It is a good, healthy frame of mind to be in. But it, just as with the other type, can produce books that leave on the minds of the general public no impression of a country in relation to a real human being.
As a matter of fact, the same trouble is at the bottom of both failures. The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has been too much occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten boyhood heroics. The more modest man, with even more self-consciousness, has been thinking of how he is going to appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought of themselves before their work. This view of the matter would probably vastly astonish the modest writer.
If, then, one is to formulate a goal toward which to write, he might express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those readers who desire sheer exploration can get it in any library. Those in search of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty of it in any book store. But the majority of people want something different from either of these. They want, first of all, to know what the country is like.
