A LETTER TO SIR FRANK YOUNGHUSBAND, K.C.I.E.
My D e a r C o l o n e l ,—
It was into the mouth of a British chieftain in the first century
that Tacitus put a criticism which has become famous. “ Men,
protested Calgacus, “ are apt to be impressed chiefly by the
unknown.” In a sense, somewhat different from that in which
it was originally intended, this estimate has remained just
to the present day. Spread out the map of the world and
there before you is proof enough of one of the most marked,
most persistent— perhaps also one of the best— characteristics
of an Englishman. You are but the latest of a succession of
explorers which has no rival in the history of another race.
The sturdy trampings of Sir John Mandeville, perhaps also his
even more robust imaginings— be it remembered, that without
the latter we should not have had the former— have had their
successors in unbroken line to the present day. Other nations
have had their home-keeping centuries— years in which the needs
of commerce or high politics have demanded that they should
for a time develop and not explore. But, decade after decade,
the English have always had their representatives creeping on
a little beyond the margin of the travelled world— men to whom
beaten tracks were a burden, men for whom the free air
astir to windward ” was inevitably more than the new-found
territory, however rich, upon which they were just turning
their backs.
Century after century it is the same old story. The instinctive
tracks of voyagers in Elizabethan years ; the restlessness
ashore of merchant Venturers the moment Blake had won for