324 ^^otes on Sport and Travel 



III 



•continued in our next' like a magazine story. I 

 wonder,— and, like Heinrich Heine's friend who 

 asked the stars much the same questions, I suppose 

 that I must be content to continue to wonder :— 

 ' The sea waves murmur their endless murmur, 

 The winds ever blow, and the clouds ever fly, 

 The stars are glittering careless and cold, 

 And a fool stands waiting their answer.' 



Still I am not such a fool as to ask the stars 

 questions, they being, as far as I am concerned, 

 mere blinking materialisms, of whose very existence, 

 at this moment, I have no proof, when I can get 

 some sort of an answer which may send one up one 

 small rung of the ladder of learning by going to 

 books of travel, or, still better, going travellmg 

 myself If we cannot get the entire answer, and of 

 course we never shall, we may at least collect facts 

 which will enable a wiser than oneself to build a 

 neat little niche in the temple of truth, to serve as a 

 resting-place to those who come after us, before they 

 in their turn climb a story higher. One thing, I 

 think, one learns by wandering about this curious 

 little cricket-ball of ours even more clearly than by 

 reading about it, and that is the axiom I started 

 with that individuals and races reach a certain state 

 of development, physical, intellectual, and political, 

 and then get arrested in their progress, certainly 

 and surely, sooner or later ; and when they have 

 got to a certain point, neither doctor nor priest can 



1 A dead nation is as incapable of recuperation as a dead man. 



