92 Ldle Days in Patagonia. 
fruit. He may cut them down in the morning, in the 
night time they will grow again. With her beloved 
weeds she will wear out his spirit and break his 
heart; she will sit still at a distance and laugh 
while he grows weary of the hopeless struggle; and, 
at last, when he is ready to faint, she will go forth 
once more and blow her trumpet on the hills and 
call her innumerable children to come and fall on 
and destroy him utterly. 
This is no mere fancy portrait, for Nature herself 
sat for it in the desert, and it is painted in true 
colours. Such is the contest the settler embarks 
in—so various in its fortunes, so full of great and 
sudden vicissitudes, calling for so much vigilance 
and strategy on his part. Ifthe dreams he sets out 
with are never realized, he is no worse off in this 
respect than others. To one, born and bred on the 
plains, the distant mountain range is ever a region 
of enchantment; when he reaches it the glory is no 
more; the opalescent tints and blue ethereal shadows 
of noon, the violet hues of the sunset have vanished. 
There is nothing after all but a rude confusion of 
piled rocks ; but although this is not what he ex- 
pected, he ends by preferring the mountain’s rough- 
ness to the monotony of the plain. The man who 
finishes his course by a fall from his horse, or is 
swept away and drowned when fording a swollen 
stream, has, in most cases, spent a happier life 
than he who dies of apoplexy in a counting-house 
er dining-room ; or, who, finding that end which 
seemed so infinitely beautiful to Leigh Hunt (which 
