From R. M. C. To Bow and Arrow: Schooner Days MLV (1055)

by C. H. J. Snider

Old Warior's Young Cruise - 1.

WOULD you care to hear how boys of the Royal Military College at Kingston were initiated into yachting 60 years ago?

Fred B. Meyers, U.E., of 428 Bloor street west, recently received from Endebess, Kenya Colony, in Africa, a bright letter from Major. J. J. B. Farley, his cousin,, a veteran of Kitchener's campaign against the Mahdi, and of the South African War, and an R.M.C. graduate. It carried a sailing story which Schooner Days would like to give, as closely as possible in the mayor's own words.

Perhaps we can promise to begin this next week, but meantime we Would like to explain how those elephants got into Schooner Days, and tell something about the gentleman who unwittingly put them there.

MAJOR J. J. B. FARLEY was born in the "Old Round House," an octagonal structure in Belleville, and is the son of Matilda Bleecker and Lieut. Col. Alfred A. Farley, who was commandant at Quebec, at the time of his death, 1907-08.

The major attended Thurlow public school and Quebec High School. He then went to the Royal Military College, at Kingston, Ont., where he graduated in 1893, and was gazetted to the old 64th, North Staffordshire Regiment. He first served in the Island of Malta, being then stationed in Verdala Barracks, which was anciently the home of the Knights of St. John, the crusaders. He then served in Cairo, and won the broadsword championship during the first year of the Nile campaign.

Shooting sand grouse in Egypt with army officers, one of the juniors fired, and a crowd of natives came running over a hill with a little boy, who was covered with blood and claimed he had been shot. Lieut. Farley took the boy and applied his pocket handkerchief and found that he had been sprinkled with a chicken's fresh blood.

They sought "backsheesh," but did not like the kind they got.

His regiment developed Asiatic cholera, and they were marched out in the desert and remained there until declared free. He was up the Nile with Kitchener, and has numerous articles captured in the battles that destroyed the Mahdi's power.

He served in India, and was then appointed as physical instructor of the Lucknow Gymnasium. When the South African war broke out he went with the regiment to Natal and served there and in the Orange Free State, and was for a time among the Zulus.

Returned home, and then transferred into the Second Battalion N. Staff. Regt., and went to India again. He shot bears in the Himalayas, and hunted for small game in the district. Was at the Khyber Pass at times.

He retired in 1912, and returned to Canada, but two short years found him again in action, and he trained yeomanry and went to France during the Paris swing. He tells of a field that was taken many times by both sides, and was covered with dead men, and also cavalry horses, and the advance had to go over all this to gain its objective.

A bad leg sent him home and stationed him in the Woolwich Arsenal Offices. In the Great War in 1916 he was sitting at his desk fading a plate glass window when the Zeppelin dropped the bomb. When the window blew in it dumped him over and when he came to, he had a lump the size of an egg on the back of his head.

When he retired he took up archery, and soon became the English champion and has a very fine collection of bows today.

He resides, in Kenya, East Africa, not far from the place from which Teddy Roosevelt conducted his African hunt. In a recent letter to his cousin, Meyers told of having seen this year two herds of giraffes, 20 in one place and about 60 in another, browsing from the treetops, romping without fear or quietly lying down, within twenty feet of the roadside. He had no camera at the time, and so could not photograph them. For Christmas he sent out a happy snapshot of these wild elephants, who were equally unconcerned at human approach. So that's how they got into this berrypatch.

R.M.C. next week.