BOY SCOUTS’ JOURNEY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 14345, 25 October 1910, Page 7

BOY SCOUTS’ JOURNEY.

A record in scout work, and an unprecedented method in the delivery of mayoral correspondence, are reported from Home. From Cardiff two boy scouts, bearing a dispatch■ from the local Mayor, sot out on a two hundred and fifteen miles' journey to London and tho Lord Mayor. That they accompished this on foot in five days, at the average rate of over forty miles a dayspeaks volumes for their pluck and endurance, but that they should have run the gauntlet of hordes of vigilant “defenders” without being once challenged speaks more for their intelligence and ingenuity. By tho rules for dispatch limning they were exempt from challenges hy other scouts whim within certain areas, hut oven if challenged outside those they were at liberty to continue jf their message,.was not discovered within two minutes of their arrest. More than nine challenges, however, barred them from success. .Sometimes, to avoid dangerous localities, they had to make wide detours, hut even’ if challenged it would have taken a very smart scout to find the dispatch, since part of the time it reposed in a bloater—where the digestive organs should have been. At some of the towns they were enthusiastically received by local “troops,” the city areas being neutral territory, but they were not always fortunate in striking a town at night, and on two occasions they slept in a barn, making their breakfast off mushrooms foraged from tho fields. AVhon one hundred and fifteen miles from London they were joined by another scout, who, after failing to entrap them, decided to assist in the enterprise. An injured cyclist and runaway horse were tho bettor for their attentions at Hammersmith. One night they wore forced to spend on tho road, but they managed to roach the Mansion House apparently none the worse for their remarkable journey. They were to return to Cardiff under tho same conditions.