If we hurry we should be able to sight them in
an hour." At first the officers would smile, but not after a
half-hour's gallop, when they would see ahead of them a dozen
Boers leading five ponies. In the early days of Salem, Burnham
would have been burned as a witch.
When twenty-three years of age he married Miss Blanche Blick, of
Iowa. They had known each other from childhood, and her
brothers-in-law have been Burnham's aids and companions in
every part of Africa and the West. Neither at the time of their
marriage nor since did Mrs. Burnham "lay a hand on the bridle
rein," as is witnessed by the fact that for nine years after his
marriage Burnham continued his career as sheriff, scout, mining
prospector. And in 1893, when Burnham and his brother-in-law,
Ingram, started for South Africa, Mrs. Burnham went with them,
and in every part of South Africa shared her husband's life of travel
and danger.
In making this move across the sea, Burnham's original idea was to
look for gold in the territory owned by the German East African
Company. But as in Rhodesia the first Matabele uprising had
broken out, he continued on down the coast, and volunteered for
that campaign. This was the real beginning of his fortunes. The
"war" was not unlike the Indian fighting of his early days, and
although the country was new to him, with the kind of warfare
then being waged between the Kaffirs under King Lobengula and
the white settlers of the British South Africa Company, the
chartered company of Cecil Rhodes, he was intimately familiar.
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