310 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



of elusion and pursuit, whose helical eddyings and in- 

 termittent lurchings seemed to betoken a scarcely self- 

 containing force. The phenomena of Nature seemed 

 to be acutely present to my mind, and a species of 

 semi-delirium rendered me almost oblivious of bodily 

 fatigue. I thought of home, of a Devonshire garden 

 amid the scent of wallflowers or violets. Oh, God 

 of spring ! A whole world opens to my senses a 

 world so far away, so long ago ! I pull down the 

 brim of my hat and shut out the glowing sunball 

 and dwell a moment in that springtime garden with 

 the loved ones sitting there. Stride forward ! I will 

 not sit down on that grassy bank of dreamland 1 



The sand is whirled into my face as if some demon 

 of the desert mocked me. The mirage a phenomenon 

 of those regions builds a vague and unstable world 

 on the horizon a lake, houses, trees, which recede as 

 I advance. Again I pull down my hat's brim and 

 enter the springtime garden, and again the sand-sleet 

 strikes my face and wakes me, and garden, lake, trees, 

 and home, they are retreating ever, like the mirage, 

 like hope that pillared cloud of day or night, alter- 

 nate grim or gay, elusive on the future's border- 

 land ! 



Good reader, possibly you have never suffered from 

 the effects of fatigue, exposure, thirst, hunger, and the 

 like. I was going to say I trust you never will, yet 

 there are sweet uses and comparisons of such adver- 

 sity. For as the pitiless sun approached the horizon, 

 and as I staggered on and reached the point or spur 

 towards which I had set my course, as I rounded a 

 huge projecting buttress of rocks, I came suddenly 

 upon what? a stream of water sparkling down from 



