Scouting on Two Continents Quotes

“Rinderpest is endemic in Central Asia, and was brought to Africa by the Italian forces in their war with the Black King Menelik of Abyssinia. The deadly germ got into the Italian transport, perhaps through some infected sheepskin or saddle pad stuffed with hair from a sick animal, and triumphantly survived its six-thousand-mile journey to the Cape of Good Hope. The malady attacks all cud-chewing animals and is fatal to probably ninety per cent. Great herds of buffalo were exterminated by it; millions of antelope of all varieties, from the lordly eland to the tiny dick-dick, died of it; and vast numbers of domestic cattle were wiped out. Many native wars blazed up in its wake, and the resultant financial cloud continued for years to hang over the great colonial governments of Africa. Science eventually found a way of combating the disease, although strict quarantine is still the first and best line of defence.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“a moment after leaving Cummings, they heard the howl of their old hound, and then the yells of a horde of savages. Their house was surrounded, and the dynamite the Blicks had bought for the purpose of sinking a well was used to blow up their own buildings. To this day, my bachelor brother-in-law laments the newly darned socks he lost on that occasion, and in memory of that cruel event has refused steadfastly ever since to darn a sock.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“The Mashonas, who were the slaves that had been set free from the Matabele, joined with their old tyrants in the plan to exterminate the people who had freed them, and in no instance did a Mashona give warning to the whites,”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“if the vanquished has lately felt the sword, the victor may for a time carry an empty scabbard with impunity. Yet, in the end, to rely on the scabbard alone brings more bloodshed than to have the sword always ready within.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“The policy of equipping and drilling the blacks in South Africa was one of the worst mistakes the white man could make, if he expected to hold the country permanently.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“Here were people given more liberty than they had ever known before; the slaves all freed, labour paid in coin, lands held in safety, and taxes lighter by far than those levied on any white man in the empire. But let one cabalistic word be whispered in the ear of a servant by an emissary of the M’Limo (the Mouthpiece of God), and he became as a bit of grass swayed by an invisible wind. All the white man’s kindness and the benefits of good government were swept from his mind.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“It is almost impossible for the white race to grasp, even in a slight degree, the motives actuating the black.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“it took more than one hundred years of tragic warfare with that wiliest of all savages, the American Indian, to instil into the minds of our frontiersmen the fact that it is always wise to have ammunition handy and a gun loaded. Thousands of settlers were massacred and scalped, their homes burned and their families tortured, before our pioneers fully learned that first lesson of self-preservation — preparedness.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“it took more than one hundred years of tragic warfare with that wiliest of all savages, the American Indian, to instil into the minds of our frontiersmen the fact that it is always wise to have ammunition handy and a gun loaded. Thousands of settlers were massacred and scalped, their homes burned and their families tortured, before our pioneers fully learned that first lesson of self-preservation”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“it is always wise to have ammunition handy and a gun loaded.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“For our sins Allah has seen fit to punish us by setting the foreigner over us. When in his judgment we have paid, we shall rule again. The English came yesterday. They are here today; they will be gone to-morrow. We were here before they were known. We shall be here when they are forgotten.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“The Cross and the Crescent have each held sway twice in turn since 1250 A. D., but the palm groves, the coral strand, and the Negroes are now as they were then and probably will continue the same after the history of both is forgotten.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“Tippoo Tib, famous for many exploits long ago chronicled by Stanley and other writers. He was without doubt a very shrewd man, with many excellent qualities. It has been a good thing for white supremacy in that part of the world that others of his race were not like him.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“This was the day of gold, and this my opportunity to gain it; so, although I hated the slavery it entailed, I did my best to gather it for the sake of my children and those dependent on me. It seems to me that, in one way or another, nine tenths of our proud race must bend the knee to the power of money.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“Because,” the messenger replied, “they move like the snake; the head goes under the grass and comes up again and they are always moving. We attack them at one place and they move on to another and never stop marching.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“They loomed large and strange in the mist.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“Our horses would not back-track unguided. The map stored in my mind for the past forty-eight hours unrolled, but not as vividly as I required. I was enraged at myself for not having turned in the saddle every fifty yards to gaze backward.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“I knew the ring was complete because about a dozen of them had come in full view, brandishing their shields and shouting most uncomplimentary remarks about all our ancestors in general and our near relations in particular, adding most prejudiced opinions of ourselves. All this meant it was time to saddle up.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“The savage fights best when flushed with victory; the white man when desperate or when fighting for his own in a cause he deems right. Then there is a grimness about him that strips away all the conventions of ordinary life, and no savage is his equal.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“The settlers happened to have a few small pieces of artillery captured from the Portuguese in a previous row over the possession of the town of Massikessi. One of these weapons was a Hotchkiss one-and-a-half pounder. A clever Holland gunsmith made shells for us, and we moulded bullets about the size of ordinary buckshot which we imbedded in a mixture of tallow and resin, thereby providing a fairly effective weapon for resisting attack.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“But if any stranger expected us to take our responsibilities seriously, he had only to observe the laughing, careless, casual way in which we assumed control of this part of the continent. In 1893, South Africa was a young man’s land. When we marched into Matabeleland I was considered elderly by my companions — and I had just turned thirty-two.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“Probably there was never a more individualistic colony in the world, though we were amalgamated and held together by the pressure and the menace about us of overwhelming numbers of blacks, all latently dangerous and many openly hostile. They outnumbered us more than a hundred to one.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“we were amalgamated and held together by the pressure and the menace about us of overwhelming numbers of blacks, all latently dangerous and many openly hostile. They outnumbered us more than a hundred to one.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“The Honourable Sirs and Lords who joined us, fought with us, starved with us, and died as men should, doing their bit, were the least materialistic of all and often generous to their own undoing.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“There was a brave contingent from Australia, placed by mutual consent under the command of their greatest and best-loved prospector, Thomas. His heroism, his whimsicality, and his almost impossible doings became a tradition. Quite appropriately, at his death, the monument selected for him was a huge uncut boulder of a peculiar white quartz — an expression of the tribute we paid in our hearts to the whiteness of his soul.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“a slave mind makes a slave, irrespective of prowess or arms;”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“It has been claimed that the invention of the wheel was a greater benefit to man than either steam or electricity. Next to fire, it gave him mastery over the wilderness, wild beasts, and savage men. The Goths, the Boers, and the Americans each conquered their country with a wagon train which served to carry their food, protect the women and children, shelter their stock, and on occasion became a formidable though quickly movable fort.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“It has been claimed that the invention of the wheel was a greater benefit to man than either steam or electricity. Next to fire, it gave him mastery over the wilderness, wild beasts, and savage men.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“Johannesburg. I have known nothing like this place in all the world. Boer government, English capital, and black labour by hundreds of thousands under the management of American engineers, using their superior methods of mining, formed a combination that had never before been brought about.”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents

“We arrived just after the Sultan of Zanzibar had declared war on the British. It was probably the shortest war in history. It lasted forty minutes. At the end of that time, the Sultan’s navy was sunk, his palace a ruin, and the white flag was flying in token of surrender. In a few days, a new Sultan was enthroned and all was well”
― F.R. Burnham, Scouting on Two Continents