46 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



thorny, waterless uplands, it was, perhaps, incon- 

 ceivable 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 some- 

 thing out of nothing. She agreed with me in 

 some hesitating words, and I felt that I had put 

 my foot in it ; for only then I recalled the fact that 

 she also had been born in the valley the great- 

 granddaughter 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 flavors 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 red- 

 dish-purple or liver color. In summer and au- 

 tumn fruits and sweet gums are not scarce. One 

 gray-leafed herbaceous shrub is much sought after 

 for its sap, that oozes from the stem and hardens 



