The men who are under an infernal spell, a spell which our best
political economists have proved cannot be and ought not to be broken,
and who therefore must run to and fro between London and Croydon
all their wretched lives, are astonished when an infant shows more
initiative and ventures to New York. But why shouldn’t it? Its journey
proved as easy as a perambulator and a nurse. There is nothing in being
carried about. Where steamships and railways go anyone may go. You have
only to take a seat, and wait. A child could travel in independence
from here to Macassar, which is a mere name through distance, and it
would but add interest to a long voyage for doting seamen. The
trouble for a restless soul begins only when he would turn aside,
and go where other people do not. Then he finds that the herd has no
sympathy for one of its members who would leave the farmer’s field; no
sympathy, no advice, no help; nothing but curt warnings and mocking
prophecies.
[Illustration:
_After a long and faithful adherence to the
beaten tracks you reach some distant coastal
outpost_--
]
After a long and faithful adherence to the beaten tracks you reach
some distant coastal outpost, and, enforced, there you pause. There
is nothing else to do, so you look inland to the hills. What do they
hide? The exiles on the spot, through envy and jealousy--for it would
be absurd to suppose that they do not want to lose you--deny all access
to those hills. That outpost is touched by a steamer at least once a
fortnight, and while waiting for it, each evening, when the other men
are as idle as yourself, you ask disturbing questions about the land
beyond, The men reclining about the room murmur that nobody ever goes.
Some day, of course, before they return home, they intend to stand on
those hills. Just once. Wants a bit of doing, though. Pretty bad, the
fevers. Can’t trust the natives. Last year a young fellow, just out, he
tried it. Thought we didn’t know. Wouldn’t listen to us. Said he would
be back in a week. He isn’t back yet. And there was a Dutchman once....
Heard about him? Well. The sagacious informant here glances round to
see who is present, and leans over to whisper, ending his story with a
malignant chuckle. “And served him right, too.”
If you listened to those fellows in complete social credulity you
would merely stay at the rest-house till the next ship anchored, and
when she departed so would you, still gazing at the unknown over her
taffrail. But she has not arrived yet, and therefore every day, as you
look to the hills, you explore a path which leads, so it seems, to
those ramparts of cobalt. You have not the cheerful idea, of course, of
continuing long enough. That would show courage instead of sociability.
You merely wish to gratify, as much as a quiet creature dare, an
intolerable desire to approach the forbidden.
Then, in some manner, those hills vanish. After five minutes on that
track they go. An illusion? You continue till you reach a secluded
valley, a steep and narrow place about which nobody has warned you,
though to warn a friend of it, in case he should stray that way by
chance, seems at a glance to be a positive duty. You watch a river come
down turbulently through woods as dark and still as night. It goes over
rocks, but with hardly a sound, as though it were muffled. A native
crouches on the coiled roots of a tree on the opposite shore, and
eyes you. But he does not move his head. He says nothing. He continues
to watch you, and he does not move. Is it possible to get beyond that
point? Very likely not. The very hills have disappeared. That dark
forest, if it is not impenetrable, would be better if it were. The land
is only a dream, and that native is the warning figure in it. You shout
over to the figure, but it does not answer. It looks away. So you turn
back, listen to more stories for a few more nights in the rest-house,
and leave with the next ship.
There is the island of Celebes. Ships go to it direct from England. A
child could manage the journey thither. I could not count the number
of villages of its coast off which anchored my local trading steamer;
we stood in and out of Celebes for weeks. I sought for a man who could
tell me about the interior of that island--which has about the same
area as Ireland, but a coastline long enough for an archipelago--but
never found him. Picture post-cards may be obtained at Macassar and
Menado, and trips by motor-car bought for as far as the roads go. But
Brighton has the same advantages. Yet when it came to the question
of a journey into the interior, then you might as well have been in
a London post-office appealing through the wire netting, to a young
lady counting insurance stamps, for a way to send a message to Joanna
Southcott about that box. Yet there cannot be another large island
anywhere in the world with shores so inviting, because those of
Celebes are uninhabited, except for short lengths; and the mountains
of the interior of that island, which is crossed by the equator, are
so fantastic that they might be hiding the wonders of all outlandish
legends. No matter. There is no approach, apparently, to the heights.
A spell is on the place. You must be content to watch that coast and
those hills pass, unless you are more daring than this deponent in
flaunting the settled ways and opinions of your fellow-men.
The time does come, it does come, when you can stand the charted paths
no longer. It is all very well for the people at home, misled by the
narratives of flamboyant tourists, to suppose that the track you are
following is one only for the stout of heart. By the map, doubtless, it
looks as though it were. But you know better. The chief difficulty on
that track, however devious and far it may seem from London, is that
you cannot get away from it. While this is strictly true, it must be
remembered that it is not altogether a simple excursion for a wayfarer
to leave the highways and cross alone and in safety some of the moors
of England. The warnings of the friends with whom you consort for
a few days at a rest-house in the tropics merit attention. There is
something in what they say.
At last you are in no doubt about it. If the warning fables were only
half as bad as the reality still the common path could hold you no
longer. Boredom with the ways of Labuan is no different from boredom
in Highgate. With deliberation you cast your luggage into a godown,
careless whether or not you ever see it again, and set out light-foot
for the unknown quarter where health is the only fortune, and where all
the money in the world cannot buy refreshment when it does not exist,
nor goodwill from creatures who do not like your face. If your good
luck or common sense prove inadequate, then you are aware you won’t
return; but there is satisfaction to be found in the certain knowledge
that if you have to pay the ultimate forfeit it will be because you
ought to pay it. You cannot find that satisfaction in London, which
is in many ways worse than the jungle. If you prove good enough, the
wild will reward you with a safe passage; but the city will even punish
qualities which make men honest citizens and pleasant neighbours.
In weeks of toil you get far beyond the last echo of the coast. You can
imagine you have reached, not another place, but another time, and
have entered an earlier age of the earth. Soon after the beginning of
the journey up country there was a suspicion, when another silent reach
of the river opened, where immense trees overhung and were motionless,
and were doubled in the mirror, that now you were about to wake up.
This would go. In reality you were not there.
The paddlers ceased. A buffalo, a bronze statue on a strip of sand in
the water, stared at the lot of you as you rounded the point. Then he
erupted that scene. It did exist; it was alive. The first ripple from
the outer world had come to stir into protest that timeless peace.
The river is left, and a traverse made of the forest. Ranges are
crossed. You become a little doubtful of your whereabouts. The map
treasured in a rubber bag now abandons you to an indeterminate land.
The natives are shy, food is scarce and a little queer, and exposure
and wounds recall to the memory the unfriendly yarns of the settlement
far away. About time to turn back? But the inclination is to go on, for
the days seem brighter and more innocent than you have ever known them
to be. Even food has become an enjoyable way to continue life; and the
camp at sundown, when, offering grace for the pleasure of conscious
continuance in fatigue, you look upwards to a fading stratum of gold
on the roof of the jungle across the stream, and the cicadas begin
their pæan, is richer than success. The very smell of the wood smoke
is a luxury. Only at night, when the darkness is so well established
that it could be the irrevocable end of all the days, and the distant
sounds in the forest are inexplicable if they are not menacing, do the
thoughts turn backward. It would be easier, you think then, to be safe.
But the next day you discover that you are not alone in that unknown
country. A man meets you, and says that he has heard you were about.
He has been trying to find you. He would like to hear a bit of news.
He behaves to you as though you were the best friend he had. You learn
that he has been there for nearly a year. He came to that corner of the
continent from the other side. He says this as though he were merely
remarking that it rained yesterday; and the extraordinary character
of such a journey causes you to glance at him for some clue to the
reason for so obvious a lie. Yet no, that fellow is not a liar--not in
such a small matter, anyhow. What is he doing there? Oh, just looking
round for gold, or tin, or a job. Have you heard a word, he asks, of a
railway coming along?
You cannot journey to any unusual quarter without surprising there
one of these wanderers. He is looking a country over, and has lived
with the chief’s daughter, and improved the chief’s importance with
neighbouring tribes, and has kept open a wary eye for gold or anything
else which might be lying about, long before regular communication was
made with the sea, and years ahead of the bold explorers about whom the
newspapers make such a fuss; he saw the land before the missionaries.
These wanderers make rough maps of their own, they are familiar with
the most unlikely recesses of the land--which they reached, by the way,
from China, or Uganda, or Bogota, or wherever they were last. If one
of them tells you his name you need not believe him. The place of his
birth is not the place of his confidence. It is no good asking him what
he is going to do next, for he does not know. While you are with him,
you feel that a better companion for such a country was never born; and
when you leave him you know you will never see him again, nor even hear
of him. But he is a man you will never forget.