The Lure of Lonely Places

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 26 November 1927, Page 12

The Lure of Lonely Places

KWHEN I first travelled through 90 miles of stark wilderness between the Selukwe railhead and Victoria, in Southern Rhodesia, now 24 years ago, the only open spaces I bad known were those of the great :ea wastes. And always civilisation had accompanied me, in the stir and bustle and discipline of a great ship; while a few short days or weeks away lay London or New York, Liverpool or Sydney, Southampton or Calcutta. I had never felt that I had left the world of men, and I had never known silence —the silence that speaks Insistently of past, and present, and future (wrote W. S. Chadwick in a recent issue of the "Cape Times”). There in the Rhodesian solitudes. I felt that I had stepped over’the edge of the world I had known, and that the voices of giants whispered In a language strange to me. I felt fascinated, yet repelled; eagerly curious, yet afraid; longing to adventure further, yet desirous of retreat. After 18 months I yielded to the desire to revisit the world I had left, and tell of the charm, and mystery, and fascination of that I had found. 1 returned to England. Then a strange thing happened. I had left the silent wastes with delight; revelling In the prospects of re- siting the haunts of men. That delight grew less during each day of a week spent in Capetown, and the morning the ship left the docks I felt panic ,as she drew away from the quayside; a sheer terror lest I be prevented from returning to the solitudes I had left so gladly! I felt as an exiled monarch might, who watched the shores of his 'kingdom receding from view. For an impression was suddenly born that, amidst the frowning hills gnd silent bush wastes where I had wandered, I had been a king and that in the world to which I was going I should become again a cipher—a creature without power, prestige, or consequence. No longer a man but

merely a name! Amidst the roar of London, Liverpool, Manchester and other cities that feeling intensified, and when—a fewmonths later—l found myself patrolling vast distances alone In the suabaked silent solitudes of Namaqualand I felt exultation at a stark desolation that to most men brought only depression. I had discovered the lure of the lonely places—the lure which I have followed through the length and breadth of Africa since then without pause or halt. In the "Never-Never” Lande For it is in the “never-never” lands Ithat man achieves that self-expression and dominance, the desire of which is .deep rooted in human psychology; the -desire which has inspired his triumphs over matter and provoked Ibis conflicts with men. To ride alone in the silent small (hours 5,000 feet down a moon-washed rock trail into the shadowed ravine beneath, and watch the stealthy de'parture of a leopard from the rocks 'where he has made an ambush he dare no* maintain before one’s advance, to | follow the broad white elephant trail through 40 miles of silvered, whisperling forest between starlight and dawn .and hear the voices of great killers 'protest at an invasion they dare not challenge, to stagger exhausted to a water hole long after hardy black bodies have acknowledged weariness and defeat, and know the jby of rest, and food and drink, earned by endurance and sweat and toil; to listen to the inaudible converse of one’s soul with elemental voices, and to both hear and understand: these things comprise the lure of the lonely places. j

In such surroundings man knows his immortality and levels in it, on this side of the border line; for he contacts dally with the eternal. Problems of existence cease to concern him, and are replaced by those of destiny; problems which he finds life all too short to solve, and impossible to study amidst the roar of human and mechanical sounds. The Lonely Places

For in the lonely places is much material as well as spiritual loot; if little of wealth. Food in abundance, and Infinite variety building materials of strength and beauty, awaiting only the artistry of man; skins and ivory sufficient in value to purchase all his aesthetic Instincts demand; even gold and diamonds to tempt his allegiance! But these last Nature scatters sparingly for where they are found there is soon one lonely place the less; and the lure vanishes. Since the lure is spiritual and aesthetic, Nature sees to it that in the great tracts of earth where it is greatest, and gold or precious stones, or timber wealth exist, which may destroy it, sickness and death shall stand guard over both lure and loot; that only the strong shall survive to seize either. The weak and fainthearted die or depart; afraid to look upon the naked face of Nature which illumines Destiny. So, on the tangled forests of the Amazon; on the primeval tracts of equatorial Africa; on the cariboudaunted wastes of the Arctic circle; on the bleak splendour of the Russian steppes, tWisands look and long, and fain’ 'i”d shndflo*-. and turn ag"’n to thg B(Ue 281 X the lew.

press forward to the voice of the lure and enter into dominion. Loot Sufficient To each comes loot sufficient tc live, and enjoy the living; -and to a few, wealth. To some of these last the lure has already transcended loot and luxury, and it is of such Robert Service sings when he says:— "There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I'm wanting, So much as Just finding the gold. It’s the great big broad land way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that fills me with wonder, It’s the silence that fills me with peace." One such passed through Livingstone recently. A very wealthy man —he had come all the way from Australia to go and live tor seven months alone, in a district bordering on the Kalahari, as he had done at two-year intervals for 14 years. It is a district where food and water is scarce, and hardships many, yet he said to me: "I feel like a schoolboy out for a holiday when I get out here. Thank God it will be many a long year before the motor-car hunters come this way'” The lure of the lonely places is “the peace fl e Lord has hidden in the secret ho. ft of the wild.” Loot there is too, but the spirits which seek the loot olid are d-af and blind to the lure, faint in their thousands by the way. Nature has ordered it so. It will be an ill day for humanity wb -i- none exist to whom the lure galte IgUdest, ~