28 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



some vampire bats, as Darwin remarks ; and that 

 the horror they excite in us is due to this resem- 

 blance ; what he failed to see was that it is the ex- 

 pression rather than the shape that horrifies. For 

 in these creatures it simulates such expressions as 

 excite fear and abhorrence in our own species, or 

 pity so intense as to be painful ferocity, stealthy, 

 watchful malignity, a set look of anguish or des- 

 pair, or some dreadful form of insanity. Someone 

 has well and wisely said that there is no ugliness in 

 us except the expression of evil thoughts and 

 passions ; for these do most assuredly write them- 

 selves on the countenance. Looking at a serpent of 

 this kind, and I have looked at many a one, the 

 fancy is born in me that I am regarding what was 

 once a fellow-being, perhaps one of those cruel 

 desperate wretches I have encountered on the out- 

 skirts of civilization, who for his crimes has been 

 changed into the serpent form, and cursed with 

 immortality. 



As a rule the deceptive resemblances and self- 

 plagiarisms of nature, when we light by chance on 

 them, give us only pleasure, heightened by wonder 

 or a sense of mystery ; but the case of this serpent 

 forms an exception : in spite of the tenderness I 

 cherish towards the entire ophidian race, the sensa- 

 tion is not agreeable. 



To return. My friend made a fire to boil water, 

 and after we had had some breakfast, he galloped 

 off once more in a new direction ; he had at last re- 



