9O Idle Days in Patagonia. 



more to level the ancient trees, to invert the soil, 

 and pasture his herds on her grasses and flowers. 

 He will subdue the wild thing at last, but not yet ; 

 many years will she struggle to retain her ancient 

 sweet supremacy ; he cannot alter all at once the 

 old order to which she clings tenaciously, as the red 

 man to his savage life. Her attempt to frighten him 

 away has failed. He laughs at her mask of terrors 

 he knows that it is only a mask ; and it suffocates 

 her and cannot be long endured. She will cast it 

 aside and fight him another way. She will stoop 

 to his yoke and be docile only to betray and defeat 

 him at the last. A thousand strange tricks and 

 surprises will she invent to molest him. In a hun- 

 dred forms she will buzz in his ears and prick his 

 flesh with stings ; she will sicken him with the 

 perfume of flowers, and poison him with sweet 

 honey ; and when he lies down to rest, she will 

 startle him with the sudden apparition of a pair of 

 lidless eyes and a flickering forked tongue. He 

 scatters the seed, and when he looks for the green 

 heads to appear, the earth opens, and lo, an army 

 of long-faced, yellow grasshoppers come forth ! 

 She, too, walking invisible at his side had scattered 

 her miraculous seed along with his. He will nob be 

 beaten by her, he slays her striped and spotted 

 creatures ; he dries up her marshes ; he consumes 

 her forests and prairies with fire, and her wild things 

 perish in myriads ; he covers her plains with herds 

 of cattle, and waving fields of corn, and orchards of 

 fruit-bearing trees. She hides her bitter wrath in 



