42 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



to me, and for a while T saw nature as the savage sees 

 it, and as he saw it in that stone age I pondered over, 

 only without the suj^ernaturalism that has so large 

 a place in his mind. By taking thought I am con- 

 vinced that we can make no progress in this direc- 

 tion, simply because we cannot voluntarily escape 

 from our own personality, our environment, our 

 outlook on Nature. 



Not only were my efforts idle, but merely to 

 think on the subject sometimes had the effect of 

 l)ringing a shadow, a something of melancholy, over 

 my mind, the temper Avliicli is fatal to investigation, 

 causing " all things to droop and languisli." In 

 such a mood I would make my way to one of the 

 half-a-dozen ancieut burial-places existing in the 

 neighbourhood of the house I was staying at. As a 

 preference I would go to the largest and most popu- 

 lous, where half an acre of earth was strewn thick 

 with crumbling skeletons. Here by searching 

 closely a few arrow-heads and ornaments, that had 

 been interred with the dead, could also be ibund. 

 And here I Avould sit and walk about on the hot 

 barren yellow sand — the faithless sand to which the 

 bitter secret had so long ago been vainly entrusted ; 

 careful in walking not to touch an exposed skull 

 with my foot, although the hoof of the next wild 

 thing that passed would shatter it to pieces like a 

 vessel of fragile glass. The polished intensely white 

 surfaces of such skulls as had been longest exposed 

 to the sun reflected the noonday light so powerfully 

 that it almost pained the eyes to look at them. In 



