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. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 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 Desert is but little-known. A few nomads--some of European and some of mixed descent--hang on its fringe. Here and there ephemeral mat-house villages, whose dwellers are dependent on the sparse and uncertain bounty of the sky, will, perhaps, be found for a season. But when the greedy sun has reclaimed the last drop of moisture from shallow "pan" or sand-choked rock-saucer, the mat-houses are folded up and, like the Arabs, these dwellers steal silently away from the blighting visage of the Thirst King. But the greater portion of Bushmanland may be ranked among the most complete solitudes of the earth. The lion, the rhinoceros, and, in fact, most of the larger indigenous fauna have disappeared from it--with the autochthonous pygmy human inhabitants; nevertheless it is a region full of varied and distinctive interest. The landscape consists either of vast plains, mirage-haunted and as level as the sea,--arid mountain ranges--usually mere piles of naked rock, or immense sand-dunes, massed and convoluted. The latter often change their form and occasionally their location under stress of the violent winds which sweep down from the torrid north.