Afterwards I think we shall ship him across to Boston and New York. They love a prince there too, but they will not have him coloured. H'umaduya of the Gold Coast would not have gone down at any price in the States. The Americans have too many niggers at home to tolerate the _bouquet d'Afrique_ otherwise than in the appartments specially appointed to contain its assertive flavour; but Prince Johann of Lapland would be a very different matter. Every paper in New York would publish a personal interview illustrated with his photographs six hours before he landed. His political relations with "Czar Nicholas" would be dished up spicily; and the "barbaric splendours of his princely court" would be written of with vivid (and a slightly indecent) realism by gentlemen of the press, who know to a headline what their public want.
But unless there is absolutely no other competition on the carpet, I am afraid that he would not have so long a reign in the States as he had in England. In my own, my native land, we like curiosities; in the States they prefer culture. Curiosities are a drug in the States, and a slightly impertinent drug at that. Culture is rare, and so they imitate and talk about it all day long.
Except for the absence of game, the country we were travelling through was much the same as the Thames valley must have appeared to those hairy, naked savages who first looked out upon the levels where London now stands. Here was a forest of fire-slain pines, still reared up gaunt and gray, defying heaven. Young birches and hazels were growing up round them. And then would come mile after mile, and mile after mile, of spongy morass, seamed by rivulets, and smeared by stagnant ponds. The Thames valley became of use to man, so man drained it, and penned all the streamlets into one orderly river, and created dry land out of the swamps. But it is hard to fancy that these great wildernesses so far within the Arctic Circle will ever be reclaimed by the ditcher for his master, the factory builder.
We met, though, with some traces of man's handiwork, and man's toil for his own convenience, as we journeyed on. We came upon a great circular morass, four miles in diameter. It was ringed in by a jagged paling of pines, and in the exact centre was a hummocky oasis of gray, lichened stone. Years before logs had been laid down over the worst parts of the swamp; they were crumbling and insecure, but they showed a distinct attempt at road-making; and over these we picked our way in easy peril of sprained ankles. But still there were many places where the logs had melted, and through these we had to wallow in the fashion which we had learned so very thoroughly. I think that this frail path accentuated the general desolation.