The one American whose exploits will long remain in the Boer mind was John N. King, of Reading, Pennsylvania, who vowed that he would allow his hair to grow until the British had been driven from federal soil.  King began his career of usefulness to society at the time of the Johnstown flood, where he and some companions lynched an Italian who had been robbing the dead.  Shortly afterward he gained a deep insight into matters journalistic by being the boon companion of a newspaper man.  The newspaper man was in jail on a charge of larceny; King for murder.  When war was begun King was employed on a Johannesburg mine, and when his best friend determined to join the British forces he decided to enlist in the Boer army.  Before parting the two made an agreement that neither should make the other prisoner in case they met.  At Spion Kop, King captured his friend unawares and, after a brief conversation and a farewell grasp of the hand, King shot him dead.  King took part in almost every one of the Natal battles, and when there was no fighting to do he passed the time away by such reckless exploits as going within the British firing-line at Ladysmith to capture pigs and chickens.  He bore a striking resemblance to Napoleon I., and loved blood as much as the little Corsican.  When the Scouts went out from Brandfort in April and killed several of the British scouts, King wept because he had remained in camp that day and had missed the opportunity of having a part in the engagement.

The lieutenant of the Scouts was John Shea, a grey-haired man who might have had grand-children old enough to fight.  Shea fought with the Boers because he thought they had a righteous cause, and not because he loved the smell of gunpowder, although he had learned to know what that was in the Spanish-American war.  Shea endeavoured to introduce the American army system into the Boer army, but failed signally, and then fought side by side with old takhaars all during the Natal campaign.  He was the guardian of the mascot of the scouts, William Young, a thirteen-year-old American, who was acquainted with every detail of the preliminaries of the war.  William witnessed all but two of the Natal battles, and several of those in the Free State, and could relate all the stirring incidents in connection with each, but he could tell nothing more concerning his birthplace than that it was “near the shore in America,” both his parents having died when he was quite young.  Then there was Able-Bodied Seaman William Thompson, who was in the Wabash of the United States Navy, and served under MacCuen in the Chinese-Japanese war.  Thompson and two others tried to steal a piece of British heavy artillery while it was in action at Ladysmith, but were themselves captured by some Boers who did not believe in modern miracles.  Of newspaper men, there were half a dozen who laid aside the pen for the sword.  George Parsons, a Collier’s Weekly man, who was once left on a desert island on the east end of