6 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



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 in 

 a modest gray coloring, 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 somber-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 favorite 

 flower, both in gardens and growing wild, was the 

 sweet perfumer of 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 



