men and
five hundred natives. The most interesting result of the expedition
was the discovery of a lake forty-nine miles square, composed almost
entirely of pure carbonate of soda, forming a snowlike crust so thick
that on it the men could cross the lake.

It is the largest, and when the railroad is built--the Uganda Railroad
is now only eighty-eight miles distant--it will be the most valuable
deposit of carbonate of soda ever found.

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
silver.

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 expense many
species of South African deer.

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, and President Roosevelt is one of its
most enthusiastic supporters.

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 to leave him.

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 hun