2O Idle Days in Patagonia. 



I caught nothing, and found out nothing ; never- 

 theless, these days of enforced idleness were not 

 unhappy. And after leaving my room, hobbling 

 round with the aid of a stout stick, and sitting in 

 houses, I consorted with men and women, and 

 listened day by day to the story of their small 

 un-avian affairs, until it began to interest me. But 

 not too keenly. I could always quit them without 

 regret to lie on the green sward, to gaze up into the 

 trees or the blue sky, and speculate on all imagi- 

 nable things. The result was that when no longer 

 any excuse for inaction existed use had bred a habit 

 in me the habit of indolence, which was quite 

 common among the people of Patagonia, and ap- 

 peared to suit the genial climate ; and this habit 

 and temper of mind I retained, with occasional 

 slight relapses, during the whole period of my 

 stay. 



Our waking life is sometimes like a dream, which 

 proceeds logically enough until the stimulus of 

 some new sensation, from without or within, throws 

 it into temporary confusion, or suspends its 

 action ; after which it goes on again, but with fresh 

 characters, passions, and motives, and a changed 

 argument. 



After feasting on cherries, and resting at the 

 estancia, or farm, where we first touched the shore, 

 we went on to the small town of El Carmen, which 

 has existed since the last century, and is built on 

 the side of a hill, or bluff, facing the river. On the 



