172 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
general blueness obscuring all things, but in which, 
to him, every object stands out with wonderful 
clearness, and plainly tells its story. 
All this may sound very trite, very trivial, and 
matter of common knowledge—so common as to be 
known to every schoolboy, and to the boy that 
goeth not to school; yet it is because this simple 
familiar fact has been ignored, or has not always 
been borne in mind by our masters, that they have 
taught us an error, namely, that savages are our 
superiors in visual power, and that the difference 
is so great that ours is a dim decaying sense com- 
pared with their brilliant faculty, and that only 
when we survey the prospect through powerful 
field-glasses do we rise to their level, and see the 
world as they see it. The truth is that the savage 
sight is no better than ours, although it might seem 
natural enough to think the contrary, on account 
of their simple natural life in the desert, which is 
always green and restful to the eye, or supposed to 
be so; and because they have no gas nor even 
candlelight to irritate the visual nerve, and do 
themselves no injury by poring over miserable 
books. 
Possibly, then, the beginning of the error was in 
this preconceived notion, that greenness and the 
absence of artificial light, with other conditions of 
a primitive life, keep the sight from deteriorating. 
The eye’s adaptiveness did not get sufficient credit. 
We know how the muscles may be developed by 
training, that the blacksmith and prizefighter have 
