150 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



PATAGONIA. 



vious. At other times I heard of the marvellous property 

 of certain rivers, which had the power of changing small 

 bones into large; or, as some maintained, the bones them- 

 selves grew. As far as I am aware, not one of these animals 

 perished, as was formerly supposed, in the marshes or river 

 beds of the present land, but their bones have been exposed 

 by streams cutting through the watery deposit in which they 

 were originally imbedded. We may conclude that the whole 

 area of the Pampas is one wide sepulchre of extinct gigantic 

 quadrupeds. 



In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of 

 Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains 

 are pronounced by everybody wretched and useless. With- 

 out habitations, without water, without trees, without moun- 

 tains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why then 

 have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory, 

 and not on mine alone? Why have not the still more level, 

 the greener and more fertile Pampas, which are more ser- 

 viceable to mankind, produced an equal impression ? I can 

 scarcely analyze these feelings, but it must be partly owing 

 to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of 

 Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and 

 hence unknown ; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as 

 they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their 

 duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, 

 the fiat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of 

 water, or by deserts heated to an unbearable excess, who 

 would not look at these lost boundaries to man's knowledge 

 with deep but vague sensations ? 



