Chapter X (1)

1896-1907

AS soon as Selous and his wife returned home at the end of 1896 he finished off the notes he had made concerning the second Matabele War, and delivered them to Rowland Ward & Co., who published his book, "Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia," shortly afterwards. From this time forward he did a considerable amount of literary work, which, being in demand, gave him sufficient money to satisfy many of his more pressing wants at home, as well as supplying funds for the numerous short trips he now made every year. Owing in a large measure to the kindly help and advice given to him by a South African friend, his finances were now put on a sound basis, and he was able to look forward to being able to live at home in comfort without being denied those short periods of wandering which to him were part of his existence. Of course there were always ups and downs due to market fluctuations, and when things went wrong for a while he would have fits of depression that he would be unable to hunt any more; but these always passed away sooner or later when the clouds lifted and some new piece of work commanded a good price. There is little doubt that a man enjoys best that for which he has worked. All Selous' later hunts were the outcome of his industry with the pen, and in some measure from lectures, so he experienced some joy in the working, for it meant to him the camp fire and the open road.

In reading of his almost continuous wanderings after this date it must not be supposed that he was not happy in his home life. As a matter of fact no man considered himself more blessed by fortune in the possession of wife and children, and every fresh expedition, when he felt impelled as it were to go to the wilds, was fraught with misgivings and anxieties for his loved ones at home. It was always a wrench when the time came. He wrote once to Roosevelt on this point, and received the following sympathetic answer:--

"... After all, there is nothing that in any way comes up to
home and wife and children, in spite of the penalty one has to
pay for having given hostages to fortune. I know just exactly
how you feel about the 'two hearts.' Having a wife and six
children, of whom I am very fond, I have found it more and more
difficult to get away; for the last eight years, indeed, my
hunting trips have merely been short outings. I am of course
very much interested in my work here; but I cannot say how I
long at times for the great rolling prairies of sun-dried yellow
grass, where the antelopes stand at gaze, or wheel and circle;
for the splintered cottonwoods on the bank of some shrunken
river, with the wagon drawn up under them, and the ponies
feeding round about; for the great pine forests, where the bull
elk challenge, and the pack-train threads its way through the
fallen timber. I long also for the other wilderness which I have
never seen, and never shall see, excepting through your books,
and the books of two or three men like you who are now dead. It
may be that some time I can break away from this sedentary life
for a hunt somewhere; and of all things possible to me, I should
like to take this hunt among the big bears of Alaska, and try to
work out their specific relationship. But I don't know whether I
shall ever get the chance; and of course this sedentary life
gradually does away with one's powers; though I can walk and
shoot a little yet. Politics is a rather engrossing pursuit,
and, unfortunately, with us it is acute in the Fall, at the very
time of the best hunting; and as my children grow older I am
more and more concerned with giving them a proper training for
their life-work, whatever it may be. I don't yet accept the fact
that I shall never get the chance to take some big hunt again,
and perhaps it may come so I shall be able to; and meanwhile I
do revel in all the books about big game, and when I can get out
to my ranch even for ten days, I enjoy it to the last point,
taking an old cow-pony and shambling off across the grassy flats
for a few days' camping, and the chance of an occasional
prong-buck.

"I am glad you like to chat with me even by letter. Ever since
reading your first book I have always wanted to meet you. I hope
I may have better luck next year than I had this. You will of
course let me know if you think I can be of any help to you in
your Canadian trip.

"The Colonel X. whom I wrote to you about is, I am quite sure,
what we should term a fake, although I also have no doubt that
he has actually done a good deal of big game hunting; but I am
certain that, together with his real experiences, he puts in
some that are all nonsense. Did you ever read the writings of a
man named Leveson, who called himself 'the Old Shikari'? He was
undoubtedly a great hunter; yet when he wrote about American big
game, I know that he stretched the long bow, and I am very sure
he did the same about African big game. He everywhere
encountered precisely those adventures which boys' books teach
us to expect. Thus as soon as he got to Africa, he witnessed a
vicious encounter between black rhinoceroses and elephants,
which would have done credit to Mayne Reid; exactly as Colonel
X. relates the story of a fearful prize-fight, in which a
captive English Major slays a gorilla, against which he is
pitted by a cannibal king--dates, names and places being left
vacant.

"What do you know of that South African hunter and writer named
Drummond? He wrote very interestingly, and gave most vivid
descriptions of hunting-camps, of the African scenery, and of
adventures with Hons and buffaloes; but his remarks about
rhinoceroses made me think he was not always an exact observer,
especially after I had read what you said.

"By the way, did I ever mention to you that Willie Chanler's
party was continually charged by black rhinoceroses, and his
companion, an Austrian named Von Hoehnel, who stayed with me
once, was badly mauled by one."

Like most schoolboys with a taste for natural history and an adventurous disposition Selous had, as we have seen, been an industrious bird-nester. In his youth he had commenced to make a collection of European birds' eggs, and this taste, usually abandoned by most boys in after-life, was in him only dormant. When he set out to do anything he generally carried it through to the end; and so when opportunity came again, as it did after his wanderings in South Africa were finished, he seized it with avidity. He was much too good a naturalist to collect eggs wholesale, as some collectors unfortunately do, but contented himself with one or two clutches taken by himself. His contention was, I think, a correct one, that if only one clutch of eggs of a bird is taken, the same bird either sits again and lays a fresh set of eggs or makes a new nest. So little or no harm is done.

Being a member of the British Ornithologists' Union he knew all the regular egg-collectors, and soon obtained the best information where various species were to be found. Each year as April came round he packed his bag and, occasionally accompanied by some local enthusiast, he went to all the best resorts of rare birds in England, Scotland, the Orkneys, Asia Minor, Spain, Hungary, Holland, and Iceland.

Thus in 1897 he commenced the egg-hunting season by going to Smyrna in February with the intention of taking the nests of the large raptorial birds which there breed very early in the year. The point he made for was the Murad Dagh, a range of mountains in the interior of Asia Minor, where he knew the short-toed, golden and imperial eagles, and the black and griffon vultures nested. He also had some hopes that he might secure one of the big stags before they dropped their horns. On his journey he suffered much from the cold in the mountains, and was also at first unsuccessful in finding any of the big stags, who seemed to have been hunted out of the range. He saw three fine stags but did not succeed in finding one of those which he had wounded. He then returned to Smyrna and went into the Maimun Dagh again. Here he took the eggs of black vulture, griffon vulture, short-toed eagle and laemmergeier. Getting tired of this range he went on to the Ak Dagh, where he took one golden eagle's nest, three griffon vultures' eggs, and two of black vultures. He also shot a young red deer, with which was a fine old stag that had just dropped its horns. He returned to England in March.

In England he commenced his nesting operations in April by hunting Thatcham Marsh (near Reading) for water-rails' nests, and took two. Then he went on to the Scilly Isles for sea-birds.

He says, in a letter to me: "I am going to Brabant if I can obtain a permit from the Dutch Government to collect a few eggs, and after that to Scotland, where I shall remain until it is time to leave for America." In Scilly, he says: "I got eggs of the Greater and Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Herring Gull, Manx Shearwater, Oyster-catcher, and Ringed Plover, but found no Terns breeding." On June 8th he decided to put off his trip to Holland, as it was too late. I then gave him particulars where he could get Arctic, Lesser and Sandwich terns in Scotland, and also obtained permission for him to take two Capercaillie nests. All of these he obtained.

In any collection of hunting trophies, the gems of all collections (with perhaps the exception of the red deer of Europe and the great sheep and goats of Central Asia) are the great deer of North America, and Selous had for long envied the possessors of such fine specimens of moose, wapiti and caribou as had been obtained in the seventies and eighties of the last century. It is true that as good moose and caribou can be killed to-day as ever; but the great wapiti, owing to their curtailed range, are gone for ever, so a hunter to-day must be content with inferior specimens. In 1897 three or four specimens of wapiti were allowed to be killed in the restricted area south of the Yellowstone Park, and it was with the intention of killing these as well as other North American game that Selous turned to the West in August, 1897.

In his youth Selous, like other boys of similar tastes, had devoured the works of Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, Catlin, and Kingston, relating to fact and fiction, and had always desired to visit America as one of his lands of dreams. But it was not civilized America that appealed to him. Cities are the same all the world over. It was the land of vast plains and trackless forests swarming with game that appealed to him; and if he could not, alas, now find such a hunter's paradise, he could at least see something of the little that was truly wild which was left and perhaps obtain a few fair specimens for his collection. Once, it is true, he had actually taken his passage to America. That happened in 1893, but the outbreak of the Matabele war in that year had caused him to alter his plans and he went back to South Africa instead.

Selous had a good friend, W. Moncrieff, who owned a small cattle ranch in the heart of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. Here in the adjoining forests and mountains still lived a remnant of the bears, wapiti, mule-deer and sheep that had formerly been so abundant, and the local knowledge enjoyed by Moncrieff enabled him to furnish Selous with the best information. Accordingly he left England accompanied by his wife, and, passing through Canada, reached the ranch on the last day of August. Next day the party on horses, accompanied by a waggon with one Bob Graham as a guide, struck into the mountains and, after passing over the main range of the Big Horns, descended into the Big Horn basin. This is covered with sage brush, and is still the home of a few prong-horned antelopes, two of which, one a good male, Selous succeeded in shooting.

The hunters then proceeded up the south fork of Stinking Water, and established a main camp in the forests, where a few very shy wapiti males were still to be found. For twenty days Selous toiled in a mass of dense and fallen timber before he carried his first wapiti head back to camp. Wapiti are in fact now both shy and scarce, and a man must persevere and work continuously, at least early in the season, before even one fair specimen can be found, but Selous greatly enjoyed the grandeur and wildness of the scenery, and being still in the prime of life the exertion of daily toil did not in any way affect his energy. On September 29th he shot his first mule-deer buck. A little snow came and helped to make tracking easier. Then Selous had some luck, and he killed four wapiti, two in one day, and a fifth near Davies' ranch on October 28th. Near the same place too he killed one of the few remaining white-tailed deer-bucks in Wyoming, but its head was rather a poor one, that of an old male "going-back." Selous wrote an account of this trip to Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary to the American Navy, and received (November 30th, 1897) the following reply:--

"Your letter made me quite melancholy--first, to think I wasn't
to see you after all; and next, to realize so vividly how almost
the last real hunting-grounds in America have gone. Thirteen
years ago I had splendid sport on the Big Horn Mountains which
you crossed. Six years ago I saw elk in bands of one and two
hundred on Buffalo Fork; and met but one hunting expedition
while I was out. A very few more years will do away with all the
really wild hunting, at least so far as bear and elk are
concerned, in the Rocky Mountains and the West generally; one of
the last places will be the Olympic Peninsula of Oregon, where
there is a very peculiar elk, a different species, quite as big
in body but with smaller horns, which are more like those of the
European red deer, and with a black head. Goat, sheep, and bear
will for a long time abound in British Columbia and Alaska.

"Well, I am glad you enjoyed yourself, anyhow, and that you did
get a sufficient number of fair heads--wapiti, prong-buck,
black-tail, and white-tail. Of course I am very sorry that you
did not get a good sheep and a bear or two. In the north-eastern
part of the Park there is some wintering ground for the elk; and
I doubt if they will ever be entirely killed out in the Park;
but in a very short while shooting in the West, where it exists,
will simply be the kind that can now be obtained in Maine and
New York; that is, the game will be scarce, and the game-laws
fairly observed in consequence of the existence of a class of
professional guides; and a hunter who gets one good head for a
trip will feel he has done pretty well. You were in luck to get
so fine a prong-buck head.

"Do tell Mrs. Selous how sorry I am to miss her, as well as
you. I feel rather melancholy to think that my own four small
boys will practically see no hunting on this side at all, and
indeed no hunting anywhere unless they have the adventurous
temper that will make them start out into wild regions to find
their fortunes. I was just in time to see the last of the real
wilderness life and real wilderness hunting. How I wish I could
have been with you this year! But, as I wrote you before, during
the last three seasons I have been able to get out West but
once, and then only for a fortnight on my ranch, where I shot a
few antelope for meat.

"You ought to have Hough's 'Story of the Cowboy' and Van Dyke's
'Still Hunter.' Also I think you might possibly enjoy small
portions of the three volumes of the Boone and Crockett Club's
publications. They could be obtained from the 'Forest and
Stream' people at 346 Broadway, New York, by writing. Have you
ever seen Washington Irving's 'Trip on the Prairie,' and Lewis
and Clarke's Expedition? And there are two very good volumes,
about fifty years old, now out of print, by a lieutenant in the
British Army named Ruxton, the titles of which for the moment I
can't think of; but I will look them up and send them to you. He
describes the game less than the trappers and hunters of the
period; men who must have been somewhat like your
elephant-hunters. When I was first on the plains there were a
few of them left; and the best hunting-trip I ever made was in
the company of one of them, though he was not a particularly
pleasant old fellow to work with.

"Now, to answer your question about ranching; and of course you
are at liberty to quote me.

"I know a good deal of ranching in western North Dakota, eastern
Montana and north-eastern Wyoming. My ranch is in the Bad Lands
of the Little Missouri, a good cattle-country, with shelter,
traversed by a river, into which run here and there perennial
streams. It is a dry country, but not in any sense a desert.
Year in and year out we found that it took about twenty-five
acres to support a steer or cow. When less than that was allowed
the ranch became overstocked, and loss was certain to follow. Of
course where hay is put up, and cultivation with irrigation
attempted, the amount of land can be reduced; but any country
in that part of the West which could support a steer or cow on
five acres would be country which it would pay to attempt to
cultivate, and it would, therefore, cease to be merely pastoral
country.

"Is this about what you wish? I have made but a short trip to
Texas. There are parts of it near the coast which are
well-watered, and support a large number of cattle. Elsewhere I
do not believe that it supports more cattle to the square mile
than the north-western country, and where there are more they
get terribly thinned out by occasional droughts. In Hough's book
you will see some description of this very ranching in Texas and
elsewhere. I really grudge the fact that you and Mrs. Selous got
away from this side without my even getting a glimpse of you."

As he had only shot two wapiti with fair heads and one mule-deer with average horns, Selous decided to have a second hunt in the Rockies, with the object of obtaining better specimens. In November, as a rule, there is heavy snow in the mountains, and this has the effect of driving the game down out of the heavy timber into more open ground where "heads" can more easily be seen and judged. Accordingly in October, 1898, Selous went to Red Lodge in Montana and there met the hunter Graham. This time he went up the north fork of Stinking Water to the forest and about twelve miles east of the Yellowstone Park. Mild weather, however, throughout November was all against seeing any quantity of game, so Selous was again somewhat disappointed with the results of this hunt.

After this trip, in 1898, he wrote to me:--

"Come here yourself as soon as you can. _Vous serez toujours le
bienvenu._ A damned newspaper reporter (an American, who came
here whilst I was in London, and would not go away until he had
seen me) said I have got some good wapiti heads, but I only got
one _fair_ one. I got four wapiti bulls altogether, but two had
very small heads--not worth taking. I got four mule-deer stags,
one with a very nice head and a second not at all bad. I also
shot another lynx; but I had very unfortunate weather, hardly
any snow, and when I left the Mountains the wapiti were still up
in their early autumn range."

Selous was rather disappointed in not obtaining better wapiti heads, and wrote in his book ("Travels East and West") that bigger heads of deer could now be killed in Hungary than in the Rockies. Commenting on this, Roosevelt, in a letter to him at a later date, says:--

"By the way, I was in the winter range of the deer (Colorado),
and I have never seen them so numerous. They were all black-tail
(mule-deer). Every day I saw scores, and some days hundreds.
There were also elk (wapiti). I did not shoot either deer or
elk, of course; but I saw elk-antlers shot last fall, ranging
from 52 to 56 inches in length. I think you were a few years
ahead of time (although only a few years) when you stated that
already bigger antlers could be secured in Hungary than in the
Rockies."

In this doubtless Roosevelt was correct; but Selous had hunted in a district where all good heads had been picked off, and the range and feed of wapiti had been so curtailed that even at this date and now it is practically impossible to obtain a good specimen.

In April, 1899, he went with his wife to Wiesbaden, returning in June. In October he paid a short visit to his friend, Mr. Danford, in Transylvania, where he killed some good specimens of chamois--one, a female, having horns 11 inches long. In November he came home again, and having some thought of hunting elk in Norway in the following year, wrote to me in November, 1899: "I want to hear all about your hunt in Norway, so come over here at once. I am very glad to hear you were so successful with the elk and bear, and should much like to have a try next year, if I could stand the work, which I have always heard is very hard." This hunt, however, failed to materialize.

One of Selous' beliefs was that it was impossible for men to hold wide sympathies and to lead others towards the light unless they had been through the grinding-mill of experience in other lands. His broad-minded outlook made him a cosmopolitan in one sense of the word, for he found good and something ever to learn from the men of all nations; yet withal at heart he was intensely English of the English, and believed in our destiny, as a nation, as a guiding light to universal understanding. His view was that no man had any right to express an opinion on another nation unless that man had lived amongst the people he criticized _and could speak their language_. Such a theory would no doubt be unpopular, but it is right. In international differences all kinds of people express their views in contemporary literature just because they happen to have the ear of the public; but how many of these really know anything about the people they criticize. A popular cry is raised, and the mob follow like a flock of sheep. An instance of this was the complete misunderstanding of the causes of the Boer War and Boer nation. There were not half a dozen men in England or Africa to tell the public at home the true state of things, and when they did express their views they were quickly drowned in a flood of lies and misrepresentations by interested politicians and gold-magnates who held the press. Men like Selous and Sir William Butler, because they told the absolute truth, were dubbed "Pro-Boers," when in reality they were the best examples of "Pro-English" Englishmen. They simply could not be silent amongst the welter of falsehoods, and only tried to stem the flowing tide of mendacity. Their strongly expressed view that the war would not be a walk-over for us, and that we were fighting a gallant foe who deemed themselves right in defending their country, which had been most distinctly given back to them by inviolable treaties (made by the Gladstone Government), was correct, and that they would fight desperately and to a large extent successfully was abundantly proved by subsequent events. If Selous made a mistake it was in allowing certain letters to the "Times" and "Morning Post" to appear _after the war had commenced_. I have reason, however, to believe that these letters were written and sent in prior to the commencement of hostilities, and that they were "held over" to a time when their appearance was, to say the least of it, unfortunate.

In justice to Selous, however, it must be said that after this he kept silent, nor did he ever utter a word publicly in the matter. He felt that we were now hopelessly involved, and that anything he could say would be of little use. Though he felt sad and disappointed over the whole matter, he was far too much a patriot to do other than wish success to our arms, though he ever hoped that some amicable settlement would evolve out of the whole disastrous affair. Afterwards too he often expressed his appreciation of the noble way in which the subsequent British Government treated the Boers, both at the conclusion of peace and the liberal manner in which we sought to bury the hatchet--a manner which unfortunately has not always met with success amongst the older Boer irreconcilables. Men like Botha and Smuts have proved that our later policy has been broad-minded and humane, and that in time we shall amalgamate in one South African Dominion a nation absolutely loyal to the British Crown; but it will be a long time before the malcontents have lost all their bitterness and a new generation understands what is meant by a Greater South Africa.

His true feelings as regards the war are thus stated in a letter to me, November 5th, 1899:--

"This war is a most deplorable business; but of course, as you
say, we _must_ bring it to a successful conclusion now at
whatever cost; but think what South Africa will be like when it
is over. However, it is useless talking about it. My letters to
the 'Times' have raised a great deal of ill-feeling against me
in this country."

And again, writing January 1st, 1900, he says:--

"I am very depressed about this war. It is a bad business, and
justice is not on our side. There was a lot of dirty work done
by the capitalists to bring it about, and no good can come of it
for this country. I have seen several letters written by Jan
Hofmeyr during the last few months, beginning before the war.
They are very interesting, and I hope will be published some
day. They seem to explode the idea of the leaders of the Cape
Africanders having been in a conspiracy of any kind with the
Pretoria lot."

From 1872 onwards Selous had known and studied the Boers intimately. He had lived and hunted with them from the Orange Free State to Matabeleland, and had found them a simple race of hunter-farmers, intensely patriotic and hopelessly conservative. He knew that "they are neither angels nor devils, but just men like ourselves," and that the views of the British, German and Jew storekeepers and traders of the Transvaal and Orange Free State were hopelessly wrong, because they did not know the real back-veldt Boers of the country, who made up the majority of the Nation. He himself had never received anything but kindness and straight dealing from them, and was therefore able to appreciate their indignation and outbursts of fury when a second annexation was contemplated by our Government. He replies to the charge that life for Englishmen was impossible in the Transvaal after the retrocession to the Boers of that country in 1881: "Mr. Rider Haggard has told us that he found it impossible to go on living in the Transvaal amid the daily insults of victorious Boers, and he also tells us that Boers look upon Englishmen with contempt, and consider them to be morally and physically cowards. I travelled slowly through the Transvaal by bullock-waggon shortly after the retrocession of the country in 1881, and visited all the farmhouses on my route. I met with no insults nor the least incivility anywhere, nor ever heard any boasting about Boer successes over our troops, though at that time I understood the 'Taal' well. In common with all who really know the Boers, who have lived amongst them, and not taken their character at second-hand, I have always been struck by their moderation in speaking of their victories over our soldiers. As for the Boers having a contempt for Englishmen as individuals, that is nonsense. They hate the British Government, and knowing their history, I for one think they have ample reason for doing so. But the individual Englishman that they know, they take at his real value. There are of course, unfortunately, certain Englishmen in Johannesburg, or people who are now put down as Englishmen, who could not but appear as contemptible to a Boer as they would do to most people in this country. But, on the other hand, I could name many Englishmen and Scotchmen, men who have been honest and upright and fearless in all their dealings with their neighbours, who have been held in immense respect by all the Boers of their acquaintance. These men, however, lived amongst the Boers, spoke their language, and took a sympathetic interest in their lives; whilst one of the troubles of the present situation in the Transvaal is that the Uitlander population of Johannesburg is, in its sympathies, its mode of life, and all its hopes and aspirations, as wide as the poles asunder from the pastoral Boers, with whom it never mixes, and whom it therefore does not understand." (Letter to the "Times," October 24th, 1899.)

This was also exactly my own experience as recently as 1893, when I lived entirely and trekked with Boers for a year. Never was I ever treated except with the greatest kindness both by my own intimate friends or casual acquaintances, once I had learnt to speak the "Taal," nor did I ever hear them "crow" over their victories of 1881. There was, however, always the latent fear that the British Government would again play them false, and they would be once more forced to fight us; but with individual Englishmen they liked and trusted there was no sign of animosity.[52]

In June, 1900, Selous was asked to sign a protest, issued by the "South Africa Conciliation Committee," inaugurated by W. L. Courtney (editor of the "Fortnightly Review"). In the following letter, however, written to the Secretary, he manifests his sound common-sense in separating the "causes of the war" from what could be done at the moment when our forces were actually fighting and likely to prove victorious. His grievance was with the authorities who brought about the war and the methods which had been employed to make it, and not with the conduct thereof or its natural effects. Wherefore he refused to sign the protest, and gave his reasons as follows:--

"_August 3rd, 1900._

"I have left your circular so long unanswered because I have
been thinking over it very deeply, and because, although I
realize most fully the force of all the arguments that can be
used against the annexation of the Boer Republics, I still think
that those who sign the protest ought to be able to propose some
scheme of settlement which holds out a better prospect of future
peace. I personally can think of no such scheme. Had honourable
terms been offered to the Boers, and the independence of their
countries been assured to them with certain necessary
limitations, immediately after the occupation of Pretoria, there
might have been great hope for the future peace of the country,
but all that has occurred, not only in the Transvaal and Orange
State, but also in the Cape Colony, must have caused such a
feeling of exasperation amongst the Dutch Africanders against
the British Government, that I cannot but feel that the granting
of a limited independence to the Boer Republics would not now
produce rest or peace. Things have gone too far for that now,
and it seems to me that Great Britain will only be able to hold
South Africa in the immediate future by force. I am of course
convinced of the truth of all you say in the protest, that the
annexation of the Boer Republics is 'contrary to the public
declarations of Her Majesty's Ministers, alien to all the best
traditions of a freedom-loving country, burdensome to the
resources of the nation, and wholly distasteful to the majority
of our fellow-subjects in South Africa,' but that does not blind
me to the fact that the race hatred that has been engendered by
this war is so deep and so terrible that the granting of
independence to the Boer Republics would be more immediately
disastrous to British supremacy in South Africa than unjust
annexation accompanied by the garrisoning of the country with
large numbers of troops. Annexation or no annexation, I firmly
believe that sooner or later the people who actually live in
South Africa--as distinguished from those whose only interest in
the country is the exploitation of its mineral wealth--will
govern the country, and, if they wish it, have their own flag,
and throw off all allegiance to Great Britain. I would gladly
sign any protest against the policy which brought about the war,
one of the results of which is this ill-omened annexation of
independent states, but I am beginning to think, with John
Morley, that annexation was an almost necessary result of a war
pushed to the bitter end. I am very sorry to have troubled you
with so long a letter, but I wish you to understand that,
although my views as to the iniquity of the policy which brought
about the war will always remain the same, and although I think
the annexation of the two Boer Republics a piece of injustice
and a national disgrace, and would most willingly have signed a
protest against it three months ago, I now feel the exasperation
caused by the war is so great that the independence of the Boer
Republics might very possibly be used against British supremacy
in South Africa. It is a very distressing outlook, and I can see
no light in the future; but still I do not feel justified in
signing the present protest. I beg to thank you for the last two
leaflets you sent me, Nos. 53 and 54. The publication of Colonel
Stonham's evidence, as to the humanity of the Boers, ought to
have a very good effect if it could be made widely known."

After this the war drew on slowly to its eventual finish in 1901, Selous' only public contribution being a letter to the "Speaker," which was used by the South African Conciliation Committee in its efforts to influence the Government, and part of this letter, which deals with the effects of the war on the Boer population and the future, is worth quoting:--

"Should it, however, be determined to erase the Boer Republics
from the map of Africa and to carry on the war to the point of
practically exterminating the able-bodied male population of
these two sparsely-peopled States, let it not be thought that
the surviving women will bring up their children to become
loyal British subjects. Let Englishmen remember that the men who
prophesied that within a short time after the war was over the
Boers would become reconciled to the British, whom they would
then have learnt to respect, are the same people who also told
us that the war would be a very short and simple campaign, as
the Boers were a degenerate, cowardly race, who could no longer
shoot at all well, and who would be sure to disperse to their
homes after the first battle, if only a hundred of them were
killed. These were the sort of predictions which were very
commonly heard in this country a few months before the war
commenced, and they were the utterances of men wholly ignorant
of the Boer character.

"As showing that there are people whose opinions are entitled to
respect who think differently, I will now quote from memory a
passage in a letter lately written by a well-known and
well-educated Dutch Africander to a friend in this country:
'Those people who expect that the Boers will soon forgive and
forget this war, and settle down quietly under the British flag,
are most terribly mistaken. I think I know my own countrymen,
and I believe that if, after this war is over, the independence
of the Republics is destroyed, the historic episode of Hamilcar
making Hannibal swear eternal enmity to Rome will be re-enacted
in many a farmhouse throughout the Transvaal and Orange Free
State. The Boer women will teach their children to hate the very
name of England, and bid them look forward to the day when their
country will be freed from British domination.' These words,
even if the idea they express is somewhat exaggerated, are
worthy of attention when it is remembered how rapidly the Boers
increase in numbers and fighting strength." ("The Speaker,"
1900.)

After this he only expressed his views to a few personal friends, such as President Roosevelt, who was in close sympathy with his hopes that peace on a fair basis might soon be restored. In reply to one of his letters, Roosevelt, writing March, 1901, says:--

"It makes me melancholy to see the Boer War hanging on. Your
limit of eighteen months (the time Selous stated it would last)
is rapidly approaching. Of course there can be only one ending;
but it is a dreadful thing to have the ending come only by the
exhaustion of the country and of the fighting men. How I wish
you could be made administrator of all South Africa. Somehow I
feel that you could do what no other man could do, and really
bring about peace. I begin to be afraid you have been right
about this war. I hope we shall see things go right hereafter."

It is interesting too to study both Roosevelt's and the American attitude towards our policy in the Boer War. In reply to Selous' explanation of the whole matter the American statesman thus writes (March 19th, 1900):--

"I appreciate very deeply the trouble you have taken in writing
to me; although in a way your letter has made me feel very
melancholy. My idea of the questions at issue has been mainly
derived from the 'Spectator,' a paper that I take and always
like, and which impresses me as being honestly desirous of
getting at the true facts in any given case. I paid especial
heed to what it said because of its entire disapproval of Cecil
Rhodes and the capitalist gang. Moreover, a friend of mine,
Ferdinand Becker, who was in the Transvaal and who saw very
clearly the rights and wrongs of each side, and for whose
judgment I have great respect, insists that as things actually
were the war was inevitable, _that there had to be a fight, and
that one or the other race had to be supreme in South Africa_.
By the way, much of the pro-Boer feeling here is really
anti-English, and as I have a very warm remembrance of England's
attitude to us two years ago, I have of course no sympathy with
such manifestations. So I thought after Montague White's visit
to me that I should like to hear the other side from someone
whom I could thoroughly trust, and I appealed to you. It is
largely an academic curiosity on my part, so to speak, for the
answer of the English Premier to the communication of
transmissal sent by President McKinley with the letters from the
Presidents of the two Republics shows that any mediation would
be promptly rejected. I do not suppose that the end can be very
far distant now, unless there is a formidable uprising in the
Cape Colony, for it would look as if there had never been fifty
thousand Boers under arms, and Roberts has four times that
number of troops in South Africa. Evidently the Boers are most
gallant fighters, and quite as efficient as they are gallant.

"I had been inclined to look at the war as analogous to the
struggles which put the Americans in possession of Texas, New
Mexico, and California. I suppose the technical rights are about
the same in one case as in the other; but, of course, there is
an enormous difference in the quality of the invading people;
for the Boers have shown that they have no kinship with the
Mexicans. In Texas the Americans first went in to settle and
become citizens, making an Outlander population. This Outlander
population then rose, and was helped by raids from the United
States, which in point of morality did not differ in the least
from the Jameson raid--although there was at back of them no
capitalist intrigue, but simply a love of adventure and a
feeling of arrogant and domineering race-superiority. The
Americans at last succeeded in wresting Texas from the Mexicans
and making it an independent Republic. This Republic tried to
conquer New Mexico but failed. Then we annexed it, made its
quarrels our own, and did conquer both New Mexico and
California. In the case of Texas there was the dark blot of
slavery which rested on the victors; for they turned Texas from
a free province into a slave republic. Nevertheless, it was of
course ultimately to the great advantage of civilization that
the Anglo-American should supplant the Indo-Spaniard. It has
been ultimately to the advantage of the Indo-Spaniard himself,
or at any rate to the advantage of the best men in his ranks. In
my regiment, which was raised in the South-West, I had forty or
fifty men of part Indian blood and perhaps half as many of part
Spanish blood, and among my captains was one of the former and
one of the latter--both being as good Americans in every sense
of the word as were to be found in our ranks.

"If the two races, Dutch and English, are not riven asunder by
too intense antagonism, surely they ought to amalgamate in South
Africa as they have done here in North America, where I and all
my fellows of Dutch blood are now mixed with and are
indistinguishable from our fellow Americans, not only of
English, but of German, Scandinavian, and other ancestry.

"The doubtful, and to my mind the most melancholy, element in
the problem is what you bring out about the Englishman no longer
colonizing in the way that the Boer does. This is a feature due,
I suppose, to the enormous development of urban life and the
radical revolution in the social and industrial conditions of
the English-speaking peoples during the past century. In our
Pacific States, and even more in Australia, we see the same
tendency to the foundation of enormous cities instead of the
settlement of the country districts by pioneer farmers. Luckily,
America north of the Rio Grande and Australia definitely belong
to our peoples already, and there is enough of the pastoral and
farming element among us to colonize the already thinly-settled
waste places which now belong to our people. But the old
movement which filled the Mississippi valley at the beginning of
this century with masterful dogged frontier-farmers, each
skilled in the use of the rifle and axe, each almost independent
of outside assistance, and each with a swarm of tow-headed
children, has nearly come to an end. When Kentucky, at the close
of the eighteenth century, was as populous as Oregon 100 years
later, Kentucky did not have one-tenth of the urban population
that Oregon had when she reached the same stage. Now, urban
people are too civilized, have too many wants and too much
social ambition, to take up their abode permanently in the
wilderness and marry the kind of women who alone could be
contented, or indeed could live in the wilderness. On the great
plains of the West, when I was in the cattle business, I saw
many young Easterners and young Englishmen of good families who
came out there; but not one in twenty, whether from the Atlantic
States or from England, married and grew up as a permanent
settler in the country; and the twentieth was usually a
_declasse_. The other nineteen were always working to make money
and then go home, or somewhere else, and they did not have their
womankind with them. The 'younger son' of whom Kipling sings is
a picturesque man always, and can do very useful work as a
hunter and explorer, or even a miner, but he is not a settler,
and does not leave any permanent mark upon any true
frontier-community with which I am acquainted. After the
frontier has been pushed back, when the ranchman and the cowboy
and the frontier-ganger, who are fitted for the actual
conditions, have come in, then the 'younger son' and the
struggling gentleman-adventurer may make their appearance in the
towns. Of course, there are exceptions to all of this, but as a
rule what I have pointed out is true. I have seen
scores--perhaps hundreds--of men from Oxford and Cambridge,
Harvard and Yale, who went into cattle-growing on the Great
Plains, but they did just as I did; that is, worked with greater
or less success at the business, gained an immense amount of
good from it personally, especially in the way of strength and
gratifying a taste for healthy adventure, learned much of human
nature from associating with the men round about, and then went
back to their own homes in England or New York or Boston,
largely because, when it came to marrying and bringing up
children, they could not well face the conditions; and so the
real population of the future in the valleys of the upper
Missouri, the Platte, and the Rio Grande, will be composed of
the sons of their companions, who were themselves descendants of
small farmers in Texas, Missouri, and Illinois, or of
working-men from Scandinavia and Germany.

"Pardon this long letter, which has wandered aside from the
thesis with which it started. I hope that the language of the
more highly civilized people will, in spite of the evil
influences of to-day, gradually oust the 'Taal' or whatever you
call Boer Dutch in South Africa, and that when the conquest of
the two Republics is succeeded by the full liberty which I
understand the Cape Dutch enjoy, there will come a union in
blood as well as in that between the two peoples who are so
fundamentally alike.

"I am looking forward to the receipt of the three books you have
been so very kind as to send me. I do know a certain amount
about the Boers from the time of their great trek onward, for
it has always seemed to me to be one of the most fascinating
bits of modern history."

In the spring of 1900 Selous went on a bird-nesting trip to the forest and marshes of the Danube in Hungary, and was successful in getting the eggs of many new species for his collection. When he arrived home in June he found his finances in low water, owing to enlarging his house, and so feared he would be unable to make an extensive autumn hunt, but later on things improved, and he was able to go West after all.

In September, 1900, he went to Canada to hunt moose, and arrived at Mattawa, Ontario, on September 24th. On this trip he was fortunate in securing the services of George Crawford, a half-breed Indian, who was probably the best moose-caller and hunter in that province. In spite of the number of American hunters who at this time made the districts of Kippewa and Tamiskaming their favourite hunting-grounds, Crawford always knew where to go to secure moose, and it was not long before Selous reached a hunting-ground, about three days north of Mattawa, on Lake Bois Franc, where he killed two fine bulls. After this short trip he went to Snake Lake to try and secure a good white-tailed deer stag, but was not very successful, as he only secured a four-year-old buck with moderate horns. On October 26th he landed in Newfoundland and, being supplied with bad information, went by railway from Port-aux-Basque to Howley, a station on the main line, where the annual slaughter of caribou took place late in the season.

It was not long before Selous found that the so-called "sport" of shooting caribou on migration as they crossed the line in their southern migration was not sport at all, and that frequently, owing to the number of bullets flying in all directions fired by enthusiastic meat-hunters, the shooting was likely to result in human as well as cervine casualties. Moreover, hardly any good stags come south with the mass of does and immatures, so, taking his guide Stroud and an old man named Robert Saunders he left the place in disgust and went south to the Terra Nova river, intending to strike into the heart of the country and, if possible, catch up the main body of the migrating deer before they cast their horns and reached their winter-quarters near the south coast. But he was too late, and after an onerous tramp, during which he penetrated beyond the limits reached by other white men, he was forced to return owing to lack of food, but not before his sharp eyes had seen numerous trees stripped by "summering" stags in the neighbourhood of St. John's Lake. These signs convinced him that the local movements of the deer were unknown even to the hunters in Newfoundland, and that the big stags would probably be found in autumn in the heart of the island, and not on migration in the north. In this he was quite correct. He did not, however, go home without a specimen, for he killed one nice stag on his journey inland.

Accordingly he made plans to hunt in the neighbourhood of St. John's Lake in the following autumn of 1901, and procuring two canoes from Peterborough in Ontario, and enlisting the services of Saunders and his cousin John Wells, he ascended the rocky Terra Nova river in September. To the reader it may seem easy to go seventy miles in a canoe up-stream, but the fact that previous hunters had not been there proves that there were difficulties. No Newfoundland boats in fact would withstand the rocky benches of this swift-flowing river, so progress can only be made for the most part by wading and dragging the canoes, whilst the hunter has to force his way through dense forest, so thick at times that an axe has to be used for progress to be made before reaching the higher plateaux, where lakes and streams are easily passed. Once on Lake St. John, all was easy, and Selous found game abundant and a small migration of big stags already in progress.[53]

Moreover, Selous was lucky enough to have struck a good year for "heads." In less than eight days he shot his five stags, two of which carried remarkably fine heads--one, in fact, a forty-pointer, which he killed by a long shot close to his camp, being one of the finest specimens ever killed in the island by any sportsman. Selous often spoke afterwards of this trip as being one of the pleasantest he ever had in his life.

He writes, October 6th, 1901:--

"I am back from Newfoundland. I had a short but very successful
little trip into quite new country, thanks to my canoes, and
shot the five stags my licence entitled me to kill very quickly.
I have got one really remarkable head, a second, very handsome,
with beautiful double brow-antlers, and very fine tops; and a
third, a pretty regular head of medium size--the other two not
much to boast about. But my two good heads are really fine, and
when you see them you will never rest till you go to my new
ground and get more like them. I can give you all particulars
when we meet, and have arranged that my guide--hardly the right
word, as we got into country where he had never been in his life
and where he says no one has ever yet hunted, except a few
Micmac Indians who were out after caribou, but trapping beavers
along the rivers--shall keep himself unengaged for you up to
June next."