6 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



they stooped to rest their wings, or heard far off 

 " wailing their way from cloud to cloud," impelled 

 by that mysterious thought-baffling faculty, so un- 

 like all other phenomena in its manifestations as to 

 give it among natural things something of the 

 supernatural. Some of these wanderers, more 

 especially such as possess only a partial or limited 

 migration, I hoped to meet again in Patagonia, 

 singing their summer songs, and breeding in their 

 summer haunts. It was also my hope to find some 

 new species, some bird as beautiful, let us say, as 

 the wryneck or wheatear, and as old on the earth, 

 but which had never been named and never 

 ever seen by any appreciative human eye. I do 

 not know how it is with other ornithologists at the 

 time when their enthusiasm is greatest ; of myself 

 I can say that my dreams by night were often of 

 some new bird, vividly seen ; and such dreams 

 were always beautiful to me, and a grief to wake 

 from ; yet the dream-bird often as not appeared 

 in a modest grey colouring, or plain brown, or some 

 other equally sober tint. 



From the summit of the sandy ridge we saw before 

 us an undulating plain, bounded only by the horizon, 

 carpeted with short grass, seared by the summer 

 suns, and sparsely dotted over with a few sombre- 

 leafed bushes. It was a desert that had been a 

 desert always, and for that very reason sweet beyond 

 all scenes to look upon, its ancient quiet broken 

 only by the occasional call or twitter of some small 

 bird, while the morning air I inhaled was made 



