92 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



fruit. He may cut them down in the morning, in the 

 night time they will grow again. With her beloved 

 weeds she will wear out his spirit and break his 

 heart; she will sit still at a distance and laugh 

 while he grows weary of the hopeless struggle ; and, 

 at last, when he is ready to faint, she will go forth 

 once more arid blow her trumpet on the hills and 

 call her innumerable children to come and fall on 

 and destroy him utterly. 



This is no mere fancy portrait, for Nature herself 

 sat for it in the desert, and it is painted in true 

 colours. Such is the contest the settler embarks 

 in so various in its fortunes, so full of great and 

 sudden vicissitudes, calling for so much vigilance 

 and strategy on his part. If the dreams he sets out 

 with are never realized, he is no worse off in this 

 respect than others. To one, born and bred on the 

 plains, the distant mountain range is ever a region 

 of enchantment ; when he reaches it the glory is no 

 more; the opalescent tints and blue ethereal shadow's 

 of noon, the violet hues of the sunset have vanished. 

 There is nothing after all >but a rude confusion of 

 piled rocks ; but although this is not what he ex- 

 pected, he ends by preferring the mountain's rough- 

 ness to the monotony of the plain. The man who 

 finishes his course by a fall from his horse, or is 

 swept away and drowned when fording a swollen 

 stream, has, in most cases, spent a happier life 

 than he who dies of apoplexy in a counting-house 

 or dining-room ; or, who, finding that end which 

 seemed so infinitely beautiful to Leigh. Hunt (which 



