The Land of Footprints

by Stewart Edward White
I. ON BOOKS OF ADVENTURE

Books of sporting, travel, and adventure in countries little
known to the average reader naturally fall in two

classes-neither, with a very few exceptions, of great value. One
class is perhaps the logical result of the other.

Of the first type is the book that is written to make the most of
far travels, to extract from adventure the last thrill, to

impress the awestricken reader with a full sense of the danger
and hardship the writer has undergone. Thus, if the latter takes

out quite an ordinary routine permit to go into certain
districts, he makes the most of travelling in "closed territory,"

implying that he has obtained an especialprivilege, and has
penetrated where few have gone before him. As a matter of fact,

the permit is issued merely that the authorities may keep track
of who is where. Anybody can get one. This class of writer tells

of shooting beasts at customary ranges of four and five hundred
yards. I remember one in especial who airily and as a matter of

fact killed all his antelope at such ranges. Most men have shot
occasional beasts at a quarter mile or so, but not airily nor as

a matter of fact: rather with thanksgiving and a certain amount
of surprise. The gentleman of whom I speak mentioned getting an

eland at seven hundred and fifty yards. By chance I happened to
mention this to a native Africander.

"Yes," said he, "I remember that; I was there."
This interested me-and I said so.

"He made a long shot," said I.
"A GOOD long shot," replied the Africander.

"Did you pace the distance?"
He laughed. "No," said he, "the old chap was immensely delighted.

'Eight hundred yards if it was an inch!' he cried."
"How far was it?"

"About three hundred and fifty. But it was a long shot, all
right."

And it was! Three hundred and fifty yards is a very long shot. It
is over four city blocks-New York size. But if you talk often

enough and glibly enough of "four and five hundred yards," it
does not sound like much, does it?

The same class of writer always gets all the thrills. He speaks
of "blanched cheeks," of the "thrilling suspense," and so on down

the gamut of the shilling shocker. His stuff makes good reading;
there is no doubt of that. The spellbound public likes it, and to

that extent it has fulfilled its mission. Also, the reader
believes it to the letter-why should he not? Only there is this

curious result: he carries away in his mind the impression of
unreality, of a country impossible to be understood and gauged

and savoured by the ordinary human mentalequipment. It is
interesting, just as are historical novels, or the copper-riveted

heroes of modern fiction, but it has no real relation with human
life. In the last analysis the inherent untruth of the thing

forces itself on him. He believes, but he does not apprehend; he
acknowledges the fact, but he cannot grasp its human quality. The

affair is interesting, but it is more or less concocted of
pasteboard for his amusement. Thus essential truth asserts its

right.
All this, you must understand, is probably not a deliberate

attempt to deceive. It is merely the recrudescence under the
stimulus of a brand-new environment of the boyish desire to be a

hero. When a man jumps back into the Pleistocene he digs up some
of his ancestors' cave-qualities. Among these is the desire for

personal adornment. His modern development of taste precludes
skewers in the ears and polished wire around the neck; so he

adorns himself in qualities instead. It is quite an engaging and
diverting trait of character. The attitude of mind it both

presupposes and helps to bring about is too complicated for my
brief analysis. In itself it is no more blameworthy than the

small boy's pretence at Indians in the back yard; and no more
praiseworthy than infantile decoration with feathers.

In its results, however, we are more concerned. Probably each of
us has his mental picture that passes as a symbol rather than an

idea of the different continents. This is usually a single
picture-a deep river, with forest, hanging snaky vines,

anacondas and monkeys for the east coast of South America, for
example. It is built up in youth by chance reading and chance

pictures, and does as well as a pink place on the map to stand
for a part of the world concerning which we know nothing at all.

As time goes on we extend, expand, and modify this picture in the
light of what knowledge we may acquire. So the reading of many

books modifies and expands our first crude notions of Equatorial
Africa. And the result is, if we read enough of the sort I

describe above, we build the idea of an exciting, dangerous,
extra-human continent, visited by half-real people of the texture

of the historical-fiction hero, who have strange and interesting
adventures which we could not possibly imagine happening to

ourselves.
This type of book is directly responsible for the second sort.

The author of this is deadly afraid of being thought to brag of
his adventures. He feels constantly on him the amusedly critical

eye of the old-timer. When he comes to describe the first time a
rhino dashed in his direction, he remembers that old hunters, who

have been so charged hundreds of times, may read the book.
Suddenly, in that light, the adventure becomes pitifully

unimportant. He sets down the fact that "we met a rhino that
turned a bit nasty, but after a shot in the shoulder decided to

leave us alone." Throughout he keeps before his mind's eye the
imaginary audience of those who have done. He writes for them, to

please them, to convince them that he is not "swelled head," nor
"cocky," nor "fancies himself," nor thinks he has done, been, or

seen anything wonderful. It is a good, healthy frame of mind to
be in; but it, no more than the other type, can produce books

that leave on the minds of the general public any impression of a
country in relation to a real human being.

As a matter of fact, the same trouble is at the bottom of both
failures. The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has

been too much occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten
boyhood heroics. The more modest man, with even more

self-consciousness, has been thinking of how he is going to
appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought of themselves

before their work. This aspect of the matter would probably
vastly astonish the modestwriter.

If, then, one is to formulate an ideal toward which to write, he
might express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those

readers desiring sheer exploration can get it in any library:
those in search of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty

of it at any book-stall. But the majority want something
different from either of these. They want, first of all, to know

what the country is like-not in vague and grandiose "word
paintings," nor in strange and foreign sounding words and

phrases, but in comparison with something they know. What is it
nearest like-Arizona? Surrey? Upper New York? Canada? Mexico? Or

is it totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon?
When you look out from your camp-any one camp-how far do you

see, and what do you see?-mountains in the distance, or a screen
of vines or bamboo near hand, or what? When you get up in the

morning, what is the first thing to do? What does a rhino look
like, where he lives, and what did you do the first time one came

at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I were either an
old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were afraid

somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I
want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? or

did you become cool? Tell me frankly just how it was, so I can
see the thing as happening to a common everyday human being.

Then, even at second-hand and at ten thousand miles distance, I
can enjoy it actually, humanly, even though vicariously,