226 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
as historical memory in us, it is not strange that the 
sweetest moment in any life, pleasant or dreary, 
should be when Nature draws near to it, and, taking 
up her neglected instrument, plays'a fragment of 
some ancient melody, long unheard on the earth. 
t might be asked: If nature has at times this 
peculiar effect on us, restoring instantaneously the 
old vanished harmony between organism and environ- 
ment, why should it be experienced in a greater 
degree in the Patagonian desert than in other 
solitary places,—a desert which is waterless, where 
animal voices are seldom heard, and vegetation is 
grey instead of green? I can only suggest a reason 
for the effect being so much greater in my own 
case. In sub-tropical woods and thickets, and in 
wild forests in temperate regions, the cheerful ver- 
dure and bright colours of flower and insects, if we 
have acquired a habit of looking closely at these 
things, and the melody and noises of bird-life 
engages the senses ; there is movement and bright- 
ness; new forms, animal and vegetable, are con- 
tinually appearing, curiosity and expectation are 
excited, and the mind is so much occupied with 
novel objects that the effect of wild nature in its 
entirety is minimized. In Patagonia the monotony 
of the plains, or expanse of low hills, the universal 
unrelieved greyness of everything, and the absence 
of animal forms and objects new to the eye, leave 
the mind open and free to receive an impression of 
visible nature as a whole. One gazes on the pro- 
spect as on the sea, for it stretches away sea-like, 
