secrets with them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and undefiled; but to
one who knows and loves it, the wilderness is not lonely, because the
spirit of nature is ever there to keep the wanderer company. He finds
companions in the winds--the sunny streams babble like Nature's
children at his feet; high above them, in the purple sunset, are domes
and minarets and palaces, such as no mortal man has built, in and out
of whose flaming doors the angels of the sun seem to move continually.
And there, too, is the wild game, following its feeding-grounds in
great armies, with the springbuck thrown out before for skirmishers;
then rank upon rank of long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling like
infantry; and last the shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed
shaggy vilderbeeste to take, as it were, the place of the cossack host
that hangs upon an army's flanks.

[*] This of course was written before Mr. Quatermain's account of the
adventures in the newly-discovered country of Zu-Vendis of
himself, Sir Henry Curtis, and Capt. John Good had been received
in England.--Editor.

"Oh, no," he would say, "the wilderness is not lonely, for, my boy,
remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to
God," and though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is
one I am sure that anybody will easily understand who has watched the
sun rise and set on the limitless deserted plains, and seen the
thunder chariots of the clouds roll in majesty across the depths of
unfathomable sky.

Well, at any rate we went back again, and now for many months I have
heard nothing at all of him, and to be frank, I greatly doubt if
anybody will ever hear of him again. I fear that the wilderness, that