40 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



sippi valley, and the races that built the forest- 

 grown cities of Yucatan 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 in- 

 fluence, and with no knowledge of any world be- 

 yond 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 dor- 

 mant in them, and that they were slowly pro- 

 gressing 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 occa- 

 sion, as I propose to show in a later chapter, the 

 wished vision of the past came unsought and un- 

 expectedly 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 super- 

 naturalism 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 per- 

 sonality, our environment, our outlook on Na- 

 ture. 



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 inves- 



