118 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
the feeling does not last, and is speedily forgotten, 
or else set down as an effect of mere novelty. In 
Melville it was very strong; it stirred him deeply, 
and caused him to ponder with awe on its meaning ; 
and the conclusion he came to was that it is an 
instinct in us—an instinct similar to that of the 
horse with regard to the smell of some animal 
which has the effect of violently agitating it. He 
calls it an inherited experience. ‘‘ Nor, in some 
things,” he says, ‘‘ does the common hereditary ex- 
perience of all mankind fail to bear witness to the 
supernaturalism of this hue.” Finally, the feeling 
speaks to us of appalling things in a remote past, 
of unimaginable desolations, and stupendous cala- 
mities overwhelming the race of man. 
It is a sublime conception, adequately expressed ; 
and as we read the imagination pictures to us the 
terrible struggle of our hardy barbarous progenitors 
against the bitter killing cold of the last glacial 
period ; but the picture is vague, like striving human 
figures in a landscape half obliterated by wind- 
driven snow. It was a struggle that endured for 
long ages, until the gigantic white phantom, from 
which men sought everywhere to fly, came to be a 
phantom of the mind, a spectralness over the fancy, 
and instinctive horror, which the surviving remnant 
transmitted by inheritance down to our own distant 
times. 
It is more than likely that cold has been one of 
the oldest and deadliest enemies to our race; never- 
theless, I reject Melville’s explanation in favour of 
