H2 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



tuous milky sea ; and now, after several months 

 there came this snow-fall, and a vaster and stranger 

 whiteness. My uppermost feeling at the time was 

 one of delight at seeing what I had been hoping for 

 months to see, but had now, when winter was so 

 nearly over, ceased to hope for. This pleasure 

 was purely intellectual; but when I ask myself if 

 there was anything besides, a deeper, undefinable 

 feeling, I can only answer, I think not : my first 

 experience of snow does not lead me to believe 

 that there is any instinctive feeling in us related 

 to it ; that the feeling which so many, perhaps a 

 majority of persons, experience on seeing the earth 

 whitened by the breath of winter, must be accounted 

 for in some other way. 



In Herman Melville's romance of Moby Dick, or 

 The Whale, there is a long dissertation, perhaps the 

 finest thing in the book, on whiteness in nature, 

 and its effect on the mind. It is an interesting 

 and somewhat obscure subject ; and, as Melville is 

 the only writer I know who has dealt with it, and 

 something remains to be said, I may look to be 

 pardoned for dwelling on it at some length in this 

 place. 



Melville recalls the fact that in numberless 

 natural objects whiteness enhances beauty, as if it 

 imparted some special virtue of its own, as in 

 marbles, japonicas, pearls ; that the quality of 

 whiteness is emblematic of whatever we regard as 

 high and most worthy of reverence ; that it has for 

 us innumerable beautiful and kindly associations. 



