214 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



the midst of that universal unrelieved greyness. 

 Descending from my look-out, I would take up my 

 aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations 

 to gaze on the same landscape from another point ; 

 and so on for hours, and at noon I would dismount 

 and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or 

 longer. One day, in these rambles, I discovered a 

 small grove composed of twenty to thirty trees, 

 about eighteen feet high, and taller than the sur- 

 rounding trees. They were growing at a con- 

 venient distance apart, and had evidently been 

 resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals 

 for a very long time, for the boles were polished to 

 a glassy smoothness with much rubbing, and the 

 ground beneath was trodden to a floor of clean, 

 loose yellow sand. This grove was on a hill 

 differing in shape from other hills in its neighbour- 

 hood, so that it was easy for me to find it on other 

 occasions ; and after a time I made a point of 

 finding and using it as a resting-place every day at 

 noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of 

 that one spot, sometimes going miles out of my way 

 to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one 

 of the millions of trees and bushes covering the 

 country, on any other hillside. I thought nothing 

 at all about it, but acted unconsciously ; only after- 

 wards, when revolving the subject, it seemed to me 

 that after having rested there once, each time I 

 wished to rest again the wish came associated with 

 the image of that particular clump of trees, with 

 polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath ; 



