SPORT AND SCIENCE ON THE 
upon the land, without the help of stores from 
Europe or American canned goods ? What more 
natural than that the unknown places in this 
land of mystery should beckon to me, and that I 
should hear that voice ringing its “‘ interminable 
changes . . . . something hidden. Go and find 
ita a  e 
I cannot claim with Kipling’s Explorer to have 
found country unknown to man; but I can say 
that I have been the first white man to tread 
many a forest and wild mountain, many a sandy 
waste and boulder-strewn wilderness, many a rich 
pasture and fertile valley. I, too, have seen the 
promise of future prosperity in ‘the big fat 
marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,” in the 
“nameless timber,” and “ illimitable plains.” 
Will others go up and occupy ? Will my ecoun- 
trymen aid in developing that potential wealth ? 
I hope so. 
Strange though it may seem it has not been 
the solemn grandeur of the great back ranges, 
nor the mysterious silence and gloom of the virgin 
forests, nor yet the smiling fatness of the valleys 
and plains that have appealed to me most. It 
is the sun-baked, barren ridges, the shifting, 
windswept sand-dunes and the saline, brackish 
swamps of the Ordos Desert that have cast upon 
me the strongest spell. 
Even as a boy I had been fascinated by what 
I had heard of that howling wilderness, that 
4 
