International News Service

“ The Major attended schools in Iowa and California, whither the family moved in 1870, but his real education was in the open.
Richard Harding Davis, writing of Burnham in Real Soldiers of Fortune, says: "Some men are born scouts, others by training become scouts. From his father Burnham Inherited his instinct for woodcraft, and to this Instinct, which in him is as keen as in a wild deer or a mountain lion, he had added in the jungle and on the prairie and mountain ranges, years of the hardest, most relentless schooling. ”

“ In those years he has trained himself to endure the most appalling fatigue, hunger, thirst and wounds; has subdued the brain to infinite patience, has learned to force every nerve of his body to absolute obedience ”

“ Major Burnham's father died when the lad was eleven years old, and the son worked for two years as a mounted messenger for the Western Union Telegraph Co. He was known as the hardest rider in Southern California. At fourteen he began his life as a scout and frontiersman, and for the next few years wandered over Arizona, Mexico, California and other parts of the Southwest. In 1878 he went to the frontier of Texas as a cowboy and buffalo hunter, also doing police duty. In 1880 he moved to Arizona, and became a prospector and a scout in the Indian wars. ”