In very many parts of the world, which on the map are painted red and collectively called the British Empire, there are huge tracts of country covered with forests of all sorts, which are known to the inhabitants of the different colonies by various names, and these have exacted a heavy toll of human life from the venturesome traveller, prospector, hunter, or others, who have entered their recesses on their own business or pleasure. If the scrub of Australia, the bush of New Zealand, the forests of Canada, and the wilds of Africa could only be examined with a microscope, the remains of thousands of men would be discovered who, having been bushed (i.e. lost in the forest), have died of hunger, thirst or exhaustion, and whose remains, unfound, have wasted away until only a few mouldering bones, some tattered rags, and a few fragments of rusty metal remain to tell the tale and act as a warning to others. I have on two occasions been the finder of the remains of men who have been lost. One on the Taupo plains, who disappeared and who, although he was missed and looked for, was not found until three years after his disappearance, when I, quite by chance, stumbled on the poor chap’s bones, which were identified by a glass eye. The other case was the bones of a white man I found while shooting in South Africa. Who or what he had been never transpired. That he had been a white man was evident, but when or how he had been lost I never found out. I remember well that after I had searched the vicinity for anything that could have been used as a clue to his identity, I stood over the poor bones and moralised. This poor chap must have belonged to someone in the world who cared for him. Yet here he lay nameless, and unknown, his bones to be buried, as soon as my hunting boys with knife and tomahawk could scoop out a hole, by a man who was a perfect stranger to him, or, for all I knew to the contrary, we might have been comrades in two or three wars, or have hobnobbed together scores of times. However, there, under a tree, his bones lie, and I have no doubt that all marks of his grave, even the cross I cut out on the tree, to mark the spot, have long ago disappeared, and yet it is quite possible to this day there are people hoping and wondering if he will turn up. In the colonies men disappear very rapidly, and they are not readily missed. So they do in this great wilderness, London, whose hidden mysteries far and away outnumber all the frontier mysteries of the British Empire put together, but yet somehow the picture of a man lost in the bush, dying, alone, of starvation, thirst and exhaustion seems, if not so pathetic, at least more romantic than the scores of hungry, ragged and homeless creatures who wander about the Embankment, or the slums of the mighty city. Very many times during my life on the frontiers of the various colonies in which I have served I have been called on to assist in the search for a missing man; sometimes we have been successful, and have found our man alive, sometimes we have found him dead, and often we have searched in vain, the poor chap having disappeared, as if taken from earth in a chariot of fire. I could fill a book with yarns of cases of people being lost and found, and of being lost and not found, but the most wonderful case I know of is that of a young colonial, who was lost for forty days, yet was found alive, and who I believe to be still living.

In 1891 I had taken command of the De Beer’s Company Expedition to Mashonaland, consisting of sixty white men, forty colonial boys (natives), and eighteen waggons. The above I was to conduct from Kimberley to Salisbury, a trek of about 1300 miles. It was no joke. Very many of my men were quite raw hands, and just after we had left Kimberley the heaviest rains ever known in South Africa came on, so that the rivers became flooded, the swamps impassable, and the roads, such as they were, so rotten that the heavily laden waggons sank to their bed plates every few minutes.

However, I at last passed Tuli, and proceeded some eighteen miles on the Umzinguani River, where I determined to halt for a fortnight, so as to rest and recuperate my worn-out oxen. In Tuli the O.C. of the B.S.A. Police had told me that some days before I reached that place a man had been lost from some waggons that had been outspanned at the Umzinguani River. Up to date he had not been heard of, so he requested me to make a careful search and try to discover any trace of the missing man. I promised to do so, and asked for all the particulars. The man was a Colonial of Dutch descent, who was acting as orderly to some Dominican Nursing Sisters en route to Salisbury. They had outspanned across the river, in the early morning. After breakfast the man had taken his rifle, had entered the bush on the down-river side of the road, to try and shoot a buck for fresh meat, but had never returned. The waggons had waited three days for him, and then trekked on. I also ascertained that some twelve miles farther on the road was crossed by a big creek, that ran into the river some miles below the drift. This being the case, I failed to see how a colonial man, provided he kept his head, could be lost, as the area in which the occurrence happened was surrounded on all sides by good landmarks. It was in fact an irregular triangle, bounded on one side by the river, on another by the creek, and on the third by the road. Provided he struck the road, he had only to turn to his left to reach the outspan. If he struck the river he would only have to follow it up and find his waggons, and if he came across the creek he would only have to follow it to the road or river. This seems easy enough; but, as an old and experienced scout, I knew there were fifty sorts of trouble that might have happened to him, or he might have been guilty of a score of follies, all inexcusable but all committed frequently, even by old hands. He had gone away without his coat, that we knew; he might also have gone without matches—this was quite likely—and probably with only two or three rounds of ammunition. It was a very bad lion country: he might have tackled one and got the worst of the encounter; he might have been hurt by a wounded buck, sprained his ankle, broken his leg or otherwise hurt himself. It is folly, a man going shooting alone in a South African bush. Anything may happen in a moment, and then a man by himself is helpless and unable to send for assistance. We reached the Umzinguani River at daylight, crossed the drift and outspanned. After breakfast I collected the men, explained my plans to them and drew them a rough map of the area over which our search was to be made. I selected seventy men, black and white, for the job, and my plan was to extend these men some ten or twelve yards apart and, keeping our right on the river’s bank, to move down in line till we came to the spot where the creek ran into the river. Then, if we found no trace or spoor of him, to swing round and return to the road, taking, of course, a new line parallel to, and touching, the first one; and to enable us to do this correctly I ordered the man on the left flank to blaze the trees on his line, so that we should know we were not going over the same ground twice, nor leave a gap between the lines of search.

I had plenty of old hands among my men, both black and white, and on reaching the junction of the river and creek I was certain the work had been done thoroughly, although nothing had been found. At the junction I found a lot of Dutchmen, some twenty in number, who were outspanned there. They were trek riders, who, after delivering their loads in Salisbury, had hauled off the road and camped for the purpose of resting their oxen and shooting big game to make biltong. They had heard nothing of the lost man, but insisted on helping me to look for him. That afternoon we searched the new line of country back to the road, the right-hand man blazing the trees en route, but found nothing except game and lion spoor. The next day we started from where we had left off and took a new line, the left-hand man blazing the trees, while the right-flank man worked down the line of the previous afternoon. I did not rush the men, as I had no hopes of finding the poor fellow alive, but yet I hoped to find his rifle—a lion could not eat that—or some trace of him, so I told the men to search carefully and not hurry. I had two bugles with me, and the men shouting to one another, so as to keep in touch, made plenty of noise, that the poor chap must have heard if alive. The bush was an open one, with little undergrowth, so we had a good chance of finding anything out of the common.

We kept up this search ten days, until I was convinced every bit of ground in the triangle had been prospected; but we found absolutely nothing. Then we said good-bye to the Dutchmen and continued our journey. Some weeks afterwards a post cart passed me going to Salisbury and the corporal in charge of it told me a wonderful tale. The Dutchmen had remained at their camp some time after my departure, and the day before they moved off one of them, while out shooting, had found a white man concealed in an ant-bear hole. He was stark naked, and in a dreadfully emaciated condition, the nails torn off his hands and his teeth actually worn down to his gums. He was quite mad, but the Dutchman carried him to his waggon, and trekked into Tuli; where he was taken into the hospital, and with careful nursing restored to reason and health.

He afterwards came up to Salisbury, where I was staff officer. I knew him well, and held frequent conversations with him regarding his woeful experiences. His story is a very short one. He had left the waggons after breakfast for a stroll, with his rifle, three cartridges and no matches. All at once it dawned on him he was lost, so he started running (a fatal mistake), and remembers no more. Up to the time he was found, quite close to the Dutchman’s camp, over forty days had elapsed. How he had lived he had no idea. The state of his hands and teeth showed he must have grubbed roots and gnawed them; but he must have obtained water from either the creek or river, and, mad as he was, one of them should have guided him to safety.

Again, how did he escape my search and that of other parties who had looked for him? What became of his rifle, boots and clothes? And, above all, why did not a lion skoff him? To these and heaps of other queries I can only say that truth is stranger than fiction, that I have told the yarn as it happened, and can’t answer conundrums. In the above yarn I have told you that the lost man began to run, and have noted it was a fatal mistake. Yes, it is a fatal mistake to begin to run when you discover you are lost, for I can assure you that it is not a difficult matter for even an old and experienced scout to lose himself, if he lets his mind and attention wander. But now I will spin you a yarn about one of my men who was lost on the same trek to Mashonaland.

This man was a fine, strapping fellow about thirty years of age. He was a well-educated mechanic, a good athlete and football-player, but a new chum in the bush and at frontier work. We were at the time trekking along the Limpopo River, a very bad bit of country indeed, and I had given my men warning not to leave the waggons.