THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDS 125 



into some long wanderings, and now into that wilderness, no scene 

 that I have ever looked upon, however wild or lonely, has touched 

 me in any way that could compare with the thrill of those early 

 dreams. Romance lies always a little too far away ; only in child- 

 hood is the gate of that wonderful garden open to us, and we gaze 

 and long for the fruit we are never to handle. 



Our tents at Horsham Camp — so we named it — were the only 

 green things in the landscape. They happened to be of a pale 

 green. Riding out from the camp in most directions you found 

 yourself amongst a bare and wind-swept series of ridges two 

 or three hundred feet in height, which appeared to roll away 

 across the wide continent. Sunday was welcome. It was notice- 

 able how Sunday abroad always affected men, some of whom at 

 home spared small attention for the day. Life went evenly. The 

 others took it in turn to cook. I generally rode out early. The 

 troop were rounded up and our first meal came about 7 o'clock. 

 After that I used to go to my tent and write while the men busied 

 themselves with any job on hand. Cocoa at two on Sundays, and 

 about six a meal of meat and beans. And so to bed. The day 

 before the colt was killed, Tom, my hound, stole a dumpling from 

 the plate of one of the party as he sat eating. The loser at once 

 pursued the thief, retrieved " the dumpling and ate it, so you will 

 understand that there was no wastefulness among us ! 



By November 12 I was tired of inaction, tired of the tent, 

 tired of the camp. The wind continued. Surely in all his 

 writings R. L. Stevenson never made a more perfect phrase than 

 the " incommunicable thrill of tilings." A wood-scent in the 

 morning, the sound of the wind at night, the clear cinders of the 

 fire or a whiff of burning wood — one receives the spark that fires 

 the train of thought and leads us far away. No indolence of the 

 soul this, but the fulfilling of some beautiful law at the junction 

 of the spiritual and the natural, infused through a thousand 

 tissues and welded by a thousand heredities. . . . One writes 

 much of this kind of thing, for, afar from all books or chance 

 of interchanging ideas, one falls back upon oneself, and one's pen 

 is a safe outlet for superfluous imaginings. 



On that afternoon I caught a horse and went down to the long 



