In Wildest Africa ^ 



whose teeming millions would fain imprint their image 

 on the whole earth, and even lay covetous hands on this 

 far-off wilderness, and that in time this must happen ? 



A world of which I myself am a unit ! How strange 

 that I can delight so deeply in all this wild charm ! And 

 how quickly the wishes of men change ! A while ago, 

 in the long nights of fever, I had but one desire — that 

 my heart, my heart alone, should not be buried in a 

 foreign soil, but be taken back to the Fatherland. 



And now, only a few weeks after my recovery, how 

 different seems to me all I may hope for from Fate, and 

 how much more complex, how much more difficult to 

 accomplish ! 



I yield myself up entirely to the spell of the wilderness, 

 to the mood of the night. 



That was ten years ago, before the Europeans had 

 banished it — when it ached on the senses like the nocturne 

 of some great tone-poet. But I know well that to-day 

 it is no longer in existence ; Lake Nakuro is now only 

 a lake like any other, and the railway whistle wakes its 

 echoes. 



That night the spell must have been exceptionally strong. 

 It seemed to me as though I were under some charm, 

 as if I were carried back into the far-off times. There 

 came before my mind much of what the lake had seen 

 in the long vanished past. The lands around me heaved 

 and quaked. Mighty earth-shaping forces were doing 

 their work. I seemed to see before my eyes what 

 happened here in primeval times — how volcanic forces, 

 strange, boundless, and terrible, had built up and given 



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