166 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
fine myself to the subject of vision in savage and 
semi-barbarous men as compared with ours. 
Here again I recall an incident of my boyhood, 
and am not sure that it was not this that first gave 
me an interest in the subject. 
One summer day at home, I was attentively 
listening, out of doors, to a conversation between 
two men, both past middle life and about the same 
age, one an educated Englishman, wearing spectacles, 
the other a native, who was very impressive in his 
manner, and was holding forth in a loud authorita- 
tive voice on a variety of subjects. All at once he 
fixed his eyes on the spectacles worn by the other, 
and, bursting into a laugh, cried out, “‘ Why do 
you always wear those eye-hiding glasses straddled 
across your nose? Are they supposed to make a 
man look handsomer or wiser than his fellows, or 
do you, a sensible person, really believe that you 
can see better than another man because of them ? 
Tf so, then all I can say is that it is a fable, a delu- 
sion ; no man can believe such a thing.” 
He was only expressing the feeling that all per- 
sons of his class, whose lives are passed in the 
semi-barbarous conditions of the gauchos on the 
pampas, experience at the sight of such artificial 
helps to vision as spectacles. They look through a 
pane of common glass, and it makes the view no 
clearer, but rather dimmer—how can the two 
diminutive circular panes carried before the eyes 
produce any other effect? Besides, their sight as a 
rule is good when they are young, and as they pro- 
