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Title:      Idle Days in Patagonia
Author:     W.H. (William Henry) Hudson
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Language:   English
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Date first posted:          June 2005
Date most recently updated: June 2005

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Title:      Idle Days in Patagonia
Author:     W.H. (William Henry) Hudson





CONTENTS


I.        AT LAST, PATAGONIA!
II.       HOW I BECAME AN IDLER
III.      VALLEY OF THE BLACK RIVER
IV.       ASPECTS OF THE VALLEY
V.        A DOG IN EXILE
VI.       THE WAR WITH NATURE
VII.      LIFE IN PATAGONIA
VIII.     SNOW, AND THE QUALITY OF WHITENESS
IX.       IDLE DAYS
X.        BIRD MUSIC IN SOUTH AMERICA
XI.       SIGHT IN SAVAGES
XII.      CONCERNING EYES
XIII.     THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA
XIV.      THE PERFUME OF AN EVENING PRIMROSE
APPENDIX: ON THE BIRDS OF THE RIO NEGRO OF PATAGONIA
INDEX


{p 1}

IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA



CHAPTER I


AT LAST, PATAGONIA!

The wind had blown a gale all night, and I had been hourly expecting that
the tumbling, storm-vexed old steamer, in which I had taken passage to the
Rio Negro, would turn over once for all and settle down beneath that
tremendous tumult of waters.  For the groaning sound of its straining
timbers, and the engine throbbing like an overtasked human heart, had made
the ship seem a living thing to me; and it was tired of the struggle, and
under the tumult was peace. But at about three o'clock in the morning the
wind began to moderate, and, taking off coat and boots, I threw myself into
my bunk for a little sleep.

Ours, it must be said, was a very curious boat, reported ancient and much
damaged; long and narrow in shape, like a Viking's ship, with the
passengers' cabins ranged like a row of small wooden cottages on the deck:
it was as ugly to look at as it was said to be unsafe to voyage in.  To make
matters worse our captain, a man over eighty years old, was lying in his
cabin sick unto death, for, as {p 2} a fact, he died not many days after our
mishap; our one mate was asleep, leaving only the men to navigate the
steamer on that perilous coast, and in the darkest hour of a tempestuous
night.

I was just dropping into a doze when a succession of bumps, accompanied by
strange grating and grinding noises, and shuddering motions of the ship,
caused me to start up again and rush to the cabin door.  The night was still
black and starless, with wind and rain, but for acres round us the sea was
whiter than milk.  I did not step out; close to me, half-way between my
cabin door and the bulwarks, where our only boat was fastened, three of the
sailors were standing together talking in low tones.  "We are lost," I heard
one say; and another answer, "Ay, lost for ever!"  Just then the mate,
roused from sleep, came running to them.  "Good God, what have you done with
the steamer!" he exclaimed sharply; then, dropping his voice, he added,
"Lower the boat -- quick!"

I crept out and stood, unseen by them in the obscurity, within five feet of
the group.  Not a thought of the dastardly character of the act they were
about to engage in -- for it was their intention to save themselves and
leave us to our fate -- entered my mind at the time.  My only thought was
that at the last moment, when they would be unable to prevent it except by
knocking me senseless, I would spring with them into the boat and save
myself, or else perish with them in that awful white surf.  But one other
person, more experienced than myself, and whose {p 3} courage took another
and better form, was also near and listening. He was the first engineer -- a
young Englishman from Newcastle-on-Tyne.  Seeing the men making for the
boat, he slipped out of the engine-room, revolver in hand, and secretly
followed them; and when the mate gave that order, he stepped forward with
the weapon raised, and said in a quiet but determined voice that he would
shoot the first man who should attempt to obey it.  The men slunk away and
disappeared in the gloom.  In a few moments more the passengers began
streaming out on to the deck in a great state of alarm; last of all the old
captain, white and hollow-eyed from his death-bed, appeared like a ghost
among us.  He had not been long standing there, with arms folded on his
chest, issuing no word of command, and paying no attention to the agitated
questions addressed to him by the passengers, when, by some lucky chance,
the steamer got off the rocks and plunged on for a space through the
seething, milky surf; then, very suddenly, passed out of it into black and
comparatively calm water.  For ten or twelve minutes she sped rapidly and
smoothly on; then it was said that she had ceased to move, that we were
stuck fast in the sand of the shore, although no shore was visible in the
intense darkness, and to me it seemed that we were still moving swiftly on.

There was no longer any wind, and through the now fast-breaking clouds ahead
of us appeared the first welcome signs of dawn.  By degrees the darkness
grew less intense; only just ahead of us there {p 4} still remained
something black and unchangeable -- a portion, as it were, of that pitchy
gloom that a short time before had made sea and air appear one and
indistinguishable; but as the light increased it changed not, and at last it
was seen to be a range of low hills or dunes of sand scarcely a stone's
throw from the ship's bows.  It was true enough that we were stuck fast in
the sand; and although this was a safer bed for the steamer than the jagged
rocks, the position was still a perilous one, and I at once determined to
land.  Three other passengers resolved to bear me company; and as the tide
had now gone out, and the water at the bows was barely waist deep, we were
lowered by means of ropes into the sea, and quickly waded to the shore.

We were not long in scrambling up the dunes to get a sight of the country
beyond.  At last, Patagonia!  How often had I pictured in imagination,
wishing with an intense longing to visit this solitary wilderness, resting
far off in its primitive and desolate peace, untouched by man, remote from
civilisation!  There it lay full in sight before me -- the unmarred desert
that wakes strange feelings in us; the ancient habitation of giants, whose
foot-prints seen on the sea-shore amazed Magellan and his men, and won for
it the name of Patagonia. There too, far away in the interior, was the place
called Trapalanda, and the spirit-guarded lake, on whose margin rose the
battlements of that mysterious city, which many have sought and none have
found.

It was not, however, the fascination of old legends {p 5} that drew me, nor
the desire of the desert, for not until I had seen it, and had tasted its
flavour, then, and on many subsequent occasions, did I know how much its
solitude and desolation would be to me, what strange knowledge it would
teach, and how enduring its effect would be on my spirit.  Not these things,
but the passion of the ornithologist took me.  Many of the winged wanderers
with which I had been familiar from childhood in La Plata were visitors,
occasional or regular, from this grey wilderness of thorns.  In some cases
they were passengers, seen only when they stopped to rest their wings, or
heard far off "wailing their way from cloud to cloud," impelled by that
mysterious thought-baffling faculty, so unlike all other phenomena in its
manifestations as to give it among natural things something of the
supernatural.  Some of these wanderers, more especially such as possess only
a partial or limited migration, I hoped to meet again in Patagonia, singing
their summer songs, and breeding in their summer haunts.  It was also my
hope to find some new species, some bird as beautiful, let us say, as the
wryneck or wheatear, and as old on the earth, but which had never been named
and never ever seen by any appreciative human eye.  I do not know how it is
with other ornithologists at the time when their enthusiasm is greatest; of
myself I can say that my dreams by night were often of some new bird,
vividly seen; and such dreams were always beautiful to me, and a grief to
wake from; yet the dream-bird often as not appeared {p 6} in a modest grey
colouring, or plain brown, or some other equally sober tint.

From the summit of the sandy ridge we saw before us an undulating plain,
bounded only by the horizon, carpeted with short grass, seared by the summer
suns, and sparsely dotted over with a few sombre-leafed bushes.  It was a
desert that had been a desert always, and for that very reason sweet beyond
all scenes to look upon, its ancient quiet broken only by the occasional
call or twitter of some small bird, while the morning air I inhaled was made
delicious with a faint familiar perfume.  Casting my eyes down I perceived,
growing in the sand at my feet, an evening primrose plant, with at least a
score of open blossoms on its low wide-spreading branches; and this, my
favourite flower, both in gardens and growing wild, was the sweet perfumer
of all the wilderness!  Its subtle fragrance, first and last, has been much
to me, and has followed me from the New World to the Old, to serve sometimes
as a kind of second more faithful memory, and to set my brains working on a
pretty problem, to which I shall devote a chapter at the end of this book.

Our survey concluded, we set out in the direction of the Rio Negro. Before
quitting the steamer the captain had spoken a few words to us. Looking at us
as though he saw us not, he said that the ship had gone ashore somewhere
north of the Rio Negro, about thirty miles he thought, and that we should
doubtless find some herdsmen's huts on our way thither.  No need then to
burden ourselves with {p 7} food and drink!  At first we kept close to the
dunes that bordered the seashore, wading through a luxuriant growth of wild
liquorice -- a pretty plant about eighteen inches high, with deep green
feathery foliage crowned with spikes of pale blue flowers.  Some of the
roots which we pulled up from the loose sandy soil were over nine feet in
length. All the apothecaries in the world might have laid in a few years'
supply of the drug from the plants we saw on that morning.

To my mind there is nothing in life so delightful as that feeling of relief,
of escape, and absolute freedom which one experiences in a vast solitude,
where man has perhaps never been, and has, at any rate, left no trace of his
existence.  It was strong and exhilarating in me on that morning; and I was
therefore by no means elated when we descried, some distance ahead, the low
walls of half a dozen mud cabins.  My fellow-travellers were, however,
delighted at the discovery, and we hastened on, thinking that we were nearer
to the settlement than we had supposed.  But we found the huts uninhabited,
the doors broken down, the wells choked up and overgrown with wild liquorice
plants.

We learnt subsequently that a few venturesome herdsmen had made their home
in this remote spot with their families, and that about a year before our
visit the Indians had swept down on them and destroyed the young settlement.
 Very soon we turned our backs on the ruined hovels, my companions loudly
expressing their disappointment, while {p 8} I felt secretly glad that we
were yet to drink a little more deeply of the cup of wild nature.

After walking on some distance we found a narrow path leading away southward
from the ruined village, and, believing that it led direct to the Carmen,
the old settlement on the Rio Negro, which is over twenty miles from the
sea, we at once resolved to follow it.  This path led us wide of the ocean.
 Before noon we lost sight of the low sand-hills on our right hand, and as
we penetrated further into the interior the dark-leafed bushes I have
mentioned were more abundant. The dense, stiff, dark-coloured foliage of
these bushes give them a strange appearance on the pale sun-dried plains, as
of black rocks of numberless fantastic forms scattered over the
greyish-yellow ground. No large fowls were seen; small birds were, however,
very abundant, gladdening the parched wilderness with their minstrelsy.
Most noteworthy among the true songsters were the Patagonian mocking-bird
and four or five finches, two of them new to me.  Here I first made the
acquaintance of a singular and very pretty bird -- the red-breasted
plant-cutter, a finch too, but only in appearance.  It is a sedentary bird
and sits conspicuously on the topmost twig, displaying its ruddy under
plumage; occasionally emitting, by way of song, notes that resemble the
faint bleatings of a kid, and, when disturbed, passing from bush to bush by
a series of jerks, the wings producing a loud humming sound.  Most numerous,
and surpassing all others in interest, were the omnipresent dendrocolaptine
{p 9} birds, or wood-hewers, or tree-creepers as they are sometimes called
-- feeble flyers, in uniform sober brown plumage; restless in their habits
and loquacious, with shrill and piercing, or clear resonant voices.  One
terrestrial species, with a sandy-brown plumage, 'Upucerthia dumetoria',
raced along before us on the ground, in appearance a stout miniature ibis
with very short legs and exaggerated beak.  Every bush had its little colony
of brown gleaners, small birds of the genus 'Synallaxis', moving restlessly
about among the leaves, occasionally suspending themselves from the twigs
head downwards, after the manner of tits.  From the distance at intervals
came the piercing cries of the cachalote ('Homorus gutturalis'), a much
larger bird, sounding like bursts of hysterical laughter.  All these
dendrocolaptine birds have an inordinate passion for building, and their
nests are very much larger than small birds usually make.  Where they are
abundant the trees and bushes are sometimes laden with their enormous
fabrics, so that the thought is forced on one that these busy little
architects do assuredly occupy themselves with a vain unprofitable labour.
It is not only the case that many a small bird builds a nest as big as a
buzzard's, only to contain half a dozen eggs the size of peas, which might
very comfortably be hatched in a pill-box; but frequently, when the nest has
been finished, the builder sets about demolishing it to get the materials
for constructing a second nest.  One very common species, 'Anumbius
acuticaudatus', variously called in the {p 10} vernacular the thorn-bird,
the woodman, and the firewood-gatherer, sometimes makes three nests in the
course of a year, each composed of a good armful of sticks.  The woodman's
nest is, however, an insignificant structure compared with that of the
obstreperous cachalote mentioned a moment ago.  This bird, which is about as
large as a missel thrush, selects a low thorny bush with stout
wide-spreading branches, and in the centre of it builds a domed nest of
sticks, perfectly spherical and four or five feet deep.  The opening is at
the side near the top, and leading to it there is a narrow arched gallery
resting on a horizontal branch, and about fourteen inches long.  So
compactly made is this enormous nest that I have found it hard to break one
up.  I have also stood upright on the dome and stamped on it with my boots
without injuring it at all. During my stay in Patagonia I found about a
dozen of these palatial nests; and my opinion is that like our own houses,
or, rather, our public buildings, and some ant-hills, and the vizcacha's
village burrows, and the beaver's dam, it is made to last for ever.

The only mammal we saw was a small armadillo, 'Dasypus minutus'; it was
quite common, and early in the day, when we were still fresh and full of
spirits, we amused ourselves by chasing them.  We captured several, and one
of my companions, an Italian, killed two and slung them over his shoulder,
remarking that we could cook and eat them if we grew hungry before reaching
our destination.  We were not much troubled with hunger, but towards {p 11}
noon we began to suffer somewhat from thirst.  At midday we saw before us a
low level plain, covered with long coarse grass of a dull yellowish-green
colour.  Here we hoped to find water, and before long we descried the white
gleam of a lagoon, as we imagined, but on a nearer inspection the whiteness
or appearance of water turned out to be only a salt efflorescence on a
barren patch of ground.  On this low plain it was excessively sultry; not a
bush could be found to shelter us from the sun:  all was a monotonous desert
of coarse yellowish grass, out of which rose, as we advanced, multitudes of
mosquitoes, trumpeting a shrill derisive welcome.  The glory of the morning
that had so enchanted us at the outset had died out of nature, and the scene
was almost hateful to look on.  We were getting tired, too, but the heat and
our thirst, and the intolerable 'fi fo fum' of the ravenous mosquitoes would
not suffer us to rest.

In this desolate spot I discovered one object of interest in a singular
little bird, of slender form and pale yellowish-brown colour.  Perched on a
stem above the grass it gave utterance at regular intervals to a clear,
long, plaintive whistle, audible nearly a quarter of a mile away; and this
one unmodulated note was its only song or call.  When any attempt to
approach it was made it would drop down into the grass, and conceal itself
with a shyness very unusual in a desert place where small birds have never
been persecuted by man.  It might have been a wren, or tree-creeper, or
reed-finch, or pipit; I {p 12} could not tell, so jealously did it hide all
its pretty secrets from me.

The sight of a group of sand-hills, some two or three miles to our right,
tempted us to turn aside from the narrow path we had followed for upwards of
six hours:  from the summit of these hills we hoped to be able to discover
the end of our journey.  On approaching the group we found that it formed
part of a range stretching south and north as far as the eye could see.
Concluding that we were now close to the sea once more, we agreed that our
best plan would be, after taking a refreshing bath, to follow the beach on
to the mouth of the Rio Negro, where there was a pilot's house.  An hour's
walk brought us to the hill.  Climbing to the top, what was our dismay at
beholding not the open blue Atlantic we had so confidently expected to see,
but an ocean of barren yellow sand-hills, extending away before us to where
earth and heaven mingled in azure mist!  I, however, had no right to repine
now, as I had set out that morning desirous only of drinking from that wild
cup, which is both bitter and sweet to the taste.  But I was certainly the
greatest sufferer that day, as I had insisted on taking my large cloth
poncho, and it proved a great burden to carry; then my feet had become so
swollen and painful, through wearing heavy riding boots, that I was at last
compelled to pull off these impediments, and to travel barefooted on the hot
sand and gravel.

Turning our backs on the hills, we started, wearily enough, to seek the
trail we had abandoned, directing {p 13} our course so as to strike it three
or four miles in advance of the point where we had turned aside.  Escaping
from the long grass we again found gravelly, undulating plains, with
scattered dark-leafed bushes, and troops of little singing and trilling
birds.  Armadillos were also seen, but now they scuttled across our path
with impunity, for we had no inclination to chase them. It was near sunset
when we struck the path again; but although we had now been over twelve
hours walking in the heat, without tasting food or water, we still struggled
on.  Only when it grew dark, and a sudden cold wind sprang up from the sea,
making us feel stiff and sore, did we finally come to a halt.  Wood was
abundant, and we made a large fire, and the Italian roasted the two
armadillos he had patiently been carrying all day.  They smelt very tempting
when done; but I feared that the fat luscious meat would only increase the
torturing thirst I suffered, and so while the others picked the bones I
solaced myself with a pipe, sitting in pensive silence by the fire.  Supper
done, we stretched ourselves out by the fire, with nothing but my large
poncho over us, and despite the hardness of our bed and the cold wind
blowing over us, we succeeded in getting some refreshing sleep.

At three o'clock in the morning we were up and on our way again, drowsy and
footsore, but fortunately feeling less thirsty than on the previous day.
When we had been walking half an hour there was a welcome indication of the
approach of day -- not in the sky, where the stars were still sparkling with
{p 14} midnight brilliancy, but far in advance of us a little bird broke out
into a song marvellously sweet and clear.  The song was repeated at short
intervals, and by-and-by it was taken up by other voices, until from every
bush came such soft delicious strains that I was glad of all I had gone
through in my long walk, since it had enabled me to hear this exquisite
melody of the desert.  This early morning singer is a charming grey and
white finch, the 'Diuca minor', very common in Patagonia, and the finest
voiced of all the fringilline birds found there; and that is saying a great
deal.  The 'Diucas' were sure prophets:  before long the first pale streaks
of light appeared in the east, but when the light grew we looked in vain for
the long-wished river.  The sun rose on the same great undulating plain,
with its scattered sombre bushes and carpet of sere grass -- that ragged
carpet showing beneath it the barren sand and gravelly soil from which it
draws its scanty subsistence.

For upwards of six hours we trudged doggedly on over this desert plain,
suffering much from thirst and fatigue, but not daring to give ourselves
rest.  At length the aspect of the country began to change: we were
approaching the river settlement.  The scanty grass grew scantier, and the
scrubby bushes looked as if they had been browsed on; our narrow path was
also crossed at all angles by cattle tracts, and grew fainter as we
proceeded, and finally disappeared altogether. A herd of cattle, slowly
winding their way in long trains towards the open country, was then seen.
Here, too, a pretty little tree called {p 15} chanar ('Gurliaca
decorticans') began to get common, growing singly or in small groups.  It
was about ten to sixteen feet high, very graceful, with smooth polished
green bole, and pale grey-green mimosa foliage.  It bears a golden fruit as
big as a cherry, with a peculiar delightful flavour, but it was not yet the
season for ripe fruits, and its branches were laden only with the great
nests of the industrious woodman.  Though it was now the end of December and
past the egg season, in my craving for a drop of moisture I began to pull
down and demolish the nests -- no light task, considering how large and
compactly made they were.  I was rewarded for my pains by finding three
little pearly-white eggs, and, feeling grateful for small mercies, I quickly
broke them on my parched tongue.

Half an hour later, about eleven o'clock, as we slowly dragged on, a mounted
man appeared driving a small troop of horses towards the river.  We hailed
him, and he rode up to us, and informed us that we were only about a mile
from the river, and after hearing our story he proceeded to catch horses for
us to ride.  Springing on to their bare backs we followed him at a swinging
gallop over that last happy mile of our long journey.

We came very suddenly to the end, for on emerging from the thickets of dwarf
thorn trees through which we had ridden in single file the magnificent Rio
Negro lay before us.  Never river seemed fairer to look upon:  broader than
the Thames at Westminster, and extending away on either hand until it melted
{p 16} and was lost in the blue horizon, its low shores clothed in all the
glory of groves and fruit orchards and vineyards and fields of ripening
maize.  Far out in the middle of the swift blue current floated flocks of
black-necked swans, their white plumage shining like foam in the sunlight;
while just beneath us, scarcely a stone's throw off, stood the thatched
farmhouse of our conductor, the smoke curling up peacefully from the kitchen
chimney.  A grove of large old cherry trees, in which the house was
embowered, added to the charm of the picture; and as we rode down to the
gate we noticed the fully ripe cherries glowing like live coals amid the
deep green foliage.



{p 17} CHAPTER II


HOW I BECAME AN IDLER

If things had gone well with me, if I had spent my twelve months on the Rio
Negro, as I had meant to do, watching and listening to the birds of that
district, these desultory chapters, which might be described as a record of
what I did not do, would never have been written.  For I should have been
wholly occupied with my special task, moving in a groove too full of
delights to allow of its being left, even for an occasional run and taste of
liberty; and seeing one class of objects too well would have made all others
look distant, obscure, and of little interest.  But it was not to be as I
had planned it.  An accident, to be described by-and-by, disabled me for a
period, and the winged people could no longer be followed with secret steps
to their haunts, and their actions watched through a leafy screen.  Lying
helpless on my back through the long sultry mid-summer days, with the
white-washed walls of my room for landscape and horizon, and a score or two
of buzzing house-flies, perpetually engaged in their intricate airy dance,
for only company, I was forced to think on a great variety of subjects, and
to occupy my mind with other problems than that of migration.  These other
problems, too, were in many ways like {p 18} the flies that shared my
apartment, and yet always remained strangers to me, as I to them, since
between their minds and mine a great gulf was fixed.  Small unpainful
riddles of the earth; flitting, sylph-like things, that began life as
abstractions, and developed, like imago from maggot, into entities:  I
always flitted among them, as they performed their mazy dance, whirling in
circles, falling and rising, poised motionless, then suddenly cannoning
against me for an instant, mocking my power to grasp them, and darting off
again at a tangent.  Baffled I would drop out of the game, like a tired fly
that goes back to his perch, but like the resting, restive fly I would soon
turn towards them again; perhaps to see them all wheeling in a closer order,
describing new fantastic figures, with swifter motions, their forms turned
to thin black lines, crossing and recrossing in every direction, as if they
had all combined to write a series of strange characters in the air, all
forming a strange sentence -- the secret of secrets!  Happily for the
progress of knowledge only a very few of these fascinating elusive insects
of the brain can appear before us at the same time:  as a rule we fix our
attention on a single individual, like a falcon amid a flight of pigeons or
a countless army of small field finches; of a dragon-fly in the thick of a
cloud of mosquitoes, or infinitesimal sand-flies.  Hawk and dragon-fly would
starve if they tried to capture, or even regarded, more than one at a time.

I caught nothing, and found out nothing; nevertheless, these days of
enforced idleness were not {p 19} unhappy.  And after leaving my room,
hobbling round with the aid of a stout stick, and sitting in houses, I
consorted with men and women, and listened day by day to the story of their
small un-avian affairs, until it began to interest me.  But not too keenly.
 I could always quit them without regret to lie on the green sward, to gaze
up into the trees or the blue sky, and speculate on all imaginable things.
The result was that when no longer any excuse for inaction existed, use had
bred a habit in me -- the habit of indolence, which was quite common among
the people of Patagonia, and appeared to suit the genial climate; and this
habit and temper of mind I retained, with occasional slight relapses, during
the whole period of my stay.

Our waking life is sometimes like a dream, which proceeds logically enough
until the stimulus of some new sensation, from without or within, throws it
into temporary confusion, or suspends its action; after which it goes on
again, but with fresh characters, passions, and motives, and a changed
argument.

After feasting on cherries, and resting at the estancia, or farm, where we
first touched the shore, we went on to the small town of El Carmen, which
has existed since the last century, and is built on the side of a hill, or
bluff, facing the river.  On the opposite shore, where there is no cliff nor
high bank, and the low level green valley extends back four or five miles to
the grey barren uplands, there is another small town called La Merced.  In
these two settlements {p 20} I spent about a fortnight, and then, in company
with a young Englishman, who had been one or two years in the colony, I
started for an eighty miles' ride up the river.  Half-way to our destination
we put up at a small log hut, which my companion had himself built a year
before; but finding, too late, that the ground would produce nothing, he had
lately abandoned it, leaving his tools and other belongings locked up in the
place.

A curious home and repository was this same little rude cabin.  The interior
was just roomy enough to enable a man of my height (six feet) to stand
upright and swing a cat in without knocking out its brains against the
upright rough-barked willow-posts that made the walls.  Yet within this
limited space was gathered a store of weapons, tackle, and tools, sufficient
to have enabled a small colony of men to fight the wilderness and found a
city of the future.  My friend had an ingenious mind and an amateur's
knowledge of a variety of handicrafts.  The way to make him happy was to
tell him that you had injured something made of iron or brass -- a gun-lock,
watch, or anything complicated.  His eyes would shine, he would rub his
hands and be all eagerness to get at the new patient to try his surgical
skill on him.  Now he had to give two or three days to all these wood and
metal friends of his, to give a fresh edge to his chisels, and play the
dentist to his saws; to spread them all out and count and stroke them
lovingly, as a breeder pats his beasties, and feed and anoint them with oil
to make them shine and {p 21} look glad.  This was preliminary to the
packing for transportation, which was also a rather slow process.

Leaving my friend at his delightful task I rambled about the neighbourhood
taking stock of the birds.  It was a dreary and desolate spot, with a few
old gaunt and half-dead red willows for only trees.  The reeds and rushes
standing in the black stagnant pools were yellow and dead; and dead also
were the tussocks of coarse tow-coloured grass, while the soil beneath was
white as ashes and cracked everywhere with the hot suns and long drought.
Only the river close by was always cool and green and beautiful.

At length, one hot afternoon, we were sitting on our rugs on the clay floor
of the hut, talking of our journey on the morrow, and of the better fare and
other delights we should find at the end of the day at the house of an
English settler we were going to visit.  While talking I took up his
revolver to examine it for the first time, and he had just begun to tell me
that it was a revolver with a peculiar character of its own, and with
idiosyncrasies, one of which was that the slightest touch, or even vibration
of the air, would cause it to go off when on the cock -- he was just telling
me this, when off it went with a terrible bang and sent a conical bullet
into my left knee, an inch or so beneath the knee-cap.  The pain was not
much, the sensation resembling that caused by a smart blow on the knee; but
on attempting to get up I fell back.  I could not stand.  Then the blood
began to flow in a thin but continuous stream from the round symmetrical
bore which seemed to go {p 22} straight into the bone of the joint, and
nothing that we could do would serve to stop it.  Here we were in a pretty
fix!  Thirty-six miles from the settlement, and with no conveyance that my
friend could think of except a cart at a house several miles up the river,
but on the wrong side!  He, however, in his anxiety to do something,
imagined, or hoped, that by some means the cart might be got over the river,
and so, after thoughtfully putting a can of water by my side, he left me
lying on my saddle-rugs, and, after fastening the door on the outside to
prevent the intrusion of unwelcome prowlers, he mounted his horse and rode
away.  He had promised that, with or without some wheeled thing, he would be
back not long after dark. But he did not return all night; he had found a
boat and boatman to transport him to the other side only to learn that his
plan was impracticable, and then returning with the disappointing tidings,
found no boat to recross, and so in the end was obliged to tie his horse to
a bush and lie down to wait for morning.

For me night came only too soon.  I had no candle, and the closed,
windowless cabin was intensely dark.  My wounded leg had become inflamed and
pained a great deal, but the bleeding continued until the handkerchiefs we
had bound round it were saturated.  I was fully dressed, and as the night
grew chilly I pulled my big cloth poncho, that had a soft fluffy lining,
over me for warmth.  I soon gave up expecting my friend, and knew that there
would be no relief until morning.  But I could neither doze nor think, {p
23} and could only listen.  From my experience during those black anxious
hours I can imagine how much the sense of hearing must be to the blind and
to animals that exist in dark caves.  At length, about midnight, I was
startled by a slight curious sound in the intense silence and darkness.  It
was in the cabin and close to me.  I thought at first it was like the sound
made by a rope drawn slowly over the clay floor.  I lighted a wax match, but
the sound had ceased, and I saw nothing.  After a while I heard it again,
but it now seemed to be out of doors and going round the hut, and I paid
little attention to it.  It soon ceased, and I heard it no more.  So silent
and dark was it thereafter that the hut I reposed in might have been a roomy
coffin in which I had been buried a hundred feet beneath the surface of the
earth.  Yet I was no longer alone, if I had only known it, but had now a
messmate and bedfellow who had subtly crept in to share the warmth of the
cloak and of my person -- one with a broad arrow-shaped head, set with round
lidless eyes like polished yellow pebbles, and a long smooth limbless body,
strangely segmented and vaguely written all over with mystic characters in
some dusky tint on an indeterminate greyish-tawny ground.

At length, about half-past three to four o'clock, a most welcome sound was
heard -- the familiar twittering of a pair of scissor-tail tyrant birds from
a neighbouring willow-tree; and after an interval, the dreamy, softly rising
and falling, throaty warblings of the white-rumped swallow.  A loved and {p
24} beautiful bird is this, that utters his early song circling round and
round in the dusky air, when the stars begin to pale; and his song, perhaps,
seems sweeter than all others, because it corresponds in time to that rise
in the temperature and swifter flow of the blood -- the inward resurrection
experienced on each morning of our individual life.  Next in order the
red-billed finches begin to sing -- a curious, gobbling, impetuous
performance, more like a cry than a song.  These are pretty reed birds,
olive-green, buff-breasted, with long tails and bright red beaks.  The
intervals between their spasmodic bursts of sound were filled up with the
fine frail melody of the small brown and grey crested song-sparrows.  Last
of all was heard the long, leisurely-uttered chanting cry of the brown
carrion-hawk, as he flew past, and I knew that the morning was beautiful in
the east.  Little by little the light began to appear through the crevices,
faint at first, like faintly-traced pallid lines on a black ground, then
brighter and broader until I, too, had a dim twilight in the cabin.

Not until the sun was an hour up did my friend return to me to find me
hopeful still, and with all my faculties about me, but unable to move
without assistance.  Putting his arms around me he helped me up, and just as
I had got erect on my sound leg, leaning heavily on him, out from beneath
the poncho lying at my feet glided a large serpent of a venomous kind, the
'Craspedocephalus alternatus', called in the vernacular the 'serpent with a
cross'.  Had my friend's arms not been occupied with sustaining me he, no {p
25} doubt, would have attacked it with the first weapon that offered, and in
all probability killed it, with the result that I should have suffered from
a kind of vicarious remorse ever after.  Fortunately it was not long in
drawing its coils out of sight and danger into a hole in the wall.  My
hospitality had been unconscious, nor, until that moment, had I known that
something had touched me, and that virtue had gone out from me; but I
rejoice to think that the secret deadly creature, after lying all night with
me, warming its chilly blood with my warmth, went back unbruised to its den.

Speaking of this serpent with a strange name, I recall the fact that Darwin
made its acquaintance during his Patagonian rambles about sixty years ago;
and in describing its fierce and hideous aspect, remarks, "I do not think I
ever saw anything more ugly, excepting, perhaps, some of the vampire bats."
 He speaks of the great breadth of the jaws at the base, the triangular
snout, and the linear pupil in the midst of the mottled coppery iris, and
suggests that its ugly and horrible appearance is due to the resemblance of
its face, in its shape, to the human countenance.

This idea of the ugliness or repulsiveness of an inferior animal, due to its
resemblance to man in face, is not, I believe, uncommon; and I suppose that
the reason that would be given for the feeling is that an animal of that
kind looks like a vile copy of ourselves, or like a parody maliciously
designed to mock us.  It is an erroneous idea, or, at all events, {p 26} is
only a half-truth, as we recognise at once when we look at animals that are
more or less human-like in countenance, and yet cause no repulsion.  Seals
may be mentioned -- the mermaids and mermen of the old mariners; also the
sloth with its round simple face, to which its human shape imparts a
somewhat comical and pathetic look.  Many monkeys seem ugly to us, but we
think the lemurs beautiful, and greatly admire the marmosets, those hairy
manikins with sprightly, bird-like eyes.  And yet it is true that there is
something human in the faces of this and perhaps of other pit-vipers, and of
some vampire bats, as Darwin remarks; and that the horror they excite in us
is due to this resemblance; what he failed to see was that it is the
expression rather than the shape that horrifies.  For in these creatures it
simulates such expressions as excite fear and abhorrence in our own species,
or pity so intense as to be painful -- ferocity, stealthy, watchful
malignity, a set look of anguish or despair, or some dreadful form of
insanity.  Someone has well and wisely said that there is no ugliness in us
except the expression of evil thoughts and passions; for these do most
assuredly write themselves on the countenance.  Looking at a serpent of this
kind, and I have looked at many a one, the fancy is born in me that I am
regarding what was once a fellow-being, perhaps one of those cruel desperate
wretches I have encountered on the outskirts of civilisation, who for his
crimes has been changed into the serpent form, and cursed with immortality.

{p 27} As a rule the deceptive resemblances and self-plagiarisms of nature,
when we light by chance on them, give us only pleasure, heightened by wonder
or a sense of mystery; but the case of this serpent forms an exception:  in
spite of the tenderness I cherish towards the entire ophidian race, the
sensation is not agreeable.

To return.  My friend made a fire to boil water, and after we had had some
breakfast, he galloped off once more in a new direction; he had at last
remembered that on our side of the river there lived a settler who owned a
bullock-cart, and to him he went.  About ten o'clock he returned, and was
shortly followed by the man with his lumbering cart drawn by a couple of
bullocks.  In this conveyance, suffering much from the heat and dust and
joltings on the rough hard road, I was carried back to the settlement.  Oxen
travel slowly, and we were on the road all day and all night, and only
reached our destination when the eastern sky had begun to grow bright, and
the swallows from a thousand roosting-places were rising in wide circles
into the still, dusky air, making it vocal with their warblings.

My miserable journey ended at the Mission House of the South American
Missionary Society, in the village on the south bank of the river, facing
the old town; and the change from the jolting cart to a comfortable bed was
an unspeakable relief, and soon induced refreshing sleep.  Later in the day,
on awakening, I found myself in the hands of a {p 28} gentleman who was a
skilful surgeon as well as a divine, one who had extracted more bullets and
mended more broken bones than most surgeons who do not practise on
battle-fields.  My bullet, however, refused to be extracted, or even found
in its hiding-place, and every morning for a fortnight I had a bad quarter
of an hour, when my host would present himself in my room with a quiet smile
on his lips and holding in his hands a bundle of probes -- oh, those probes!
-- of all forms, sizes, and materials -- wood, ivory, steel, and
gutta-percha.  These painful moments over, with no result except the
re-opening of a wound that wished to heal, there would be nothing more for
me to do but to lie watching the flies, as I have said, and dreaming.

To conclude this vari-coloured chapter, I may here remark that some of the
happiest moments of my life have been occasioned by those very circumstances
which one would imagine would have made me most unhappy -- by grave
accidents, and sickness, which have disabled and cast me a burden upon
strangers; and by adversity --

Which, like a toad, ugly and venomous, Yet wears a precious jewel in its
head.

Familiar words, but here newly interpreted; for this jewel which I have
found -- man's love for man, and the law of helpful kindness written in the
heart -- is worthy to be prized above all our possessions, and is most
beautiful, outshining the lapidary's gems, and of so sovereign a virtue that
cynicism itself grows mute and ashamed in its light. {p 29}



CHAPTER III


VALLEY OF THE BLACK RIVER

Still a lingerer in the hospitable shade of the Mission House, my chief
pleasure during the early days of February was in observing the autumnal
muster of the purple swallows -- 'Progne furcata' --  a species which was
abundant at this point, breeding in the cliffs overhanging the river; also,
like so many other swallows in all places, under the eaves of houses.  It is
a large, beautiful bird, its whole upper plumage of a rich, glossy, deep
purple hue, its under surface black.  No such large swallows as this, with
other members of its genus, are known in the Old World; and a visitor from
Europe would probably, on first seeing one of these birds, mistake it for a
swift; but it has not got the narrow, scythe-shaped wings of the swift, nor
does it rush through the air in the swift's mad way; on the contrary, its
flight is much calmer, with fewer quick doublings, than that of other
swallows.  It also differs from most members of its family in possessing a
set song of several modulated notes, which are occasionally warbled in a
leisurely manner as the bird soars high in the air:  as a melodist it should
rank high among the hirundines.

The trees of the Mission House proved very {p 30} attractive to these birds;
the tall Lombardy poplars were specially favoured, which seems strange, for
in a high wind (and it was very windy just then) the slim unresting tree
forms as bad a perching-place as a bird could well settle on.  Nevertheless,
to the poplars they would come when the wind was most violent; first
hovering or wheeling about in an immense flock, then, as occasion offered,
dropping down, a few at a time, to cling, like roosting locusts, to the thin
vertical branches, clustering thicker and thicker until the high trees
looked black with them; then a mightier gust would smite and sway the tall
tops down, and the swallows, blown from their insecure perch, would rise in
a purple cloud to scatter chattering all over the windy heavens, only to
return and congregate, hovering and clinging as before.

Lying on the grass, close to the river bank, I would watch them by the hour,
noting their unrest and indecision, the strangeness and wild spirit that
made the wind and vexed poplars congenial to them; for something new and
strange had come to trouble them -- the subtle breath

That in a powerful language, felt, not heard, Instructs the fowls of heaven.

But as to the character of that breath I vainly questioned Nature -- she
being the only woman who can keep a secret, even from a lover.

Rain came at last, and fell continuously during an entire night.  Next
morning (February 14th) when I went out and looked up at the sky, covered
with {p 31} grey hurrying clouds, I saw a flock of forty or fifty large
swallows speeding north; and after these I saw no more; for on that first
wet morning, before I had risen, the purple cloud had forsaken the valley.

I missed them greatly, and wished that they had delayed their going, since
it was easier and more hopeful to ponder on the mystery of their instinct
when they were with me.  That break in the tenor of their lives; the
enforced change of habits; the conflict between two opposite emotions -- the
ties of place that held them back, seen and guessed in their actions, and
the voice that called them away, speaking ever more imperatively, which so
wrought in them that at moments they were beside themselves -- noting all
this, hearing and seeing it at all hours of the day, I seemed to be nearer
to the discovery of some hidden truth than when they were no longer in
sight.  But now they were gone, and with their departure had vanished my
last excuse for resting longer inactive -- at that spot, at all events.

I started afresh on my up-river journey, and paid a long visit to an English
estancia about sixty miles from the town.  I spent much of my time there in
solitary rambles, tasting once more of the "sweet and bitter cup of wild
Nature."  Her colour was grey, her mood pensive as winter deepened, and
there was nothing in the cup to inflame the fancy.  But it was tonic.  My
rides were often to the hills, or terraced uplands, outside of the level
valley; but my description of that grey desolate solitude and its effects on
me must be reserved for a later chapter, {p 32} when I shall have dropped
once for all this thread of narrative, slight and loosely held as it is.  In
the present chapter and the succeeding one I shall treat of the aspects of
nature in the valley itself.  For I did not remain too long at any one
point, but during the autumn, winter, and spring months I resided at various
points, and visited the mouth of the river and adjacent plains on both
sides, then went up river again to a distance of something over a hundred
miles.

The valley, in this space, does not vary much in appearance; it may be
described as the level bed of an ancient river, five or six miles wide, cut
out in the plateau, with the existing river -- a swift, deep stream, two
hundred to three hundred yards broad -- serpentining along its middle. But
it does not keep to the middle; in its windings it approaches now the north,
now the south, plateau, and at some points touches the extreme limits of the
valley, and even cuts into the bank-like front of the high land, which forms
a sheer cliff above the current, in some spots a hundred feet high.

The river was certainly miscalled Cusar-leofu, or Black River, by the
aborigines, unless the epithet referred only to its swiftness and dangerous
character; for it is not black at all in appearance, like its Amazonian
namesake.  The water, which flows from the Andes across a continent of stone
and gravel, is wonderfully pure, in colour a clear sea-green.  So green does
it look to the eye in some lights that when dipped up in a glass vessel one
marvels to see it changed, no longer green, but crystal as dew- or {p 33}
rain-drop.  Doubtless man is naturally scientific, and finds out why things
are not what they seem, and gets to the bottom of all mysteries; but his
older, deeper, primitive, still persistent nature is non-scientific and
mythical, and, in spite of reason, he wonders at the change; -- it is a
miracle, a manifestation of the intelligent life and power that is in all
things.

The river has its turbid days, although few and far between.  One morning,
on going down to the water, I was astonished to find it no longer the lovely
hue of the previous evening, but dull red -- red with the red earth that
some swollen tributary hundreds of miles to the west had poured into its
current.  This change lasts only a day or two, after which the river runs
green and pure again.

The valley at the end of a long hot windy summer had an excessively dry and
barren appearance. The country, I was told, had suffered from scarcity of
rain for three years:  at some points even the roots of the dry dead grass
had been blown away, and when the wind was strong a cloud of yellow dust
hung all day over the valley.  In such places sheep were dying of
starvation: cattle and horses fared better, as they went out into the
uplands to browse on the bushes.  The valley soil is thin, being principally
sand and gravel, with a slight admixture of vegetable mould; and its
original vegetation was made up of coarse perennial grasses, herbaceous
shrubs and rushes:  the domestic cattle introduced by the white settlers
destroyed these slow-growing grasses and plants, {p 34} and, as has happened
in most temperate regions of the globe colonised by Europeans, the sweet,
quick-growing, short-lived grasses and clovers of the Old World sprang up
and occupied the soil. Here, however, owing to its poverty, the excessive
dryness of the climate, and the violence of the winds that prevail in
summer, the new imported vegetation has proved but a sorry substitute for
the old and vanished.  It does not grow large enough to retain the scanty
moisture, it is too short-lived, and the frail quickly-perishing rootlets do
not bind the earth together, like the tough fibrous blanket formed by the
old grasses.  The heat burns it to dust and ashes, the wind blows it away,
blade and root, and the surface soil with it, in many places disclosing the
yellow underlying sand with all that was buried in it of old.  For the
result of this stripping of the surface has been that the sites of
numberless villages of the former inhabitants of the valley have been
brought to light.  I have visited a dozen such village sites in the course
of one hour's walk, so numerous were they.  Where the village had been a
populous one, or inhabited for a long period, the ground was a perfect bed
of chipped stones, and among these fragments were found arrow-heads, flint
knives and scrapers, mortars and pestles, large round stones with a groove
in the middle, pieces of hard polished stone used as anvils, perforated
shells, fragments of pottery, and bones of animals.  My host remarked one
day that the valley that year had produced nothing but a plentiful crop of
arrow-heads. The anthropologist {p 35} could not have wished for a more
favourable year or for a better crop.  I collected a large number of these
objects; and some three or four hundred arrow-heads which I picked up are at
present, I believe, in the famous Pitt-Rivers collection. But I was
over-careful.  The finest of my treasures, the most curious and beautiful
objects I could select, packed apart for greater safety, were unfortunately
lost in transit -- a severe blow, which hurt me more than the wound I had
received on the knee.

At some of the villages I examined, within a few yards of the ground where
the huts had stood, I found deposits of bones of animals that had been used
as food.  These were of the rhea, huanaco, deer, peccary, 'Dolichotis' or
Patagonian hare, armadillo, coypú, vizcacha, with others of smaller mammals
and birds.  Most numerous among them were the bones of the small cavy
('Cavia australis'), a form of the guinea-pig; and of the tuco-tuco
('Ctenomys magellanica'), a small rodent with the habits of the mole.

A most interesting fact was that the arrow-heads I picked up in different
villages were of two widely different kinds -- the large and rudely
fashioned, resembling the Palaeolithic arrow-heads of Europe, and the
highly-finished, or Neolithic, arrow-heads of various forms and sizes, but
in most specimens an inch and a half to two inches long.  Here there were
the remains of the two great periods of the Stone Age, the last of which
continued down till the discovery and colonisation of the country by {p 36}
Europeans.  The weapons and other objects of the latter period were the most
abundant, and occurred in the valley:  the ruder more ancient weapons were
found on the hill-sides, in places where the river cuts into the plateau.
The site where I picked up the largest number had been buried to a depth of
seven or eight feet; only where the water after heavy rains had washed great
masses of sand and gravel away, the arrow-heads, with other weapons and
implements, had been exposed.  These deeply-buried settlements were
doubtless very ancient.

Coming back to the more modern work, I was delighted to find traces of a
something like division of labour in different villages; of the
individuality of the worker, and a distinct artistic or aesthetic taste.  I
was led to this conclusion by the discovery of a village site where no large
round stones, knives and scrapers were found, and no large arrow-heads of
the usual type.  The only arrow-heads at this spot were about half an inch
long, and were probably used only to shoot small birds and mammals.  Not
only were they minute but most exquisitely finished, with a fine serration,
and, without an exception, made of some beautiful stone -- crystal, agate,
and green, yellow, and horn-coloured flint.  It was impossible to take
half-a-dozen of these gems of colour and workmanship in the hand and not be
impressed at once with the idea that beauty had been as much an aim to the
worker as utility. Along with these fine arrow-heads I found nothing except
one small well-pointed dagger of red stone, its handle a cross, about {p 37}
four inches long, and as slender and almost as well rounded as an ordinary
lead pencil.

When on this quest I sometimes attempted to picture to myself something of
the outer and inner life of the long-vanished inhabitants.  The red men of
to-day may be of the same race and blood, the lineal descendants of the
workers in stone in Patagonia; but they are without doubt so changed, and
have lost so much, that their progenitors would not know them, nor
acknowledge them as relations.  Here, as in North America, contact with a
superior race has debased them and ensured their destruction.  Some of their
wild blood will continue to flow in the veins of those who have taken their
place; but as a race they will be blotted out from earth, as utterly extinct
in a few decades as the mound-makers of the Mississippi valley, and the
races that built the forest-grown cities of Yucutan and Central America.
The men of the past in the Patagonian valley were alone with nature, makers
of their own weapons and self-sustaining, untouched by any outside
influence, and with no knowledge of any world beyond their valley and the
adjacent uninhabited uplands. And yet, judging even from that dim partial
glimpse I had had of their vanished life, in the weapons and fragments I had
picked up, it seemed evident that the mind was not wholly dormant in them,
and that they were slowly progressing to a higher condition.

Beyond that fact I could not go:  all efforts to know more, or to imagine
more, ended in failure, as all such efforts must end.  On another occasion,
{p 38} as I propose to show in a later chapter, the wished vision of the
past came unsought and unexpectedly to me, and for a while I saw nature as
the savage sees it, and as he saw it in that stone age I pondered over, only
without the supernaturalism that has so large a place in his mind.  By
taking thought I am convinced that we can make no progress in this
direction, simply because we cannot voluntarily escape from our own
personality, our environment, our outlook on nature.

Not only were my efforts idle, but merely to think on the subject sometimes
had the effect of bringing a shadow, a something of melancholy, over my
mind, the temper which is fatal to investigation, causing "all things to
droop and languish."  In such a mood I would make my way to one of the
half-a-dozen ancient burial-places existing in the neighbourhood of the
house I was staying at.  As a preference I would go to the largest and most
populous, where half an acre of earth was strewn thick with crumbling
skeletons. Here by searching closely a few arrow-heads and ornaments, that
had been interred with the dead, could also be found.  And here I would sit
and walk about on the hot barren yellow sand -- the faithless sand to which
the bitter secret had so long ago been vainly entrusted; careful in walking
not to touch an exposed skull with my foot, although the hoof of the next
wild thing that passed would shatter it to pieces like a vessel of fragile
glass.  The polished intensely white surfaces of such skulls as had been
longest exposed to the sun reflected the {p 39} noonday light so powerfully
that it almost pained the eyes to look at them.  In places where they were
thickly crowded together, I would stop to take them up and examine them, one
by one, only to put them carefully down again; and sometimes, holding one in
my hand, I would pour out the yellow sand that filled its cavity; and
watching the shining stream as it fell, only the vainest of vain thoughts
and conjectures were mine.



{p 40} CHAPTER IV


ASPECTS OF THE VALLEY

To go back for a brief space to those Golgothas that I frequently visited in
the valley, not as collector nor archaeologist, and in no scientific spirit,
but only, as it seemed, to indulge in mournful thoughts.  If by looking into
the empty cavity of one of those broken unburied skulls I had been able to
see, as in a magic glass, an image of the world as it once existed in the
living brain, what should I have seen?  Such a question would not and could
not, I imagine, be suggested by the sight of a bleached broken human skull
in any other region; but in Patagonia it does not seem grotesque, nor merely
idle, nor quite fanciful, like Buffon's notion of a geometric figure
impressed on the hive-bee's brain.  On the contrary, it strikes one there as
natural; and the answer to it is easy, and only one answer is possible.

In the cavity, extending from side to side, there would have appeared a band
of colour; its margins grey, growing fainter and bluer outwardly, and
finally fading into nothing; between the grey edges the band would be green;
and along this green middle band, not always keeping to the centre, there
would appear a sinuous shiny line, like a serpent with {p 41} glittering
skin lying at rest on the grass.  For the river must have been to the
aboriginal inhabitants of the valley the one great central unforgettable
fact in nature and man's life.  If as nomads or colonists from some cis- or
trans-Andean country they had originally brought hither traditions, and some
supernatural system that took its form and colour from a different nature,
these had been modified, if not wholly dissolved and washed away in that
swift eternal green current, by the side of which they continued to dwell
from generation to generation, forgetting all ancient things.  The shining
stream was always in sight, and when, turning their backs on it, they
climbed out of the valley, they saw only grey desolation -- a desert where
life was impossible to man -- fading into the blue haze of the horizon; and
there was nothing beyond it.  On that grey strip, on the borders of the
unknown beyond, they could search for tortoises, and hunt a few wild
animals, and gather a few wild fruits, and hard woods and spines for
weapons; and then return to the river, as children go back to their mother.
 All things were reflected in its waters, the infinite blue sky, the clouds
and heavenly bodies; the trees and tall herbage on its banks, and their dark
faces; and just as they were mirrored in it, so its current was mirrored in
their minds.  The old man, grown blind with age, from constantly seeing its
image so bright and persistent, would be unconscious of his blindness.  It
was thus more to him than all other objects and forces in nature; the Inca
might worship sun and {p 42} lightning and rainbow; to the inhabitant of the
valley the river was more than these, the most powerful thing in nature, the
most beneficent, and his chief god.

I do not know, nor can anyone know, whether the former dwellers in the
valley left any descendants, any survivors of that age that left some traces
of a brightening intellect on its stone work.  Probably not; the few Indians
now inhabiting the valley are most probably modern colonists of another
family or nation; yet it did not surprise me to hear that some of these
half-tame, half-christianised savages had, not long before my visit,
sacrificed a white bull to the river, slaying it on the bank and casting its
warm, bleeding body into the current.

Even the European colonists have not been unaffected psychologically by the
peculiar conditions they live in, and by the river, on which they are
dependent.  When first I became cognisant of this feeling, which was very
soon, I was disposed to laugh a little at the very large place THE RIVER
occupied in all men's minds; but after a few months of life on its banks it
was hardly less to me than to others, and I experienced a kind of shame when
I recalled my former want of reverence, as if I had made a jest of something
sacred.  Nor to this day can I think of the Patagonian river merely as one
of the rivers I know.  Other streams, by comparison, seem vulgar, with no
higher purpose than to water man and beast, and to serve, like canals, as a
means of transport.

One day, to the house where I was staying near the town there came a native
lady on a visit, bringing {p 43} with her six bright blue-eyed children.  As
we, the elders, sat in the living-room, sipping mate and talking, one of the
youngsters, an intelligent-looking boy of nine, came in from play, and
getting him by me I amused him for a while with some yarns and with talk
about beasts and birds.  He asked me where I lived.  My home, I said, was in
the Buenos Ayrean pampas, far north of Patagonia.

"Is it near the river," he asked, "right on the bank, like this house?"

I explained that it was on a great, grassy, level plain, that there was no
river there, and that when I went out on horseback I did not have to ride up
and down a valley, but galloped away in any direction -- north, south, east,
or west.  He listened with a twinkle in his eyes, then with a merry laugh
ran out again to join the others at their game.  It was as if I had told him
that I lived up in a tree that grew to the clouds, or under the sea, or some
such impossible thing; it was nothing but a joke to him.  His mother,
sitting near, had been listening to us, and when the boy laughed and ran
out, I remarked to her that to a child born and living always in that
valley, shut in by the thorny, waterless uplands, it was, perhaps,
inconceivable that in other places people could exist out of a valley and
away from a river.  She looked at me with a puzzled expression in her eyes,
as if trying to see something mentally which her eyes had never seen --
trying, in fact, to create something out of nothing.  She agreed with me in
some hesitating words, and I felt that I had {p 44} put my foot in it; for
only then I recalled the fact that she also had been born in the valley --
the great-grand-daughter of one of the original founders of the colony --
and was probably as incapable as the child of imagining any other conditions
than those she had always been accustomed to.

It struck me that the children here have a very healthy, happy life,
especially those whose homes are in the narrow parts of the valley, who are
able to ramble every day into the thorny uplands in search of birds' eggs
and other pretty things, and the wild flavours and little adventures that
count for so much with the very young.  In birds' eggs, the greatest prizes
are those of the partridge-like tinamous, the beautifully mottled and
crested martineta ('Calodromas elegans'), that lays a dozen eggs as large as
those of a fowl, with deep-green polished shells; and the smaller Nothura
darwini, whose eggs vary in tint from wine-purple to a reddish-purple or
liver colour. In summer and autumn fruits and sweet gums are not scarce.
One grey-leafed herbaceous shrub is much sought after for its sap, that
oozes from the stem and hardens in small globes and lumps that look and
taste like white sugar.  There is a small disc-shaped cactus, growing close
to the surface, and well defended with sharp spines, which bears a
pinkish-yellow fruit with a pleasant taste.  There is also a large cactus,
four or five feet high, so dark-green as to appear almost black among the
pale-grey bushes. It bears a splendid crimson flower, and a crimson fruit
that is insipid and not considered {p 45} worth eating; but being of so
beautiful a colour, to see it is sufficient pleasure.  The plant is not very
common, and one does not see too many of the fruits even in a long day's
ramble:

Like stones of worth, they thinly placèd are.

The chanar bears a fruit like a cherry in size, and, like a cherry, with a
stone inside; it has a white pulp and a golden skin; the flavour is peculiar
and delicious, and seemed to be greatly appreciated by the birds, so that
the children get little.  Another wild fruit is that of the 'piquellin'
('Condalia spinosa'), the dark-leafed bush which was mentioned in the first
chapter. Its oval-shaped berries are less than currants in size, but are in
such profusion that the broad tops of the bushes become masses of deep
colour in autumn.  There are two varieties, one crimson, the other
purple-black, like sloes and blackberries. They have a strong but not
unpleasant flavour, and the children are so fond of them that, like the
babes in the wood, their little lips are all bestained and red with the
beautiful juice.

The magnetism of the river (to go back to that subject) is probably
intensified by the prevailing monotonous greys, greens, and browns of nature
on either side of it.  It has the powerful effect of brightness, which
fascinates us, as it does the moth, and the eye is drawn to it as to a path
of shining silver -- that is, of silver in some conditions of the
atmosphere, and of polished steel in others.  At ordinary times {p 46} there
is no  other brightness in nature to draw the sight away and divide the
attention.  Only twice in the year, for a brief season in spring and again
in autumn, there is anything like large masses of bright colour in the
vegetation to delight the eyes.  The commonest of the grey-foliaged plants
that grow on the high grounds along the borders of the valley is the chanar
('Gurliaca decorticans'), a tree in form, but scarcely more than a bush in
size.  In late October it bears a profusion of flowers in clusters, in
shape, size, and brilliant yellow colour resembling the flower of the broom.
 At this season the uplands along the valley have a strangely gay
appearance.  Again, there is yellow in the autumn -- the deeper yellow of
xanthophyll -- when the leaves of the red willows growing on the banks of
the river change their colour before falling.  This willow ('Salix
humboldtiana') is the only large wild tree in the country; but whether it
grew here prior to the advent of the Spanish or not, I do not know.  But its
existence is now doomed as a large tree of a century's majestic growth,
forming a suitable perch and look-out for the harpy and grey eagles, common
in the valley, and the still more common vultures and 'Polybori', and of the
high-roosting, noble black-faced ibis; a home and house, too, of the
Magellanic eagle-owl and the spotted wild cat ('Felis geoffroyi'); and where
even the puma could lie at ease on a horizontal branch thirty or forty feet
above the earth.  Being of soft wood, it can be cut down very easily; and
when felled and lashed in rafts on the river, it is floated down-stream to
supply {p 47} the inhabitants with a cheap wood for fuel, building, and
other purposes.

At the highest point I reached in my rambles along the valley, about a
hundred and twenty miles from the coast, there was a very extensive grove or
wood of this willow, many of the trees very large, and some dead from age.
I visited this spot with an English friend, who resided some twenty miles
lower down, and spent a day and a half wading about waist-deep through the
tall, coarse grasses and rushes under the gaunt, leafless trees, for the
season was midwinter. The weather was the worst I had experienced in the
country, being piercingly cold, with a violent wind and frequent storms of
rain and sleet.  The rough, wet boles of the trees rose up tall and straight
like black pillars from the rank herbage beneath, and on the higher branches
innumerable black vultures ('Cathartes atratus') were perched, waiting all
the dreary day long for fair weather to fly abroad in search of food.

On the ground this vulture does not appear to advantage, especially when
bobbing and jumping about, performing the "buzzard lope," when quarrelling
with his fellows over a carcase:  but when perched aloft, his small naked
rugous head and neck and horny curved beak seen well defined above the broad
black surface of the folded wing, he does not show badly.  As I had no wish
to make a bag of vultures and saw nothing else, I shot nothing.

A little past noon on the second day we saddled our horses and started on
our homeward ride; and {p 48} although the wind still blew a gale, lashing
the river into a long line of foam on the opposite shore, and bringing
storms of rain and sleet at intervals, this proved a very delightful ride,
one that shines in memory above all other rides I have taken.  We went at a
swift gallop along the north bank, and never had grey Patagonia looked more
soberly and sadly grey than on this afternoon.  The soil, except in places
where the winter grass had spread over it, had taken a darker brown colour
from the rain it had imbibed, and the bosky uplands a deeper grey than ever,
while the whole vast sky was stormy and dark. But after a time the westering
sun began to shine through the rifts behind us, while before us on the wild
flying clouds appeared a rainbow with hues so vivid that we shouted aloud
with joy at the sight of such loveliness.  For nearly an hour we rode with
this vision of glory always before us; grove after grove of leafless
black-barked willow-trees on our right hand, and grey thorny hill after hill
on our left, did we pass in our swift ride, while great flocks of upland
geese continually rose up before us, with shrill whistlings mingled with
solemn deep droning cries; and the arch of watery fire still lived, now
fading as the flying wrack grew thinner and thinner, then, just when it
seemed about to vanish, brightening once more to a new and more wonderful
splendour, its arch ever widening to greater proportions as the sun sunk
lower in the sky.

I do not suppose that the colours were really more vivid than in numberless
other rainbows I have {p 49} seen; it was, I think, the universal greyness
of earth and heaven in that grey winter season, in a region where colour is
so sparsely used by Nature, that made it seem so supremely beautiful, so
that the sight of it affected us like wine.

The eyes, says Bacon, are ever most pleased with a lively embroidery on a
sad and sombre ground. This was taught to us by the green and violet arch on
the slaty-grey vapour.  But Nature is too wise

To blunt the fine point of seldom pleasure.

The day of supernatural splendour and glory comes only after many days that
are only natural, and of a neutral colour.  It is watched and waited for,
and when it comes is like a day of some great festival and rejoicing -- the
day when peace was made, when our love was returned, when a child was born
to us.  Such sights are like certain sounds, that not only delight us with
their pure and beautiful quality, but wake in us feelings that we cannot
fathom nor analyse.  They are familiar, yet stranger than the strangest
things, with a beauty that is not of the earth, as if a loved friend, long
dead, had unexpectedly looked back to us from heaven, transfigured.  It
strikes me as strange that, so far as we know, the Incas were the only
worshippers of the rainbow.

One evening in the autumn of the year, near the town, I was witness of an
extraordinary and very magnificent sunset effect.  The sky was clear except
for a few masses of cloud low down in the west; and these, some time after
the sun had disappeared, {p 50} assumed more vivid and glowing colours,
while the pale yellow sky beyond became more luminous and flame-like.  All
at once, as I stood not far from the bank, looking westward across the
river, the water changed from green to an intense crimson hue, this
extending on both hands as far as I could see.  The tide was running out,
and in the middle of the river, where the surface was roughened into waves
by the current, it quivered and sparkled like crimson flame, while near the
opposite shore, where rows of tall Lombardy poplars threw their shadow on
the surface, it was violet-coloured.  This appearance lasted for five or six
minutes, then the crimson colour grew darker by degrees until it
disappeared.  I have frequently read and heard of such a phenomenon, and
many persons have assured me that they have witnessed it "with their own
eyes."  But what they have witnessed one does not know.  I have often seen
the surface of water, of the ocean, or a lake, or river, flushed with a rosy
colour at sunset; but to see, some time after sunset, the waters of a river
changed to blood and crimson fire, this appearance lasting until the
twilight drew on, and the earth and trees looked black by contrast, has been
my lot once only on this occasion; and I imagine that if any river on the
globe was known to take such an appearance frequently, it would become as
celebrated, and draw pilgrims as far to see it, as Chimborazo and the Falls
of Niagara.

Between the town and the sea, a distance of about twenty miles, the valley
is mostly on the south side {p 51} of the river; on the north side the
current comes very near, and in many places washes the upland. I visited the
sea by both ways, and rode for some distance along the coast on both sides
of the river. North of the river the beach was shingle and sand, backed by
low sand dunes extending away into infinitude; but on the south side,
outside the valley, a sheer stupendous precipice faced the ocean.  A slight
adventure I had with a condor, the only bird of that species I met with in
Patagonia, will give some idea of the height of this sheer wall of rock.  I
was riding with a friend along the cliff when the majestic bird appeared,
and swooping downwards hovered at a height of forty feet above our heads.
My companion raised his gun and fired, and we heard the shot rattle loudly
on the stiff quills of the broad motionless wings.  There is no doubt that
some of the shot entered its flesh, as it quickly swept down over the edge
of the cliff and disappeared from our sight.  We got off our horses, and
crawling to the edge of the dreadful cliff looked down, but could see
nothing of the bird.  Remounting we rode on for a little over a mile, until
coming to the end of the cliff we went down under it and galloped back over
the narrow strip of beach which appears at low tide. Arrived at the spot
where the bird had been lost we caught sight of it once more, perched at the
mouth of a small cavity in the face of the rocky wall near the summit, and
looking at that height no bigger than a buzzard.  He was far beyond the
reach of shot, and safe, and if not fatally wounded, may soar above that {p
52} desolate coast, and fight with vultures and grey eagles over the
carcases of stranded fishes and seals for half a century to come.

Close to the mouth of the river there is a low flat island, about half a
mile in length, covered in most part by a dense growth of coarse grass and
rushes.  It is inhabited by a herd of swine; and although these animals do
not increase, they have been able to maintain their existence for a long
period without diminishing in number, in spite of the occasional great tides
that flood the whole island, and of multitudes of hungry eagles and
caranchos always on the look-out for stray sucklings.  Many years ago, while
some gauchos were driving a troop of half-wild cows near the shore on the
neighbouring mainland, a heifer took to the water and succeeded in swimming
to the island, where she was lost to her owner.  About a year later this
animal was seen by a man who had gone to the island to cut rushes for
thatching purposes.  The cow and the pigs, to the number of about
twenty-five or twenty-six, were lying fast asleep in a small grassy hollow
where he found them, the cow stretched out at full length on the ground, and
the pigs grouped or rather heaped around her; for they were all apparently
ambitious to rest with their heads pillowed on her, so that she was almost
concealed under them.  Presently one of the drove, more wakeful than his
fellows, became aware of his presence and gave the alarm, whereupon they
started up like one animal and vanished into a rush-bed. The cow, thus
doomed to live "alone, yet not alone," {p 53} was subsequently seen on
several occasions by the rush-cutters, always with her fierce followers
grouped round her like a bodyguard.  This continued for some years, and the
fame of the cow that had become the leader and queen of the wild island pigs
was spread abroad in the valley; then a human being, who was not a
"sentimentalist," betook himself to her little kingdom with a musket loaded
with ball, and succeeded in finding and shooting her.

In spite of what we have been taught, it is sometimes borne in on us that
man is a little lower than the brutes.

After hearing this incident one does not at once sit down with a good
appetite to roast beef or swine's flesh.



{p 54} CHAPTER V


A DOG IN EXILE

At the English estate up the river, where I made so long a stay, there were
several dogs, some of them of the common dog of no breed found throughout
Argentina, a smooth-haired animal, varying greatly in colour, but oftenest
red or black; also differing much in size, but in a majority of cases about
as big as a Scotch collie.  There were also a few others, dogs of good
breeds, and these were specially interesting to me, because they were not
restrained nor directed in any way, nor any use made of them in their
special lines.  Left to their own devices, and to rough it with the others,
the result was rather curious.  The only one among them that had proved
capable of accommodating himself to the new circumstances was a Scotch
collie -- a fine animal of pure blood.

The common dog of the country is a jack-of-all-trades; a great lover of the
chase, but a bad hunter, a splendid scavenger, a good watch-dog and
vermin-killer; an indifferent sheep-dog, but invaluable in gathering up and
driving cattle.  Beyond these things which he picks up, you can really teach
him nothing useful, although with considerable trouble you might be able to
add a few ornamental subjects, {p 55} such as giving his paw, and keeping
guard over a coat or stick left in his charge.  He is a generalised beast,
grandson to the jackal, and first cousin to the cur of Europe and the
Eastern pariah.  To this primitive, or only slightly-improved type of dog,
the collie perhaps comes nearest of all the breeds we value; and when he is
thrown back on nature he is "all there," and not hindered as the pointer and
other varieties are by more deeply-rooted special instincts.  At all events,
this individual took very kindly to the rude life and work of his new
companions, and by means of his hardihood and inexhaustible energy became
their leader and superior, especially in hunting.  Above anything he loved
to chase a fox; and when in the course of a ride in the valley one was
started, he invariably threw all the native dogs out and caught and killed
it himself.  If these dogs had all together taken to a feral life, I do not
think the collie would have been worse off than the others.

It was very different with the greyhounds.  There were four, all of pure
breed; and as they were never taken out to hunt, and could not, like the
collie, take their share in the ordinary work of the establishment, they
were absolutely useless, and certainly not ornamental.  When I first noticed
them they were pitiable objects, thin as skeletons, so lame that they could
scarcely walk, and wounded and scratched all over with thorns.  I was told
that they had been out hunting on their own account in the thorny upland,
and that this was the result.  For three {p 56} or four days they remained
inactive, sleeping the whole time, except when they limped to the kitchen to
be fed.  But day by day they improved in condition; their scratches healed,
their ribbed sides grew smooth and sleek, and they recovered from their
lameness; but scarcely had they got well before it was discovered one
morning that they had vanished.  They had gone off during the night to hunt
again on the uplands.  They were absent two nights and a day, then returned,
looking even more reduced and miserable than when I first saw them, to
recover slowly from their hurts and fatigue; and when well again they were
off once more; and so it continued during the whole time of my visit.  These
hounds, if left to themselves, would have soon perished.

Another member of this somewhat heterogeneous canine community was a
retriever, one of the handsomest I have ever seen, rather small, and with a
most perfect head.  The extreme curliness of his coat made him look at a
little distance like a dog cut out of a block of ebony, with the surface
carved to almost symmetrical knobbiness.  Major -- that was his name --
would have lent himself well to sculpture.  He was old, but not too fat, nor
inactive; sometimes he would go out with the other dogs, but apparently he
could not keep up the pace, as after a few hours he would return always
alone, looking rather disconsolate.

I have always been partial to dogs of this breed; not on account of the
assistance they have been to {p 57} me, but because when I have wished to
have a dog at my side I have found them more suitable than other kinds for
companions.  They are not stupid nor restless, but ready to fall in with a
quiet mood, and never irritate by a perpetual impatient craving for notice.
 A fussy, demonstrative dog, that can never efface himself, I object to:  he
compels your attention, and puts you in a subordinate place:  you are his
attendant, not he yours.

Major's appearance attracted me from the first, and he, on his side,
joyfully responded to my advances, and at once attached himself to me,
following me about the place as if he feared to lose sight of me even for a
minute.  My host, however, hastened to warn me not to take him with me when
I went out shooting, as he was old and blind, and subject, moreover, to
strange freaks, which made him worse than useless.  He had formerly been an
excellent retriever, he informed me, but even in his best days not wholly to
be trusted, and now he was nothing but bad.

I could scarcely credit the blindness, as he did not show it in his brown
intelligent and wistful eyes, and always appeared keenly alive and
interested in everything going on about him; but by experimenting I found
that he could scarcely see further than about six inches from his nose; but
his hearing and scent were so good, and guided him so well, that no person
on a slight acquaintance would have made the discovery of his defective
sight.

Of course, after this, I could have nothing more {p 58} to do with the
retriever, further than patting him on the head and speaking a kind word to
him whenever he chanced to be in my way.  But this was not enough for old
Major.  He was a sporting dog, full of energy, and with undiminished faith
in his own powers, in spite of his years, and when a sportsman had come to
the house, and had deliberately singled him out for friendly notice, he
could not and would not believe that it was to go no further.  Day after day
he clung to the delusion that he was to accompany me in my walks and little
shooting excursions in the neighbourhood; and every time I took down a gun
he would rush forward from his post by the door with so many demonstrations
of joy, and with such imploring looks and gestures, that I found it very
hard to rebuke him.  It was sad to have him standing there, first cocking up
one ear, then the other, striving to pierce the baffling mists that
intervened between his poor purblind eyes and my face, to find some sign of
relenting in it.

It was evident that old Major was not happy, in spite of all he had to make
him so:  although he was well fed and fat, and treated with the greatest
kindness by everyone on the place, and although all the other dogs about the
house looked up to him with that instinctive respect they always accord to
the oldest, or strongest, or most domineering member, his heart was restless
and dissatisfied.  He could not endure an inactive life.  There was, in
fact, only one way in which he could or was allowed to work off his
superabundant energy.  This was when we {p 59} went down to the river to
bathe in the afternoon, and when we would amuse ourselves, some of us, by
throwing enormous logs and dead branches into the current.  They were large
and heavy, and thrown well out into one of the most rapid rivers in the
world, but Major would have perished forty times over, if he had had forty
lives to throw away, before he would have allowed one of those useless logs
to be lost.  But this was wasted energy, and Major could not have known it
better if he had graduated with honours at the Royal School of Mines,
consequently his exertions in the river did not make him happy.  His
unhappiness began to prey on my mind, and I never left the house but that
mute imploring face haunted me for an hour after, until I could bear it no
longer.  Major conquered, and to witness his boundless delight and gratitude
when I shouldered my gun and called him to me, was a pleasure worth many
dead birds.

Nothing important happened during our first few expeditions.  Major behaved
rather wildly, I thought, but he was obedient and anxious to please, and my
impression was that he had been too long neglected, and would soon settle
down to do his share of the work in a sober, business-like manner.

Then a day came when Major covered himself with glory.  I came one morning
on a small flock of flamingos in a lagoon; they were standing in the water,
about seventy-five or eighty yards from the shore, quietly dozing.
Fortunately the lagoon was bordered by a dense bed of tall rushes, about {p
60} fifteen yards in breadth, so that I was able to approach the birds
unseen by them.  I crept up to the rushes in a fever of delighted
excitement; not that flamingos are not common in that district, but because
I had noticed that one of the birds before me was the largest and loveliest
flamingo I had ever set eyes on, and I had long been anxious to secure one
very perfect specimen.  I think my hand trembled a great deal; nevertheless,
the bird dropped when I fired; and then how quickly the joy I experienced
was changed to despair when I looked on the wide expanse of mud, reeds and
water that separated him from me!  How was I ever to get him?  for it is as
much as a man's life is worth to venture into one of these long river-like
lagoons in the valley, as under the quiet water there is a bed of mire, soft
as clotted cream, and deep enough for a giant's grave.  I thought of Major,
but not for a moment did I believe that he, poor dog! was equal to the task.
 When I fired he dashed hurriedly forward, and came against the wall of
close rushes, where he struggled hopelessly for a little while, and then
floundered back to me.  There was, however, nothing else to be done.
"Major, come here," I called, and taking a lump of clay I threw it as far as
I could towards the floating bird.  He raised his ears, and listened to get
the right direction, and when the splash of the stone reached us he dashed
in and against the rushes once more.  After a violent struggle he succeeded
in getting through them, and, finding himself in deep water, struck straight
out, and then began {p 61} swimming about in all directions, until, getting
to windward of the bird, he followed up the scent and found it.  This was
the easiest part of the task, as the bird was very large, and when Major got
back to the rushes with it, and I heard him crashing and floundering
through, snorting and coughing as if half-suffocated, I was sure that if I
ever got my flamingo at all it must be hopelessly damaged.  At length he
appeared, so exhausted with his exertions that he could hardly stand, and
deposited the bird at my feet.  Never had I seen such a splendid specimen!
It was an old cock bird, excessively fat, weighing sixteen pounds, yet Major
had brought it out through this slough of despond without breaking its skin,
or soiling its exquisitely beautiful crimson, rose-coloured, and
faintly-blushing white plumage!  Had he not himself been so plastered with
mud and slime I should, in gratitude, have taken him into my arms; but he
appeared very well satisfied with the words of approval I bestowed on him,
and we started homeward in a happy frame of mind, each feeling well pleased
with the other -- and himself.

That evening as I sat by the fire greatly enjoying my after-dinner coffee,
and a pipe of the strongest cavendish, I related the day's adventures, and
then for the first time heard from my host something of Major's antecedents
and remarkable history.

He was a Scotch dog by birth, and had formerly belonged to the Earl of
Zetland, and as he proved to be an exceptionally clever and good-looking
young dog, he was for a time thought much of; but there {p 62} was a drop of
black blood in Major's heart, and in a moment of temptation it led him into
courses for which he was finally condemned to an ignominious death; he
escaped to become a pioneer of civilisation in the wilderness, and to show,
even in old age and when his sight had failed him, of what stuff he was
made.  Killing sheep was his crime; he had hunted the swift-footed cheviots
and black-faces on the hills and moors; he had tasted their blood and had
made the discovery that it was sweet, and the ancient wild-dog instinct was
hot in his heart.  The new joy possessed his whole being, and in a moment
swept away every restraint.  The savage life was the only real life after
all, and what cared Major about the greatest happiness for the greatest
number, and new-fangled notions about the division of labour, in which so
mean a part was assigned him!  Was he to spend a paltry puppy existence
retrieving birds, first flushed by a stupid pointer or setter, and shot by a
man with a gun -- the bird, after all, to be eaten by none of them; and he,
in return for his share in the work, to be fed on mild messes and biscuits,
and beef, killed somewhere out of sight by a butcher?  Away with such a
complex state of things!  He would not be stifled by such an artificial
system; he would kill his own mutton on the moors, and eat it raw and warm
in the good old fashion, and enjoy life, as, doubtless, every dog of spirit
had enjoyed it a thousand years ago.

This was not to be permitted on a well-conducted estate; and as it was
thought that chains and slavery {p 63} would be less endurable than death to
a dog of Major's spirit, to death he was forthwith condemned.

Now it happened that a gentleman, hearing all this from the earl's
gamekeeper, before the dread sentence had been executed, all at once
remembered that one of his friends, who was preparing to emigrate to
Patagonia, purposed taking out some good dogs with him, and thinking that
this retriever would form an acceptable gift, he begged for it. The
game-keeper gave it to him, and he in turn gave it to his friend, and in
this way Major escaped the penalty, and in due time, after seeing and
doubtless reflecting much by the way, arrived at his destination.  I say
advisedly that Major probably reflected a great deal, for in his new home he
never once gave way to his criminal appetite for sheep's blood; but whenever
the flock came in his way, which was often enough, he turned resolutely
aside and skulked off out of the sound of their bleating as quickly as
possible.

All I heard from my host only served to raise my opinion of Major, and,
remembering what he had accomplished that day, I formed the idea that the
most glorious period of his life had just dawned, that he had now begun a
series of exploits, compared with which the greatest deeds of all retrievers
in other lands would sink into insignificance.

I have now to relate Major's second important exploit, and on this occasion
the birds were geese.

The upland geese are excellent eating, and it was our custom to make an
early breakfast off a cold goose, or of any remnants left in the larder.
Cold {p 64} boiled goose and coffee, often with no bread -- it sounds
strange, but never shall I forget those delicious early Patagonian
breakfasts.

Now the geese, although abundant at that season, were excessively wary, and
hard to kill; and as no other person went after them, although all grumbled
loudly when there was no goose for breakfast, I was always very glad to get
a shot at them when out with the gun.

One day I saw a great flock congregated on a low mud-bank in one of the
lagoons, and immediately began to manoeuvre to get within shooting distance
without disturbing them.  Fortunately they were in a great state of
excitement, keeping up a loud incessant clamour, as if something very
important to the upland geese was being discussed, and in the general
agitation they neglected their safety.  More geese in small flocks were
continually arriving from various directions, increasing the noise and
excitement; and by dint of much going on hands and knees and crawling over
rough ground, I managed to get within seventy yards of them and fired into
the middle of the flock. The birds rose up with a great rush of wings and
noise of screams, leaving five of their number floundering about in the
shallow water. Major was quickly after them, but two of the five were not
badly wounded, and soon swam away beyond his reach; to the others he was
guided by the tremendous flapping they made in the water in their death
struggles; and one by one he conveyed them, not to his expectant master, but
to a small {p 65} island about a hundred and twenty yards from the shore.
No sooner had he got them all together than, to my unspeakable astonishment
and dismay, he began worrying them, growling all the time with a playful
affectation of anger, and pulling out mouthfuls of feathers which he
scattered in clouds over his head.  To my shouts he responded by wagging his
tail, and barking a merry crisp little bark, then flying at the dead birds
again.  He seemed to be telling me, plainly as if he had used words, that he
heard me well enough, but was not disposed to obey, that he found it very
amusing playing with the geese and intended to enjoy himself to his heart's
content.

"Major!  Major!" I cried, "you base ungrateful dog!  Is this the way you
repay me for all my kindness, for befriending you when others spoke evil of
you, and made you keep at home, and treated you with contemptuous neglect!
Oh, you wretched brute, how many glorious breakfasts are you spoiling with
those villainous teeth!"

In vain I stormed and threatened, and told him that I would never speak to
him again, that I would thrash him, that I had seen dogs shot for less than
what he was doing.  I screamed his name until I was hoarse, but it was all
useless.  Major cared nothing for my shouts, and went on worrying the geese.
At length, when he grew tired of his play, he coolly jumped into the water
and swam back to me, leaving the geese behind.  I waited for him, a stick in
my hand, burning for vengeance, and fully intending to collar and thrash him
well the moment he reached {p 66} me.  Fortunately he had a long distance to
swim, and before he reached land I began to reflect that if I received him
roughly, with blows, I would never get the geese -- those three magnificent
white-and-maroon-coloured geese that had cost me so much labour to kill.
Yes, I thought, it will be better to dissemble and be diplomatic and receive
him graciously, and then perhaps he will be persuaded to go again and fetch
the geese.  In the midst of these plans Major arrived, and sat down facing
me without shaking himself, evidently beginning to experience some qualms of
conscience.

"Major," said I, addressing him in a mild gentle voice, and patting his wet
black head, "you have treated me very badly, but I am not going to punish
you -- I am going to give you another chance, old dog.  Now, Major, good and
obedient dog, go and fetch me the geese." With that I pushed him gently
towards the water.  Major understood me, and went in, although in a somewhat
perfunctory manner, and swam back to the island.  On reaching it he went up
to the geese, examined them briefly with his nose and sat down to
deliberate.  I called him, but he paid no attention.  With what intense
anxiety I waited his decision!

At last he appeared to have made up his mind; he stood up, shook himself
briskly and -- will it be believed? -- began to worry the geese again!  He
was not merely playing with them now, and did not scatter the feathers about
and bark, but bit and tore them in a truculent mood.  When he had torn them
{p 67} pretty well to pieces he swam back once more, but this time he came
to land at a long distance from me, knowing, I suppose, that I was now past
speaking mildly to him; and, skulking through the reeds, he sneaked home by
himself.  Later, when I arrived at the house, he carefully kept out of my
way.

I believe that when he went after the geese the second time he really did
mean to bring them out, but finding them so much mutilated he thought that
he had already hopelessly offended me, and so concluded to save himself the
labour of carrying them.  He did not know, poor brute, that his fetching
them would have been taken as a token of repentance, and that he would have
been forgiven.  But it was impossible to forgive him now.  All faith in him
was utterly and for ever gone, and from that day I looked on him as a poor
degraded creature; and if I ever bestowed a caress on his upturned face, I
did it in the spirit of a man who flings a copper to an unfortunate beggar
in the street; and it was a satisfaction to me that Major appeared to know
what I thought of him.

But all this happened years ago, and now I can but look with kindly feelings
for the old blind retriever who retrieved my geese so badly. I can even
laugh at myself for having allowed an ineradicable anthropomorphism to carry
me so far in recalling and describing our joint adventures.  But such a
fault is almost excusable in this instance, for he was really a remarkable
dog among other dogs, like a talented man among his fellow-men.  I doubt if
any {p 68} other retriever, in such circumstances and handicapped by such an
infirmity, could have retrieved that splendid flamingo; but with this
excellence there was the innate capacity to go wrong, a sudden reversion to
the irresponsible wild dog -- the devilry, to keep to human terms, that sent
him into exile and made him at the last so interesting and pathetic a
figure.



{p 69} CHAPTER VI


THE WAR WITH NATURE

During my sojourn on the Rio Negro letters and papers reached me only at
rare intervals.  On one occasion I passed very nearly two months without
seeing a newspaper.  I remember, when at the end of that time one was put
before me, I snatched it up eagerly, and began hastily scanning the columns,
or column-headings rather, in search of startling items from abroad, and
that after a couple of minutes I laid it down again to listen to someone
talking in the room, and that I eventually left the place without reading
the paper at all.  I suppose I snatched it up at first mechanically, just as
a cat, even when not hungry, pounces on a mouse it sees scuttling across its
path.  It was simply the survival of an old habit -- a trick played by
unconscious memory on the intellect, like the action of the person who has
resided all his life in a hovel, and who, on entering a cathedral door or
passing under a lofty archway, unwittingly stoops to avoid bumping his
forehead against an imaginary lintel.  I was conscious on quitting the room,
where I had cast aside the unread newspaper, that the old interest in the
affairs of the world at large had in a great measure forsaken me; yet the
thought did not seem {p 70) a degrading one, nor was I at all startled at
this newly-discovered indifference, though up till then I had always been
profoundly interested in the moves on the great political chessboard of the
world.  How had I spent those fifty or sixty days, I asked myself, and from
what enchanted cup had I drunk the oblivious draught which had wrought so
great a change in me?  The answer was that I had drunk from the cup of
Nature, that my days had been spent with peace.  It then also seemed to me
that the passion for politics, the perpetual craving of the mind for some
new thing, is after all only a feverish artificial feeling, a necessary
accompaniment of the conditions we live in, perhaps, but from which one
rapidly recovers when it can no longer be pandered to, just as a toper, when
removed from temptation, recovers a healthy tone of body, and finds to his
surprise that he is able to exist without the aid of stimulants.  It is easy
enough to relapse from this free and pleasant condition; in the latter case
the emancipated man goes back to the bottle, in the former to the perusal of
leading articles and of the fiery utterances of those who make politics
their trade.  That I have never been guilty of backsliding I cannot boast;
nevertheless the lesson Nature taught me in that lonely country was not
wholly wasted, and while I was in that condition of mind I found it very
agreeable.  I was delighted to discover that the stimulus derived from many
daily telegrams and much discussion of remote probabilities were not
necessary to keep my mind from lethargy. Things {p 71} about which I had
hitherto cared little now occupied my thoughts and supplied me with
pleasurable excitement.  How fresh and how human it seemed to feel a keen
interest in the village annals, the domestic life, the simple pleasures,
cares, and struggles of the people I lived with!  This is a feeling only to
be experienced in any great degree by the soul that has ceased to vex itself
with the ambitious schemes of Russia, the attitude of the Sublime Porte, and
the meeting or breaking up of parliaments.  When the Eastern Question had
lost its ancient fascination for me I found a world large enough for my
sympathies in the little community of men and women on the Rio Negro. Here
for upwards of a century the colony has existed, cut off, as it were, by
hundreds of desert leagues from all communion with fellow-christians,
surrounded by a great wilderness, waterless and overgrown with thorns,
peopled only by pumas, ostriches, and wandering tribes of savage men.  In
this romantic isolation the colonists spend their whole lives, roaming in
childhood over the wooded uplands; in after life with one cloud always on
their otherwise sunlit horizon -- the fear of the red man, and always ready
to fly to arms and mount their horses when the cannon booms forth its loud
alarm from the fort.

It must of necessity have been a case of war to the knife with these white
aliens -- war not only with the wild tribes that cherish an undying feud
against the robbers of their inheritance, but also with Nature.  For when
man begins to cultivate the soil, {p 72} to introduce domestic cattle, and
to slay a larger number of wild animals than he requires for food -- and
civilised man must do all that to create the conditions he imagines
necessary to his existence -- from that moment does he place himself in
antagonism with Nature, and has thereafter to suffer countless persecutions
at her hands. After a century of residence in the valley the colonist has
established his position so that he cannot be driven out. Twenty-five years
ago it was still possible for a great cacique to gallop into the town,
clattering his silver harness and flourishing his spear, to demand with loud
threats of vengeance his unpaid annual tribute of cattle, knife-blades,
indigo, and cochineal.  Now the red man's spirit is broken; in numbers and
in courage he is declining. during the last decade the desert places have
been abundantly watered with his blood, and, before many years are over, the
old vendetta will be forgotten, for he will have ceased to exist.

Nature, albeit now without his aid, still maintains the conflict, enlisting
the elements, with bird, beast, and insect, against the hated white
disturber, whose way of life is not in harmony with her way.

There are the animal foes.  Pumas infest the settlement.  At all seasons a
few of these sly but withal audacious robbers haunt the riverside; but in
winter a great many lean and hungry individuals come down from the uplands
to slay the sheep and horses, and it is extremely difficult to track them to
their hiding-places in the thorny thickets overhanging {p 73} the valley.  I
was told that not less than a hundred pumas were killed annually by the
shepherds and herdsmen.  The depredations of the locusts are on a much
larger scale.  In summer I frequently rode over miles of ground where they
literally carpeted the earth with their numbers, rising in clouds before me,
causing a sound as of a loud wind with their wings.  It was always the same,
I was told; every year they appeared at some point in the valley to destroy
the crops and pasturage.  Then there were birds of many species and in
incalculable numbers.  To an idle sportsman without a stake in the country
it was paradise.  At one spot I noticed all the wheat ruined, most of the
stalks being stripped and broken, presenting a very curious appearance; I
was surprised to hear from the owner of the desolate fields that in this
instance the coots had been the culprits.  Thousands of these birds came up
from the river every night, and in spite of all he could do to frighten them
away they had succeeded in wasting his corn.

On either side of the long straggling settlement spreads the uninhabited
desert -- uninhabitable, in fact, for it is waterless, with a sterile
gravelly soil that only produces a thorny vegetation of dwarf trees.  It
serves, however, as a breeding-place for myriads of winged creatures; and
never a season passes but it sends down its hungry legions of one kind or
another into the valley.  During my stay pigeons, ducks, and geese were the
greatest foes of the farmer. When the sowing season commenced {p 74} the
pigeons ('Columba maculosa') came in myriads to devour the grain, which is
here sown broadcast.  Shooting and poisoning them was practised on some
farms, while on others dogs were trained to hunt the birds from the ground;
but notwithstanding all these measures, half the seed committed to the earth
was devoured.  When the corn was fully ripe and ready to be harvested, then
came the brown duck ('Dafila spinacauda') in millions to feast on the grain.
 Early in the winter the arrival of the migratory upland geese ('Chloephaga
magellanica') was dreaded.  It is scarcely possible to keep them from the
fields when the wheat is young or just beginning to sprout; and I have
frequently seen flocks of these birds quietly feeding under the very shadow
of the fluttering scarecrows set up to frighten them. They do even greater
injury to the pasture-lands, where they are often so numerous as to denude
the earth of the tender young clover, thus depriving the sheep of their only
food.  On some estates mounted boys were kept scouring the plains, and
driving up the flocks with loud shouts; but their labours were quite
profitless; fresh armies of geese on their way north were continually
pouring in, making a vast camping ground of the valley, till scarcely a
blade of grass remained for the perishing cattle.

Viewed from a distance, in comfortable homes, this contest of man with the
numberless destructive forces of Nature is always looked on as the great
drawback in the free life of the settler -- the drop of bitter in the cup
which spoils its taste.  It is a false {p 75} notion, although it would no
doubt be upheld as true by most of those who are actually engaged in the
contest, and should know.  This is strange, but not unaccountable.  Our
feelings become modified and changed altogether with regard to many things
as we progress in life, and experience widens, but in most cases the old
expressions are still used.  We continue to call black black, because we
were taught so, and have always called it black, although it may now seem
purple or blue or some other colour.  We learn a kind of emasculated
language in the nursery, from schoolmasters, and books written indoors, and
it has to serve us.  It proves false, but its falsity is perhaps never
clearly recognised; Nature emancipates us and the feeling changes, but there
has been no conscious reasoning on the matter, and thought is vague.  One
hears a person relating the struggles and storms of his early or past life,
and receiving without protest expressions of sympathy and pity from his
listeners; but he knows in his heart, albeit his brain may be and generally
is in a mist, that these were the very things that exhilarated him, that if
he had missed them his life would have been savourless.  For the healthy
man, or for the man whose virile instincts have not become atrophied in the
artificial conditions we exist in, strife of some kind, if not physical then
mental, is essential to happiness.  It is a principle of Nature that only by
means of strife can strength be maintained.  No sooner is any species placed
above it, or over-protected, than degeneration begins.  But about the {p 76}
condition of the inferior animals, with regard to the comparative dulness or
brightness of their lives, we do not concern ourselves. It is pleasant to be
able to believe that they are all in a sense happy, although hard to believe
that they are happy in the same degree.  The sloth, for instance, that most
over-protected mammalian, fast asleep as he hugs his branch, and the wild
cat that has to save himself, and must for ever and always keep all his
faculties keen and brightly polished.  With regard to man, who has the power
of self-analysis and of seeing in his own mind all minds, the case is very
different, and it does concern us to know the truth.  A great deal -- very
many pages, chapters, and even books -- might be written on this subject,
but to write them is happily unnecessary, since everyone can easily find out
the truth from his own experience.  This will tell him which satisfied him
most in the end -- the rough days or the smooth in his life; and which was
most highly valued -- the good he struggled for or that which came to him in
some other way. Even as a child, or as a small boy, assuming that his early
years were passed in fairly natural conditions, the knocks and bruises and
scratches and stings of infuriated humble-bees he suffered served only to
excite a spirit that had something of conscious power and gladness in it;
and in this the child was father to the man.  But the subject which
specially concerns me just now is the settler's life in some new and rough
district; and as it appears that the greatest, the most real, and in many
cases the only {p 77} pleasures of such an existence are habitually spoken
of as pains, the subject is one on which I may be pardoned for dwelling at
some length.

If Mill's doctrine be true, that all our happiness results from delusion,
that to one capable of seeing things as they are life must be an intolerable
burden, then it may seem only a cruel kindness to whisper into the ear of
the emigrant the warning:  "That which thou goeth forth to seek thou shalt
not find."

It is not said, be it remembered, that he will not find happiness, which,
like the rain and sunshine, although in more moderate measure, comes alike
to all men; it is only said that the particular form of happiness to which
he looks forward will never be his.  But one need not fear to whisper the
warning, nor even to shout it from the house-tops, for, to begin with, he
will not believe nor listen to it. His mind is fixed on the three glorious
prizes that lure him away -- Adventure, Distinction, Gold.  These bright and
shining apples are perhaps just as common at home as abroad, and as easily
gathered; but the young enthusiast, surveying coasts five or ten thousand
miles away through his mental telescope, sees them apparently hanging on
very much lower branches, and imagines that to pluck them he has only to
transport himself beyond the ocean.  To drop this metaphor, adventure in
that distant place will be as common as the air he breathes, giving him much
invigorating pleasure by the way, while he advances to possess himself of
other more satisfying things.  With the nimble brains, brave spirit, and {p
78} willing hands characteristic of the inhabitants of the British Islands,
he will assuredly be able to achieve distinction -- that pretty bit of
ribbon which most men are willing enough to wear.

This, however, is only a matter of secondary importance; the chief prize
will always be the yellow metal.  Knowing how much can be done with it at
home where it is held in great esteem, he will take care to provide himself
with an abundant supply against his return.  The precise way in which it is
to be acquired he will not trouble himself about until he reaches his
destination.  It will perhaps flow in upon him through business channels; in
most cases it will be thought more agreeable to pick it up in its native
state during his walks abroad in the forest.  The simple-minded aborigines,
always ready to humour an eccentric taste, will assist him in collecting it;
and, finally, for a small consideration in the form of coloured beads and
pocket-mirrors, convey it in large sacks and hampers to the place of
embarkation.  It is not meant that the immigrant in all cases paints his
particular delusion in colours bright as these; let him shade the picture
until it corresponds in tone with his individual creation -- a dream and a
delusion it will nevertheless remain.  Not in these things which will never
be his, nor in still cherishing the dream, will he find his pleasure, but in
something very different.

I speak not of that large percentage of immigrants who are doomed to find no
pleasure at all, and no good.  To the youth of ardent generous {p 79}
temperament, arrived in some far-off city where all men are free and equal,
and the starched conventionalities of the Old World are unknown, it is
perhaps the hardest thing to believe that when he slips down not a hand will
be put forth to raise him; that when he pronounces these common words, "I
have come to the end of my tether," instantly all the smiling faces
surrounding him will vanish as if by magic; that the few sovereigns
remaining in his pocket at any time are as a chain, shortened each day by a
link, holding him back from some terrible destiny . . . .  Let us delay no
longer in this moral place of skulls, but follow that wise and sturdy youth
who, wrapping his cloak about his face, passes unharmed through the
poisonous atmosphere of the landing-place, and hurries a thousand miles
away, while ever

Before him, like a blood-red flag,

flutters and shines the dream that lures him on.  And now at his journey's
end comes reality to lay rude hands on him with rough shaking.  Meanwhile,
before he has quite recovered from the shock, that red flag on which his
dreamy eyes have been so long fixed stays not, but travels on and on to
disappear at last like a sunset cloud in the distant horizon.  He does not
miss it greatly after all.  The actual is much in his thoughts.  When a man
is buffeting the waves he does not curiously examine the landscape before
him and complain that there are no bright flowers on the trees.  New
experience takes the place of {p 80} vanished dreams, which, like
water-lilies, blossom only on stagnant pools.  Here are none of the
innumerable appliances to secure comfort he has been used to from infancy,
regarding them almost as spontaneous productions of the earth; no hand to
perform a hundred necessary offices, so that this dainty gentleman is
obliged to blacken his own boots, tame and harness to the plough his own
bullocks or horses, kill and cook his own mutton.  Nothing is here, in fact,
but harsh Nature reluctant to be subdued; while he, to subdue her and make
his own conditions, has only a pair of soft weak hands.

To one fresh from the softness and smoothness of civilisation, unaccustomed
to manual labour, how hard then is the lot of the settler!  Behind him
physical comfort and beautiful dreams; before him the prospect of long years
of unremitting toil, every day of which will unfit him more and more for a
return to the gentle life of the past; while, for only result, he will have
food enough to satisfy hunger, and a rude shelter from extremes of heat and
cold, from torrents of winter rain and blinding clouds of summer dust.  Yet
is he happy.  For the vanished substantial comforts and airy splendours
there is a compensation gilding his rough existence with a better brightness
than that of any hope of future prosperity which may yet linger in his mind.
 It is the feeling the settler experiences from the moment of his induction
into the desert that he is engaged in a conflict, and there is no feeling
comparable with it to put a man on his mettle and inspire him {p 81} with a
healthy and enduring interest in life.  To this feeling is added the charm
of novelty caused by that endless procession of surprises which Nature
prepares for the pioneer -- an experience unknown to the rural life of
countries that have long been under cultivation.  The greatest drawbacks and
difficulties encountered have this charm strongest in them, and are robbed
by it of half their power to discourage the mind.

The young enthusiast, hurrying about London to speak his farewells and look
after his outfit, will perhaps laugh at this, for his delusion is still dear
to him.  But I am not discouraging him; I am, on the contrary, telling him
of a rill of pure water out there where he is going, where, for many years
to come, he will refresh himself every day, and learn to feel (if not to
think and to say) that it is the sweetest rill in existence.

It is rough living with unsubdued, or only partially subdued, Nature, but
there is a wonderful fascination in it.  The patient, leaden-footed, but
always obedient drudge, who goes forth uncomplainingly, albeit often with a
sullen face, about her work, day after day, year after year; who never
rebels, never murmurs against her bad task-master Man, although sometimes
the strength fails her so that she cannot complete the appointed task --
this is Nature at home in England.  How strange to see this stolid,
immutable creature transformed beyond the seas into a flighty, capricious
thing, that will not be wholly ruled by you, a beautiful wayward Undine, {p
82} delighting you with her originality, and most lovable when she teases
most; a being of extremes, always either in laughter or tears, a tyrant and
a slave alternately; to-day shattering to pieces the work of yesterday; now
cheerfully doing more than is required of her; anon the frantic vixen that
buries her malignant teeth into the hand that strikes or caresses her.  All
these rapid incomprehensible changes, even when most vexing and destructive
to your plans, interest your mind, and call up a hundred latent energies it
is a joy to discover. But you have not yet sounded all her depths; nor can
you imagine, seeing her frequent gay smiles, to what length her fierce
resentment may carry her.  sometimes, as if roused to sudden frenzy at the
indignities you are subjecting her to -- hacking at her trees, turning up
her cushioned soil, and trampling down her grass and flowers -- she arrays
herself in her blackest, most terrible aspect, and like a beautiful woman
who in her fury has no regard for her beauty, she plucks up her noblest
trees by the roots, and scooping up the very soil from the earth, whirls it
aloft to give a more horrible gloom to the heavens.  And darkness not being
terrifying enough, she kindles up the mighty chaos she has created into a
blaze of intolerable light, while the solid world is shaken to its
foundations with her wrathful thunders.  When destruction seems about to
fall on man and all his works, when you are prostrate and ready to perish
with excessive fear, lo, the mood changes, the furious passion has spent
itself, and there is no trace left of {p 83} it when you look up only to
encounter her peaceful reassuring smile. These sublime moods are, however,
infrequent and soon forgotten; man learns to despise the threats of a
cataclysm that never comes, and goes forth once more to level the ancient
trees, to invert the soil, and pasture his herds on her grasses and flowers.
 He will subdue the wild thing at last, but not yet; many years will she
struggle to retain her ancient sweet supremacy; he cannot alter all at once
the old order to which she clings tenaciously, as the red man to his savage
life.  Her attempt to frighten him away has failed.  He laughs at her mask
of terrors -- he knows that it is only a mask; and it suffocates her and
cannot be long endured.  She will cast it aside and fight him another way.
She will stoop to his yoke and be docile only to betray and defeat him at
the last.  A thousand strange tricks and surprises will she invent to molest
him.  In a hundred forms she will buzz in his ears and prick his flesh with
stings; she will sicken him with the perfume of flowers, and poison him with
sweet honey; and when he lies down to rest, she will startle him with the
sudden apparition of a pair of lidless eyes and a flickering forked tongue.
 He scatters the seed, and when he looks for the green heads to appear, the
earth opens, and lo, an army of long-faced, yellow grasshoppers come forth!
 She, too, walking invisible at his side, had scattered her miraculous seed
along with his.  He will not be beaten by her:  he slays her striped and
spotted creatures; he dries up her marshes; he consumes her forests and
prairies {p 84} with fire, and her wild things perish in myriads; he covers
her plains with herds of cattle, and waving fields of corn, and orchards of
fruit-bearing trees.  She hides her bitter wrath in her heart, secretly she
goes out at dawn of day and blows her trumpet on the hills, summoning her
innumerable children to her aid.  She is hard-pressed and cries to her
children that love her to come and deliver her.  Nor are they slow to hear.
 From north and south, from east and west, they come in armies of creeping
things and in clouds that darken the air.  Mice and crickets swarm in the
fields; a thousand insolent birds pull his scarecrows to pieces, and carry
off the straw stuffing to build their nests; every green thing is devoured;
the trees, stripped of their bark, stand like great white skeletons in the
bare desolate fields, cracked and scorched by the pitiless sun.  When he is
in despair deliverance comes; famine falls on the mighty host of his
enemies; they devour each other and perish utterly.  Still he lives to
lament his loss; to strive still, unsubdued and resolute.  She, too, laments
her lost children, which now, being dead, serve only to fertilise the soil
and give fresh strength to her implacable enemy.  And she, too, is
unsubdued; she dries her tears and laughs again; she has found out a new
weapon it will take him long to wrest from her hands.  Out of many little
humble plants she fashions the mighty noxious weeds; they spring up in his
footsteps, following him everywhere, and possess his fields like parasites,
sucking up their moisture and killing their fertility.  Everywhere, as {p
85} if by a miracle, is spread the mantle of rich, green, noisome leaves,
and the corn is smothered in beautiful flowers that yield only bitter seed
and poison fruit.  He may cut them down in the morning, in the night time
they will grow again.  With her beloved weeds she will wear out his spirit
and break his heart; she will sit still at a distance and laugh while he
grows weary of the hopeless struggle; and, at last, when he is ready to
faint, she will go forth once more and blow her trumpet on the hills and
call her innumerable children to come and fall on and destroy him utterly.

This is no mere fancy portrait, for Nature herself sat for it in the desert,
and it is painted in true colours.  Such is the contest the settler embarks
in -- so various in its fortunes, so full of great and sudden vicissitudes,
calling for so much vigilance and strategy on his part.  If the dreams he
sets out with are never realised, he is no worse off in this respect than
others.  To one, born and bred on the plains, the distant mountain range is
ever a region of enchantment; when he reaches it the glory is no more; the
opalescent tints and blue ethereal shadows of noon, the violet hues of the
sunset have vanished.  There is nothing after all but a rude confusion of
piled rocks; but although this is not what he expected, he ends by
preferring the mountain's roughness to the monotony of the plain.  The man
who finishes his course by a fall from his horse, or is swept away and
drowned when fording a swollen