Fallow Years, 1844—1849 197 



Not a single letter is available, not a record of the winter 1844 — 5 

 in Park Lane ; but in the later part of 1845, the Red Gods' call reached 

 Galton, the spring-fret was on him' : 



Velvet-footed, who shall guide them to their goal 1 



Unto each the voice and vision : unto each his spoor and sign — 

 Lonely mountain in the Northland, misty sweat-bath 'neath the Line — 



And to each a man that knows his naked soul ! 

 Let him go — go — go mvay from here ! 



On the other side t/ie worlds he's overdue. 

 'Send your road is clear hefore you wJieu the old 



apring-fret comes o'er you 

 And the Bed Gods call for you 1 



The Red Gods called, but for Galton the road was not clear before 

 him, not for another five years did he know his soul ! Galton's visits 

 to Egypt and later to Syria were aimless, they were the restless visits of 

 the well-to-do young man, seeking travel-pleasure in the routine way, 

 without scientific object and without archaeological or linguistic know- 

 ledge. Yet there were epochs in them — as the meeting with Arnaud 

 and the death of the faithful Ali — which influenced Galton permanently. 

 Above all he gained two experiences — first that mere travel without 

 aim does not give the highest pleasure, and secondly that travelhng is 

 itself an art and needs training — training in what to take and what to 

 observe, training in how to meet and how to handle men. Think only 

 of the Galton, the boy of 23 years, who set off" to Khartoum without a 

 map and without purpose, and who in Syria wished to sail down the 

 Jordan on a raft based on inflated waterskins without thought of 

 current or season of the year — think of these things, and then of the 

 cautious preparation, the thought-out purpose of the African journey 

 of six years later by one who after six fallow years had become a man 

 in bearing and in power of achievement ! 



The young medical student of the Birmingham General Hospital 

 and the freshman at Cambridge impress us with the power of observa- 

 tion and the capacity for action. The last year at Cambridge, the 

 year in Egypt and Syria, the years to come of social life, hunting and 

 shooting, bring before us another aspect of a many-sided nature, which 

 had under the influence of the " spring-fret " to test many things before 

 it knew its " naked soul." As Galton himself has said, there were 



' Rudyard Kipling : "The t'eet of the Young Men" in The Five Nations. 



