LODGES IN THE 

 WILDERNESS 



CHAPTER I 



THE BUSHMANLAND DESERT — ITS NATURE AND EXTENT — 

 DESERT TRAVELLING — THE ' TOA.' 



THE world moves rapidly and with in- 

 creasing momentum. Even regions 

 remote from those communities which 

 the stress of increasing population and the 

 curse of unleisured industrialism send spin- 

 ning " down the ringing grooves of change," 

 are often so disturbed or overwhelmed by the 

 overflow of what threatens to be an almost 

 world-wide current of morbid energy, that 

 within a strangely short period their character 

 is apt completely to alter and their individu- 

 ality to become utterly destroyed. 



I do not know how the Great Bushmanland 

 Desert has fared in this respect — not having 

 visited it for several years — but if some un- 

 likely combination of circumstances were to 

 take me once more to Aroegas or Koisabies, — 



