IV Scout and Sportsman
In his youthful days Baden-Powell was very fond of exploring such unknown regions as are accessible to a small boy, and it is related of him that nothing gave him so much pleasure as to find himself and his companions lost and his own ingenuity taxed to restore them to the paths of safety. When he arrived at years of discretion this passion for wandering did not desert him—on the contrary it increased within him, and finally culminated in a devotion to scouting, which has made his name famous all over the world. It is needless to say that in this matter, as in most other matters closely affecting him, Baden-Powell has largely depended upon himself for success and mastery. As he remarks in his “Aids to Scouting,” a little military handbook the proofs of which accompanied the last despatches got through the Boer lines at Mafeking, “Scouting is a thing that can be learnt, but cannot be taught. A man must pick up much of it for himself by his own effort.” How much of it Baden-Powell has not picked up for himself can only be guessed by a careful perusal of this little treatise, which is packed with the results of keen observation, and gives one perhaps a better notion of what its author really is as a born soldier and leader of soldiers than anything else of his. It was, no doubt, with sublime unconsciousness that he describes himself in describing the perfect scout, the man of pluck, self-reliance, and discretion, the man who can use his ears and eyes, his sense of smell and touch, who can keep himself hidden and track others, who can make his way across strange lands and take good care of himself and his horse, and who in everything he does is always dominated by the desire to secure valuable information. And it is with perhaps still more sublime unconsciousness that he insists that the first three necessary qualifications spring from—confidence in one’s own powers.
Of the many wonderful things done by Baden-Powell nothing seems to me so wonderful as the way in which the man who has had so many and such varied occupations has perfected himself in scouting. He seems to be all eyes and ears, to never lose cognizance of anything that happens, and to give an attention to little points of detail which less extraordinary men would feel tempted to ignore. “It should be a point of honour with a scout,” he remarks, “that nobody sees any object that he has not already seen for himself. For this your eyes must be never resting, continually glancing round in every direction, and trained to see objects in the far distance. A scout must have eyes in the back of his head. Riding with a really trained scout, such as Buffalo Bill or Burnham, you will notice that while he talks with you his eyes scarcely look you in the face for a moment, they keep glancing from point to point of the country round from sheer force of habit.” Then he quotes a slight incident from his own experience to show how a little reflection and common-sense will suggest the most likely point for which to look for the presence of an enemy. He and a Shikari in Kashmir were having a match as to which of them could see furthest. The Shikari, pointing out a hillside rising at some distance, inquired if his opponent could say how many cattle were grazing along its slopes. Baden-Powell could only see the cattle with great difficulty, but he presently astonished the Shikari by asking him if he could see the man who was herding the cattle. He could not see the man himself, but he had argued the thing out and knew where the man was. First of all, where there were cattle there would be a herd in charge of them. Secondly, it was most likely that he would be up-hill, above them. Thirdly, up-hill above them stood a solitary tree. Fourthly, the day was very hot, and the tree was the only means of affording shade. Because of these reasons the man must be under the tree—and when Baden-Powell and the Shikari brought their glasses into operation there the man was.
An instance of Baden-Powell’s careful attention to small details is given in the same chapter of “Aids to Scouting.” “I was once acting as scout for a party in a desert country,” he says, “where we were getting done up for want of water. I had gone out two or three miles ahead to where I thought the ground seemed to slope slightly downwards, but except a very shallow, dry water-course, there was no sign of water. As I was making my way slowly back again, I noticed a scratching in the sand, evidently recently made by a buck, and the sand thrown up was of a darker colour, therefore damper, than that on the surface. I dismounted and scooped up more with my hands, and found the under-soil quite moist, so water was evidently near, and could probably be got by digging. But at that moment two pigeons sprang up and flew away from under a rock near by; full of hope, I went to the spot and found there a small pool of water, which yielded sufficient for the immediate requirements of the party. Had I not noticed the buck-scratching, or the pigeons flying up, we should have had a painful toil of many miles before we struck on the river, which we eventually did come to.”
There are abundant evidences in “Aids to Scouting” of the extraordinary patience which its author possesses, and of the way in which he has exercised it in perfecting himself as a scout. He mentions, as if it were a mere nothing, that he once took up a position amongst some rocks overhanging a path, and so close to it that he could have touched passers-by with a fishing-rod, and remained there for two hours in order to see how many people who passed him would perceive him. He took no pains to conceal himself, but merely sat down, a little above the level of a man’s eye. During the two hours fifty-four persons passed him, and he was only noticed by eleven of them. But how many of us are there who have the patience to remain motionless for two hours?—all for the sake of an experiment! But Baden-Powell’s patience gains a great deal in its value to him as a scout by its being linked with a marvellous power of deduction. He likes to find out everything he can about all that he sees, keeps a sharp eye on the people he meets, tries to deduce what they are from their personal appearance, outward signs, and chance observations, and is all the better satisfied if he finds that his conclusions are true. When he was in India he used to go out in the early mornings looking for what he could find and deducing arguments from signs and things thus found. He gives numerous illustrations of this exercise of his logical faculties in “Aids to Scouting,” of which the following is a typical example:—
Example of Deduction from Signs. (“Aids to Scouting,” p. 75.)
Locality.—A mountain path in Kashmir.
Weather.—Dry and fine. There had been heavy rain two days before, but the ground had dried the same night.
Signs observed.—Passing a tree stump, I noticed a stone lying on it about the size of a cocoa-nut. I wondered for the moment how it came to be there, and soon discovered the reason.
On the stump, and also sticking to the stone, were some bits of bruised walnut-rind, green, but dried up. Bits of shell of about four walnuts were lying about the ground near a leaning rock about 30 yards away south of the stump. The only walnut-tree in sight was about 150 yards north of the stump.
At the foot of the stump, just where a man would stand to use the stone on it, was a cake of hardened mud that had evidently fallen from the sole of a grass sandal.
Deduction.
That a man was carrying a load.—Had it been anyone not carrying a load he or she would not have sat down on the stump or close to it; instead of that, he had gone 30 yards away to where a slanting rock was; this would support his load while he leant back against it to rest and eat his walnuts (whose shells were lying there). Women do not carry loads on their backs.
He was on a long journey.—As he wore sandals instead of bare feet.
Towards the south.—He had got the walnuts 150 yards north of the stump, had stopped there to break them with the stone, and had gone 30 yards further on his road to the rock to eat them.
He had passed there two days ago.—The cake of mud off his sandal showed that when he was there the ground was wet, and the dried husk of the walnuts corroborated this deduction.
Total information.—A man had passed here two days ago, on a long journey, carrying a load southward.
It goes without saying that Baden-Powell has had plenty of adventures and excitement out of his love of scouting. How often his life has been in such danger that it was apparently not worth a moment’s purchase, it is probable he himself does not know. But if there is anybody who knows what an extraordinarily watchful life it is that has thus risked itself a thousand times, it is the Matabele against whom Baden-Powell brought his keen senses to bear during the campaign of 1896, and who conferred upon him a sobriquet which is likely to stick to him as long as his old nickname of “Bathing-Towel,” or the modern “B.-P.” of admiring crowds. Writing of his work during July, 1896 (“The Matabele Campaign,” p. 127-8), he says: “Many of the strongholds to which I had at first learned the way with patrols, I have now visited again by myself at nights, in order to further locate the positions of their occupants. In this way I have actually got to know the country and the way through it better by night than by day, that is to say, by certain landmarks and leading stars whose respectively changed appearance or absence in daylight is apt to be misleading. The enemy, of course, often see me, but are luckily very suspicious, and look upon me as a bait to some trap, and are therefore slow to come at me. They often shout to me; and yesterday my boy, who was with my horse, told me they were shouting to each other that ‘Impeesa’ was there—i.e., ‘The Wolf,’ or, as he translated it, the beast, that does not sleep, but sneaks about at night.” Since then a good many folk have learnt much of the Wolf that does not sleep. But if this same sleepless Wolf were asked if there had not been many compensations for his sneaking about at night, he would probably be able to say that for every moment of anxiety he had spent a thousand of satisfaction. To how many men leading hum-drum stay-at-home lives is it ever granted to see one such picture as that Baden-Powell records in his journal under date July 29th, 1896? (“The Matabele Campaign,” p. 175.)
“To-day, when out scouting by myself, being at some distance from my boy and the horses, I lay for a short rest and a quiet look-out among some rocks and grass overlooking a little stream; and I saw a charming picture. Presently there was a slight rattle of trinkets, and a swish of the tall yellow grass, followed by the sudden apparition of a naked Matabele warrior standing glistening among the rocks of the streamlet, within thirty yards of me. His white war ornaments—the ball of clipped feathers on his brow, and the long white cow’s-tail plumes which depended from his arms and knees—contrasted strongly with his rich brown skin. His kilt of wild cat-skins and monkeys’ tails swayed round his loins. His left hand bore his assegais and knobkerrie beneath the great dapple ox-hide shield; and, in his right, a yellow walking-staff.
“He stood for almost a minute perfectly motionless, like a statue cast in bronze, his head turned from me, listening for any suspicious sound. Then, with a swift and easy movement, he laid his arms and shield noiselessly upon the rocks, and, dropping on all fours beside a pool, he dipped his muzzle down and drank just like an animal. I could hear the thirsty sucking of his lips from where I lay. He drank and drank as though he never meant to stop, and when at last his frame could hold no more, he rose with evident reluctance. He picked his weapons up, and then stood again to listen. Hearing nothing, he turned and sharply moved away. In three swift strides he disappeared within the grass as silently as he had come. I had been so taken with the spectacle that I felt no desire to shoot at him—especially as he was carrying no gun himself.”
But lest those who read these words should imagine that the life of a scout is all pleasurable excitement with a little danger thrown in to give it an added zest, let them read an extract from one of Baden-Powell’s letters to the Daily Chronicle, to which he at one time acted as special correspondent. It describes setting out on reconnaissance with a patrol:—
“Is it the cooing of doves that wakes me from dreamland to the stern reality of a scrubby blanket and the cold night air of the upland veldt? A plaintive, continuous moan, moan, reminds me that I am at one of our outpost forts beyond Buluwayo, where my bedroom is under the lee of the sail (waggon tilt) which forms the wall of the hospital. And through the flimsy screen there wells the moan of a man who is dying. At last the weary wailing slowly sobs itself away, and the suffering of another mortal is ended. He is at peace. It is only another poor trooper gone. Three years ago he was costing his father so much a year at Eton; he was in the eleven, too—and all for this.
“I roll myself tighter in my dew-chilled rug, and turn to dream afresh of what a curious world I’m in. My rest is short, and time arrives for turning out, as now the moon is rising. A curious scene it is, as here in shadow, there in light, close-packed within the narrow circuit of the fort, the men are lying, muffled, deeply sleeping at their posts. It’s etiquette to move and talk as softly as we are able, and even harsh-voiced sentries drop their challenge to a whisper when there is no doubt of one’s identity. We give our horses a few handfuls of mealies, while we dip our pannikins into the great black ‘billy,’ where there’s always cocoa on the simmer for the guard. And presently we saddle up, the six of us, and lead our horses out; and close behind us follow, in a huddled, shivering file, the four native scouts, guarding among them two Matabele prisoners, handcuffed wrist to wrist, who are to be our guides.
“Down into the deep, dark kloof below the fort, where the air strikes with an icy chill, we cross the shallow spruit, then rise and turn along its farther bank, following a twisting, stony track that leads down the valley. Our horses, though they purposely are left unshod, make a prodigious clatter as they stumble adown the rough uneven way. From force of habit rather than from fear of listening enemies, we drop our voices to a whisper, and this gives a feeling of alertness and expectancy such as would find us well prepared on an emergency. But we are many miles as yet from their extremest outposts, and, luckily for us, these natives are the soundest of sleepers, so that one might almost in safety pass with clattering horses within a quarter of a mile of them.
“... Dawn is at hand. The hills along our left (we are travelling south) loom darker now against the paling sky. Before us, too, we see the hazy blank of the greater valley into which our present valley runs. Suddenly there’s a pause, and all our party halts. Look back! there, high up on a hill, beneath whose shadow we have passed, there sparkles what looks like a ruddy star, which glimmers, bobs, goes out, and then flares anew. It is a watchfire, and our foes are waking up to warm themselves and to keep their watch. Yonder on another hill sparks up a second fire, and on beyond, another. They are waking up, but all too late; we’ve passed them by, and now are in their ground. Forward! We press on, and ere the day has dawned we have emerged from out the defile into the open land beyond. This is a wide and undulating plain, some five miles across to where it runs up into mountain peaks, the true Matopos. We turn aside and clamber up among some hills just as the sun is rising, until we reach the ashes of a kraal that has been lately burned. The kraal is situated in a cup among the hills, and from the koppies round our native scouts can keep a good look-out in all directions. Here we call a halt for breakfast, and after slackening girths, we go into the cattle kraal to look for corn to give our horses. (The Kaffirs always hide their grain in pits beneath the ground of the ‘cattle kraal’ or yard in which the oxen are herded at night.) Many of the grain-pits have already been opened, but still are left half-filled, and some have not been touched—and then in one—well, we cover up the mouth with a flat stone and logs of wood. The body of a girl lies doubled up within. A few days back a party of some friendlies, men and women, had revisited this kraal, their home, to get some food to take back to their temporary refuge near our fort. The Matabele saw them, and just when they were busy drawing grain, pounced in upon them, assegaing three—all women—and driving off the rest as fast as they could go. This was but an everyday incident of outpost life.”
It may be that Baden-Powell would never have been so great an exponent of the art and science of scouting if he had not always been a thoroughly good sportsman. To sport his devotion has invariably been marked since the days when he first felt the charm of wild life. He hunts and shoots, and in Mrs. Baden-Powell’s house in St. George’s Place there are innumerable trophies of his skill, including lions and tigers. Perhaps his favourite sport is pig-sticking, of which he became a devotee soon after he joined the 13th Hussars in India. In 1883 he won the Kadir Cup—the highest distinction open to followers of this very fascinating sport—and in 1885 he published his work on “Pig-sticking,” from which the following characteristically written account of a fight which he once witnessed between a tiger and a boar is extracted:—
“... He eagerly watched the development of this strange rencontre. The tiger was now crouching low, crawling stealthily round and round the boar, who changed front with every movement of his lithe and sinewy adversary, keeping his determined head and sharp, deadly tusks ever facing his stealthy and treacherous foe. The bristles of the boar’s back were up at a right angle from the strong spine. The wedge-shaped head poised on the strong neck and thick rampart of muscular shoulder was bent low, and the whole attitude of the body betokened full alertness and angry resoluteness. In their circlings the two brutes were now nearer to each other and nearer to us, and thus we could mark every movement with greater precision. The tiger was now growling and showing his teeth; and all this, that takes such a time to tell, was but the work of a few short minutes. Crouching now still lower, till he seemed almost flat on the ground, and gathering his sinewy limbs beneath his lithe, lean body, he suddenly startled the stillness with a loud roar, and quick as lightning sprang upon the boar. For a brief minute the struggle was thrilling in its intense excitement. With one swift, dexterous sweep of the strong, ready paw, the tiger fetched the boar a terrific slap right across the jaw, which made the strong beast reel, but with a hoarse grunt of resolute defiance, with two or three sharp digs of the strong head and neck, and swift, cutting blows of the cruel, gashing tusks, he seemed to make a hole or two in the tiger’s coat, marking it with more stripes than Nature has ever painted there; and presently both combatants were streaming with gore. The tremendous buffet of the sharp claws had torn flesh and skin away from off the boar’s cheek and forehead, leaving a great ugly flap hanging over his face and half blinding him. The pig was now on his mettle. With another hoarse grunt he made straight for the tiger, who very dexterously eluded the charge, and, lithe and quick as a cat after a mouse, doubled almost on himself, and alighted clean on the boar’s back, inserting his teeth above the shoulders, tearing with his claws, and biting out great mouthfuls of flesh from the quivering carcase of his maddened antagonist. He seemed now to be having all the best of it, so much so that the boar discreetly stumbled and fell forward, whether by accident or design I know not, but the effect was to bring the tiger clean over his head, sprawling clumsily on the ground... the tables were turned. Getting his forefeet on the tiger’s prostrate carcase, the boar now gave two or three short, ripping gashes with his strong white tusks, almost disembowelling his foe, and then exhausted seemingly by the effort, apparently giddy and sick, he staggered aside and lay down, panting and champing his tusks, but still defiant....” One can conceive, after reading this passage, that Baden-Powell must needs have a considerable respect for the wild pig of India, and find in him a foe worthy his own skill and courage.
An extract from the journal which he kept during the Matabele Campaign shows Baden-Powell in the character of lion-hunter:—
“October 10th (to be marked with a red mark when I can get a red pencil).—Jackson and a native boy accompanied me scouting this morning; we then started off at three in the morning, so that by dawn we were in sight of one of the hills we expected might be occupied by Paget, and where we hoped to see his fires. We saw none there; but on our way, in moving round the hill which overlooks our camp, we saw a match struck high up near the top of the mountain. This one little spark told us a good deal. It showed that the enemy were there; that they were awake and alert (I say ‘they’ because one nigger would not be up there by himself in the dark), and that they were aware of our force being at Posselt’s (or otherwise they would not be occupying that hill). However, they could not see anything of us, as it was then quite dark; and we went further on among the mountains. In the early morning light we crossed the deep river-bed of the Umchingwe River, and, in doing so, we noticed the fresh spoor of a lion in the sand. We went on, and had a good look at the enemy’s stronghold; and on our way back, as we approached this river-bed, we agreed to go quietly, in case the lion should be moving about in it. On looking down over the bank, my heart jumped into my mouth, when I saw a grand old brute just walking in behind a bush. Jackson could not see him, but was off his horse as quick as I was, and ready with his gun; too ready, indeed, for the moment that the lion appeared, walking majestically out from behind the bush that had hidden him, Jackson fired hurriedly, striking the ground under his foot, and, as we afterwards discovered, knocking off one of his claws. The lion tossed up his shaggy head and looked at us in dignified surprise. Then I fired, and hit him in the ribs with a leaden bullet from my Lee-Metford. He reeled, sprang round, and staggered a few paces, when Jackson, who was firing a Martini-Henry, let him have one in the shoulder; this knocked him over sideways, and he turned about, growling savagely.
“I could scarcely believe that we had actually got a lion at last, but resolved to make sure of it; so, telling Jackson not to fire unless it was necessary (for fear of spoiling the skin with the larger bullet of the Martini), I got down closer to the beast, and fired a shot at the back of his neck as he turned his head away from me. This went through his spine, and came out through the lower jaw, killing him dead. We were pretty delighted at our success, but our nigger was mad with happiness, for a dead lion—provided he is not a man-eater—has many invaluable gifts for a Kaffir, in the shape of love-philtres, charms against disease or injury, and medicines that produce bravery. It was quite delightful to shake hands with the mighty paws of the dead lion, and to pull at his magnificent tawny mane, and to look into his great deep yellow eyes. And then we set to work to skin him; two skinning, while the other kept watch in case of the enemy sneaking up to catch us while we were thus occupied. In skinning him, we found that he was very fat, and also that he had been much wounded by porcupines, portions of whose quills had pierced the skin and lodged in his flesh in several places. Our nigger cut out the eyes, gall-bladder, and various bits of the lion’s anatomy, as fetish medicine. I filled my carbine bucket with some of the fat, as I knew my two boys, Diamond and M’tini, would very greatly value it. Then, after hiding the head in a neighbouring bush, we packed the skin on to one of the ponies, and returned to camp mightily pleased with ourselves.
“On arrival there, the excitement among the boys was very great, for, as we rode into camp, we pretended we had merely shot a buck; but when Diamond turned out to take my horse from me, he suddenly recognized the skin, and his eyes almost started from his head as he put his hand over his mouth and ejaculated, ‘Ow! Ingonyama!’ (‘Great Scott! a lion!’) Then, grinning with excitement, he asked leave to go and get some more of it. In vain I told him that it was eight miles away, and close under the enemy’s stronghold. He seized up an assegai and started off at a steady trot along our back-spoor. And very soon one nigger after another was doubling out of camp after him, to get a share of the booty. In the evening they came back quite happy with various tit-bits, and also the head. The heart was boiled and made into soup, which was greedily partaken of by every boy in camp, with a view to gaining courage. Diamond assured me that the bits of fat, &c., of which he was now the proud possessor, would buy him several cattle when he got back to Natal.”
In addition to his fame as a sticker of pigs, a hunter of hogs, a slayer of lions and tigers, Baden-Powell has also greatly distinguished himself as a hunter of big game and an expert polo-player. But there is scarcely anything in the shape of sport and the pursuit of outdoor life which he does not care for. Nature in her wildest and loneliest moods he loves with a whole-hearted devotion, and it is easy to perceive when reading his books and journals that he knows her in all her phases and attitudes, and loves her in them all. It would be strange if it were not so in the case of a man who has so often laid down in the loneliness of the African veldt and slept as trustfully as if he were in his own bed—always taking care, though, with his usual caution, to be sure that his revolver is under his knees, and its lanyard round his neck. To such as him the open air is as the breath of heaven to the saint, and communion with the wild places and wild life of the earth as meat to the hungry.