I02 THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA 



dust a savage people with Martinis and increase their manhood, 

 if the punishment be not severe and too prolonged, but as sure as 

 the whisky bottle — the raw, cheap, rot-gut country spirit — is 

 introduced among them, a primitive people is doomed. In all sorts 

 of places in the world I have seen this baleful influence at work. 



The Indians, as I knew them, are a kind-hearted, docile and 

 lazy race. In all the dealings I had with them I found them 

 invariably most courteous. Treat them as you desire they should 

 treat you, and not in the odious " poor-devil-of-a-heathen, beast- 

 of-a-savage " sort of style, which obtains with some of our own 

 countrymen abroad, I am sorry to say, and you will receive a grave 

 and quiet consideration, and they will call you biien hombre, a good 

 man. 



Progress, the white man's shibboleth, has no meaning for the 

 Patagonian. He is losing ground day by day in the wild onward 

 rush of mankind. Our ideas do not appeal to him. He has 

 neither part nor lot in the feverish desires and ambitions that move 

 us so strongly. As his forefathers were, so is he — content to live 

 and die a human item with a moving home, passing hither and 

 thither upon the waste and open spaces of his native land. He is 

 far too single-minded and too dignified to stoop to a cheap imita- 

 tion. He does not shout aloud that he is the equal of the white 

 man, as more vulgar races do. It has often struck me that the 

 primitive races of the world might be put under two heads — the 

 men of silence and the men of uproar. Among the men of silence 

 we have the Zulu, the North American Indian, the Tehuelche, and 

 some others. These silent peoples cannot exist, like the negroes, 

 as the camp followers of civilisation. They have not the ya hoop 

 imitative faculty of the negro race. They are hunters, men of 

 silence and of a great reserve. When they meet with the white 

 man, they do not rush open-mouthed to swallow his customs. 



The men of silence will, in the savage state, take a hint as 

 quickly as an English gentleman ; the men of uproar will only 

 accept a hint when it is backed by a command. The Tehuelche 

 will not remain at a camp-fire where he is not wanted. He lacks 

 passion, perhaps, but appreciation pleases him. His dignified 

 courtesy can best be exemplified by a story. 



