160 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



next chapter; in the present chapter I shall con- 

 fine myself to the subject of vision in savage and 

 semi-barbarous men as compared with ours. 



Here again I recall an incident of my boyhood, 

 and am not sure that it was not this that first gave 

 me an interest in the subject. 



One summer day at home, I was attentively 

 listening, out of doors, to a conversation between 

 two men, both past middle life and about the same 

 age, one an educated Englishman, wearing spec- 

 tacles, the other a native, who was very impressive 

 in his manner, and was holding forth in a loud 

 authoritative voice on a variety of subjects. All 

 at once he fixed his eyes on the spectacles worn by 

 the other, and, bursting into a laugh, cried out, 

 "Why do you always wear those eye-hiding 

 glasses straddled across your nose? Are they 

 supposed to make a man look handsomer or wiser 

 than his fellows, or do you, a sensible person, real- 

 ly believe that you can see better than another 

 man because of them? If so, then all I can say is 

 that it is a fable, a delusion; no man can believe 

 such a thing." 



He was only expressing the feeling that all per- 

 sons of his class, whose lives are passed in the 

 semi-barbarous conditions of the gauchos on the 

 pampas, experience at the sight of such artificial 

 helps to vision as spectacles. They look through 

 a pane of common glass, and it makes the view 

 no clearer, but rather dimmer how can the two 

 diminutive circular panes carried before the eyes 



