The real observer is he who does not
observe, but is gradually aware that he knows. Sometimes he does not
learn that he is wise till long years have passed, and then perhaps the
mechanical maxim of a mechanical eye-server of Nature shall startle him
into a sense of deep abiding, but perhaps incommunicable, knowledge. So
comes the knowledge of mountain, moor and stream; so rises the Aphrodite
truth of the sea, born from the foam that surges round the Horn, or
floats silently upon the beach of some lonely coral island; and so grows
the knowledge of vast stretches of dim inland continents.

I spent my hours (let them be called months) in Africa seeking vainly
after facts that after all were of no importance. Politics are of
to-day, but human nature is of eternity. And while I sought what I could
hardly find, in one cold clear dawn I stumbled upon the truth concerning
the white people of the veldt, whom we call Boers. And yet it was not
stumbling; I had but rediscovered something that I had known of old in
other lands, far east and far west of Africa. When first I entered on
the terraces of the Karroo I tried to build up for myself the character
of the lone horsemen who ride across these spaces, and though I was
solitary, and saw sunrises, the construction of the type eluded me. I
saw the big plain and the flat-topped banded hills that had sunk into
their minds. I saw the ruddy dawn glow, and the ruddier glory of sundown
as the sun bit into the edge of the horizon, and I knew that here
somewhere lay the secret of the race, even though I could not find it.
And I knew too that I had discovered sister secrets in long past days;
and I saw that, not in the intellect as one knows it, but in some
revived instinct, revived it might be by one of the senses, lay the clue
to what I sought. What did these people think, or what lay beneath
thought in them? It was something akin to what I had felt somewhere,
that I knew. But the sun went down and left me in the dark; or it rose
clear of the distant hills and drowned me in daylight, and still I did
not know. Then there was the babble of politics in my ears, and I spoke
of Reform and such urgent matters in the dusty streets of windy
Johannesburg.

But one day, as it chanced, I came upon the secret; and then I found it
was incommunicable, as all real secrets are. For your true secret is an
informing sensation, and no sensation can resolve itself other than by
negatives. I had spent a wear