Ill 



THE CENTRAL PLATEAU 



NOW is required a special quality of the imag- 

 ination, not in myself, but in my readers, for 

 it becomes necessary for them to grasp the logic of a 

 whole country in one mental effort. The difficulties 

 to me are very real. If I am to tell you it all in de- 

 tail, your mind becomes confused to the point of 

 mingling the ingredients of the description. The 

 resultant mental picture is a composite; it mixes 

 localities wide apart; it comes out, like the snake- 

 creeper - swamp - forest thing of grammar-school 

 South America, an unreal and deceitful impression. 

 If, on the other hand, I try to give you a bird's-eye 

 view — saying, here is plain, and there follows up- 

 land, and yonder succeed mountains and hills — 

 you lose the sense of breadth and space and the toil 

 of many days. The feeling of onward outward ex- 

 tending distance is gone; and that impression so in- 

 dispensable to finite understanding — ^*here am I, 

 and what is beyond is to be measured by the length 

 of my legs and the toil of my days," You will not 



