86 Tale Days in Patagonia. 
have come to the end of my tether,” instantly all the 
smiling faces surrounding him will vanish as if by 
magic; that the few sovereigns remaining in his 
pocket at any time are as a chain, shortened each 
day by a link, holding him back from some terrible 
destiny. . . . Let us delay no longer in this moral 
place of skulls, but follow that wise and sturdy 
youth who, wrapping his cloak about his face, passes 
unharmed through the poisonous atmosphere of the 
landing-place, and hurries a thousand miles away, 
while ever 
Before him, like a blood-red flag, 
flutters and shines the dream that lures him on. 
And now at his journey’s end comes reality to lay 
rude hands on him with rough shaking. Meanwhile, 
before he has quite recovered from the shock, that 
red flag on which his dreamy eyes have been so long 
fixed stays not, but travels on and on to disappear at 
last like a sunset cloud in the distant horizon. He 
does not miss it greatly after all. The actual is 
much in his thoughts. When a man is buffeting the 
waves he does not curiously examine the landscape 
before him and complain that there are no bright 
flowers on the trees. New experience takes the 
place of vanished dreams, which, like water-lilies, 
blossom only on stagnant pools. Here are none of 
the innumerable appliances to secure comfort he has 
been used to from infancy, regarding them almost 
as spontaneous productions of the earth; no hand 
to perform a hundred necessary offices, so that this 
