326 Notes on Sport and Travel m 



specks of ' pay-dirt ' with a mere pannikin or frying- 

 pan, and sell them to Bentley or Murray for what 

 he can get, and the gold is often good, though 

 somewhat pale and thin in the colour ; but the 

 traveller, the quartz -reefer, who is going to hunt 

 the pure gold home, and follow it vein by vein 

 through rock and rock, till he finds its very Ursprung, 

 must carry with him many a skilfully-prepared tool. 



I wonder whether that very true traveller Mr. 

 Burton would agree with me in this fancy ; or, if I 

 could believe in my Slade, Livingstone? But I 

 should be shy of asking too many questions of the 

 disembodied, for fear of bringing up certain souls of 

 most Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese, who, I am 

 sure, would agree with me only too well, they having 

 carried out the idea of developing their original 

 drop of savage blood to such an extent as to — Pah ! 

 Let us turn away from the foul brutality and base- 

 ness of a religion carefully going mad with a 

 purpose ! 



But because the boiler ' busts ' when the engineer, 

 thinking that the engine was created for his sole use 

 and emolument, sits on the safety-valve, we must 

 not too much undervalue the dear little drop of 

 savage blood, right good Scandinavian or Celtic, 

 which gives us English some inklings of what we 

 ought to be, as differing from what we are ; the 

 stupid Saxon blood does that, and if we want to 

 understand the beginning of things, we must use it 

 as a communicating medium with the undeveloped. 



