NORTH-WESTERN RHODESIA 33 



pits, constructing a primitive windlass out of 

 bush timber, and with the help of a few rude 

 savages making for himself the unlovely begin- 

 nings of a Central African home. A few bundles 

 of sticks, a quantity of rank grass stalks, and some 

 mud from a half-dried-up water-hole are all he 

 needs for a house, which in his heart of hearts 

 he prefers to the gilded palaces of the mighty. 

 The furniture — if it might so be called — is well 

 in keeping with the simple barbarity of the walls 

 and the covering which must, during the rainy 

 months, protect him from tropical downpours 

 and barely endurable heat. A couple of dynamite 

 boxes, a broken-down stretcher bed, a few skins, 

 a rough table made out of a packing-case, a 

 few plates and pans and a rifle — these are all 

 the possessions of this man, a true type of the 

 pioneers of industry, who so often go down into 

 a little grave dug by some faithful native, 

 unhonoured and unknown. 



A few miles north of his camp there may lie 

 a range of rugged hills, their rocky pinnacles 

 unadorned by bush or tree. Evening after 

 evening the prospector will sit on one of his 

 dynamite boxes and watch the smoke from his 

 pipe waft gently away towards their frowning 

 crests, and evening after evening as the sun dies 

 in that crimson glory, which only those who 

 live with Nature can really learn to love and 

 look for, he will ponder on the untold possi- 

 bilities of the lands beyond, where the noises of 

 the pick and the shovel and the dynamite 

 cartridge have never been heard. 



In the course of a little while that pondering 

 will change into a yearning to know what a 

 journey over the rugged range may bring forth. 

 Each evening the yearning will become more 



