A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13483, 6 July 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

UNDER EIGHTEEN FLAGS. A ' picturesque soldier of fortune,, from whom Mr.-, Richard Harding DaA-is got many ideas for his stories, has just died in a lodging-houso in New York with less than two shillings in his pockets. He was Major-General Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver, who had fought under eighteen flags and had been wounded many times. During his career lie bad incidentally fought four duels and killed.two of his adversaries. Maclver gained his highest military title in the Servian army. He was born on a ship off the Virginia coast on Christmas Day, 1841, his mother being a Virginian and his father a Scotsman, Ronald Maclver, of Ross-shire. He lived in Virginia until he was ten years old, and was then sent to Edinburgh to be educated. His uncle, General Donald Graham, of Edinburgh, helped him to get an ensign's' commission in the East India Company. While in his teens Maclver was in the Indian Mutiny and wounded twice. Ho appeared subsequently as a lieutenant under Garibaldi a captain under Don Carlos ; a lieutenant-colonel under Emperor Maximilian of Mexico ; a colonel under Napoleon III. ; an aide on the staffs of ihe Confederate Generals "Stonewall" Jackson and J. E. B. Stuart in the American Civil war an inspector of cavalry for the Khedive of Egypt, and chief of cavalry in the army of King Milan of Servia, He was the author of "Under Fourteen Flags," published in 1888. He fought in the Ten Years' War of the Cubans, and participated in some Latin-American revolutions. For a prief period he was a United States Consul in Spain. It is stated that General Maclver left a daughter in England and that his wife died many years -ago. The cause of his death was given as. nephritis. ..-..,./'. ~