6 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
they stooped to rest their wings, or heard far off 
“wailing their way from cloud to cloud,” impelled 
by that mysterious thought-baffling faculty, so un- 
like all other phenomena in its manifestations as to 
give it among natural things something of the 
supernatural. Some of these wanderers, more 
especially such as possess only a partial or limited 
migration, I hoped to meet again in Patagonia, 
singing their summer songs, and breeding in their 
summer haunts. It was also my hope to find some 
new species, some bird as beautiful, let us say, as 
the wryneck or wheatear, and as old on the earth, 
but which had never been named and never 
ever seen by any appreciative human eye. I do 
not know how it is with other ornithologists at the 
time when their enthusiasm is greatest; of myself 
I can say that my dreams by night were often of 
some new bird, vividly seen; and such dreams 
were always beautiful to me, and a grief to wake 
from; yet the dream-bird often as not appeared 
in a modest grey colouring, or plain brown, or some 
other equally sober tint. 
From the summit of the sandy ridge we saw before 
us an undulating plain, bounded only by the horizon, 
carpeted with short grass, seared by the summer 
suns, and sparsely dotted over with a few sombre- 
leafed bushes. It was a desert that had been a 
desert always, and for that very reason sweet beyond 
all scenes to look upon, its ancient quiet broken 
only by the oceasional call or twitter of some small 
bird, while the morning air I inhaled was made 
