abandon all his

ammunition save thirty rounds a man, and all of his food supplies excepting two barrels of bread. On the

coast of this continent there is no spot more unhealthy than Honduras, and when the Englishmen entered the

fishing village they found Walker's seventy men lying in the palm huts helpless with fever, and with no

stomach to fight British bluejackets with whom they had no quarrel. Walker inquired of Salmon if he were

asking him to surrender to the British or to the Honduranian forces, and twice Salmon assured him,

"distinctly and specifically," that he was surrendering to the forces of her Majesty. With this understanding

Walker and his men laid down their arms and were conveyed to the Icarus. But on arriving at Trujillo, in spite

of their protests and demands for trial by a British tribunal, Salmon turned over his prisoners to the

Honduranian general. What excuse for this is now given by his descendants in the Salmon family I do not

Probably it is a subject they avoid, and, in history, Salmon's version has never been given, which for him,

perhaps, is an injustice. But the fact remains that he turned over his white brothers to the mercies of

halfIndian, halfnegro, savages, who were not allies of Great Britain, and in whose quarrels she had no

interest. And Salmon did this, knowing there could be but one end. If he did not know it, his stupidity

equalled what now appears to be heartless indifference. So far as to secure pardon for all except the leader

and one faithful follower, Colonel Rudler of the famous Phalanx, Salmon did use his authority, and he

offered, if Walker would ask as an American citizen, to intercede for him. But Walker, with a distinct sense

of loyalty to the country he had conquered, and whose people had honored him with their votes, refused to

accept life from the country of his birth, the country that had injured and repudiated him.

Even in his extremity, abandoned and alone on a strip of glaring coral and noisome swamp land, surrounded

At thirtyseven life is very sweet, many things still seem possible, and before him, could his life be spared,

Walker beheld greater conquests, more power, a new South controlling a Nicaragua canal, a network of busy

railroads, great squadrons of merchant vessels, himself emperor of Central America. On the gunboat the

goldbraided youth had but to raise his hand, and Walker again would be a free man. But the goldbraided

one would render this service only on the condition that Walker would appeal to him as an American; it was

They led him out at sunrise to a level piece of sand along the beach, and as the priest held the crucifix in front

of him he spoke to his executioners in Spanish, simply and gravely: "I die a Roman Catholic. In making war

upon you at the invitation of the people of Ruatan I was wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept my

punishment with resignation. I would like to think my death will be for the good of society."

From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers fired at him, but, although each shot took effect, Walker was not

dead. So, a sergeant stooped, and with a pistol killed the man who would have made him one of an empire of

Had Walker lived four years longer to exhibit upon the great board of the Civil War his ability as a general,

And because the people of his own day destroyed him is no reason that we should withhold from this

AMONG the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories have been told in this book were men who are no longer

living, men who, to the United States, are strangers, and men who were of interest chiefly because in what

The subject of this article is none of these. His adventures are as remarkable as any that ever led a small boy

to dig behind the barn for buried treasure, or stalk Indians in the orchard. But entirely apart from his

adventures he obtains our interest because in what he has attempted he has not failed, because he is one of our

own people, one of the earliest and best types of American, and because, so far from being dead and buried,

he is at this moment very much alive, and engaged in Mexico in searching for a buried city. For exercise, he

In his home in Pasadena, Cal., where sometimes he rests quietly for almost a week at a time, the neighbors

know him as "Fred" Burnham. In England the newspapers crowned him "The King of Scouts." Later, when

he won an official title, they called him "Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D. S. O."

Some men are born scouts, others by training become scouts. From his father Burnham inherited his instinct

for woodcraft, and to this instinct, which in him is as keen as in a wild deer or a mountain lion, he has

added, in the jungle and on the prairie and mountain ranges, years of the hardest, most relentless schooling. In

those years he has trained himself to endure the most appalling fatigues, hunger, thirst, and wounds; has

subdued the brain to infinite patience, has learned to force every nerve in his body to absolute obedience, to

still even the beating of his heart. Indeed, than Burnham no man of my acquaintance to my knowledge has

devoted himself to his life's work more earnestly, more honestly, and with such singlemindedness of

purpose. To him scouting is as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that today what

the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all other "trackers," woodmen, and scouts. He reads "the face

of Nature" as you read your morning paper. To him a movement of his horse's ears is as plain a warning as

the "Go SLOW" of an automobile sign; and he so saves from ambush an entire troop. In the glitter of a piece

of quartz in the firelight he discovers King Solomon's mines. Like the horned cattle, he can tell by the smell

of it in the air the near presence of water, and where, glaring in the sun, you can see only a bare kopje, he

distinguishes the muzzle of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the levelled barrel of a Mauser. He is

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 hidingplaces 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

Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of fiction, and of the Wild West Show, as it is possible for a man

to be. He possesses no flowing locks, his talk is not of "greasers," "grizzly b'ars," or "pesky redskins." In fact,

because he is more widely and more thoroughly informed, he is much better educated than many who have

passed through one of the "Big Three" universities, and his English is as conventional as though he had been

brought up on the borders of Boston Common, rather than on the borders of civilization.

In appearance he is slight, muscular, bronzed; with a finely formed square jaw, and remarkable light blue

eyes. These eyes apparently never leave yours, but in reality they see everything behind you and about you,

above and below you. They tell of him that one day, while out with a patrol on the veldt, he said he had lost

the trail and, dismounting, began moving about on his hands and knees, nosing the ground like a bloodhound,

and pointing out a trail that led back over the way the force had just marched. When the commanding officer

"Don't raise your head, sit. On that kopje to the right there is a commando of Boers."

In his eyes, possibly, owing to the uses to which they have been trained, the pupils, as in the eyes of animals

that see in the dark, are extremely small. Even in the photographs that accompany this article this feature of

his eyes is obvious, and that he can see in the dark the Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In manner he is

quiet, courteous, talking slowly but well, and, while without any of that shyness that comes from

selfconsciousness, extremely modest. Indeed, there could be no better proof of his modesty than the

difficulties I have encountered in gathering material for this article, which I have been five years in

collecting. And even now, as he reads it by his campfire, I can see him squirm with embarrassment.

Burnham's father was a pioneer missionary in a frontier hamlet called Tivoli on the edge of the Indian reserve

of Minnesota. He was a stern, severely religious man, born in Kentucky, but educated in New York, where he

graduated from the Union Theological Seminary. He was wonderfully skilled in woodcraft. Burnham's

mother was a Miss Rebecca Russell of a wellknown family in Iowa. She was a woman of great courage,

which, in those days on that skirmish line of civilization, was a very necessary virtue; and she was possessed

of a most gentle and sweet disposition. That was her gift to her son Fred, who was born on May 11, 1861.

His education as a child consisted in memorizing many verses of the Bible, the "Three R's," and woodcraft.

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

On another occasion Fred's mother fled for her life from the Indians, carrying the boy with her. He was a

husky lad, and knowing that if she tried to carry him farther they both would be overtaken, she hid him under

a shock of corn. There, the next morning, the Indians having been driven off, she found her son sleeping as

soundly as a night watchman. In these Indian wars, and the Civil War which followed, of the families of

Burnham and Russell, twentytwo of the men were killed. There is no question that Burnham comes of

In 1870, when Fred was nine years old, his father moved to Los Angeles, Cal., where two years later he died;

and for a time for both mother and boy there was poverty, hard and grinding. To relieve this young Burnham

acted as a mounted messenger. Often he was in the saddle from twelve to fifteen hours, and even in a land

where every one rode well, he gained local fame as a hard rider. In a few years a kind uncle offered to Mrs.

Burnham and a younger brother a home in the East, but at the last moment Fred refused to go with them, and

chose to make his own way. He was then thirteen years old, and he had determined to be a scout.

At that particular age many boys have set forth determined to be scouts, and are generally brought home the

next morning by a policeman. But Burnham, having turned his back on the cities, did not repent. He

wandered over Mexico, Arizona, California. He met Indians, bandits, prospectors, hunters of all kinds of big

game; and finally a scout who, under General Taylor, had served in the Mexican War. This man took a liking

to the boy; and his influence upon him was marked and for his good. He was an educated man, and had

carried into the wilderness a few books. In the cabin of this man Burnham read "The Conquest of Mexico and

Peru" by Prescott, the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, of Livingstone the explorer, which first set his

thoughts toward Africa, and many technical works on the strategy and tactics of war. He had no experience of

military operations on a large scale, but, with the aid of the veteran of the Mexican War, with corncobs 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

At nineteen Burnham decided that there were things in this world he should know that could not be gleaned

from the earth, trees, and sky; and with the few dollars he had saved he came East. The visit apparently was

not a success. The atmosphere of the town in which he went to school was strictly Puritanical, and the

townspeople much given to religious discussion. The son of the pioneer missionary found himself unable to

subscribe to the formulas which to the others seemed so essential, and he returned to the West with the most

"It seems strange now," he once said to me, "but in those times religious questions were as much a part of our

daily life as today are automobiles, the Standard Oil, and the insurance scandals, and when I went West I

was in an unhappy, doubting frame of mind. The trouble was I had no moral anchors; the old ones father had

given me were gone, and the time for acquiring new ones had not arrived." This bitterness of heart, or this

disappointment, or whatever the state of mind was that the dogmas of the New England town had inspired in

the boy from the prairie, made him reckless. For the life he was to lead this was not a handicap. Even as a lad,

in a landgrant war in California, he had been under gunfire, and for the next fifteen years he led a life of

danger and of daring; and studied in a school of experience than which, for a scout, if his life be spared, there

can be none better. Burnham came out of it a quiet, manly, gentleman. In those fifteen years he roved the

West from the Great Divide to Mexico. He fought the Apache Indians for the possession of waterholes, he

guarded bullion on stagecoaches, for days rode in pursuit of Mexican bandits and American horse thieves,

took part in countyseat fights, in rustler wars, in cattle wars; he was cowboy, miner, deputysheriff, and in

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 deputysheriff this educated faculty of not requiring sleep aided him in many

important captures. Sometimes he would not strike the trail of the bandit or "bad man" until the other had

several days the start of him. But the end was the same; for, while the murderer snatched a few hours' rest by

the trail, Burnham, awake and in the saddle, would be closing up the miles between them.

That he is a good marksman goes without telling. At the age of eight his father gave him a rifle of his own,

and at twelve, with either a "gun" or a Winchester, he was an expert. He taught himself to use a weapon

either in his left or right hand and to shoot, Indian fashion, hanging by one leg from his pony and using it as a

cover, and to turn in the saddle and shoot behind him. I once asked him if he really could shoot to the rear

"Well," he said, "maybe not to hit him, but I can come near enough to him to make him decide my pony's so

Besides perfecting himself in what he tolerantly calls "tricks" of horsemanship and marksmanship, he studied

the signs of the trail, forest and prairie, as a sailingmaster studies the waves and clouds. The knowledge he

gathers from inanimate objects and dumb animals seems little less than miraculous. And when you ask him

how he knows these things he always gives you a reason founded on some fact or habit of nature that shows

him to be a naturalist, mineralogist, geologist, and botanist, and not merely a seventh son of a seventh son.

In South Africa he would say to the officers: "There are a dozen Boers five miles ahead of us riding Basuto

ponies at a trot, and leading five others. If we hurry we should be able to sight them in an hour." At first the

officers would smile, but not after a halfhour'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 twentythree years of age he married Miss Blanche Blick, of Iowa. They had known each other from

childhood, and her brothersinlaw 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 brotherinlaw, Ingram, started for South Africa,

Mrs. Burnham went with them, and in every part of South Africa shared her husband's life of travel and

In making this move across the sea, Burnham's original idea was to look for gold in the territory owned by

the German East African Company. But as in Rhodesia the first Matabele uprising had broken out, he

continued on down the coast, and volunteered for that campaign. This was the real beginning of his fortunes.

The "war" was not unlike the Indian fighting of his early days, and although the country was new to him,

with the kind of warfare then being waged between the Kaffirs under King Lobengula and the white settlers

of the British South Africa Company, the chartered company of Cecil Rhodes, he was intimately familiar.

It does not take big men long to recognize other big men, and Burnham's remarkable work as a scout at once

brought him to the notice of Rhodes and Dr. Jameson, who was personally conducting the campaign. The war

was their own private war, and to them, at such a crisis in the history of their settlement, a man like Burnham

The chief incident of this campaign, the fame of which rang over all Great Britain and her colonies, was the

gallant but hopeless stand made by Major Alan Wilson and his patrol of thirtyfour men. It was Burnham's

King Lobengula and his warriors were halted on one bank of the Shangani River, and on the other Major

Forbes, with a picked force of three hundred men, was coming up in pursuit. Although at the moment he did

not know it, he also was being pursued by a force of Matabeles, who were gradually surrounding him. At

nightfall Major Wilson and a patrol of twelve men, with Burnham and his brotherinlaw, Ingram, acting as

scouts, were ordered to make a dash into the camp of Lobengula and, if possible, in the confusion of their

sudden attack, and under cover of a terrific thunderstorm 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

At a distance of about seven hundred yards from the camps there was a giant anthill, 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 anthill it was found that of

the fourteen three were missing. As the official scout of the patrol and the only one who could see in the dark,

Wilson ordered Burnham back to find them. Burnham said he could do so only by feeling the hoofprints 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 hoofprints of the three

others separated from it, and so came upon the three men. Still, with nothing but the mud of the jungle to

guide him, he brought them back to their comrades. It was this feat that established his reputation among

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 reenforcements. They had come in time to share in a glorious immortality. No sooner had these men

joined than the Kaffirs began the attack; and the white men at once learned that they were trapped in a

complete circle of the enemy. Hidden by the trees, the Kaffirs fired pointblank, 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

"Tell him to come up at once," he said; "we are nearly finished." He detailed a trooper named Gooding and

Ingram to accompany Burnham. "One of you may get through," he said. Gooding was but lately out from

London, and knew nothing of scouting, so Burnham and Ingram warned him, whether he saw the reason for it

or not, to act exactly as they did. The three men had barely left the others before the enemy sprang at them

with their spears. In five minutes they were being fired at from every bush. Then followed a remarkable ride,

in which Burnham called to his aid all he had learned in thirty years of border warfare. As the enemy rushed

after them, the three doubled on their tracks, rode in triple loops, hid in dongas to breathe their horses; and to

scatter their pursuers, separated, joined again, and again separated. The enemy followed them to the very

bank of the river, where, finding the "drift" covered with the swollen waters, they were forced to swim. They

reached the other bank only to find Forbes hotly engaged with another force of the Matabeles.

"I have been sent for reenforcements," Burnham said to Forbes, "but I believe we are the only survivors of

that party." Forbes himself was too hard pressed to give help to Wilson, and Burnham, his errand over, took

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 reenforcements, was as loudly cheered by those in the audience as by

Hensman, in his "History of Rhodesia," says: "One hardly knows which to most admire, the men who went

on this dangerous errand, through brush swarming with natives, or those who remained behind battling

For his help in this war the Chartered Company presented Burnham with the campaign medal, a gold watch

engraved with words of appreciation; and at the suggestion of Cecil Rhodes gave him, Ingram, and the Hon.

After this campaign Burnham led an expedition of ten white men and seventy Kaffirs north of the Zambesi

River to explore Barotzeland and other regions to the north of Mashonaland, and to establish the boundaries

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

But Latea, the son of the king, refused to recognize the treaty and sent his young men in great numbers to

surround Burnham's camp. Burnham had been instructed to avoid a fight, and was torn between his desire to

obey the Chartered Company and to prevent a massacre. He decided to make it a sacrifice either of himself or

of Latea. As soon as night fell, with only three companions and a missionary to act as a witness of what

occurred, he slipped through the lines of Latea's men, and, kicking down the fence around the prince's hut,

"Is it peace or war?" Burnham asked. "I have the king your father's guarantee of protection, but your men

surround us. I have told my people if they hear shots to open fire. We may all be killed, but you will be the

The missionary also spoke urging Latea to abide by the treaty. Burnham says the prince seemed much more

impressed by the arguments of the missionary than by the fact that he still was covered by Burnham's rifle.

Whichever argument moved him, he called off his warriors. On this expedition Burnham discovered the ruins

of great granite structures fifteen feet wide, and made entirely without mortar. They were of a period dating

before the Phoenicians. He also sought out the ruins described to him by F. C. Selous, the famous hunter, and

by Rider Haggard as King Solomon's Mines. Much to the delight of Mr. Haggard, he brought back for him

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 driedup basin of what once had

been a great lake. Water was carried in goatskins on the heads of the bearers. The boys, finding the bags an

unwieldy burden, and believing, with the happy optimism of their race, that Burnham's warnings were

needless, and that at a stream they soon could refill the bags, emptied the water on the ground.

The tortures that followed this wanton waste were terrible. Five of the boys died, and after several days, when

Burnham found water in abundance, the tongues of the others were so swollen that their jaws could not meet.

On this trip Burnham passed through a region ravaged by the "sleeping sickness," where his nostrils were

never free from the stench of dead bodies, where in some of the villages, as he expressed it, "the hyenas were

mangy with overeating, and the buzzards so gorged they could not move out of our way." From this

expedition he brought back many ornaments of gold manufactured before the Christian era, and made several

valuable maps of hitherto uncharted regions. It was in recognition of the information gathered by him on this

He returned to Rhodesia in time to take part in the second Matabele rebellion. This was in 1896. By now

Burnham was a very prominent member of the "vortrekers" and pioneers at Buluwayo, and Sir Frederick

Carrington, who was in command of the forces, attached him to his staff. This second outbreak was a more

serious uprising than the one of 1893, and as it was evident the forces of the Chartered Company could not

handle it, imperial troops were sent to assist them. But with even their aid the war dragged on until it

threatened to last to the rainy season, when the troops must have gone into winter quarters. Had they done so,

the cost of keeping them would have fallen on the Chartered Company, already a sufferer in pocket from the

ravages of the rinderpest and the expenses of the investigation which followed the Jameson raid.

Accordingly, Carrington looked about for some measure by which he could bring the war to an immediate

It was suggested to him by a young Colonial, named Armstrong, the Commissioner of the district, that this

could be done by destroying the "god," or high priest, Umlimo, who was the chief inspiration of the rebellion.

This high priest had incited the rebels to a general massacre of women and children, and had given them

confidence by promising to strike the white soldiers blind and to turn their bullets into water. Armstrong had

discovered the secret hidingplace of Umlimo, and Carrington ordered Burnham to penetrate the enemy's

The adventure was a most desperate one. Umlimo was secreted in a cave on the top of a huge kopje. At the

base of this was a village where were gathered two regiments, of a thousand men each, of his fighting men.

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

Against a white man reaching the cave and returning, the chances were a hundred to one, and the difficulties

of the journey are illustrated by the fact that Burnham and Armstrong were unable to move faster than at the

rate of a mile an hour. In making the last mile they consumed three hours. When they reached the base of the

kopje in which Umlimo was hiding, they concealed their ponies in a clump of bushes, and on hands and

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 antheap. In an

instant the veldt below was black with running men, and as, concealment being no longer possible, the white

men rose to fly a great shout of anger told them they were discovered. At the same moment two women,

returning from a stream where they had gone for water, saw the ponies, and ran screaming to give the alarm.

The race that followed lasted two hours, for so quickly did the Kaffirs spread out on every side that it was

impossible for Burnham to gain ground in any one direction, and he was forced to dodge, turn, and double. At

one time the white men were driven back to the very kopje from which the race had started.

But in the end they evaded assegai and gunfire, and in safety reached Buluwayo. This exploit was one of the

chief factors in bringing the war to a close. The Matabeles, finding their leader was only a mortal like

themselves, and so could not, as he had promised, bring miracles to their aid, lost heart, and when Cecil

Rhodes in person made overtures of peace, his terms were accepted. During the hard days of the siege, when

rations were few and bad, Burnham's little girl, who had been the first white child born in Buluwayo, died of

fever and lack of proper food. This with other causes led him to leave Rhodesia and return to California. It is

possible he then thought he had forever turned his back on South Africa, but, though he himself had departed,

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 trolleycar 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 communitiesArizona, California,

Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda. As he once said: "It is the constructive side of frontier life that most appeals

to me, the building up of a country, where you see the persistent drive and force of the white man; when the

In Alaska he did much prospecting, and, with a sled and only two dogs, for twentyfour days made one long

fight against snow and ice, covering six hundred miles. In mining in Alaska he succeeded well, but against

the country he holds a constant grudge, because it kept him out of the fight with Spain. When war was

declared he was in the wilds and knew nothing of it, and though on his return to civilization he telegraphed

Colonel Roosevelt volunteering for the Rough Riders, and at once started south, by the time he had reached

Several times has he spoken to me of how bitterly he regretted missing this chance to officially fight for his

country. That he had twice served with English forces made him the more keen to show his loyalty to his own

That he would have been given a commission in the Rough Riders seems evident from the opinion President

"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

In 1899 he had returned to the Klondike, and in January of 1900 had been six months in Skagway. In that

same month Lord Roberts sailed for Cape Town to take command of the army, and with him on his staff was

Burnham's former commander, Sir Frederick, now Lord, Carrington. One night as the ship was in the Bay of

Biscay, Carrington was talking of Burnham and giving instances of his marvellous powers as a "tracker."

From Gibraltar a cable was sent to Skagway, offering Burnham the position, created especially for him, of

Probably never before in the history of wars has one nation paid so pleasant a tribute to the abilities of a man

The sequel is interesting. The cablegram reached Skagway by the steamer City of Seattle. The purser left it at

the postoffice, and until two hours and a half before the steamer was listed to start on her return trip, there it

lay. Then Burnham, in asking for his mail, received it. In two hours and a half he had his family, himself, and

his belongings on board the steamer, and had started on his halfaroundtheworld journey from Alaska to

A Skagway paper of January 5, 1900, published the day after Burnham sailed, throws a side light on his

character. After telling of his hasty departure the day before, and of the high compliment that had been paid

to "a prominent Skagwayan," it adds: "Although Mr. Burnham has lived in Skagway since last August, and

has been North for many months, he has said little of his past, and few have known that he is the man famous

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

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 fellowcountryman one had heard praised so highly so completely make good. It was not

as though he had a credulous audience of commercial tourists. Among the officers who each evening

gathered around him were Colonel Gallilet of the Egyptian cavalry, Captain Frazer commanding the Scotch

Gillies, Captain Mackie of Lord Roberts's staff, each of whom was later killed in action; Colonel Sir Charles

Hunter of the Royal Rifles, Major Bagot, Major Lord Dudley, and Captain Lord Valentia. Each of these had

either held command in border fights in India or the Sudan or had hunted big game, and the questions each

Not for a single evening could a faker have submitted to the midnight examination through which they put

Burnham and not have exposed his ignorance. They wanted to know what difference there is in a column of

dust raised by cavalry and by trek wagons, how to tell whether a horse that has passed was going at a trot or a

gallop, the way to throw a diamond hitch, how to make a fire without at the same time making a target of

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

Within two nights he had us so absolutely at his mercy that we would have followed him anywhere; anything

he chose to tell us, we would have accepted. We were ready to believe in flying foxes, flying squirrels, that

wild turkeys dance quadrilleseven that you must never sleep in the moonlight. Had he demanded: "Do you

believe in vampires?" we would have shouted "Yes." To ask that a scout should on an ocean steamer prove

As one of the British officers said: "It's about as fair a game as though we planted the captain of this ship in

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

During the advance north he was a hundred times inside the Boer laagers, keeping Headquarters Staff daily

He was first captured while trying to warn the British from the fatal drift at Thaba'nchu. When reconnoitring

alone in the morning mist he came upon the Boers hiding on the banks of the river, toward which the English

were even then advancing. The Boers were moving all about him, and cut him off from his own side. He had

to choose between abandoning the English to the trap or signalling to them, and so exposing himself to

capture. With the red kerchief the scouts carried for that purpose he wigwagged to the approaching soldiers to

turn back, that the enemy were awaiting them. But the column, which was without an advance guard, paid no

attention to his signals and plodded steadily on into the ambush, while Burnham was at once made prisoner.

In the fight that followed he pretended to receive a wound in the knee and bound it so elaborately that not

even a surgeon would have disturbed the carefully arranged bandages. Limping heavily and groaning with

pain, he was placed in a trek wagon with the officers who really were wounded, and who, in consequence,

were not closely guarded. Burnham told them who he was and, as he intended to escape, offered to take back

to headquarters 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

Slipping quickly over the driver's seat, he dropped between the two "wheelers" to the disselboom, or tongue,

of the trek wagon. From this he lowered himself and fell between the legs of the oxen on his back in the road.

In an instant the body of the wagon had passed over him, and while the dust still hung above the trail he

It was four days before he was able to reenter 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 anthills. The Boers went into camp on every side of them, and for two days,

unknown to themselves, held Burnham a prisoner. Only at night did he and the Cape boy dare to crawl out to

breathe fresh air and to eat the food tablets they carried in their pockets. On five occasions was Burnham sent

into the Boer lines with dynamite cartridges to blow up the railroad over which the enemy was receiving

On June 2, 1901, while trying by night to blow up the line between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay, he was

surrounded by a party of Boers and could save himself only by instant flight. He threw himself Indian fashion

along the back of his pony, and had all but got away when a bullet caught the horse and, without even

faltering in its stride, it crashed to the ground dead, crushing Burnham beneath it and knocking him senseless.

He continued unconscious for twentyfour hours, and when he came to, both friends and foes had departed.

Bent upon carrying out his orders, although suffering the most acute agony, he crept back to the railroad and

destroyed it. Knowing the explosion would soon bring the Boers, on his hands and knees he crept to an empty

kraal, where for two days and nights he lay insensible. At the end of that time he appreciated that he was

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 bloodvessel. 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

On leaving the army he was given such hearty thanks and generous rewards as no other American ever

received from the British War Office. He was promoted to the rank of major, presented with a large sum of

money, and from Lord Roberts received a personal letter of thanks and appreciation.

In part the FieldMarshal wrote: "I doubt if any other man in the force could have successfully carried out the

thrilling enterprises in which from time to time you have been engaged, demanding as they did the training of

a lifetime, combined with exceptional courage, caution, and powers of endurance." On his arrival in England

he was commanded to dine with the Queen and spend the night at Osborne, and a few months later, after her

death, King Edward created him a member of the Distinguished Service Order, and personally presented him

with the South African medal with five bars, and the cross of the D. S. 0. While recovering his health

Burnham, with Mrs. Burnham, was "passed on" by friends he had made in the army from country house to

country house; he was made the guest of honor at city banquets, with the Duke of Rutland rode after the

Belvoir hounds, and in Scotland made mild excursions after grouse. But after six months of convalescence he

was off again, this time to the hinterland of Ashanti, on the west coast of Africa, where he went in the

With his brotherinlaw, J. C. Blick, he marched and rowed twelve hundred miles, and explored the Volta

River, at that date so little visited that in one day's journey they counted eleven hippopotamuses. In July,

1901, he returned from Ashanti, and a few months later an unknown but enthusiastic admirer asked in the

House of Commons if it were true Major Burnham had applied for the post of Instructor of Scouts at

Aldershot. There is no such post, and Burnham had not applied for any other post. To the Timer he wrote: "I

never have thought myself competent to teach Britons how to fight, or to act as an instructor with officers

who have fought in every corner of the world. The question asked in Parliament was entirely without my

knowledge, and I deeply regret that it was asked." A few months later, with Mrs. Burnham and his younger

son, Bruce, he journeyed to East Africa as director of the East African Syndicate.

During his stay there the African Review said of him: "Should East Africa ever become a possession for

England to be proud of, she will owe much of her prosperity to the brave little band that has faced hardships

and dangers in discovering her hidden resources. Major Burnham has chosen men from England, Ireland, the

United States, and South Africa for sterling qualities, and they have justified his choice. Not the least like a

hero is the retiring, diffident little major himself, though a finer man for a friend or a better man to serve

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 fortynine miles

square, composed almost entirely of pure carbonate of soda, forming a snowlike crust so thick that on it the

It is the largest, and when the railroad is builtthe Uganda Railroad is now only eightyeight miles

A year ago, in the interests of John Hays Hammond, the distinguished mining engineer of South Africa and

this country, Burnham went to Sonora, Mexico, to find a buried city and to open up mines of copper and

Besides seeking for mines, Hammond and Burnham, with Gardner Williams, another American who also

made his fortune in South Africa, are working together on a scheme to import to this country at their own

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,

We cannot leave Burnham in better hands than those of Hammond and Gardner Williams. Than these three

men the United States has not sent to British Africa any Americans of whom she has better reason to be

proud. Such men abroad do for those at home untold good. They are the real ambassadors of their country.

The last I learned of Burnham is told in the snapshot of him which accompanies this article, and which shows

him, barefoot, in the Yaqui River, where he has gone, perhaps, to conceal his trail from the Indians. It came a

month ago in a letter which said briefly that when the picture was snapped the expedition was "trying to cool

off." There his narrative ended. Promising as it does adventures still to come, it seems a good place in which

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.