s 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 single-mindedness of purpose. To him scouting
is as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that
to-day what the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all other
"trackers," woodmen, and scouts. He reads "the face of Nature" as you
read your morning paper. To him a movement of his horse's ears is as
plain a warning as the "Go SLOW" of an automobile sign; and he so saves
from ambush an entire troop. In the glitter of a piece of quartz in the
firelight he discovers King Solomon's mines. Like the horned cattle, he
can tell by the smell of it in the air the near presence of water,
and where, glaring in the sun, you can see only a bare kopje, he
distinguishes the muzzle of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero,
the levelled barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock Holmes of all
out-of-doors.

Besides being a scout, he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, and
explorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as a
younger man taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the "spoor"
of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now leads him as a mining expert to
the hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, great
and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa and Mexico
as large as the State of New York. As an explorer in the last few years
in the course of his expeditions into undiscovered lands, he has added
to this little world many thousands of square miles.

Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of fiction, and of the Wild
West Show, as it is 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 ligh