Captain Stelling, of the Zone Police, devoted his spare time to drilling the boys; Prof. Abbott, the botanist, undertook to teach them something of natural history and botany and took them on many a long tramp into the forest where a veritable wonderland was revealed to them; Dr. Johnson, of the Hospital Staff, gave them lessons in first aid and emergency treatment, and even Major Wilkinson, of the Engineers, found time to forget his chronic grouch against the world and took the enthusiastic “Scouts” under his wing and showed them how to build rough but serviceable bridges, how to measure distances and altitudes, how to make maps and how to accomplish a thousand and one useful things with only their hands and machetes for tools and with materials supplied by a bountiful tropic nature.
(from The Trail of the Cloven Foot by A. Hyatt Verrill, published in 1918)
