John Bell Hatcher— Schuchert. 137 
at high water, is covered by the sea or drenched with the 
spray of a perpetual and tremendous surf. 
"Scanty grasses with stunted shrubbery in occasional 
patches are characteristic of these vast and silent stretches, 
redolent of loneliness which grips the imagination. 
"In the narrow canyons, or by the rivers in broad val- 
leys of erosion, the traveler may come upon green spaces 
where the vegetation breaks into a joyous luxuriance, 
where birds abound, and deer and other animals meet man 
with fearless curiosity. Here the eye may search in vain 
for a limit to a basaltic desert extending in flat and stern 
monotony for leagues beyond the visible horizon. There 
some broad salt pan with deceptive mirage mimics the pre- 
historic lake of which it forms the dregs. At times 
wrapped in gloomy fogs or swept by tempests of incredible 
violence ; fronting the towering Atlantic surges with un- 
shaken clififs and serrate talus, looking out to shifting bars 
of sand, the terror of the navigator ; a vast cemetery for 
ghostly herds upon the like of which alive no man has ever 
gazed; it is a strange, silent, bitter, lonely land. 
"How our author went out into it, what he met, and 
how he fared, are told in modest yet most interesting 
fashion in this stately quarto. His story is so interesting 
and the unpretentious courage of the narrator so evident, 
the spirit of the land and its mysterious fascination so fully 
expressed, that few will close the book without a regret 
that it can not reach a wider audience. It is really too 
good to be reserved for the readers of quartos. 
"The volume is so full of scientific meat that it is diffi- 
cult to make a satisfactory abstract, and impossible to con- 
dense it within the limits of such a review as this. There 
is something for every taste. The life of bird and beast; 
the phases and contrasts of vegetation ; the life of the 
Tehuelche Indians and the waifs who have cast civilization 
aside like a garment, at the call of the wild; the topo- 
graphy and geology; and mingled with it all a flavor of real 
North American character to which something in each 
reader's soul will leap with sympathy and admiration." 
In character Hatcher was a very plain, unassuming, 
hard working, resourceful man. — honest, devoted, fearless, 
