THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA 211 



quently happens that the revived instinct is so 

 purely animal in character and repugnant to our 

 refined or humanitarian feelings, that it is sedu- 

 lously concealed and its promptings resisted. In 

 the military and seafaring vocations, and in lives 

 of travel and adventure, these sudden and sur- 

 prising reversions are most frequently experi- 

 enced. The excitement affecting men going into 

 battle, which even affects those who are consti- 

 tutionally timid and will cause them to exhibit a 

 reckless daring and contempt of danger astonish- 

 ing to themselves, is a familiar instance. This 

 instinctive courage has been compared to intoxi- 

 cation, but it does not, like alcohol, obscure a 

 man's faculties: on the contrary, he is far more 

 keenly active to everything going on around him 

 than the person who keeps perfectly cool. The 

 man who is coolly courageous in fight has his 

 faculties in their ordinary condition: the facul- 

 ties of the man who goes into battle inflamed with 

 instinctive, joyous excitement are sharpened to a 

 preternatural keenness. 1 When the constitution- 

 ally timid man has had an experience of this kind 

 he looks back on the day that brought it to him 



*In an article on "Courage," by Lord Wolseley, in the Fort- 

 nightly Review for August, 1889, there occurs the following pas- 

 sage, descriptive of the state of mind experienced by men in 

 fight: "All maddening pleasures seem to be compressed into 

 that very short space of time, and yet every sensation experienced 

 in those fleeting moments is so indelibly impressed on the brain 

 that not even the most trifling incident is ever forgotten in after 

 life. ' ' 



