The Plains of Patagonia. 231 



this exceedingly complex state, in wliich we appear 

 to be so effectually " hedged in from harm." I recall 

 here an incident witnessed by a friend of mine of 

 an Indian he and his fellow-soldiers were pursuing 

 who might easily have escaped unharmed ; but when 

 his one companion was thrown to the ground through 

 his horse falling, the first Indian turned deliberately, 

 sprang to the earth, and, standing motionless by 

 the other's side, received the white men's bullets. 

 Not for love — it would be absurd to suppose such 

 a thing — but inspired by that fierce instinctive spirit 

 of defiance which in some cases will actually cause 

 a man to go out of his way to seek death. Why 

 are we, children of light — the light which makes us 

 timid — so strongly stirred by a deed like this, so 

 useless and irrational, and feel an admiration so 

 great that compared with it that wliich is called 

 forth by the noblest virtue, or the highest achieve- 

 ment of the intellect, seems like a pale dim feeling ? 

 It is because in our inmost natures, our deepest 

 feelings, we are still one with the savage. We 

 admire a Grordon less for his godlike qualities — his 

 spirituality, and crystal purity of heart, and justice, 

 and love of his kind — than for that more ancient 

 nobility, the qualities he had in common with the 

 wild man of childish intellect, an old Viking, a 

 fighting Colonel Burnaby, a Captain Webb who 

 madly flings his life away, a vulgar Welsh prize- 

 fighter who enters a den full of growling lions, and 

 drives them before him like frightened sheep. It is 

 due to this instinctive savage spirit in us, in spite 



