TO WAYFARING MEN.

Sirs, the Holy Scriptures, which, as we know, were written for our learning, seem to imply that some of us are fools.

This may be so, and when I moralise, wrapped in the frequent contemplation of my travels, upon lost opportunities, lack of discernment, and on the general folly incident to all mankind, but which each man deems centred in himself, I think so too. But still a traveller in this travelling world, going perhaps to nowhere, or to some place that he would rather never visit, cannot but find his most congenial public amongst wayfaring men. Therefore to you who, like myself, have crossed, or even now are crossing, desert or pampa in the night; riding towards Capella, if in the southern hemisphere (Sohail in Africa), keeping the wind a little blowing on your right cheek, dismounting now and then to smoke and slack the girths; then camping on some river, sleeping fitfully and rising oft to view your horses feeding so quietly under the southern stars; or you who in the liner, ocean tramp, or even “windjammer” are going somewhere for no special reason, I now address myself.Writers, I take it, firstly write to please themselves, if not, ’tis ten to one their writing pleases nobody. Following my postulate I have set down that which pleased me upon my pilgrimage, hoping that it may please at least some two or three who, like myself, have wandered. Therefore in this, my modest book of travels, I have tried to write after the fashion that men speak over the fire at night, their pipes alight, hands on their rifles, boots turned towards the blaze, ears strained to catch the rustle of a leaf, and with the tin tea mug stopped on its journey to the mouth when horses snort; I mean I strove to write down that which I saw without periphrasis, sans flag-wagging, and with no megrim in my head of having been possessed by some great moral purpose, without which few travellers nowadays presume to leave their homes.

I fear I have no theory of empires, destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, spread of the Christian faith, of trade extension, or of hinterlands; no nostrum, by means of which I hope to turn Arabs to Christians, reconcile Allah and Jahve, remove the ancient lack of comprehension between East and West, mix oil and vinegar, or fix the rainbow always in the sky so that the colour-blind may scan it at their leisure through the medium of a piece of neutral-tinted glass; and generally I fear I write of things without a scrap of interest to right-thinking men: of humours, sayings, proverbs, traits of character; little of eating, drinking, or night alarms of vermin, as travellers will; but, on the contrary, of lonely rides, desolate camping places, of ruined buildings seen in peculiar lights, of simple folk who pray to Allah seven times a day, and act as if they never prayed at all; in fact of things which to a traveller, his travels o’er, still conjure up the best part of all travel—its melancholy. So I apologise for lack of analysis, neglect to dive into the supposititious motives which influence but ill-attested acts, and mostly for myself for having come before the public with the history of a failure to accomplish what I tried; and having brought together a sack of cobwebs, a pack of gossamers, a bale of thistle-down, dragon-flies’ wings, of Oriental gossip as to bygone facts, of old-world recollections, of new-world practices half understood; lore about horses’ colours, of tales of men who never bother much to think, but chiefly act, carving their lives out, where still space is left in which to carve, and acting thus so inconsiderately whilst there still remain so many stones unbroken, social problems to be solved, and the unpuncturable pneumatic tyre not yet found out.

Touching my traveller’s privilege I propose to use it sparingly, but at the same time not to blurt out the brutal truth too trippingly, for truth, I take it, suffers by too much comprehension, in the same manner as the Mass has suffered even by its transmutation into Elizabethan English. Religion, once made understandable of all, loses its authenticity, and soon degenerates into the arid dialectics of the self-righteous Nonconformist. What so consoling to a religious man, as in a building (with the entry free) to join in singing praises to an unknown God, in an uncomprehended tongue? And so perhaps the truth, [x] declare it quite unblushingly, and it may become as little interesting as is an ill-concocted lie.

It may be that my poor unphilosophic recollections of a failure may interest some who, like myself, have failed, but still may like to hear that even in a failure you can see strange things, meet as strange types, and be impressed as much with wild and simple folk, as any traveller who thundered through the land, Bible and gun in hand, making himself no spiced conscience, but putting into practice the best traditions of our race, confident that the one way to win a “nigger’s” heart “is to speak English to him,” and doing so even at the rifle’s mouth.

But if they do not interest, then I fall back again upon my wanderers, and hope that in my slight impressions they may find something they recognise, something that they have felt before upon the journey that they make across the Pampa of their lives, making it as they do in general on horses hipshot, lean and saddle-galled, asking their way from those they meet, who answer them as wise as they, “Ride on to the lone tree on the horizon, then bear a little to the right, and if you keep the line, you cannot miss the houses, for the barking of the dogs will guide you, if it falls dark.”

And then comes evening, and the travellers, still kicking at their horses’ sides, straining their eyes, keep pushing forward, stumbling and objurgating on the trail.

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.

Gartmore, 1898.