204 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



glance such a pity and sympathy that they ceased 

 to be afraid of God and began to return to Him. . . . 

 I never dared gaze at him, even I, unless Ms lids were 

 down." 



I think we have, most of us, seen eyes like these 

 eyes which one rather avoids meeting, because 

 when met one is startled by the sight of a naked 

 human soul brought so near. One person, at least, 

 I have known to whom the above description would 

 apply in every particular ; a man whose intellectual 

 and moral nature was of the highest order, and who 

 perished at the age of thirty, a martyr to the cause 

 of humanity. 



How very strange, then, that savage man should 

 have been endowed with this eye unsuited to express 

 the instincts and passions of savages, but able to 

 express the intelligence, high moral feelings, and 

 spirituality which a humane civilization was, long 

 ages after, to develop in his torpid brain ! A fact 

 like this seems to fit in with that flattering, 

 fascinating, ingenious hypothesis invented by Wal- 

 lace to account for facts which, according to the 

 theory of natural selection, ought not to exist. 



In answer to the question, What is the colour of 

 the British eye ? so frequently asked, and not yet 

 definitely settled, I wish, in conclusion, to record 

 my own observations here. I have remarked a 

 surprisingly great difference in the eyes of the two 

 classes into which the population is practically 

 divisible the well-to-do class and the poor. I 



