Desert and Forest [antikvár]

PREFACE In the course of a few years it will have become impossible, if indeed it is not already impossible, for a would-be explorer to find a virgin field for his enterprise on the earth. Perchance, our grandchildren will discover means of journeying to the stars, and then no doubt they will smile at the strivings and the petty sublunary achievements of ourselves, who crept painfully and without mechanical aids over the unknown places of the earth. For my part, I feel happy that I was born in time, if only just in time, to employ the ancient slow methods of exploration, by which the very taste and smell of remote and primitive territories is forced, even though it be painfully, on the observation of the traveller. It is impossible for the man who travels by motor car to observe closely: he is too self-contained, too independent of the inhabitants of the country through which he moves, too unleisurely, by reason of the nature of his transport. The observation of the flier must be even more superficial. In 1927, I had been summoned from the Llanos of the Orinoco to report on platiniferous territories in Western Abyssinia. Having accomplished this mission, I proceeded to Addis Ababa — and so found myself confronted by a long-sought goal, the opportunity to explore the Danakil country. The territory inhabited by the Danakils is divided into two parts by the frontier separating Abyssinia from Eritrea. The Eritrean Danakil is a strip of country, some forty miles wide, which lies along the shore of the Red Sea from II