PEOPLE get lost for the very simple reason that they either don't or won't realize how easy it is to do so, unless they are all the time mentally noting the characteristic features of their surroundings and committing them to memory.
It is one thing to follow along certain streets of which we know the names in a town or city, and quite another to pursue either a straight or circuitous course in trackless bush or forest country where there is an appalling sameness about the trees and the undergrowth, in fact, everything, and where landmarks—eminences of any kind—are consequently shut out from view. This applies equally well, though in a different way, to the ocean-like prairie, or to the veldt, where there is not a tree, a stick, and hardly a stone to break "the level waste and rounding gray" of the featureless landscape.
But we know for a certainty that it is just as easy to find one's way from one given point to another in apparently featureless country as in that which is well marked and distinctive, if only one will cultivate and exercise the powers of observation. That is the kernel of the whole business—to systematically observe and not to allow one's wits to go wool-gathering. Certainly some people are more capable of exercising their powers of observation than others; but it is in us all—this inheritance from primitive man—in a greater or less degree, though, of course, we, whose ancestors have built for us roads and church steeples—the origin and use of which are easily understandable in country places—can hardly be expected to interpret the face of Nature like the savage, with whom the necessity of exercising his perceptive faculties in regard to physical surroundings has been a necessity from all time.
The savage could not exist a week unless this were so. Put an inexperienced white man into a trackless wilderness, and the chances are he will be dead in less than three days. The conclusion we come to is that the savage, having been accustomed to exercise his powers of observation from his earliest youth, and for countless generations, has developed that faculty which we call somewhat vaguely "the bump of locality," while the civilized man, having in this country comparatively little use for it, has neglected the same, and, therefore, allowed it to become dulled. Another proof of Darwin's Law of Disuse.
But inherited qualities die hard, just as surely as the changes in human nature are almost imperceptible; therefore, we can all take heart in the thought that, so far as the bump of locality is concerned, there is a good deal of the savage in us still. Let me exemplify my point by my own case. At the same time, I will impart the result of my own experience as I go along. If he chose, any fellow can become an experienced bush man. At least, he need never lose his way unless he is wilfully neglectful.
While yet in my teens, I went out to a newly opened up cattle station in the wild Never Never Country of tropical Australia. For hundreds and hundreds of miles there was only a bush track which led from a place called Burktown to Port Darwin, a distance of considerably over a thousand miles. The newly-erected buildings of the station I have referred to lay some miles to the north of it.
The morning after I arrived there, Macintosh, the squatter, pointing to some horses that I could just catch a glimpse of through the trees in what he called the horse-paddock, told me to take a bridle with me and fetch up a certain roan horse. It was a good, quiet-going stock horse, and he would set it apart for my use.
"Now, remember always to keep your eyes about you, and take note of the direction in which you are going," he said, "if you don't you'll get lost. And as there are no roads in this part of the world, you may wander about, until you perish of thirst and hunger. I'm going a few miles south to see about a new branding-yard. I'll see you when I come back."
And then he briefly gave me a few hints which, he said, if I did not neglect, would enable me to find my way about.
I almost resented his telling me such obvious things. His "tips" to me sounded so childish and unnecessary. The people in Australia were surely very dense if they could not go exactly where they wanted to without having to exercise extraordinary precautions. Now, I know that I had all the assurance of the ignorant.
I put my bridle over my arm and started out. For half a mile the timber had been ring-barked and felled, and one could see a couple of hundred yards or so ahead. Then there was a clump of wattle, and a number of ti-trees that somewhat resembled apple-trees in an orchard.
A magnificent parrot, crimson and green and gold, the like of which I had never seen
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