On Keeping Still 



Indians or natural men under natural conditions, 

 whether the result might not have been quite 

 different. The fact that the first fifty men you 

 meet get lost or turned around in a ^trackless 

 forest is significant for the fifty, and for the vast 

 majority of others; but it means nothing to the 

 one bushman who can go where he will without 

 thought or possibility of being lost, because of his 

 sure sense of direction. 



So, possibly, with this feeling of being watched : 

 it may be too intangible for experiment, or even 

 for definition. Many times since childhood when 

 I have been alone in the big woods, fishing or hold- 

 ing vigil by a wilderness lake, I have the feeling, 

 at times vaguely and again definitely, that strange 

 eyes were upon me. Occasionally, it is true, I have 

 found nothing on looking around, either because 

 no animal was there or because he was too well 

 hidden to be seen ; but much more often the feeling 

 proved true to fact so often, indeed, that I soon 

 came to trust it without doubt or question, as 

 Simmo my Indian still does, and a few other 

 woodsmen I have known. It is possible that one's 

 ears or nose may account for the feeling; that some 

 faint sound or odor may make itself felt so faintly 

 that one has the impression of life without knowing 

 through what channel the impression is received. 

 Of that I am not at all sure; at the moment it 



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