28 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
some vampire bats, as Darwin remarks; and that 
the horror they excite in us is due to this resem- 
blance ; what he failed to see was that it is the ex- 
pression rather than the shape that horrifies. For 
in these creatures it simulates such expressions as 
excite fear and abhorrence in our own species, or 
pity so intense as to be painful—ferocity, stealthy, 
watchful malignity, a set look of anguish or des- 
pair, or some dreadful form of insanity. Someone 
has well and wisely said that there is no ugliness in 
us except the expression of evil thoughts and 
passions; for these do most assuredly write them- 
selves onthe countenance. Looking at a serpent of 
this kind, and I have looked at many a one, the 
fancy is born in me that I am regarding what was 
once a fellow-being, perhaps one of those cruel 
desperate wretches I have encountered on the out- 
skirts of civilization, who for his crimes has been 
changed into the serpent form, and cursed with 
immortality. ie 
Asa rule the deceptive resemblances and self- 
plagiarisms of nature, when we light by chance on 
them, give us only pleasure, heightened by wonder 
or a sense of mystery ; but the case of this serpent 
forms an exception: in spite of the tenderness I 
cherish towards the entire ophidian race, the sensa- 
tion is not agreeable. 
To return. My friend made a fire to boil water, 
and after we had had some breakfast, he galloped 
off once more in a new direction ; he had at last re- 
