Real Soldiers of Fortune

Real Soldiers of Fortune is by Richard Harding Davis, and one section says that on Fifth Avenue or in the restaurants of University Place "you may meet the soldier of fortune who of all his brothers in arms now living is the most remarkable." The text introduces Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver as "for some time in India an ensign in the Sepoy mutiny; in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; in Spain, captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, major in the Confederate army".

A statement the book quotes says that Brigadier-General H. R. MacIver "originated and organized the New Guinea Exploration and Colonization Company in London", a company that "had a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds". In 1904, when Churchill rose to speak, "a remarkable demonstration was made against him by his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising and leaving the House." In an account of a race that "lasted two hours", it was impossible for Burnham "to gain ground in any one direction", and the white men "evaded assegai and gunfire, and in safety reached Buluwayo."