THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA 227 



Self-balanced against contingencies, 

 As the trees and animals are. 



However great the sufferings of the gouty pre- 

 mier may have been, they were less than those 

 which any Indian youth in Guiana and Venezuela 

 voluntarily subjects himself to before he ventures 

 to call himself a man, or to ask for a wife. Small 

 in comparison, yet he did not endure them smil- 

 ingly because the traditional pride and other feel- 

 ings of a gentleman made it possible for him to 

 do so, but because that more ancient and nobler 

 pride, the stern instinct of endurance of the sav- 

 age, came to his aid and sustained him. 



These things do not, or at all events should not, 

 surprise us. They can only surprise those who 

 are without the virile instinct, or who have never 

 become conscious of it on account of the circum- 

 stances of their lives. The only wonder is that 

 the stern indomitable spirit in us should ever in 

 any circumstances fail a man, that even on the 

 scaffold or with the world against him he should 

 be overcome by despair, and burst into weak tears 

 and lamentations, and faint in the presence of his 

 fellows. In one of the most eloquent passages of 

 his finest work Herman Melville describes as fol- 

 lows that manly spirit or instinct in us, and the 

 effect produced on us by the sight of its failure: 

 "Men may seem detestable as joint-stock compa- 

 nies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers 

 there may be; men may have mean and meager 

 faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so 



