In my excess of joy I had given but little thought to this important question. One must have been in the rushing stream of London high-life, one must have gone through the everlasting feastings, the dinners, luncheons, parties, balls, &c., which fall to the lot of a society lion during the so-called "season," to understand how little time one has for thinking, and how a constant intercourse with millionaires makes one fancy one's self in possession of inexhaustible wealth. Day after day the post brought piles of invitations to lunch, or dinner, races, hunting-parties, visits to beautiful country-houses, and all imaginable pleasures and recreations. Hardly a tenth part of the people who thus offered me hospitality I knew personally. I was received everywhere as a friend and old acquaintance, and overwhelmed with attentions of all sorts. One recommended me to another, and the draconic law of fashion made it everybody's imperative duty to entertain the stranger who was about to publish in England the result of his perilous travels, and give England the first benefit of them, and in this manner to show him the gratitude of the nation.
I do not doubt that underlying all this there was a strong dose of snobbishness, in which England excels, an aping of the great and the wealthy and the highly cultured, for I am certain that many of my entertainers had but very vague notions about Central Asia. Nevertheless expressions of appreciation of my toils and labours, even if they were speculations upon ulterior benefits on the part of my hosts, could not leave me quite indifferent; in fact they took a most astonishing hold of me. When I saw with what fervour Livingstone was received on his second return from Africa, how anonymous patrons placed large sums at his disposal, and how patiently his curious whims and tempers were put up with; when I witnessed the part played in society by Burton, Speke, Grant, Du Chaillu, and Kirk, and realised that these highly celebrated "travellers" were not thus admired, distinguished, and rewarded for their great learning, but rather for their manly character, their personal courage and spirit of enterprise, I began to understand the eminently practical bent of the British nation, and the problem was explained how this little Albion had attained to so great power, so great riches, and boasts possessions which encircle the entire globe. Indeed the traveller in England enjoys much more notoriety than ever the greatest scholar and artist does on the Continent. He has seen distant lands and continents and knows where the best and the cheapest raw materials are to be had, and where the industrial products of the Mother Country can be sold most advantageously. He clears the way for the missionary and the trader and, in their wake, for the red-coat; and just as in past ages the thirst for discovery as manifested by a Drake, a Raleigh, and a Cook materially contributed to the greatness of England, so now it is expected that the explorer's zeal and love of adventure will help to expand the country's political and commercial spheres of interest.
