gO Idle Days in Patagonia. 
more to level the ancient trees, to invert the soil, 
and pasture his herds on her grasses and flowers. 
He will subdue the wild thing at last, but not yet ; 
many years will she struggle to retain her ancient 
sweet supremacy ; he cannot alter all at once the 
old order to which she clings tenaciously, as the red 
man to his savage life. Her attempt to frighten him 
away has failed. He laughs at her mask of terrors 
—he knows that it is only a mask ; and it suffocates 
her and cannot be long endured. She will cast it 
aside and fight him another way. She will stoop 
to his yoke and be docile only to betray and defeat 
him at the last. A thousand strange tricks and 
surprises will she invent to molest him. Ina hun- 
dred forms she will buzz in his ears and prick his 
flesh with stings; she will sicken him with the 
perfume of flowers, and poison him with sweet 
honey ; and when he lies down to rest, she will 
startle him with the sudden apparition of a pair of 
lidless eyes and a flickering forked tongue. He 
scatters the seed, and when he looks for the green 
heads to appear, the earth opens, and lo, an army 
of long-faced, yellow grasshoppers come forth! 
She, too, walking invisible at his side had scattered 
her miraculous seed along withhis. He will not be 
beaten by her, he slays her striped and spotted 
creatures ; he dries up her marshes; he consumes 
her forests and prairies with fire, and her wild things 
perish in myriads ; he covers her plains with herds 
of cattle, and waving fields of corn, and orchards of 
fruit-bearing trees. She hides her bitter wrath in 
