Scouting for Boys

by Baron Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell Baden-Powell of Gilwell

They said, "Yes; that was the man. Where did you see him?"

The boy replied "I have not seen him, but I know where he has gone."

Thereupon they arrested him, thinking that probably the man had been murdered and made away with, and that the boy had heard about it.

But eventually he explained that he had seen tracks of the man which he could point out to them.

Finally he brought them to a place where the signs showed that the man had made a halt. The horse had rubbed itself against a tree, and had left some of its hairs sticking to the bark which showed that it was a roan horse; its hoof marks showed that it was lame, that is, one foot was not so deeply indented on the ground and did not take so long a pace as the other feet. That the rider was a soldier was shown by the imprint of his boot which was an army boot. Then they asked the boy "How could you tell that he was a tall man?" and the boy pointed out to where the soldier had broken a branch from the tree which would have been out of reach of a man of ordinary height. Deduction exactly like reading a book.

A boy who has never been taught to read and who sees you reading from a book would ask "How do you do it?" and you would point out to him that a number of small signs on a page are letters; these letters when grouped form words; and words form sentences; and sentences give information.

Similarly a trained scout will see little signs and tracks, he puts them together in his mind and quickly reads a meaning from them such as an untrained man would never arrive at.

And from frequent practice he gets to read the meaning at a glance just as you do a book without the delay of spelling out each word, letter by letter.

I was one day, during the Matabele war [Show on map] with a native out scouting near to the Matopo Hills over a wide grassy plain. Suddenly we crossed a track freshly made in grass, where the blades of grass were still green and damp though pressed down; all were bending one way which showed the direction in which the people had been travelling; following up the track for a bit it got on to a patch of sand, and we then saw that it was the spoor of several women (small feet with straight edge, and short steps), and boys (small feet, curved edge and longer strides) walking not running, towards the hills, about five miles away; where we believed the enemy to be hiding.

Then we saw a leaf lying about ten yards off the track—There were no trees for miles, but we knew that trees having this kind of leaf grew at a village fifteen miles away, in the direction from which the footmarks were coming. It seemed likely therefore that the women had come from that village, bringing the leaf with them, and had gone to the hills.