PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 225 



some fearful gorges through which the river forced 

 its way. I wanted to see them too, and see a great 

 river in the very act of forcing its way through the 

 mighty Himalaya. Above all, I wanted to see 

 what lay on the other side of the Himalaya. I 

 wanted to get into Tibet. 



That for the time being proved impossible, and 

 my thoughts wandered off to the far eastern part of 

 Asia. I had read a book called " On the Amur," 

 by Atkinson. Not altogether a very veracious 

 book, but a fascinating book for all that. In it 

 were alluring pictures of the broad, placid river. 

 Rich forests came down to the water's edge. And 

 on its surface were depicted delightful rafts and 

 canoes. To glide down such a river, to camp on 

 its banks and plunge into the forests which clothed 

 them, seemed a joy second only to the joy of 

 scrambling about the Himalaya. So with Mr. 

 H. E. M. James — now Sir Evan James — I went to 

 Manchuria, not, indeed, to reach the Amur itself, 

 but to discover the source of its great tributary the 

 Sungari, and to follow it down through the forests 

 and over the plains for several hundred miles. 



Now, what I want to impress upon you is that 

 in all these cases it was the Natural Beauty which was 

 the attraction — it was the picture I made to myself 

 of what these countries would be like that drew me 

 on. And I am sure it is with others as it was with 

 me. Natural Beauty is at bottom what incites the 

 traveller. 



And, whether I had to go where I was taken or 

 could go where I chose, it was the Natural Beauty 

 that stuck in my memory. And when I returned 



