58 Idle Days mm Patagonia. 
a heifer took to the water and succeeded in swim- 
ming to the island, where she was lost to her owner. 
About a year later this animal was seen by a man 
who had gone to the island to cut rushes for thatch- 
ing purposes. The cow and the pigs, to the number 
of about twenty-five or twenty-six, were lying fast 
asleep in a small grassy hollow where he found them, 
the cow stretched out at full length on the ground, 
and the pigs grouped or rather heaped round her; 
for they were all apparently ambitious to rest with 
their heads pillowed on her, so that she was almost 
concealed under them. Presently one of the drove, 
more wakeful than his fellows, became aware of his 
presence and gave the alarm, whereupon they started 
up lke one animal and vanished into a rush-bed. 
The cow, thus doomed to live “alone, yet not 
alone,” was subsequently seen on several occasions 
by the rush-cutters, always with her fierce followers 
grouped round her like a bodyguard. This con- 
tinued for some years, and the fame of the cow that 
had become the leader and queen of the wild island 
pigs was spread abroad in the valley; then a human 
being, who was not a “ sentimentalist,” betook him- 
self to her little kingdom with a musket loaded with 
ball, and succeeded in finding and shooting her. 
In spite of what we have been taught, it is some- 
times borne in on us that man is a little lower than 
the brutes. 
After hearing this incident one does not at once 
sit down with a good appetite to roast beef or swine’s 
flesh. 
