74 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



delighted to discover that the stimulus derived 

 from many daily telegrams and much discussion 

 of remote probabilities was not necessary to keep 

 my mind from lethargy. Things about which I 

 had hitherto cared little now occupied my thoughts 

 and supplied me with pleasurable excitement. 

 How fresh and how human it seemed to feel a 

 keen interest in the village annals, the domestic 

 life, the simple pleasures, cares, and struggles of 

 the people I lived with ! This is a feeling only to 

 be experienced in any great degree by the soul that 

 has ceased to vex itself with the ambitious schemes 

 of Eussia, the attitude of the Sublime Porte, and 

 the meeting or breaking up of parliaments. When 

 the Eastern Question had lost its ancient fascina- 

 tion for me I found a world large enough for my 

 sympathies in the little community of men and 

 women on the Rio Negro. Here for upwards of a 

 century the colony has existed, cut off, as it were, 

 by hundreds of desert leagues from all communion 

 with fellow-christians, surrounded by a great wil- 

 derness, waterless and overgrown with thorns, 

 peopled only by pumas, ostriches, and wandering 

 tribes of savage men. In this romantic isolation 

 the colonists spend their whole lives, roaming in 

 childhood over the wooded uplands; in after life 

 with one cloud always on their otherwise sunlit 

 horizon the fear of the red man, and always 

 ready to fly to arms and mount their horses when 

 the cannon booms forth its loud alarm from the 

 fort. 



