THE CALL OF THE EAST 201 



a fall of ground at the foot of which, two hundred 

 feet or more below me, the river, quite thirty yards 

 broad and full of water, meandered through limitless 

 forest. 



I have seen many of the sights of the world : the 

 rugged grandeur of the Himalayas, the blue waters of 

 the Swiss and Italian lakes. They are fine. They far 

 surpass the paltry height, the tree-screened river, and 

 unchanging green of Equatorial Africa. I need no one 

 to tell me this. But this I know, Nanda Devi did not 

 impress me more than many a peak a couple of 

 hundred feet high, and the lovely views on Lucerne 

 or Como gave me less pleasure than the aspect of the 

 crocodile-haunted pools of many a tropical river. 

 Why ? Let me answer by another question. Why 

 do we hear "the East a-calling"? Why do we 

 hasten back to it ? Not, surely, the acrid smell of 

 the native village ; not the broiling discomfort of the 

 sun ; not the sweaty brow, the heavy helmet, nor the 

 clinging clothes ; not the steak from the coarse-fleshed 

 antelope, and the dry army biscuit washed down with 

 water off which, too often, one blows the slime, feel- 

 ing that one is lucky to get it ; not the possibility of 

 fevers, the bites of the tsetse, serut, and mosquito : 

 surely not these call us. Answer your own question, 

 ye speakers of the Why — I cannot, and others cannot 

 either, though they may tiy. I often wonder why we 

 maffick over an explorer. He lives a life compassing 

 in its full the freedom and ecstasy of sensations his 

 very being longs for. Rather admire the man chained, 

 all unwilling, to an office stool. Him, too, who with 



