During the hard days of the siege, when rations were few
and bad, Burnham's little girl, who had been the first white child
born in Buluwayo, died of fever and lack of proper food. This with
other causes led him to leave Rhodesia and return to California. It
is possible he then thought he had forever turned his back on South
Africa, but, though he himself had departed, the impression he had
made there remained behind him.
Burnham did not rest long in California. In Alaska the hunt for
gold had just begun, and, the old restlessness seizing him, he left
Pasadena and her blue skies, tropical plants, and trolley-car strikes
for the new raw land of the Klondike. With Burnham it has always
been the place that is being made, not the place in being, that
attracts. He has helped to make straight the ways of several great
communities--Arizona, California, Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda.
As he once said: "It is the constructive side of frontier life that
most appeals to me, the building up of a country, where you see
the persistent drive and force of the white man; when the place is
finally settled I don't seem to enjoy it very long."
In Alaska he did much prospecting, and, with a sled and only two
dogs, for twenty-four days made one long fight against snow and
ice, covering six hundred miles. In mining in Alaska he succeeded
well, but against the country he holds a constant grudge, because it
kept him out of the fight with Spain.
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