



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Lodges in the Wilderness
By William Charles Scully
Published by Herbert Jenkins Limited, London.
This edition dated 1915.

Lodges in the Wilderness, by William Charles Scully.

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LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS, BY WILLIAM CHARLES SCULLY.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE BUSHMANLAND DESERT--ITS NATURE AND EXTENT--DESERT TRAVELLING--THE
"TOA."

The world moves rapidly and with increasing momentum.  Even regions
remote from those communities which the stress of increasing population
and the curse of unleisured industrialism send spinning "down the
ringing grooves of change," are often so disturbed or overwhelmed by the
overflow of what threatens to be an almost worldwide current of morbid
energy, that within a strangely short period their character is apt
completely to alter and their individuality to become utterly destroyed.

I do not know how the Great Bushmanland Desert has fared in this
respect--not having visited it for several years--but if some unlikely
combination of circumstances were to take me once more to Aroegas or
Koisabies,--to the tiny spring of living water that trickles from the
depths and lies like a precious jewel hidden in the dark, narrow cavern
at Inkruip,--or to where the flaming, red-belted cone of Bantom Berg
glares over the dragon-folds of the dune-devil sprawling at its feet, I
should go in fear of finding empty sardine-tins and broken bottles lying
among the fragments of prehistoric pottery and flint implements which
were but recently the only traces of man to be found in those abodes of
solitude.

The Bushmanland