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 mourn- 

 ful 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 gro- 

 tesque, nor merely idle, nor quite fanciful, like 

 Buff on'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 color ; its margins 

 gray, growing fainter and bluer outwardly, and 

 finally fading into nothing; between the gray 

 edges the band would be green; and along this 

 green middle band, not always keeping to the 



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