214 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
the midst of that universal unrelieved greyness. 
Descending from my look-out, I would take up my 
aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations 
to gaze on the same landscape from another point ; 
and so on for hours, and at noon I would dismount 
and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or 
longer. One day, in these rambles, I discovered a 
small grove composed of twenty to thirty trees, 
about eighteen feet high, and taller than the sur- 
rounding trees. ‘They were growing at a con- 
venient distance apart, and had evidently been 
resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals 
for a very long time, for the boles were polished to 
a glassy smoothness with much rubbing, and the 
ground beneath was trodden to a floor of clean, 
loose yellow sand. This grove was on a hill 
differing in shape from other hills in its neighbour- 
hood, so that it was easy for me to find it on other 
occasions; and after a time I made a point of 
finding and using it as a resting-place every day at 
noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of 
that one spot, sometimes going miles out of my way 
to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one 
of the millions of trees and bushes covering the 
country, on any other hillside. I thought nothing 
at all about it, but acted unconsciously ; only after- 
wards, when revolving the subject, it seemed to me 
that after having rested there once, each time I 
wished to rest again the wish came associated with 
the image of that particular clump of trees, with 
polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath ; 
