Sunny Lands and Seas, a Voyage in the SS. Ceylon: Notes Made During a Five Months’ Tour in India, the Straits Settlements, Manila, China, Japan, the Sandwich Islands, and California (1883)

He wanted to shoot himself. He read the refulgent words: You can get your rifle…or you can chat with Me. I will never leave you - I can’t, because I made you. I have never said do or don’t.. .that would take away from you that treasure, your priceless free-will.This was some of the oldest rocky country on earth, Australia’s far north-west, the Back of Beyond.A flat ledge led me to the bigger of two more caves - about forty feet high and fifteen feet wide. It had a flat floor that went in some fifty feet.I explored it carefully. It was clean of anything that might bite or sting. Ten years ago, an old aboriginal had told me that thousands and thousands of years ago, this cave had been sacred - it came from the Dreaming Time. For uncountedthousands of years, no animal, no bird, no snake or insect ever went in there, he said. Today, hundreds of millions in the West…go uncomforted to the tomb. They cling in despair to their…consciousness which they think death will extinguish.