32 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



After hunting the buffaloes I wandered away 

 to the south-west, to the Lukanga and towards 

 the Copper Mines. North-western Rhodesia has 

 pretensions to being a mining country, and here 

 one may come across the prospector — another 

 human anachronism with the fever microbes 

 of Wanderlust in his blood. 



This is a type of man who flees from the never- 

 ceasing advance of civilization as the gull flies 

 from the oncoming blast of an Atlantic gale. 

 You will find him driven away into the nooks 

 and crannies of this callous earth of ours, always 

 hopeful, though seared with the furrows of 

 privation, always chasing the phantom of a 

 golden reef, which should he find it will lure him 

 back to the paths of his fellow-men for a while, 

 and will rend and tear him and drive him back 

 to his lonely byway. 



Perhaps you will pity him his lot. You 

 may forget that so soon as his hands are closed 

 on the will-o'-the-wisp which he has spent the 

 best years of his life in following across the 

 marshes of sickness, poverty, and solitude, just 

 so soon will the gold lose its glamour. He will 

 wander away to some great, greedy city, whose 

 people are lustful of his gold, but who never 

 dare to cross the mountains and delve for it in 

 the hard, relentless quartz, or to wash out the 

 yellow grains from the dry, burning sand of some 

 waterless African " river." If you will follow 

 the fortunes of the man, you will see him one day 

 scowling a glad farewell to the happy idol of 

 his hardest days. He will resolutely turn his 

 back on the bars and the music-halls and the 

 twinkling lights of what the world calls pleasure. 



A few weeks later, and he is once more toiling 

 under the burning rays of the sun, digging little 



