carries with him everything that
is essential both for himself and his horse, and packed in such a way
as would be the despair of the deftest valet. When the War Office
asks him how long he will be before starting on a commission abroad,
B.-P. answers, "I am ready now." Everything is there in a room in his
mother's house, and Baden-Powell is never so happy as when that khaki
kit leaves its resting-place and is packed away in a ship's cabin. And
what journeys he has been on Queen's service! Before he was
twenty-three he had travelled over the greater part of Afghanistan,
and then after seeing most of India, he was in South Africa at
twenty-seven, and did there a wonderful reconnaissance, unaccompanied,
of six hundred miles of the Natal Frontier in twenty days. He has
travelled through Europe, knows the Gold Coast Hinterland as well as
any European, and has almost as good a notion as the Great Powers
themselves concerning their frontier defences.

This reminds me that Baden-Powell sometimes spends his holidays in
visiting historical battlefields and travelling through various
countries to see how their defences and their guns are getting along.
He is an excellent linguist, and can make his way in any country
without arousing suspicions. During some military manoeuvres one
autumn (we need not enter into special details) Baden-Powell was
wandering at the back of the troops, seeing things not intended for
the accredited representatives of Great Britain, who had the front row
of the stalls, and saw beautifully what they were meant to see. What
he noted on this occasion is regarded by military authorities as very
valuable information.

But exciting as these adventures are, they possess no such fascination
for Baden-Powell as the life in breeches, gaiters, flannel-shirt, and
cowboy's hat--when the mountains infested with murderous natives are
blurred by the night, and he is free to steal in among their shadows
at his will, and creep noiselessly through the enemy's lines. The
Matabele, of whom we shall speak later on, soon got to distinguish
Baden-Powell from the rest of Sir Frederick Carrington's troops in
1896. They christened him "Impessa" then, and to this day he is spoken
of by the Kaffirs with awe and admiration as the "Wolf that never
Sleeps." Silent in his movements, with eyes that can detect and
distinguish suspicious objects where the ordinary man sees nothing at
all, with ears as quick as a hare's to catch the swis