a5 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
ness, and sometimes makes them mad with joy, hike 
animals newly escaped from captivity. And, for a 
similar reason, the civilized life is one of continual 
repression, although it may not seem so until a 
glimpse of nature’s wildness, a taste of adventure, 
an accident, suddenly makes it seem unspeakably 
irksome ; and in that state we feel that our loss in 
departing from nature exceeds our gain. 
It was elation of this kind, the feeling experienced 
on going back to a mental condition we have out- 
grown, which I had in the Patagonian solitude; for 
I had undoubtedly gone back ; and that state of in- 
tense watchfulness, or alertness rather, with suspen- 
sion of the higher intellectual faculties, represented 
the mental state of the pure savage. He thinks 
little, reasons little, having a surer guide in his in- 
stinct; he is in perfect harmony with nature, and is 
nearly on a level, mentally, with the wild animals 
he preys on, and which in their turn sometimes 
prey on him. If the plains of Patagonia affect a 
person in this way, even in a much less degree than 
in my case, it is not strange that they impress them- 
selves so vividly on the mind, and remain fresh in 
memory, and return frequently ; while other scenery, 
however grand or beautiful, fades gradually away, 
and is at last forgotten. To a slight, in most cases 
probably a very slight, extent, all natural sights and 
sounds affect us in the same way; but the,effect is 
often transitory, and is gone with the first shock of 
pleasure, to be followed in some cases by a profound 
and mysterious melancholy. The greenness of 
