t 90 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. 
I have often wondered what will happen when 
there is no wild to tempt the daring spirit from 
the comparative safety and comfort of civilization 
to wander forth and seek adventure for the 
very exhilaration that it affords. Surely, love 
of excitement will always be a part of human 
nature! 
It is a generally accepted fact that nearly all those 
who have lived a considerable portion of their lives 
in the tropics experience a decided desire to return. 
It is a yearning that is well-nigh irresistible, and, 
more often than not, obeyed—a call which is felt 
by the West Coaster as strongly as by his brother 
of the East Coast. I have heard many opinions 
expressed on the subject and have frequently tried 
to analyse the nature of this peculiar yearning. 
In the first place, a man living away from civiliza¬ 
tion is naturally free from all the restraints of that 
civilization, and those confining influences which, 
in his youth, drove him from the compensating 
luxuries of an old country to seek the heart of the 
wild, are naturally more irksome to him on his 
return than ever. Away in the back of beyond, he 
is not obliged to observe the innumerable petty 
points of convention with which public opinion 
demands compliance in densely populated areas, 
and which to many minds reduce existence, in a 
phrase of Carlyle, to a ‘ highly complicated egg- 
