240 



Idle Days in Patagonia. 



miracle. For a space of time so short that if it 

 could be measured it would probably be found to 

 occupy no more than a fraction of a second, I am 

 no longer in an English garden recalling and con- 

 sciously thinking about that vanished past, but 

 during that brief moment time and space seem 

 annihilated and the past is now. I am again on 

 the grassy pampas, where I have been sleeping 



Wakening at Dawn. 



very soundly under the stars, would that I could 

 now sleep as soundly nnder a roof ! It is the 

 moment of wakening, when my eyes are just opening 

 to the pure over-arching sky, flushed in its eastern 

 half with tender colour ; and at the moment that 

 nature thus reveals itself to my vision in its ex- 

 quisite morning beauty and freshness, I am sensible 

 of the subtle primrose perfume in the air. The 



