^ The Lonely Wonder-world of the Nyika 



so much beauty, which no hostile hand has yet come to 

 destroy, the scene around me is so splendid that my eyes 

 keep ranging over it, more and more eager to contemplate 

 all its splendours. 



A strange feeling comes over me. I think of all the 

 beautiful spots of our old world. They have all been 

 taken possession of under carefully devised arrangements 

 and methods, well protected by the eye of the law, and 

 often only occasionally open to access, and then on con- 

 dition of payment. But the beauty I am contemplating 

 has now been hopelessly abandoned to intruders, who 

 have neither knowledge nor taste nor sense, and who are 

 at this moment so barbarously destroying it. 



But these thoughts must give way to others that are 

 more pleasant and consoling. How wonderful to be able 

 to revel in this wilderness, to feel in oneself the influence 

 of all these splendours, notwithstanding all dangers and 

 all difficulties, however great ! Everything around us 

 undulates and shimmers, bathed in a dazzling sea of light. 

 Gradually the colouring of plain and hills, the dome of the 

 sky and the whole surrounding landscape, changes to duller 

 and less definite tints. The sun-illumined air rises in 

 waves from the earth, and the various strata of it form an 

 ever-changing chaos of reflected light. Over all there is 

 deep peace. A spell that accords with the mood of the 

 moment seems to stream down from the dome of the sky 

 over this solitude, lying so far from the noisy activity of 

 the world. 



All that I here behold has been going on since those 

 far times, directed by natural law, in ever- recurring 



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