20 Idle Days tn Patagonia. 
I caught nothing, and found out nothing; never- 
theless, these days of enforced idleness were not 
unhappy. And after leaving my room, hobbling 
round with the aid of a stout stick, and sitting in 
houses, I consorted with men and women, and 
listened day by day to the story of their small 
un-avian affairs, until it began to interest me. But 
not too keenly. I could always quit them without 
regret to lie on the green sward, to gaze up into the 
trees or the blue sky, and speculate on all imagi- 
nable things. The result was that when no longer 
any excuse for inaction existed use had bred a habit 
in me—the habit of indolence, which was quite 
common among the people of Patagonia, and ap- 
peared to suit the genial climate; and this habit 
and temper of mind I retained, with occasional 
slight relapses, during the whole period of my 
stay. 
Our waking life is sometimes like a dream, which 
proceeds logically enough until the stimulus of 
some new sensation, from without or within, throws 
it into temporary confusion, or suspends its 
action; after which it goes on again, but with fresh 
characters, passions, and motives, and a changed 
argument. 
After feasting on cherries, and resting at the 
estaucia, or farm, where we first touched the shore, 
we went on to the small town of El Carmen, which 
has existed since the last century, and is built on 
the side of a hill, or bluff, facing the river. On the 
