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SOME EARLY EXPERIENCES 45 



Seebohm, the naturalist, gave me the first good 

 commission, and I did a number of illustrations 

 for his monograph on the Charadriidce, which, with 

 my militia pay (I was then in the 3rd Battalion 

 Somerset Light Infantry), enabled me to undertake 

 the first serious expedition to foreign lands. 



On this trip to Western America, then still a 

 land of big game, I did a good deal of work upon 

 large mammals as well as birds, and although it 

 taught me something in the way of art and hunting, 

 it fostered a spirit of restlessness and roving that 

 has never left me. From the time I was a little 

 schoolboy of eight I had always longed to be an 

 artist and naturalist, and to hunt and explore in 

 new lands. Like my friend Fred Selous, the book 

 that influenced me was Baldwin's African Hunting. 



This we used to have read to us by Mrs. Wemyss 

 on Sunday afternoons in her house at Queen's 

 Gate, when my brother and I and Hugo and 

 Rosslyn Wemyss ^ would sit entranced and listen 

 to adventures in Africa. My father, however, had 

 other ideas, and was bent on my going into the 

 Army. Like many other men who know the diffi- 

 culties of their own profession, he thought any 

 other a better one. So, much to my disgust, I 

 gave in, and went to cram at " James." 



" Jimmy " disliked me because I was always 

 drawing Wapiti or Grizzly Bears in books on forti- 

 fication, or taking French leave to go off to shoot 

 and fish. Wherefore he prophesied a complete 

 failure when the final exams, came, and no credit 

 to lumself. He always held up for our model a 

 very nice fellow whom we will call X, and who 

 ^ Now Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss. 



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