The Plains of Patagonia. 2 1 9 



mind is clearer than it has ever been ; the nerves 

 are steel ; there is nothing felt but a wonderful 

 strength and fury and daring. Looking back at 

 certain perilous moments in my own life, I remember 

 them with a kind of joy ; not that there was any 

 joyful excitement then, but because they brought 

 me a new experience a new nature, as it were 

 and lifted me for a time above myself. And yet, 

 comparing myself with other men, I find that on 

 ordinary occasions my courage is rather below than 

 above the average. And probably this instinctive 

 courage, which flashes out so brightly on occasions, 

 is inherited by a very large majority of the male 

 children born into the world ; only in civilized life 

 the exact conjuncture of circumstances needed to 

 call it into activity rarely occurs. 



In hunting, again, instinctive impulses come very 

 much to the surface. Leech caricatured Gallic 

 ignorance of fox-hunting in England when he made 

 his French gentleman gallop over the hounds and 

 dash away to capture the fox himself ; but the 

 sketch may be also taken as a comic illustration of 

 a feeling that exists in every one of us. If any 

 sportsman among my readers has ever been con- 

 fronted with some wild animal a wild dog, a pig, 

 or cat, let us say when he had no firearm or other 

 weapon to kill it in the usual civilized way, and has 

 nevertheless attacked it, driven by a sudden uncon- 

 trollable impulse, with a hunting knife, or anything 

 that came to hand, and has succeeded in slaying it, 

 I would ask such a one whether this victory did not 



