General Baden-Powell
Scouting as a fine art had its origin in America, when the pioneer settled first upon the shores of the new country which stretched away, away, to the westward, how far they knew not. What wonders, what dangers, what secrets were held by that unknown country by the forest primeval they likewise knew not.
They were surrounded by hostile savages, who came and went like shadows, who found their way as straight as the flight of a carrier pigeon through countless miles of trackless forest; who appeared and disappeared as quickly and completely as the elfs of the fabled fairy-lands. But the instinct of self-preservation sharpened their wits; no man sleeps soundly when danger threatens.
They learned first the secrets by which the Indian made his way from place to place, and tracked his foe for vengeance or his game for sustenance.
They quickly discovered how by training and vigilance the eye became quick, the ear alert, and the touch sensitive.
A crushed blade of grass or a weed, a broken twig, a bent bough, all these things were to the Indian as they are to Sherlock Holmes, sufficient to construct a theory as to the character and numbers of those he pursued.
ROBERT S. S. BADEN-POWELL, MAJOR GENERAL ENGLISH ARMY.
From him the white man quickly learned his lore, but he could add to it something which instantly made him the superior of the red man, and that was, a higher order of intelligence and reason, and that conquered the aborigine and drove him farther and still farther from the lands of his fathers.
As time passed, some striking figures emerged from the people, as all history demonstrates men have done in all ages.
Daniel Boone crossed the Alleghanies, behind which the Indians made their first stand, thinking the white man would not cross that great breastwork thrown up by nature, and discovered Kentucky.
Then, following Boone, came Crockett, Bridger, Kit Carson and Cody, as the men who were the acknowledged leaders and chiefs of these wise men of the mountains, woods and prairies, during successive epochs.
Since these men and their kind made scouting a fine art, the great soldiers of Europe have acknowledged that they are matchless for the purposes of fighting in an enemy’s country.