CHAPTER IV. 



ASPECTS OF THE VALLEY. 



To go back for a brief space to those Golgothas that 

 I frequently visited in the valley, not as collector 

 nor archseologist, and in no scientific spirit, but 

 only, as it seemed, to indulge in mournful thoughts. 

 If by looking into the empty cavity of one of those 

 broken unburied skulls I had been able to see, as 

 in a magic glass, an image of the world as it once 

 existed in the living brain, what should I have seen ? 

 Such a question would not and could not, I imagine, 

 be suggested by the sight of a bleached broken 

 human skull in any other region ; but in Patagonia 

 it does not seem grotesque, nor merely idle, nor 

 quite fanciful, like Buffon's notion of a geometric 

 figure impressed on the hive-bee's brain. On the 

 contrary, it strikes one there as natural ; and the 

 answer to it is easy, and only one answer is 

 possible. 



In the cavity, extending from side to side, there 

 would have appeared a band of colour ; its margins 

 grey, growing fainter and bluer outwardly, and 

 finally fading into nothing ; between the grey edges 

 the band would be green ; and along this green 

 middle band, not always keeping to the centre, 



