THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA 217 



clouds sweeping over the sun-flushed landscape 

 to see it all is like returning to a home, which 

 is more truly our home than any habitation we 

 know. The cry of the wild bird pierces us to the 

 heart; we have never heard that cry before, and 

 it is more familiar to us than our mother's voice. 

 "I heard," says Thoreau, "a robin in the dis- 

 tance, the first I had heard for many a thousand 

 years, methought, whose note I shall not forget 

 for many a thousand more, the same sweet and 

 powerful song as of yore. the evening robin!" 

 Hafiz sings: 



O breeze of the morning blow me a memory of the ancient time; 

 If after a thousand years thy odors should float o'er my dust, 

 My bones, full of gladness uprising, would dance in the sepuleher! 



And we ourselves are the living sepulchers of a 

 dead past that past which was ours for so many 

 thousands of years before this life of the present 

 began; its old bones are slumbering in us dead, 

 and yet not dead nor deaf to Nature's voices; the 

 noisy burn, the roar of the waterfall, and thunder 

 of long waves on the shore, and the sound of rain 

 and whispering winds in the multitudinous leaves, 

 bring it a memory of the ancient time; and the 

 bones rejoice and dance in their sepuleher. 



Professor W. K. Parker, in his work On Mam- 

 malian Descent, speaking of the hairy covering al- 

 most universal in this class of animals, says : 

 "This has become, as every one knows, a custom 

 among the race of men, and shows, at present, no 



