In Wildest Africa -^ 



In the high mountain regions of Central Asia, too, this 

 spell survives, associated with the flocks of those timid 

 creatures the primitive wild sheep, with the graceful wild 

 goats, with the stately ibex,^ and with the life and move- 

 ment of the countless huge bears of the mountains, and 

 with a strange flora that I myself have never looked upon, 

 but of whose existence I am as persuaded as of that of the 

 spell itself. 



It is to be found in the jungles of India, whence the 

 tolerant natives have never driven it out. They have not 

 expelled the animal world from its paradise. There in 

 the region of the lotus-flower the spell may perhaps be 

 recognised on still, moonlit nights. 



It survives everywhere : in the Australian bush, in 

 the New and the Old World, on all islands, in all rivers 

 and waters, in the life and movement of the waves and 

 depths of the ocean, so full of secrets everywhere ; in 

 a word, where man has not yet driven it away. 



Once it lived everywhere in Germany, and even to-day 

 it is still to be found in many places. It has its being 

 where the mighty elk made its home on moor and marsh- 

 land, and our forefathers hunted the aurochs and the bison 

 in the primitive forest. To-day it is associated with the 

 edelweiss and the chamois in the Alps ; it has its being 

 in the oak and beech woods, and where the green current 

 of the Rhine flows down, or where the stag sends afar his 



^ The ibex, which was once also common in Germany, has been found 

 by Dr. G. Merzbacher in the central Tian-Shan region in the form of 

 Ibex sibirica inerzbacheri \ and two years ago by G. Leisewitz in such great 

 numbers that the appearance of (locks of hundreds of them was a daily 

 experience. 



i8o 



