The Highland Wilderness 185 



the latter-day naturalist of the most vigorous type who 

 goes into the untrodden wastes of the world must see 

 and do many strange things ; and still more owing to the 

 character of the man himself. The things he had seen 

 and done and undergone often enabled him to cast the 

 light of his own past experience on unexpected subjects. 

 Once we were talking about the proper weapons for 

 cavalry, and some one mentioned the theory that the 

 lance is especially formidable because of the moral effect 

 it produces on the enemy. Cherrie nodded emphatically ; 

 and a little cross-examination elicited the fact that he 

 was speaking from lively personal recollection of his 

 own feelings when charged by lancers. It was while he 

 was fighting with the Venezuelan insurgents in an un- 

 successful uprising against the tyranny of Castro. He 

 was on foot, with five Venezuelans, all cool men and 

 good shots. In an open plain they were charged by 

 twenty of Castro's lancers, who galloped out from be- 

 hmd cover two or three hundred yards off. It was a war 

 in which neither side gave quarter and in which the 

 wounded and the prisoners were butchered — ^just as 

 President Madero was butchered in Mexico. Cherrie 

 knew that it meant death for him and his companions if 

 the charge came home; and the sight of the horsemen 

 running in at full speed, with their long lances in rest 

 and the blades glittering, left an indelible impression on 

 his mind. But he and his companions shot deliberately 

 and accurately; ten of the lancers were killed, the nearest 

 falling within fifty yards; and the others rode off in 

 headlong haste. A cool man with a rifle, if he has mas- 

 tered his weapon, need fear no foe. 



