The Chief Scout Talks

Taranaki Daily News, 2 August 1930, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Chief Scout Talks

SELOUS THE HUNTER. A GREAT SCO LT.

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Lt. Gen. Lord Baden-

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Writing to you about backwoodsmen recently 1 mentioned the great hunter F. C. Selous, as being a man who could not get over “the call of fche wild.” It was at Cape Town very many years ago that I first met him. He was a small man, who would not strike you at first as being anything out of the common. But what I noticed at once about him was his wonderfully keen clear eye and his big deep chest. _ He had then only just got back to civilisation after his tremendous feat of escaping alone from a hostile tribe north of the Zambesi. It was chiefly thanks to that keen eye and his quick sight and to the strong heart and lungs within that mighty chest .'that he .was enabled to get away safely. The next time that I met him was up in .Rhodesia, when he had just had another escape, this time accompanied by his wife. They were at that time living on their farm some thirty miles from Buluwayo. On their land was a kraal, or village of native huts, inhabited bv Matabele natives.

One day when ho was away from •home some of the men came up from

the village and asked Mrs. if she could lend them a few axes. She did so and they grinned’ their thanks with particularly meaning grins and went back to their hute. She little thought that they were borrowing their axes for tho purpose of disarming her and her husband and of murdering them both with them later on. Presently Selous came galloping home; lie urged his wife to saddle her horse at once and to mount —the natives were “up” in rebellion all over the country. In a few minutes, like a good frontierswoman, she was ready mounted and they rode off from their home towards tho town. Before they had gone many yards ’they heard a tumult behind them, and ere they were, out of sight of their home they saw dense clouds of smoke arising from it as the natives, baulked of their prey, set the whole place on fire. THE BOY HUNTER. Selous had first gone out to South Africa directly after lie left school,

when he was nineteen years old, filled with the one idea, of becoming a big game hunter. Rhodesia was at that lime called Matabeldand and was owned by tiie fierce native chief Lobengula and his far-famed Matabele warriors. There was lots of big game in the country but Lobengula would not give white men leave to hunt it. Bits when this mere boy camo along and asked permission the chief laughed and said he was such a child he might have his wish. ;■

The old chief was very much surprised to find that in a short time Selous proved himself not only a brave and very clever hunter, but that he was far' better than any of the best warriors and hunters that the tribe could produce. Selous had marvellous endurance. Ho could run mile after mile followirjg'up elephants;,he was a wonderful trucker and a nailing good shot with the rifle. He could always manage with very little food; by being always in fit condition and never having drunk anything stronger than water he needed no drink; he could get what he wanted to eat by shooting and cooking a bird or animal. He always wore shorts as giving his freedom for his legs. He never smoked cigarettes or any kind of tobacco, so he kept his wind and could quickly outrun even the quickfooted Matabele (and they can run forty miles in a day). He was the truest type of Scout that yon could find anywhere. No man ever hunted so many elephants or so- many lions as he did. When at last he gave up bis wild life and returned to England he found he could never stay at home for long. Almost every year saw him somewhere or other after big game.. One year it might be the Rocky Mountains, the next East Africa, then Alaska or the Sudan. Once, when he was in my room, he saw there a pair of horns of a kind of antelope which he had not 'got in his collection. He at once noted down the name of the place whfere I had got them —it was somewhere in South-East Africa—and off he went, and was not satisfied until he had got a pair likewise.

"KILLED IN. ACTION.

That was the kind of man he was—always ready foi* an adventure. And yet he was, like a Scout, very quiet and modest about what he had done; h© never boasted or talked about the feats he had performed. Wlien he could not go big game shooting he was just as happy watching birds and noting their habits, collecting their eggs' and so on. He had a charming home at Worplesdon, in Surrey, where he had built a museum to hold specimens of all th© different kinds of animals he had hunted, and many a Boy Scout has in the past spent a happy day looking at the wonderful great beasts of the jungle. When the Great Wai' came in 1914 Selous could not stay idly at home; although he was sixty-three *ycars of age he "joined up” and was soon at the front in East Africa. Here, serving as an officer in the Royal Fuseliers, when _ all the officers with him were down with fever and sickness, this hardened, veteran was as fit as a fiddle and doing grand work, and he Was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for “conspicuous gallantry, resource, and endurance.” On January 8, 1917, this splendid Scout fell—killed in action fighting for his country. A fitting end to an adventurous life and the one that he would have wished for. He was one of the finest Scouts of on? time.