The documents he read were in half a dozen languages, sometimes in the vilest scrawls.

Long afterwards he described his own experience in his own graphic way.

"Often at the end of a page," he said, "I have felt as after descending a precipice, and have wondered how I got down.

I had to cut my way through a jungle, for no one had opened the road for me.

I have been turned into rooms piled to the window-sill with bundles of dust-covered despatches, and told to make the best of it.
Often I have found the sand glistening on the ink where it had been sprinkled when a page was turned.