Aspects of the Valley. 47 



and casting its warm, bleeding body into the 

 current. 



Even the European colonists have not been un- 

 affected psychologically by the peculiar conditions 

 they live in, and by the river, on which they are 

 dependent. When first I became cognizant of this 

 feeling, which was very soon, I was disposed to 

 laugh a little at the very large place the river 

 occupied in all men's minds; but after a few 

 months of life on its banks it was hardly less to 

 me than to others, and I experienced a kind 

 of shame when I recalled my former want of 

 reverence, as if I had made a jest of something 

 sacred. Nor to this day can I think of the Pata- 

 gonian river merely as one of the rivers I know. 

 Other streams, by comparison, seem vulgar, with 

 no higher purpose than to water man and beast, 

 and to serve, like canals, as a means of transport. 



One day, to the house where I was staying near 

 the town, there came a native lady on a visit, bring- 

 ing with her six bright blue-eyed children. As we, 

 the elders, sat in the living-room, sipping mate and 

 talking, one of the youngsters, an intelligent-looking 

 boy of nine, came in from play, and getting him by 

 me I amused him for a while with some yarns 

 and with talk about beasts and birds. He asked 

 me where I lived. My home, I said, was in the 

 Buenos Ayrean pampas, far north of Patagonia. 



" Is it near the river," he asked, "right on the 

 bank, like this house ? " 



I explained that it was on a great, grassy, level 



