THE WILDERNESS EXPLORER 167 



matter how well he writes and no matter how much 

 of real value he contributes to human knowledge, to 

 compare himself in any way with the real wilderness 

 wanderer, or to criticize the latter. Such a performance 

 entails no hardship or difficulty worth heeding. Its 

 value depends purely on observation, not on action. 

 The man does little ; he merely records what he sees. 

 He is only the man of the beaten routes. The true 

 wilderness wanderer, on the contrary, must be a man 

 of action as well as of observation. He must have the 

 heart and the body to do and to endure, no less than 

 the eye to see and the brain to note and record. 



Let me make it clear that I am not depreciating the 

 excellent work of so many of the men who have not 

 gone off the beaten trails. I merely wish to make it 

 plain that this excellent work must not be put in the 

 class with that of the wilderness explorer. It is excellent 

 work, nevertheless, and has its place, just as the work of 

 the true explorer has its place. Both stand in sharpest 

 contrast with the actions of those alleged explorers, 

 among whom Mr. Savage Landor stands in unpleasant 

 prominence. 



From the Sepotuba rapids our course at the outset 

 lay westward. The first day's march away from the 

 river lay through dense tropical forest. Away from the 

 broad, beaten route every step of a man's progress repre- 

 sented slashing a trail with the machete through the 

 tangle of bushes, low trees, thorny scrub, and interlaced 

 creepers. There were palms of new kinds, very tall, 

 slender, straight, and graceful, with rather short and 

 few fronds. The wild plantains, or pacovas, thronged 

 the spaces among the trunks of the tall trees ; their boles 

 were short, and their broad, erect leaves gigantic ; they 

 bore brilliant red-and-orange flowers. There were trees 



