The Land of Footprints | Page 4

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 modest writer.
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, speculating a
bit over my pipe as to how I would have liked it myself.
Obviously, to write such a book the author must at the same