CHAPTER XI 

 SIGHT IN SAVAGES 



TN Patagonia I added something to my small 

 * stock of private facts concerning eyes their 

 appearance, color, and expression and vision, 

 subjects which have had a mild attraction for me 

 as long as I can remember. When, as a boy, I 

 mixed with the gauchos of the pampas, there was 

 one among them who greatly awed me by his 

 appearance and character. He was distinguished 

 among his fellows by his tallness, the thickness 

 of his eyebrows and the great length of his crow- 

 black beard, the form and length of his facon, or 

 knife, which was nothing but a sword worn knife- 

 wise, and the ballads he composed, in which were 

 recounted, in a harsh tuneless voice to the strum- 

 strum of a guitar, the hand-to-hand combats he 

 had had with others of his class fighters and des- 

 peradoes and in which he had always been the 

 victor, for his adversaries had all been slain to 

 a man. But his eyes, his most wonderful feature, 

 impressed me more than anything else; for one 

 was black and the other dark blue. All other 

 strange and extranatural things in nature, of 

 which I had personal knowledge, as, for instance, 



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