WHEN “B.-P.” WAS NEARLY KILLED.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 January 1930, Page 2

WHEN “8.-P.” WAS NEARLY KILLED.

AN AMERICAN DISCLOSURE

By Claude Fisher, in “Daily Mail.”)

One of London’s most interesting December visitors will be Major Frederick Russell Burnham ; once introduced to me as the “the great scout alive” and referred to by Sir Rider Haggard as “more interesting than any of my 'heroes of romance.”

A cellar is not where one expects to greet famous men;'but it was in the cellar —now the chapel—of the East London Scout .Settlement, Roland House, that I first met Major Burnham, some four years ago.. . This Amercan holder of our D.S.O. and chief of scouts under .Lord Robert during i the South African War, told me the hitherto undisclosed story of how a single Matabele..warrior, in 18t6 nearly - prevented, the creation of the Scout movement. • The then Major Baden-Powell was resting yvith bis officers under a big tree—“where he learned the lesson that a scout must look up as well as down,” said Major Burnham who continued : That morning the Matabele warrior had seen the last great attack of his nation to capture Bulawayo and destroy the hated white man end in utter rout and disaster. To avoid the charge of mounted white men he had climbed with his big gun into this tree and they had swept by him. But strangely the wlirtij indunris' ihcntitiously chose his particular tree to stand under while they rested their tired horses and gathered their scattered men. Suddenly the thought . must have come to this Matabele—l hold the life of any one of .these indunns in my hand. They are only a few feet below me, my nation is lost, my race Is constantly defeated by the white. I will select the most commanding induna, kill him, and die. 1 The Chief. Scout was the.one selectto die, but the Matabele missed his victim by a hair’s breadth. The next instant the Matabele lav crompled at the base of the tree-.-'. t Let,:iis Hope that as his soul sped from black body i some angel. of solace'relieved his despair. For if: he had hut known, had | he killed that,induna he would have

destroyed an idea that in due time will assuage even such hatred as lie his people had for the whites. Scouting will enable his people and all his race to live without humiliation and have their proper place in. the sun yet not destroy the white man.