52 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

Up to Railhead

Everything was strange from the moment we
pressed our way into Water Street Station through
the crowd which always watched the twice-weekly
train depart, and waved good-bye to Younger, beyond
the black barrier of faces. I felt more at one then
with the Kuhn-Kan players; I could appreciate the
need in a strange place of some point of support, of
one or two things scattered round which are familiar
and understandable even if they are only Sydney
Horler's novels, a gin and tonic. For even the railway
journey was strange. It is a small-gauge line, and
the tram noses its way up-country with incredible
slowness (it took two days to go two hundred and fifty
miles). There are three first-class compartments. The
experienced traveller (there was one on the train)
engages the middle compartment, which is quit*
empty, and puts up his own deck-chair; in the othei
two compartments the company provides wicker arm-
chairs.

One was 'off, and one was horribly afraid of doing
the wrong thing; the etiquette of travel in wild places
is as exacting as the etiquette of a new club. Nobody
in England had warned me of the centre compart-
ment, although I now understood that as a white man
I should have made some effort to engage it. I began
to fear, too, my first meeting with a chief; I had been
told that I would be 'dashed', probably a chicken or
some eggs or rice, and I would have to 'dash* back
money in return; I must shake hands and be friendly
but aloof (it was a relief to enter the Republic and no
longer feel that I was a member of the ruling race).