The Matabele Campaign (1896)
Colonel R. S. S. Baden Powell

Baden-Powell in South Africa, 1896

CHAPTER IV.
SCOUTING.

26th June to 14th July.

Single scouts preferable to patrols—Had to conceal yourself—Skirt-dancing a useful aid to evading an enemy—The enemy’s ruses for catching us—The minutiae of scouting—The Matopo Hills—Positions of the enemy—A typical patrol—The value of solitary scouting—Its importance in modern war—The elementary principles of scouting.

14th July.—A bit of a break in the diary, not because there was nothing doing, but just the opposite. For one thing, we have been pretty busy in sending off three small columns to the assistance of Mashonaland. And also, personally, I have been fully occupied in another way: that is, in repeating my experiences of the 26th June, and frequently by day, and very often by night, I have been back in the Matopos, locating the enemy’s positions. I go sometimes with one or two whites, sometimes with two or three black companions; but what I prefer is to go with my one native-boy, who can ride and spoor and can take charge of the horses while I am climbing about the rocks to get a view.

Solitary Scouting Scouting alone gives better results than reconnaissance in parties. Accompanied by a reliable native who could keep a good look-out and take care of the horses, one was able to do a lot of effective scouting. We generally moved by night, and worked on the early dawn.

It may seem anomalous, but it is in the very smallness of the party that the elements of success and safety lie. A small party is less likely to attract attention; there are fewer to extricate or to afford a target, if we happen to get into a tight place; and I think that one is more on the alert when one is not trusting to others to keep the look-out.

Then we have a nice kind of enemy to deal with. Except on special occasions, they don’t like going about in the dark, and cannot understand anybody else doing it; and they sleep like logs, and keep little or no look-out at night. Thus one is able to pass close through their outposts in the dark, to reconnoitre their main positions in the early dawn (when they light up fires to thaw away their night’s stiffness), and then to come away by some other route than that by which you entered.

So long as you are clothed, as we are in non-conspicuous colours, you can escape detection even from their sharp eyes; but you must not move about-­directly you move, they see you, and take steps to catch you. Half the battle in keeping yourself hidden, while yet seeing everything yourself, is to study the colour of your background; thus, if clothed in things that match the rocks in colour, you can boldly sit out in front of a rock, with little risk of detection, so long as you remain motionless; if you are hiding in the shadow alongside of a rock or bush, take care that your form thus darkened is not silhouetted against alight background behind you. To show even pour hand on a skyline would, of course, be fatal to your concealment.

[P-S.-Do not wear any bright colours about you. I noticed that after I had been on the sick list and resumed my scouting expeditions, the enemy caught sight of me much more quickly than they used to, though I took just as much care, and remained just as motionless; and I then came to the conclusion that this was due to the fact that I had, in accordance with the doctor’s advice, taken to wearing a flannel cummerbund wound round my waist-and the only flannel at that time procurable was of a brilliant red; and this was what caught their eye.]

Of course, anything liable to glitter or shine is fatal to concealment; rifle, pistol, field-glasses, wrist-watch, buckles, and buttons should be dulled, abolished, or held in such a way as not to catch the rays of the sun by day or of the moon by night.

For efficient scouting in rocky ground, in the dry season, India rubber-soled shoes are essential; with these you can move in absolute silence, and over rocks which, from their smoothness or inclination, would be impassable with boots. It is almost impossible to obliterate your spoor, as, even if you brush over your footprints, the practised eye of the native tracker will read your doings by other signs; still, it is a point not to be lost sight of for a minute when getting into position for scouting, and a little walking backwards, doubling on one’s tracks over rocky ground, lighting a fire where you are not going to cook your food, or one of a hundred similar subterfuges may often relieve you from the attentions of a too-inquisitive enemy.

When they have found you watching them, they will not, as a rule, come boldly at you, fearing that you are merely a lure to draw them on into some ambuscade or trap,-for that is one of their own pet games to play,-but they will work round to get on to the track you have made in getting to your positions. Having found this, and satisfied themselves that you are practically alone, their general rule is to lie in ambush near the track, ready to catch you on your return. Naturally one never returns by the same path.

[P.S.-Once I had to do it, later on, at Wedzas, when there was no other way, and nearly paid the penalty.]

Sometimes they try to shoot or to catch one; but so long as one keeps moving about, they do not seem to trust much to their marksmanship; and I have heard them shouting to each other, "Don’t shoot at the beast, catch him by the hands, catch him by the hands." Then they would come clambering over the rocks, but clambering awkwardly-for, lithe and active though they be, the Matabele are not good mountaineers, especially in that part of it which Montenegrins say is the most difficult (possibly because they themselves shine pre-eminently at it), namely, in getting rapidly downhill. Consequently, if one is wearing india rubber-soled shoes (not hobnailed boots, for with them you merely skate about the slippery boulders), it is not a difficult matter to outpace them, provided you have the natural gift or requisite training for "placing" your feet. I am a fair blunderer in most things, but I was taken in hand in the days of my youth by a devotee of the art of skirt-dancing, and never, till I was forced by dark-brown two-legged circumstances to skip from rock to rock in the Matopos, did I fully realize the value of what I then learned, namely, the command of the feet.

The Value of Skirt Dancing When pursued by Matabele among the boulders of the Matopo country it was of the greatest advantage to be equipped with rubber-soled shoes, and to have that command of your feet which is acquired in the practice of skirt-dancing.

The enemy are also full of tricks and ruses for catching us by luring us into ambuscades. Thus they will show scouts, cattle, women, and, at night, fires, in the hope of our coming close to capture or investigate, and so putting ourselves in their hands. But even if we were so simple as to be tempted, we should probably see something of their spoor which would put us on our guard. And in this respect the stupidity of the native is almost incredible; he gathers his information almost entirely by spooring, and. yet it is only occasionally that he seems to remember that his own feet are all the time writing their message to his enemies. Now and again he thinks of it, and leaps across a path or sandy patch; but I suppose that, knowing the hopelessness of trying effectually to conceal his trail, he has acquired the habit of disregarding its importance.

There is naturally a strong attraction in reconnoitering, for, apart from the fun of besting the enemy, the art of scouting is in itself as interesting as any detective work.

It is almost impossible to describe all, the little signs that go to make up information for one when scouting. It is like reading the page of a book. You can tell your companion—say a man who cannot read—that such and such a thing is the case.

“How do you know?” he asks.

“Because it is written here on this page.”

“Oh! How do you make that out?”

Then you proceed to spell it out to him; letters that make words, words that make sentences, sentences that make sense. In the same way, in scouting, the tiniest indications, such as a few grains of displaced sand here, some bent blades of grass there, a leaf foreign to this bit of country, a buck startled from a distant thicket, the impress of a raindrop on a spoor, a single flash on the mountain-side, a far-off yelp of a dog,-all are letters in the page of information you are reading, and whose sequence and aggregate meaning, if you are a practised reader, you grasp at once without considering them as separate letters and spelling them out-except where the print happens to be particularly faint. And that is what goes to make scouting the interesting, the absorbing game that it is. . A small instance will show my meaning as to what information can be read from trifling signs.

The other day, when out with my native scout, we came on a few down-  trodden blades of common grass; this led us on to footprints in. a sandy patch of ground. They were those of women or boys (judging from the size) on a long journey (they wore sandals), going towards the Matopos. Suddenly my boy gave a “howl” of surprise, and ten yards off the track he picked up a leaf. It was the leaf of a tree that did not grow about here, but some ten or fifteen miles away; it was damp, and smelt of Kaffir beer. From these signs it was evident that women had been carrying beer from the place where the trees grew towards the Matopos (they stop up the mouth of the beer-pots with leaves), and they had passed this way at four in the morning (a strong breeze had been blowing about that hour, and the leaf had evidently been blown ten yards away). This would bring them to the Matopos about five o’clock. The men would not delay to drink up the fresh beer, and would by this time be very comfortable, not to say half-stupid, and the reverse of on the qui viva; so that we were able to go and reconnoitre more nearly with impunity-all on the strength of information given by bruised grass and a leaf.

There should have been no reason for my going out to get information in this way had we had reliable native spies or fully trained white scouts. But we find that these friendly natives are especially useless, as they have neither the pluck nor the energy for the work, and at best are given to exaggerating and lying; and our white scouts, though keen and plucky as lions, have never been trained in the necessary intricacies of mapping and reporting. Thus, it has now fallen to my lot to be employed on these most interesting little expeditions.

Under present conditions we, staff and special service officers, have to turn our hand to every kind of job as occasion demands, and one man has to do the ordinary work of half a dozen different offices. It is as though, the personnel of a railway having, been suddenly reduced by influenza or other plague just when the -bank holiday traffic was on, a few trained staff were got from another company temporarily to work it. We find a number of porters, station-masters, cleaners, firemen, &c., available, but we have to put in a lot of odd work ourselves to make the thing run; at one minute doing the traffic management, at the next driving, an engine, here superintending clearing-house business, then acting as pointsmen, and so on. It makes it all the more interesting, and in this way I have dropped in for the scouting work. The net result of our scouting to date is that we have got to know the nature of the country and the exact positions of the six different rebel impis in it, and of their three refuges of women and cattle. Maps have been lithographed accordingly, and issued to all officers for their guidance. These maps have sketches of the principal mountains to guide the officers in finding the positions of the enemy.

The Matopo district is a tract of intricate, broken country, containing a jumble of granite-boulder mountains and bush-grown gorges, extending for some sixty miles by twenty. It lies to the south of Bulawayo, its nearest point being about twenty miles from that town. Along its northern edge, in a distance of about twenty-five miles, the six separate impis of- the enemy have taken up their positions, with their women and cattle bestowed in neighboring gorges.

On the principle, “Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo,” we have taken innumerable little peeps at them, and have now “marked down” these impis and their belongings in their separate strongholds, a result that we could never have gained had we gone in strong parties.

The Strongholds in the matopos Our outposts were at Hope Fountain, Kami, Mabukutwane and Fig Tree. From these we reconnoitered the enemy’s scouts on the north bank of the Umzingwane, and marking the positions of the impis in the hills by their fires, tracks, etc.

Commencing at the western end, near the Mangwe road is the stronghold of the Inugu Mountain, a very difficult place to tackle, with its cliffs, caves, and narrow gorges. The impi occupies the mountain, while the women and cattle are in the neighbouring Famona valley.

Inuga Mountain

Five miles N.E. of this is the Chilili valley, in which are women and cattle of Babyan’s impi. This impi is located deep in the hills near Isibula’s Kraal on the Kantol Mountain; while Babyan himself, and probably the priest of the M’limo, are in a neighbouring valley.

The Chilili Valley

Eighteen miles to the eastward, eight miles south of Dawson’s Store on the Umzingwane River, we come to a bold peak, that is occupied by Inyanda’s people, with a valley behind it, in which are Sikombo’s women and cattle.

A couple of miles farther west, Sikombo’s impi is camped behind a dome-­shaped mountain close to the Tuli road.

Inyanda’s, Sikombo’s and Umugulu’s Positions

On the west side of this road Umlugulu’s impi was stationed when we first began our reconnaissance, but he moved nearer to Sikombo, with Mnyakavula close by. Each impi numbered roughly between one and two thousand men. Their outposts were among the hills along the northern bank of the Umzingwana River. We used to. pass between these by night, arriving near the strong­holds at daybreak.

The following account, taken from the Daily Chronicle, gives an idea of what one meets with when out on reconnaissance with a patrol:­

“Is it the cooing of doves that wakes me from dreamland to the stern reality of a scrubby blanket and the cold night air of the upland veldt? A plaintive, continuous moan, moan, reminds me that I am at one of our outpost forts beyond Bulawayo, where my bedroom is under the lee of the sail (wagon tilt) which forms the wall of the hospital. And through the flimsy screen there wells the moan of a man who is dying. At last the weary wailing slowly sobs itself away, and the suffering of another mortal is ended. He is at peace. It is only another poor trooper gone. Three years ago he was costing his father so much a year at Eton; he was in the eleven, too—and all for this.

“I roll myself tighter in my dew-chilled rug, and turn to dream afresh of what a curious world I’m in. My rest is short, and time arrives for turning out, as now the moon is rising. A curious scene it is, as here in shadow, there in light, close-packed within the narrow circuit of the fort, the men are lying, muffled, deeply sleeping at their posts. It’s etiquette to move and talk as softly as we are able, and even harsh-voiced sentries drop their challenge to a whisper when there is no doubt of one’s identity. We give our horses a few handfuls of mealies, while we dip our pannikins into the great black ‘billy,’ where there’s always cocoa on the simmer for the guard. And presently we saddle up, the six of us, and lead our horses out; and close behind us follow, in a. huddled, shivering file, the four native scouts, guarding among them two Matabele prisoners, handcuffed wrist to wrist, who are to be our guides.

“Down into the deep, dark kloof below the fort, where the air strikes with an icy chill, we cross the shallow spruit, then rise and turn along its farther bank, following a twisting, stony track that leads down the valley. Our horses, though they purposely are left unshod, make a prodigious clatter as they stumble adown the rough, uneven way. From force of habit rather than from fear of listening enemies, we drop our voices to a whisper, and this gives a feeling of alertness and expectancy such as would find us well prepared on an emergency. But we are many miles as vet from their extremest outposts, and, luckily for us, these natives are the soundest of sleepers, so that one might almost in safety pass with clattering horses within a quarter of a mile of them.

“There must be some merit in wrapping up your head when cold,-even at the expense of your nether limbs,—for here in Southern Africa the natives have identically the same way as the men of Northern India have of keeping up their warmth, and as they feel the cold increase, so do they “peel” their legs to find the wherewithal to further muffle up their heads. The keen crispness of the air is in keeping with our spirits, as, all awake, we trek along the hazy veldt. And what a lot of foes one sees when one is looking out for them! Surely that’s a man—yes—no—an upright bush. Ah, there! I saw one move. It is but the sprig of a nearer tree eluding a too-watchful eye; the Kafrs do not move about as a rule alone at night, while if one is seen, you may be sure there is a party close at hand, and so one needs to keep a very sharp look-out. By going thus at night, we are hoping that we may slip past the Matabele outposts stationed on the hills, and so gain the country that we want to see beyond. Were we to attempt this feat by day, or with a larger party, we should undoubtedly attract attention and have to take a longish circuit. As it is, we make our way for some ten miles along this valley, keeping off the. stony path and in the grass, so as to deaden sound as far as possible. High above on either hand the hills loom dark against the stars, and on their summits our enemy’s outposts, we know, are quietly sleeping.

“Now and again we cross a transverse donga or tributary watercourse that runs into our stream, the donga sometimes rising to the dignity of a ravine with steep and broken sides. And when we have found a place, and safely crossed it, we turn and approach it from the other side, so that should we happen later on to be pursued and want to get across it in a hurry, we shall know the landmarks that should guide us to the ‘ drift.’  The stars are palpitating now and striving hard to increase their gleam, which means that dawn is at hand. The hills along our left (we are traveling south) loom darker now against the paling sky. Before us, too, we see the hazy black of the greater valley into which our present valley runs. Suddenly there’s pause, and all our party halts. Look back ! there, high up on a hill, beneath whose shadow we have passed, there sparkles what loots like a ruddy star, which glimmers, bobs, goes out, and then flares anew. It is a watchfire, and our foes are waking up to warm themselves and to keep their watch. Yonder on another hill sparks up a second fire, and on beyond, another. They are waking up, but all too late; we’ve passed them by, and now are in their ground. Forward! We press on, and ere the day has dawned we have emerged from out the defile into the open land beyond. This is a. wide and undulating plain, some five miles across to where it runs up into mountain peaks, the true Matopos. We turn aside and clamber up among some hills just as the sun is rising, until we reach the ashes of a kraal that has been lately burned. The kraal is situated in a cup among the hills, and from the koppies round our native scouts can keep a good look-out in all directions. Here we tail a halt for breakfast, and after slackening girths we go into the cattle kraal to look for corn to give our horses. (The Kaffirs always hide their grain in pits beneath the ground of the “cattle kraal” or yard in which the oxen are herded at night.) Many of the grain-pits have already been opened, but still are left half-filled, and some have not been touched-and then in one-well, we cover up the mouth with a flat stone and logs of wood. The body of a girl lies doubled up within. A few days back a party of some friendliest, men and women, had revisited this kraal, their home, to get some food to take back to their temporary refuge near our fort. The Matabele saw them, and just when they were busy drawing grain, pounced in upon them, assuaging three-all women-and driving off the rest as fast as they could go. This was but an everyday incident of outpost life.

“And having fed our horses, each of us now got his “billy” out, a “billy” (cooking-tin) is carried here by every officer and trooper in a case upon his saddle,-and, having lit a fire, we got our coffee boiled, and break­fast under way. Then two of us, taking with us our two prisoners, clamber up a kop pie, from whose top we hope to get a view of the enemy’s country. There is something ludicrous in, and yet one cannot laugh. at, this miserable pair. Linked wrist to wrist, they move as would a pair of sullen Siamese twins. The grass is prickly hereabouts, and both want to keep to the tiny goat-track that we are following, and so they have to sidle up like crabs, going hand in hand along it. At length we gain the top; there is a splendid panorama, and now that the sun is well up, the mountains out across the plain look but a few hundred yards away, so clear is every rock, so deep the shadows. The prisoners have no hesitation in telling us exactly where their friends are camped upon the mountains, and where they keep their women and their cattle. We sit and stare for half an hour, and then agree’. that, having come so far without accident, we may as well go farther, and get a nearer view of these redoubtable strongholds. We return down to our party, and as we descend, we remember that our native scouts and the prisoners have had a pretty long walk as it is. They had shown us what we had come out to see, and we now proposed to send them back.

“So, having seen them shuffling homeward, we turned our horses’ heads towards the mountains, and continued our way across the open valley. On and on, keeping everywhere a bright look-out against surprise. The veldt was rolling grassy downs, all covered, sometimes sparsely, sometimes densely, with bushes,—mostly thorns. Every open speck of sand, every track, was keenly scrutinized for “spoor” (or tracks of men), and though there was not a soul to be seen about the veldt t, the signs of their propinquity were here too glaring to be missed.

“Leaving our horses, with the remainder of the men, well hidden behind a rise, we two walked on foot, each carrying a rifle with him. It was an anxious time, as very soon the bush had shut us out of sight of our support, but still we kept along, anxious to gain the summit of a rounded, rocky hill, whence we could see all round, and so foresee all danger.

“Now, on the paths before us were fresh tracks of an ox, behind whom had walked a man with naked feet, and going a little lame on one-the left toes dragged, he used a stick. They had passed along before sunrise, because across the tracks there ran the spoor of guinea-fowl heading towards their feeding-ground in yonder patch of maize. A single ox thus driven in the night assuredly meant a pack-ox smuggling in supplies to one of the rebel strongholds. More paths converged into the one we followed, bringing more and more people, women’s feet and children’s, oxen and donkeys, all fresh, and heading in the same direction.

“Then, mounting on the rocks, we followed with our eyes the direction of the path through thicker bush until it reached a solitary mountain. There we could see a thin wreath of smoke curling up from the bush, and, looking through our powerful telescope, we soon could see some other fires high up the hillside close to some mighty caves. – Dogs were barking, cattle lowing, at the back of one particular shoulder of the hill; and while we stared to try and distinguish figures in the rocks, a sudden flash up near the mountain-top just caught our eye. Then, focusing the glass upon it, soon we saw the dark brown figures of some twenty natives squatting up about the sky-line, and the frequent glint and sparkle showed they carried guns and assegais. Nearer and nearer we crept, gaining another koppie, whence we had a better view, and from here we marked the line that our attacking parties ought to take, and where to post our guns with best advantage. We might have stayed there longer, for it was a tempting spectacle to sit and watch. But the natives in the hills are calling to each other, evidently suspicious, if not actually aware of our presence-and they have eyes as strong as telescopes. Now some crows fly startled from the bush a few hundred yards to our right.

"Some one is moving there! Up springs a plover screaming farther on­ they’re on the move. We have seen all that we want to see. To stay in one place for long when scouting is risky at any time; to-day it looks even dangerous. So we quietly Blip away-not by the path we came-for that is the way you run into your enemy’s ambuscades.

“Then, as we went along, a novel footprint caught our eye, and struck us much as Friday’s must have struck old Crusoe. A deep indented hollow of the fore part of a foot showed plainly in the grass to one side of the path, heading as to cross it, and in the grass beyond the other side the deep indent was seen of a heel in the earth. This was the spoor of a man, running much in the same direction as ourselves, yet wishing to avoid notice, because he jumped the path.  Evidently a messenger going out the way we had come, and knowing of our presence there, and on his way to warn the out­post!!, through whom we had passed in the dark, to catch us on our home­ward road. Our horses now had had their second feed, the men had had a kind of meal, and so we started on again. We had to visit two more hills, but found them both unoccupied. And then we turned our heads for home. Caution became more than ever necessary now. There was only left the short afternoon of daylight, our horses were no longer over fresh, and we had five-and-twenty miles to go, ten of them along a defile valley. So with an advanced file sent well ahead, and one dropped well in rear, we journeyed on, each man keeping an ever-restless, bright look-out.

“And though we talked and chatted from time to time for many a weary mile, you never saw your neighbour’s eyes look at you for a moment. While talking, one had still to keep one’s eves afield. And what a mixture in our little band of eight ! Under the similar equipment of cocked-up Boer or cowboy hat, with ragged shirt and strong cord pants, with cartridge bandolier, and belt from which hung knife and pipe, tobacco-bag and purse, all grimy and unkempt, and sunburnt to a rich, dark brick colour, each individual was an interesting study in himself. Here is one with pince-nez—(pince-nez on a trooper!)—a Cambridge man of highest education, who thought he would take to farming in Rhodesia; but his plans are interrupted by the war, and while that lasts he takes his place, like others, in the ranks. Beside him rides a late A.B. seaman in the Royal Navy, a fine young fellow, full of pluck, who will press on where devils fear to tread, but, he is disap­pointing as a scout, for, after having been close up to the enemy, he cannot tell how they are posted, what their strength, or any other points that the leader wants to know. This other man an architect, and yon a gold-prospector in fact, there’s a variety enough among them to suit almost any taste.

“The sun has set and darkness has drawn on before we are well out of the defile; but we are now beyond the rebel outposts, and getting nearer home, so there’s nothing much to-bang! phit!—and a bullet flits just over our heads ! It came from behind; we halt and hear the clatter of hoofs as the man who was left as rearguard comes galloping up the road. A moment later he appears in the dusk rounding the next turn. He no sooner sees us than he halts, dismounts, drops on one knee, takes aim, and fires straight at us. We shout and yell, but as he loads to fire again, we scatter, and push on along the road, and he comes clattering after us. The explanation is that nervousness, increased by darkness coming on, has-sent the man a little off his head, and, ludicrous though it be, it is a little unpleasant for us. None of his comrades care to tackle him. “It is a pity to shoot him. His horse is tired and cannot catch us up,” and “He’ll be all right as soon as he has got over the first attack of fright”; and so we leave him to follow us, keeping a respectful distance. At length the fires twinkle ahead, and, tired and hungry, we get back to camp.

“At dawn our missing man turned up-without his horse, it had dropped dead from fatigue. He had a wondrous tale of how he had pursued a host of enemies. The sole reward he got was a ducking in the spruit.”

A small party such as that mentioned in this account of a scouting expedi­tion is often necessary, as in this case, for ensuring the safety of the scouts in getting to and from their work through defiles and the like, where it might happen that the way would have to be forced past the enemy’s outposts. But once on their ground, the escort should be carefully concealed. Their work is over for the time being, and the essential part of the expedition, that is, the scouting by one or two trained individuals, has commenced.

The scout must then be left with a perfectly free hand, and must not be tied to any certain hour for return. He can only judge for himself later on whether it is necessary to be away for two or three hours only, or for a whole night, before he comes back to the party. And that is one of the considera­tions which make me prefer to start from home or camp without escort in the original instance, as it leaves one altogether unfettered by considerations as to the feeding, resting, &c., of the patrol, or of necessarily making one’s wav back to the exact spot where it would be posted.

[P.S.-As will be seen in the following chapters, the rebel impis and their women and cattle were all found, when the troops came to attack them later on, in the exact positions assigned to them in the sketch map issued. Such “locating” would have been impossible had we tried to effect it by recon­naissances of the usual kind, that is, by parties of men. The natives would have gathered to oppose our coming, or—what is more likely—to prevent our getting away again; instead of gently stealing our honey bit by bit, we should have brought the whole swarm of bees about us, and the probability is that they would then have deserted that hive to take a new and more inaccessible one. Instead of being able to lead the troops straight to the enemy, we should merely have been able to say, “There is the spot where we fought them; they seemed to come from yonder; but it looks as if they had now gone somewhere else.” And reconnoitring parties would again have bad to follow them, with similar results, probably losing men every time, and gaining nothing.]

The value of solitary scouting does not seem to be sufficiently realized among us nowadays. One hears but little of its employment since the Peninsula days, when Marbot gave the English officers unqualified praise for their clever and daring enterprise in this line.

It is not only for savage warfare that I venture to think it is so important, but equally for modern civilized tactics. A reconnaissance in force in these days of long-range weapons and machine-guns can have very little chance of success, and yet for the same reasons an accurate knowledge of the enemy’s position, strength, and movements is more than ever necessary to the officer commanding a force. One well-trained, capable scout, can see and report on an object just as well as fifty ordinary men of a patrol looking at the same thing. But he does so with this advantage, that he avoids attracting- the attention of the enemy, and they do not alter their position or tactics on account of having been observed; and he can venture where a party would never be allowed to come, since the enemy, even if they see him, would hesitate to disturb their piquets, &c., by opening fire on a solitary individual, although they would have no such scruples were a reconnoitring party there instead.

It is difficult to find in history a battle in which the victory or defeat were not closely connected with good or deficient reconnaissance respectively. Good preliminary reconnaissance saves premature wearing out of men and horses through useless marches and counter-marches, and it simplifies the commander’s difficulties, and he knows exactly when, where, and how to dispose his force to obtain the best results. But, as I have said above, such reconnaissance can often be carried out the most effectually by single reconnoitrers or scouts. And a peace training of such men is very important.

Without special training a man cannot have a thorough confidence in himself as a scout, and without an absolute confidence in himself, it is not of the slightest use for a man to think of going out to scout.

Development of the habits of noting details and of reasoning inductively constitute the elements of the required training. This can be carried out equally in the most civilized as in the wildest countries,—although for its complete perfecting a wild country is preferable. It is to a large extent the development of the science of woodcraft in a man—that is, the art of noticing smallest details, and of connecting their meaning, and thus gaining a know­ledge of the ways and doings of your quarry; the education of your “eye-­for-a-country”; and the habit of looking out on your own account. . Once these have become, from continual practice, a second nature to a man, he has but to learn the more artificial details of what he is required to report, and the best method of doing so, to become a full-fledged scout.

We English have the talent of woodcraft and the spirit of adventure and independence already inborn in our blood to an extent to which no other nationality can lay claim, and therefore among our soldiers we ought to find the best material in the world for scouts. Were we take this material and rightly train it in that art whose value has been denoted to the term “half the battle,” we ought to make up in useful men much of our deficiency in numbers.

Houdini, the conjurer, educated the prehensibility of his son’s mind by teaching him, in progressive lessons, to be able to recapitulate the contents of a shop window after a single look at it; there is the first stage of a scout’s training, viz. the habit of noticing details. The second, “inductive reason­ing, or the putting together of this and that detail so noticed, and deducing their correct meaning, is best illustrated in the “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.”

	Colonel R. S. S. Baden-Powell. The Matabele Campaign 1896. Chapter V. The Rebels Decline to Surrender (in preparation)
	The Baden-Powell Library. A Selection of excerpts from the works of Lord Baden-Powell and works relating to his life and career.
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