On his solitary wanderings over the earth Baden-Powell has had many narrow escapes of death, but none so near, perhaps, as that of an excited native who, after an action, told B.-P. with bubbling enthusiasm that a bullet had passed between his ear and his head! Once Baden-Powell came unexpectedly upon a lion prepared to receive him with open jaws, and but for perfectly steady nerves, which enabled him at that critical moment to fire deliberately, he had never brought home another lion's skin to decorate his mother's drawing-room in London. Another narrow escape occurred during the Matabele campaign, when Baden-Powell was quietly and peacefully marching by the side of a mule battery. One of the mules had a carbine strapped on to its pack-saddle, and by some extraordinary act of carelessness the weapon had been left loaded, and at full-cock. Of course the first bush passed by the battery fired the carbine, and Baden-Powell remarks of the incident, "Many a man has nearly been shot by an ass, but I claim to have been nearly shot by a mule." It is Baden-Powell's habit to keep in perfect readiness at his London house an entire kit for service abroad. The most methodical of men, he has made a study of this important branch of a wanderer's service, and when he sets out on his journeys he carries with him everything that is essential both for himself and his horse, and packed in such a way as would be the despair of the deftest valet. When the War Office asks him how long he will be before starting on a commission abroad, B.-P. answers, "I am ready now." Everything is there in a room in his mother's house, and Baden-Powell is never so happy as when that khaki kit leaves its resting-place and is packed away in a ship's cabin. And what journeys he has been on Queen's service! Before he was twenty-three he had travelled over the greater part of Afghanistan, and then after seeing most of India, he was in South Africa at twenty-seven, and did there a wonderful reconnaissance, unaccompanied, of six hundred miles of the Natal Frontier in twenty days. He has travelled through Europe, knows the Gold Coast Hinterland as well as any European, and has almost as good a notion as the Great Powers themselves concerning their frontier defences. This reminds me that Baden-Powell sometimes spends his holidays in visiting historical battlefields and travelling through various countries to see how their defences and their guns are getting along. He is an excellent linguist, and can make his way in any country without arousing suspicions. During some military manoeuvres one autumn (we need not enter into special details) Baden-Powell was wandering at the back of the troops, seeing things not intended for the accredited representatives of Great Britain, who had the front row of the stalls, and saw beautifully what they were meant to see. What he noted on this occasion is regarded by military authorities as very valuable information.