Burnham and a
younger brother a home in the East, but at the last moment Fred
refused to go with them, and chose to make his own way. He was
then thirteen years old, and he had determined to be a scout.
At that particular age many boys have set forth determined to be
scouts, and are generally brought home the next morning by a
policeman. But Burnham, having turned his back on the cities, did
not repent. He wandered over Mexico, Arizona, California. He met
Indians, bandits, prospectors, hunters of all kinds of big game; and
finally a scout who, under General Taylor, had served in the
Mexican War. This man took a liking to the boy; and his influence
upon him was marked and for his good. He was an educated man,
and had carried into the wilderness a few books. In the cabin of
this man Burnham read "The Conquest of Mexico and Peru" by
Prescott, the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, of Livingstone
the explorer, which first set his thoughts toward Africa, and many
technical works on the strategy and tactics of war. He had no
experience of military operations on a large scale, but, with the aid
of the veteran of the Mexican War, with corn-cobs in the sand in
front of the cabin door, he constructed forts and made trenches,
redoubts, and traverses. In Burnham's life this seems to have been
a very happy period. The big game he hunted and killed he sold for
a few dollars to the men of Nadean's freight outfits, which in those
days hauled bullion from Cerro Gordo for the man who is now
Senator Jones of Nevada.
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