THE WILDERNESS 



IT is by no means easy, in the midst of this 

 built -over, cultivated, and thickly peopled 

 England of ours, to realise the great spaces of 

 the wilderness. So destructive of other effects 

 and impressions are the conditions of civilisa- 

 tion, that there is difficulty, even for those of 

 us who have known the wild places, to recall 

 their appearance once we are back in cities. 

 With church spires and factory chimneys 

 cutting the sky in every direction, we are apt 

 to forget the grander symmetry of bamboo and 

 teak. The shriek of the locomotive survives 

 the song of rivers, and the hum of crowds 

 brings unwelcome forgetfulness of Nature's 

 silence. Here and there, even in modern Eng- 

 land, in such corners of Salisbury Plain as are 

 not overrun by our brave defenders, or on the 

 lonely heights of misty Dartmoor, away from 

 the trail of the tourist, it is still possible to 

 sense something of the sweeter solitudes ; but 

 such opportunities, already few, are dwindling 

 every year. 



23 



