Page:Lhasa (Landon) Vol. I.djvu/17

 A LETTER TO SIR FRANK YOUNGHUSBAND, K.C.I.E.



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 and 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