ABSTRACT
I USED to think it was pure chance that sent me into the Colonial Service, but Chance, we are told, is a' nickname of Providence and looking back on events it seems to me that I followed unquestioningly the beckoning of the Moving Finger. There was nothing in Iny ancestry (unless a grandfather who wandered and died in Africa years before I was born), in my education or in my environnlent to encourage Ine to travel; rather the rev~rse. Yet despite every discouragement and without any realization that it was leading anywhere, my interest lay in books of discovery and exploration and the nearer East made most appeal. lowe to my father a fondness for natural history, for his hobby was British butterflies and moths, and this interest hand in hand with the other absorbed my attention to the detriinent of a classical education and the cult of games.
