CHAPTER XII 



AT THE FOOT OF THE SNOW MOUNTAINS 



KANGAROO shooting I found to have sufficient of 

 adventure and excitement to keep my thoughts off 

 butterfly expeditions for nearly six months. Then I 

 began to be weary of what seemed to me an objectless 

 sort of life. I think that after a while the wish for 

 travelling gets into the blood and becomes a disease. 

 I know that I am now always intolerant of staying in 

 any one place for more than a few months. Some- 

 times in New Guinea, sick of the fever, appalled at 

 the loneliness of my position many days away from 

 any white friends, I have decided to leave New 

 Guinea for ever and have upbraided myself as a fool 

 for undertaking the hardships of such a life. Then, 

 having got away from New Guinea and reached a 

 life of civilisation in Australia, after a little while I 

 have found the charm of the jungle and the excitement 

 of life as a collector pull me back. 



I was beginning, as I have said, to feel a weariness 

 of life without dangers and without any serious 

 purpose when a letter from Tring sent my thoughts 

 back to collecting. In my correspondence with the 

 Tring Museum the undertaking of an expedition to 

 the Charles Louis Mountains in Dutch New Guinea had 



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