HUDSON ON THE PATAGONIAN PLAINS. 205 



After my return to Buenos Aires I spent a few days in that city, sail- 

 ing from La Plata on the Royal Mail Steamer "Clyde" for Rio de Janeiro, 

 where I remained for five days, when I left for New York by the " Buffon," 

 of the Lamport & Holt Line, and reached home on the sixteenth of 

 August, 1899. Mr. Peterson was not long delayed, since he reached 

 New York on September first, coming direct from Sandy Point with the 

 "Capac," of the Grace Line. With him came the last of our collections, 

 and our work in Patagonia, for a time at least, was finished. 



We had undergone many hardships and made considerable sacrifices 

 in order to accomplish the work. In many respects our success had far 

 surpassed our most sanguine expectations, while we had signally failed 

 in one most important feature of our work, which, however, I still hope 

 to accomplish. 



Almost every traveller in Patagonia has remarked and commented 

 upon the deep impression made upon the mind by the vast expanse, 

 aridity and solitude of the Patagonian plains. Darwin has attributed 

 this to a certain realization of the fact that over vast regions they were 

 at the time of his visit unknown and practically unknowable, as he then 

 thought, on account of the supposedly inhospitable nature of these plains, 

 thus leaving much of their true nature to the imagination. Hudson has 

 taken exception to Danvin's explanation, holding that, while since Dar- 

 win's time the Patagonian plains have become quite as well known to 

 travellers as many another region of the earth's surface of similar extent, 

 yet that peculiar interest and impressiveness still attaches to them, and, 

 once visited by the traveller, they ever remain as the most perfect, vivid 

 and deeply engraved picture, more frequently and vividly recalled from 

 among the retinue of paintings in his mental gallery than any of his other 

 experiences, not excepting even those of our more impressionable child- 

 hood days. Hudson would seem to infer that the unusually distinct 

 impression produced by the plains of Patagonia is due to and inherent in 

 their monotony and lack of anything calculated to awaken in the mind 

 of the traveller any real and sustained interest in matters other than the 

 desolate solitude of his surroundings. 



I am inclined to the opinion that both Darwin and Hudson correctly 

 analyzed and set forth the reasons for their own impressions of Pata- 

 gonia. Commencing with Chapter XIII. of the latter's "Idle Days in 

 Patagonia," he says, "Near the end of Darwin's famous narrative of the 



