At Last, Patagonia ! 7 



delicious with a faint familiar perfume. Casting my 

 eyes down I perceived, growing in the sand at rny 

 feet, an evening primrose plant, with at least a score 

 of open blossoms on its low wide-spreading branches ; 

 and this, my favourite flower, both in gardens and 

 growing wild, was the sweet perfumer of the wilder- 

 ness ! Its subtle fragrance, first and last, has been 

 much to me, and has followed me from the New 

 World to the Old, to serve sometimes as a kind 

 of second more faithful memory, and to set my 

 brains working on a pretty problem, to which I 

 shall devote a chapter at the end of this book. 



Our survey concluded, we set out in the direction 

 of the Rio Negro. Before quitting the steamer the 

 captain had spoken a few words to us. Looking at 

 us as though he saw us not, he said that the ship had 

 gone ashore somewhere north of the Rio Negro, 

 about thirty miles he thought, and that we should 

 doubtless find some herdsmen's huts on our way 

 thither. No need then to burden ourselves with 

 food and drink ! At first we kept close to the dunes 

 that bordered the seashore, wading through a 

 luxuriant growth of wild liquorice a pretty plant 

 about eighteen inches high, with deep green feathery 

 foliage crowned with spikes of pale blue flowers. 

 Some of the roots which we pulled up from the 

 loose sandy soil were over nine feet in length. All 

 the apothecaries in the world might have laid in a 

 few years' supply of the drug from the plants we saw 

 on that morning. 



To my mind there is nothing in life so delightful 



