PREFACE. Vll 



the morrow is not mine or thine. You will find 

 without trouble a friend to take the place of him 

 whom you leave; so travel, for water which remains 

 still, turns stagnant — it flows over a bed of sand and 

 becomes pure." 



Although, during my wanderings, I have trodden 

 lands where the white man was unknown, climbed 

 heights on which neither the foot of man nor beast 

 had ever before rested, and traversed forests that 

 had hitherto only been penetrated by wild animals, 

 I make no pretensions to the title of " a scientific 

 eojplorer,^' as all my trips were either made in the 

 pursuit of game, or for the purpose of contempla- 

 ting Nature in its wildest forms. I ever loved the 

 intense solitude of the boundless, primeval, virgin 

 forest ; and the sublime grandeur of the highest 

 altitudes — where the eternal silence is only broken 

 by the roar of avalanches, the crackings of glaciers, 

 or the war of elements — to me presented irresistible 



attractions. 



a2 



