u^ SHIP'S LIBRARY, LANCASTE U. S. S. LANCASTER. 'J- (' ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY THE GIFT Ol- Mrs. P.C. Bibbee Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924022547909 ibMj^'"^ jS^ Dr. & Mrs. f . C. Iibb«# Pox 65 Athens, WjLst Virgin|o IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA. ■y/t?'.'' Eiliiion consists of 1750 C^'-pies. Januarij, 1893. ' AT LAST, TATAGONIA ! Front ispifice^ IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONLi W. H. HUDSON, C.M.Z.S. AUTHOR OF "THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA;" AXH JOINT AUTHOR OV " ARGENTINE 01!N ITHOLOC V." .*%i /- VL, /^/ -^fc^'S JiTtlNOCUyPTA LAKCrOLATA, ILLUSTRATED BY ALFRED HARTLEY AND J- SMIT. NEW YOKK D. APTLETON AND COMTANY [ lahn' / / 3 PAG R CONTENTS. CHAPTER r. At Last, Patagonia !.......! CHAPTEE II. How I BECAME AN IdLER 18 CHAPTER III. Valley op the Black Rivek ...... .31 CHAPTER lY. Aspects op the Valley ....... 44 CHAPTER V. A Dog in Exile 59 CHAPTER VI. The War with Nature 75 CPIAPTER VII. Life in Patagonia ........ 94 CHAPTER VIII. Snow, and the Quality of Whiteness . . . .Ill CHAPTER IX. Idle Days 125 vi Contents. CHAPTER X. PAGE Bird Music is South America . . . . .145 CHAPTER XJ. Sight in Savages . . . . . . . .104 CHAPTER XII. CONCERNIKG Eye.S ........ 185 CHAPTER XIIL The Plain's of Patagonia ...... 20G CHAPTER XIA\ The Perfume of an Evening Primrose .... i!35 LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. At last, Patagonia ! . Ehinocrypta lanceolata Our Captain Chaiiar trees Serpent with a Cross Swallows congregating An Indian burial-place The river by moonlight Black vulture . Cow and pigs . Major and the flamingo Upland geese . Pamian gives himself up Damian's wife . Snow at El Carmen . A milky sea Ctenomys magellanica Calodromus elegans . Dolichotes patagonica Calandria mocking-bird Cyphorliinus cantans Gaucho with spectacles Viewing a distant object Magellanic eagle owl The Plains of Patagonia The evening primrose Wakening at dawn . PAGE Fnmtifpiece Title page 4 16 2C 32 41 45 r-,0 I Jac- I lac pice 6G 80 104 109 113 122 132 135 144 147 160 168 176 193 213 236 240 The greatest part of the chapter ou " Sight in Savages " appeared originally in Lon(jmiin's Mmja- zinc ; the chapter entitled " The Plains of Patagonia " is reprinted, with but little alteration, from The Unicefsal Iievirw. Of the other twelve chapters contained in this woi"k, six are based on papers which have appeared in various periodicals. IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA CHAPTER I. AT LAST, TATAGONIA ! The wind had blown a gale all night, and I had been hourly expecting that the tumbhng, storm- vexed old steamer, in which I had taken passage to the Rio Negro, would turn over once for all and settle down beneath that tremendous tumult of waters. For the groaning sound of its straining timbers, and the engine throbbing like an over- tasked human heart, had made the ship seem a living tiling to me ; and it was tired of the struggle, and under the tumult was peace. But at about three o'clock in the morning the wind began to moderate, and, taking off coat and boots, I threw myself into my bunk for a little sleej:). Ours, it must be said, was a very curious boat, reported ancient and much damaged; long and narrow in shape, like a Viking's ship, with the passengers' cabins ranged like a row of small wooden cottages on the deck : it was as ugly to look at as it was said to be unsafe to voyage in. To make matters worse our captain, a man over B 2 Idle Days in Palas^onia. eighty years old, was lying in liis cabin sick unto death, for, as a fact, he died not many days after our mishap ; our one mate was asleep, leaving only the men to navigate the steamer o\\ that perilous coast, and in the darkest hour of a tem- pestuous night. ,T was just dropping into a doze when a succes- sion of bumps, accompanied by strange grating and grinding noises, and shuddering motions of the ship, caused me to start up again and rush to the cabin door. The night was still black and starless, with wind and rain, l3ut for acres round us the sea was whiter than milk, T did not step out; close to me, lialf-way between my cabin door and the bulwarks, where our onlj^ boat was fastened, three of the sailors were standing together talking in low tones. " We are lost," I heard one say ; and another answer, "Ay, lost for ever!" Just then the mate, roused from sleep, came running to them. " Good Clod, what have you done with the steamer!" he exclaimed sharply; then, dropping his voice, he added, " Lower the boat — quick! " I crept out and stood, unseen Ijy them in the obscurity, within five feet of the group. Not a thought of the dastardly character of the act they were about to engage in — for it was their intention to save themselves and leave us to our fate — entered my mind at the time. jMy only thought was that at the last moment, when they would be unable to prevent it except by knocking me sense- less, T would spring with them into the boat and Af Lasf, Patagonia ! 3 save myself, or else perish with them in that awful white surf. But one other person, more experienced than myself, and whose courage took another and better form, was also near and listening. He was the first engineer — a young Englishman from New- castle-on-Tyne. Seeing the men making for the boat, he slipped out of the engine-room, revolver in hand, and secretly followed them ; and when the mate gave that order, he stepped forward with the weapon raised, and said in a quiet but determined voice that he would shoot the first man who should attempt to obey it. The men slunk away and disappeared in the gloom. In a few moments more the passengers began streaming out on to the deck in a great state of alarm ; last of all the old cap- tain, white and hollow-eyed from his death-bed, appeared like a ghost among us. He had not been long" standing: there, with arms folded on his chest, issuing no word of command, and paying no atten- tion to the agitated questions addressed to him by the passengers, when, by some lucky chance, the steamer got off the rocks and plunged on for a space through the seething, milky surf ; then, very suddenly, passed out of it into black and com- paratively calm water. For ten or twelve minutes she sped rapidly and smoothly on ; then it was said that she had ceased to move, that we were stuck fast in the sand of the shore, although no shore was visible in the intense darkness, and to me it seemed that we were still moving swiftly on. There was no longer any wind, and through the Idle Davs ill Pataoonia. now fast-breaking clouds ahead of us appeared the first welcome signs of dawn. By degrees the dark- ness grew less intense ; only just ahead of us there still remained somethino;- black and unchangeable — a portion, as it Avere, of that pitchy gloom that a s h o r t time before had m a d e sea and air appear one and indis- tinguishable; but as the light increased it changed not, and at last it was seen to be a range of low hills or dunes of sand scarcely a 1*4'^ stone's throw from I the ship's bows. It Avas true enough Our Caiitain. il j. ± ^ i that we were stuck fast in the sand ; and although this was a safer bed for the steamer than the jagged rocks, the position was still a ]ierilous one, and I at once de- termined to land. Three other passengers resolved to bear me company ; and as the tide had now gone «df ^-li Last, Pataooiiia ! •3 out, aud the water at the bows was barely waist deep, we were lowered by means of ropes into the sea, and quickly waded to the shore. We were not long in scrambling up the dunes to get a sight of the country beyond. At last, Pata- gonia ! How often had I pictured in imagination, wishing with an intense longing to visit this soli- tary wilderness, resting far off in its primitive and desolate peace, untouched by man, remote from civilization ! There it lay full in sight before me — the unmarred desert that wakes strano^e feelino's o o in us ; tke ancient habitation of giants, whose foot- prints seen on the sea-shore amazed Magellan and his men, and won for it tlie name of Patagonia. There, too, far away in the interior, was the place called Trapalanda, and the spirit-guarded lake, on whose margin rose the battlements of that mysterious city, which many have sought and none have found. It was not, however, the fascination of old legends that drew me, nor the desire of the desert, for not until I had seen it, and had tasted its flavour, then, and on many subsequent occasions, did I know how much its solitude aud desolation would be to me, what strange knowledge it would teach, and liow^ enduring its effect would be on my spirit. Not these tilings, but the passion of the ornithologist took me. Many of the winged wan- derers with which I had been familiar from child- hood in La Plata were visitors, occasional or regular, from this grey wilderness of thorns. In some cases they were passengers, seen only when 6 Idle Days in Patagonia. they stooped to rest theiv wings, or heard far off " wailiug their way from cloud to cloud," impelled by that mysterious thought-baffling faculty, so un- like all other phenomena in its manifestations as to give it among natural things something of the supernatural. Some of these wanderers, more especially such as ^Dossess only a partial or limited migration, I hoped to meet again in Patagonia, singing their summer songs, and breeding in tlaeir summer haunts. It was also my hope to find some new species, some bird as beautiful, let us say, as the wryneck or wheatear, and as old on the earth, but which had never been named and never ever seen by any ap])reciative human eye. I do not know how it is with other ornithologists at the time when their enthusiasm is greatest ; of myself I can say that my dreams by night were often of some new bird, vividly seen ; and such dreams were always beautiful to me, and a grief to wake from ; yet the dream-bird often as not appeared in a modest grey colouring, or plain brown, or some other equally sober tint. From the summit of the sandy ridge we saw before us an undulating plain, bounded only by the horizon, carpeted with short grass, seared by the summer suns, and sparsely dotted over with a few sombre- leafed bushes. It was a desert that had been a desert always, and for that very reason sweet be^yond all scenes to look upon, its ancient quiet broken only bj' the occasional call or twitter of some small bird, while the moruing air I inhaled Avas made Af Last , Patao'onia ! o> delicious with a faint familiar perfume. Casting my e^yes down I perceived, growing in the saud at my feet, an evening primrose ^olant, witli at least a score of open blossoms on its low wide-spreading branches ; and this, my favourite flower, both in gardens and growing wild, was the sweet perfumer of the wilder- ness ! Its subtle fragrance, first and last, has been much to me, and has followed me from the New World to the Old, to serve sometimes as a kind of second more faithful memory, and to set my brains working on a pretty problem, to which I shall devote a chapter at the end of this ])ook. Our survey concluded, we set out in the direction of the Rio Negro. Before quitting the steamer the captain had spoken a few words to us. Looking at us as though he saw us not, he said that the ship had gone ashore somewhere north of the Rio Negro, about thirty miles he thought, and that we should doubtless find some herdsmen's huts on our way thither. No need then to burden ourselves with food and drink ! At first we kept close to the dunes that bordered the seashore, wading through a luxuriant growth of wild bquorice — a pretty plant about eighteen inches high, with deep green feathery foliage crowned wdth spikes of pale blue flowers. Some of the roots which we pulled up from the loose sandy soil were over nine feet in length. All the apothecaries in the world might have laid in a few years' supply of the drug from the plants we saw on that morning. To my mind there is nothing iu life so delightful S Idle Days in Patagonia. as that feeling of relief, of escape, and absolnte freedom wliicli one experiences in a vast solitude, wliere man lias perhaps never been, and has, at any rate, left no trace of his existence. It was strong and exhilarating in me on that morning ; and I was therefore by no meairs elated when we descried, some distance ahead, the low walls of half a dozen mud cabins. My fellow-travellers were, however, delighted at the discovery, and we hastened on, thinking that we were nearer to the settlement than we had supposed. But we found the huts un- inhabited, the doors broken down, the wells choked up and overgrown with wild liquorice plants. We learnt subsequently that a few venturesome herdsmen had made their home in this remote spot with their families, and that about a year before our visit the Indians had swept down on them and destroyed the young settlement. Very soon we turned our backs on the laiinod liovels, my com- panions loudly expressing their disappointment, while I felt secretly glad that we were vet to drink a little more deeply of the cup of wild nature. After walkiuo- on some distance we found a narrow path leading away southward from the ruined village, and, believing that it led direct to the Car- men, the old settlement on the Rio Negro, which is ovea' twenty miles from the sea, we at once resolved to follow it. This path led us wide of the ocean. Before noon we lost sight of the low sand-hills on our right hand, and as we penetrated further into the interior the dark-leafed l)ushes I have mentioned Af Last , Pafao'onia ! 9 were more abundant. The dense, stiff, dark-coloured foliage of these bushes give them a strange appear- ance on the pale sundried plains, as of black rocks of numberless fantastic forms scattered over the greyish-yellow ground. No large fowls were seen ; small birds were, however, very abundant, gladden- ing the parched Avilderness with their minstrelsy. Most noteworthy among the true songsters were the Patagoniau mocking bird and four or five finches, two of them new to me. Here I first made the acquaintance of a singular and very pretty bird — the red-breasted plant-cutter, a finch too, but only in appearance. It is a sedentary bii'd and sits conspicuouslj' on the topmost twig, displaying its ruddy under plumage ; occasionally emitting, by way of song, notes that resemble the faint bleatings of a kid, and, when disturbed, passing from bush to bush by a series of jerks, the wings produciug a loud humming sound. Most numerous, and sur- passing all others in interest, were the omnipresent Dendrocolaptine bird, or wood-hewers, or tree- creepers as they are sometimes called — feeble flyers, in uniform sober brown plumage ; restless in their habits and loquacious, with shrill and piercing, or clear resonant voices. One terresti'ial species, with a sandy-brown plumage, Upucerthia dumetoria, raced along before us on the ground, in appearance a stout miniature ibis with very short legs and exaggerated beak. Every bush had its little colony of brown gleaners, small birds of the genus Synal- laxis, moving restlessly about among the leaves. lo Idle Days in Patai^oina. occasionally suspending tliemselves from the twigs liead downwards, after the manner of tits. From the distance at intervals came the piercing cries of the cachalote (Homorus gnttnralis) a mnch larger bird, sounding like bursts of hysterical laughter. All these Dendrocolaptine birds have an inordinate passion for building, and their nests are very much larger than small birds usually make. Where they are abundant the trees and bushes are sometimes laden with their enormous fabrics, so that the thought is forced on one that these busy little archi- tects do assuredly occupy themselves with a vain unprofitaljle labour. It is not only the case that many a small bird builds a nest as big as a buzzard's, only to contain half a dozen eggs the size of peas, which might very comfortably be hatched in a pill- box; but frequentlj^ when the nest has been finished, the builder sets about demolishino- it to 2,'et the materials for constructing a second nest. One very common species, Anumbius acuticandatus, variously called in the vernacular the thorn-bird, the woodman, and the firewood-gatherer, sometiuies makes three nests in the course of a year, each com- posed of a good armful of sticks. The wooduian's nest is, however, an insignificant structure compared with that of the obstreperous cachalote mentioned a moment ago. This bird, which is about as large as a missel thrush, selects a low thorny bush with stout wide-spreading branches, and in the centre of it builds a domed nest of sticks, perfectly spherical and four or five feet deep. Tlie opening is at the Ai Las/, F'atagouia ! 1 1 side near the top, and leading to it tbere is a narrow ai'clied gallery resting on a horizontal branch, and abont fonrteen inches long. So compactly made is this enormous nest that T have fonnd it hard to break one up. T I]ave also stood upright on the dome and stamped on it with my boots without injuring it at all. During my stay in Patagonia I found about a dozen of these palatial nests ; and my opinion is that like our own houses, or, rather, our public buildings, and some ant-hills, and the vizcacha's village burrows, and the beaver's dam, it is made to last for ever. The only mammal we saw was a small armadillo, Dasypus minutus ; it was quite common, and early in the day, when we were still fresh and full of spirits, we amused ourselves by chasing them. We captured several, and one of my companions, an Italian, killed two and slung them over bis shoulder, remarking that we could cook and eat them if we grew hungry before reacliiug our destination. We were not much troubled with hungei', but towards noon we began to suffer somewhat from thirst. At midday we saw before us a low level plain, covered with long coarse grass of a dull yellowish-green colour. Here we hoped to find water, and before long we descried the white gleam of a lagoon, as we imagined, but on a nearer inspection the white- ness or appearance of water turned out to be only a salt efflorescence on a barren patch of ground. On this low plain it was excessively sultry; not a bush could be found to shelter us from the sun : all 12 Idle Days in Patagonia. was a monotonous desert of coarse yellowish grass, out of which rose, as we advanced, multitudes of mosquitoes, trumpeting a shrill derisive welcome. The glory of the morning that had so enchanted us at the outset had died out of nature, and the scene w^as almost hateful to look on. We were getting tired, too, but the heat and our thirst, and the intolerable fi fo fum of the ravenous mosquitoes would not suffer us to rest. In this desolate spot I discovered one object of interest in a singular little bird, of slender form and pale yellowish-brown colour. Perched on a stem alcove the grass it gave utterance at regular intervals to a clear, long, plaintive whistle, audible nearly a quarter of a mile au'ay ; and this one unmodulated note was its only song or call. When any attempt to approach it was made it would drop down into the grass, and conceal itself with a shyness very unusual in a desert place where small birds have never been persecuted by man. It might have been a wren, or tree-creeper, or reed-finch, or pipit; T could not tell, so jealously did it hide all its pretty secrets from me. The sight of a group of sand-hills, some two or three miles to our right, tempted us to turn aside from the narrow path we had followed for upwards of six liours : from the summit of these hills we hoped to be able to discover the end of our journey. On approaching the group we found that it formed part of a range stretcliing south and north as far as the eye could see. Concluding that we were now - // Last, Patagonia ! 13 close to tlic sea once more, wo agreed that oui- best ]ilan would be, after taking a refreshing bath, to follow the beach on to the month of the Rio Negro, wliere there was a pilot's house. An hour's walk brought us to the hill. Climbing to the top, what was our dismay at beholding not the open blue Atlantic we hiad so confidently expected to see, but an ocean of barren yellow sand-hills, extending away before us to where earth aud heaven mingled in azure mist ! I, however, had no right to repine now, as I had set out that morning desirous only of drinking from that wild cup, whicli is both bitter aud sweet to the taste. But I was certainly the greatest sufferer that day, as I had insisted on taking my large cloth poncho, and it proved a great burden to carry ; then my feet had become so swollen and painful, tlirough wearing heavy riding- boots, that I was at last compelled to pull off these impediments, and to travel barefooted on the hot sand and gravel. Turning our backs on the hills, we started, wearily enough, to seek the trail we had abandoned, directino: our course so as to strike it three or four miles in advance of the point wliere we had turned aside. Escaping from the long grass we again found gravelly, undulating plains, with scattered dark-leafed bushes, and troops of little singing and trilling birds. Armadilloes were also seen, but now they scuttled across our path with impunity, for we had no inclination to chase them. It was near sunset when we struck the path again ; but although 14 Idle Davs ill Patagonia. we Lad now been over twelve hours walking in the heat, without tasting food or water, we still struggled on. Only when it grew dark, and a sudden cold wind sprang up from the sea, making us feel stiff and sore, did we finally come to a halt. Wood was abundant, and we made a large fire, and the Italian roasted the two armadilloes he had patiently been carrying all day. They smelt very temptiug when done ; but I feared that the fat luscious meat would only increase the torturing thirst I suffered, and so while the others picked the bones I solaced myself with a pipe, sitting in pensive silence by the fire. Supper done, we stretched ourselves out by the fire, with nothing but my large poncho over us, and despite the hard- ness of our bed and the cold wind blowing over us, we succeeded in netting some refreshinsf sleep. At three o'clock in the morning we were up and on our way again, drowsy and footsore, but fortunately feeling less thirsty than on the previous day. When we had been walking half an hour there was a welcome indication of the approach of day — not in the sky, where the stars were still sparkling with midnight brilliancy, but far in advance of us a little bird broke out into a song marvellously sweet and clear. The song was re- peated at short intervals, and by-and-by it was taken up by other voices, until from every bush came such soft delicious strains that I was glad of all I had gone through in my long walk, since it had enaljlcd me to hear this exquisite melody of the At Last, Patagonia / 15 desert. This early morning singer is a cliarming grey and wliite finch, the Diuca minor, very com- mon in Patagonia, and the finest voiced of all the fringilline birds found there ; and that is saying a great deal. The diucas were sure prophets : before long the first pale streaks of light appeared in the east, but when the light grew we looked in vain for the long-wished river. The sun rose on the same great undulating plain, with its scattered sombre bushes and carpet of sere grass — that ragged carpet showing beneath it the barren sand and gravelly soil from ^vhich it draws its scanty subsistence. For upwards of six hours we rrudged doggedly on over this desert plain, suffering much from thirst and fatigue, but not daring to give ourselves rest. At length the aspect of the couutrj^ began to change : we were approaching the river settlement. The scantjr grass grew scantier, and the scrubby bushes looked as if thej^ had been browsed on ; our narrow path was also crossed at all angles by cattle tracts, and grew fainter as we proceeded, and finally disappeared altogether. A herd of cattle, slowly winding their way in long trains towards the open country, was then seen. Here, too, a pretty little tree called chaha (Gurliaca decorticans), began to get common, growing singly or in small groups. It was about ten to sixteen feet high, very graceful, with smooth polished green bole, and pale gr^ey- green mimosa foliage. It bears a golden fruit as big as a cherry, with a peculiar delightful flavour, 1 6 Idle Days in Pa/a(;vnia. but it was not yet the season for ripe fruits, and its l:)ranches were laden only with the great nests of the industrious woodman. Though it was now the end of December and past the eg^s, season, in my craving for a (]rop of moisture I began to ]>ulldowu and demolish the nests — no light task, considering how large and compactlj^ made they were. I was rewarded for my ]3ains ])y finding tliree little pearly-white eggs, and, feeling grateful for small mercies, I (jnickly broke them on my parched tongue. Half an hour later, about eleven o'clock, as we Clianar tree.^ At Last, Patagonia ! 17 slowly dragged on, a mounted luau appeared driv- ing a small troop of horses towards the river. We hailed him, and he rode up to us, and informed us that we wore onl}^ about a mile from the river, and after hearing our story he proceeded to catch horses for us to ride. Springing on to their bare backs we followed him at a swinging gallop over that last happy mile of our long journey. We came very suddenly to the end, for on emerging from the thickets of dwarf thorn trees through which we had ridden in single file the magnificent Eio Negro lay before us. Never river seemed fairer to look upon : broader than the Thames at Westminster, and extending away on either hand until it melted and was lost in the blue horizon, its low shores clothed in all the glory of groves and fruit orchards and vine3mrds and fields of ripening maize. Far out in the middle of the swift blue current floated flocks of black-necked swans, their white plumage shining lil^e foam in the sun- light ; while just beneath us, scarcely a stone's throw off, stood the thatched farmhouse of our conductor, the smoke curling up peacefully from the kitchen chimney. A grove of large old cherry trees, in which the house was embowered, added to the cliaimi of the picture; and as we rode down to the gate we noticed the fully ripe cherries glowing like live coals amid the deep green foliage. CHAPTER ir. now I EEOAME AN ILiLEK. If tilings liad gone well 'witli me, if I bad spent my twelve months on the Rio Negro, as I had meant to do, watching and listening to the birds of that district, these desnltorj chapters, which might be described as a record of what I did not do, would never have been written. For T should have been wholly occupied with my special task, moving in a groove too full of delights to allow of its being left, even for an occasional run and taste of liberty ; and seeing one class of objects too well would have made all others look distant, obscure, and of little interest. But it was not to be as I had planned it. An acci- dent, to be described by-and-by, disabled me for a period, and the winged jDeople could no longer be followed with secret steps to their haunts, and their actions watched through a leafy screen. Lying helpless on my back through the long sultry mid- summer days, with the white-washed walls of my room for landscape and horizon, and a score or two of buzzing house-flies, perpetually engaged in their intricate airy dance, for only compan}^, I was forced to think on a great variety of subjects, and to occupy my mind with other problems than that of Hoiv I became an Idler. 1 9 migration. These other problems, too, were in many Avays like the flies that shared my apartment, and yet always remained strangers to me, as I to them, since between their minds and mine a great gulf was fixed. Small un painful riddles of the earth ; flitting, sylph-hke things, that began life as abstractions, and developed, like imago from mag- got, into entities : I always flitting among them, as they performed their mazy dance, whirling in circles, falling and rising, poised motionless, then suddenly cannoning against me for an instant, mocking my power to grasp them, and darting oft' again at a tangent. BaiBed I would drop out of tloe game, like a tired fly that goes back to his perch, but like the resting, restive fly I would soon turn towards them again ; perhaps to see them all wheeling in a closer order, describing new fantastic figures, with swifter motions, their forms turned to thin black lines, crossing and recrossing in every direction, as if they liad all comljined to write a series of strange characters in the air, all forming a strange sentence — the secret of secrets ! Happily for the progress of knowledge only a very few of these fascinating elusive insects of the brain can appear before us at the same time : as a rule we fix our attention on a single individual, like a falcon amid a flight of pigeons or a countless army of small field finches ; or a dragon-fly in the thick of a cloud of mos- quitoes, or infinitesimal sand-flies. Hawk and dragon-fly would starve if they tried to capture, or even regarded, more than one at a time. 20 Idle Days in Paiaqonia. I caught nothing, and found out nothing ; never- theless, these days of enforced idleness were not unhappy. And after leaving my room, hobbling round with the aid of a stout stick, and sitting in houses, I consorted with men and women, and listened day by day to the story of their small nn-avian affairs, until it began to interest me. But not too keenly. I could always quit them without regret to lie on the green sward, to gaze up into the trees or the blue sky, and speculate on all imagi- nable things. The result was that Avlien no longer any excuse for inaction existed use had bred a habit in me — the habit of indolence, which was quite common among the people of Patagonia, and ap- peared to suit the genial climate ; and this habit and temper of mind I retained, with occasional slight relapses, during the whole ])eriod of my stay. Our waking life is sometimes like a dream, which proceeds logically enough until the stimulus of some new sensation, from without or within, throws it into temporary confusion, or suspends its action; after which it goes on again, but Avith fresh characters, passions, and motives, and a changed argument. After feasting on cherries, and resting at the estaucia, or farm, where we hrst touched the shore, we went on to the small town of El Carmen, which has existed since the last century, and is built on the side of a hill, or bluff, facing the river. On the Hoiv I became an Idler. 2 1 opposite shore, where tliere is no cliil nor high bank, and the low level green valley extends back four or five miles to the grej barren uplands, there is another small town called La Merced. In these two settlements I spent about a fortnight, and then, in company with a young Englishman, -who had been one or two years in the colony, I started for an eighty miles' ride up the river. Half way to our destination we put up at a small log hut, which my companion had himself built a year before ; but finding, too late, that the ground would produce nothing, he had lately abandoned it, leaving his tools and other belongings locked up in the place. A curious home and repository was this same little rude cabin. Tlie interior was just roomy enough to enable a man of my height (six feet) to stand upright and swing a cat in without knocking out its brains against the upright rough-barked willow-posts that made the walls. Yet within this limited space Avas gathered a store of weapons, tackle, and tools, sufficient to have enabled a small colony of ]nen to fight the wilderness and found a citv of the future. JMy friend had an ingenious mind and an amateur's knowledge of a variety of handicrafts. The way to make him happy was to tell him that you had injured something made of iron or brass — a gun-lock, watch, or anything com- plicated. His eyes would shine, he would rub his hands and be all eagerness to get at the new patient to try his surgical skill on him. Now he had to 22 Idle Days in Patao^onia. give two or three days to all tliese wood and metal friends of his, to give a fresh edge to his chisels, and play the dentist to liis saws ; to spread them all out and count and stroke them lovingly, as a breeder pats his beasties, and feed and anoint them with oil to make them shine and look glad. This was preliminary to the packing for transporta- tion, which was also a rather slow process. Leaving my friend at his delightful task I rambled about the neio'hbourhood taking stock of the birds. It was a dreary and desolate spot, with a few old gaunt and half-dead red willows for only trees. The reeds and rushes standing m the black stagnant pools were yellow and dead ; and dead also were the tussocks of coarse tow-coloured grass, while the soil beneath was white as ashes and cracked ever3^where with the hot suns and long drought. Only the river close by was always cool and o-reen and beautiful. At length, one hot afternoon, we Avere sitting on our rugs on the cka}' floor of the hut, talking of our journey on the morrow, and of the better fiire and other delights we should find at the end of the day at the house of an English settler we were going to visit. While talking I took up his revolver to examine it for the first time, and ho had just begun to tell me that it was a revolver with a peculiar character of its own, and with idiosyncrasies, one of which was that the slightest touch, or even vibration of the air, would cause it to go ofi' when on the cock — he was just telling me this, when off Hoiv I became an Idler. 23 it went, with a terrible bang and sent a conical bullet into my left knee, an incli or so beneath the knee-cap. The pain Avas not much, the sensation resembling that caused by a smart blow on the knee ; but on attempting to get up I fell back. I could not stand. Then the blood beo-an to flow in a thin but continuous stream from the round sym- metrical bore which seemed to go straight into the bone of the joint, and nothing that we could do would serve to stop it. Here we were in a pretty fix ! Thirty- six miles from the settlement, and with no conveyance that my friend could think of except a cart at a house several miles up the river, but on the wrong side ! He, however, in his anxiety to do something, imagined, or hoped, that by some means the cart might be got over the river, and so, after thoughtfully putting a can of water by my side, he left me lying on my saddle-rugs, and, after fastening the door on the outside to prevent the intrusion of unwelcome prowlers, he mounted liis horse and rode away. He had promised that, with or without some w'heeled thing, he would be back not long after dark. But he did not return all nio-ht : he had found a boat and boatman to trans- port him to the other side only to learn that his plan was impracticable, and then returning with the dis- appointing tidings, found no boat to recross, and so in the end was obliged to tie his horse to a bush and lie down to wait for morning. For me night came only too soon. I had no candle, and the closed, windowless cabin was in- 2 4 Idle Days in Pataoonia. tensely dark. My wounded leg had become inflamed and pained a great deal, but tLe bleeding continued until tlie handkerchiefs we had bound round it were saturated. I was fully dressed, and as the night grew chilly I pulled my big cloth poncho, that had a soft fluffy lining, over me for warmth. I soon gave up expecting my friend, and knew that there would be no relief until morning. But I could neither doze nor think, and could only listen. From my experience during those black anxious hours I can imagine how much the sense of hearing must be to the blind aud to animals that exist in dark caves, At length, about midnight, I was startled by a slight curious sound in the intense silence and dark- ness. It was in the cabin and close to me. I thought at first it was like the sound made by a rope drawn slowly over the clay floor. I lighted a wax match, but the sound had ceased, and I saw nothing. After awhile I heard it again, but it now seemed to be out of doors and going round the hut, and I paid little attention to it. It soon ceased, and I heard it no more. So silent and dark was it thereafter that the hut I reposed in might have been a roomy coffin in which I had been buried a hundred feet beneath the surface of the earth. Yet I was no longer alone, if I had only known it, but had now a messmate and bedfellow who liad subtly crept in to share the warmth of the cloak and of my person — one with a broad arrow-shaped head, set with round lidless eyes like polished yellow pebbles, and a long smooth limbless body, strangel}^ seg- How I became an Idler. 2 5 mented and vaguely written all over with mystic characters in some dusky tint on an indeterminate greyish-tawny ground. At length, about half-past three to four o'clock, a most welcome sound was hoard — the familiar twittering of a pair of scissor-tail tyrant birds from a neighbouring willow-tree ; and after an interval, the dreamy, softly rising and falling, throaty warblings of the white-rumped swallow. A loved and beautiful bird is this, that utters his early song circling round and round in the dusky air, when the stars begin to pale ; and his song, perhaps, seems sweeter than all others, because it corresponds hi time to that rise in the temperature and swifter flow of the blood — the inward resurrection experienced on each morning of our individual life. Next in order the red-billed finches beo-in to sino- — a curious, gobbling, impetuous performance, more like a cry than a song. These are pretty reed birds, olive- green, buff-breasted, with long tails and bright red beaks. The intervals between their spasmodic bursts of sound were filled up with the fine frail melody of the small brown and grey crested song- sparrows. Last of all was heard the long, leisurely- uttered chanting crj'- of the brown carrion-hawk, as he flew past, and I knew that the morning was beautiful in the east. Little by little the light began to appear through the crevices, faint at first, like faintly-traced pallid lines on a black ground, then brighter and broader until I, too, had a dim twilight in the cabin. 26 Idle Days in Patagonia. Not until the sun was an hour up did my friend return to me to find me hopeful still, and witli all my faculties about me, but unable to move without assistance. Putting his arms around me he helped me up, and just as I had got erect on my sound leg, leaning heavily on him, out from beneatli the poncho lying at my feet glided a large serpent of a venomous kind, the Craspedocephalus alternatus, called in the vernacular the scrprnt loifli a cross. Had my friend's arms not been occupied with sus- taining me ho, no doubt, would have attacked it with the first weapon that offered, and in all probability Serpent with i\ Cross. killed it, with the result that [ should have suffered from a kind of vicarious remorse ever after. For- tunately it was not long in drawing its coils out of sight and danger into a hole in the wall. My hospitality had been unconscious, nor, until that moment, had I known that something had touched me, and that virtue had gone out from me ; but T rejoice to think that the secret deadly creature, after lying all night with me, warming its chilly blood with ni}' warmth, went back unbruised to its den. How I became an Idler. i y Speaking of this serpent witli a strange name, I recall the fact that Darwin made its acquaintance during his Patagonian rambles about sixty years ago ; and in describing its fierce and hideous aspect, remarks, " I do not think I ever saw anything more ugly, excepting, perhaps, some of the vampire bats." He speaks of the great breadth of the jaws at the base, the triangular snout, and the linear pupilin the midst of the mottled coppery iris, and suggests that its ugly and horrible appearance is due to the re- semblance of its face, in its shape, to tlie human countenance. This idea of the ugliness or repulsiveness of an inferior animal, due to its resemblance to man in face, is not, I believe, uncommon ; and I suppose that the reason that would be gfiyen for the feelinof is that an animal of that kind looks like a vile copy of ourselves, or like a parody maliciously designed to mock us. It is an erroneous idea, or, at all events, is only a half-truth, as we recognize at once when we look at animals that are more or less human-like in countenance, and yet cause no repul- sion. Seals may be mentioned — the mermaids and mermen of the old mariners ; also the sloth with its round simple face, to which its human shape im- parts a somewhat comical and pathetic look. Many monkeys seem ugly to us, but we think the lemurs beautiful, and greatly admire the marmosets, those hairy manikins with sprightly, bird-like eyes. And yet it is true that there is something human in the faces of this and perhaps of other pit- vipers, and of 2 8 Idle Days in Patagonia. some vampire bats, as Darwin remarks ; and that the horror they excite in us is due to this resem- blance ; what he failed to see was that it is the ex- pression rather than the shape that horrifies. For in these creatures it simulates such expressions as excite fear and abhorrence in our own species, or pity so intense as to be painful — ferocity, stealthy, watchful malignity, a set look of anguish or des- pair, or some dreadful form of insanity. Someone has well and wisely said that there is no ugliness in us except the expression of evil thoughts and passions ; for these do most assuredly write them- selves on the countenance. Looking at a serpent of this kind, and I have looked at many a one, the fancy is born in me that I am regarding what was once a fellow-being, perhaps one of those cruel desperate wretches I have encountered on the out- skirts of civilization, who for his crimes has been changed into the serpent form, and cursed with immortality. As a rule the deceptive resemblances and self- plagiarisms of nature, when we light by chance on them, give us only pleasure, heightened by wonder or a sense of mystery ; but the case of this serpent forms an exception : in spite of the tenderness I cherish towards the entire ophidian race, the sensa- tion is not agreeable. To return. Lly friend made a fire to boil water, and after we had had some breakfast, he galloped off once more in a new direction ; he had at last re- How I became an Idler. 29 membered that ou our side of the river there lived a settler who owned a bullock-cart, and to him he went. About ten o'clock he returned, and was shortly followed by the man with his lumbering cart drawn by a couple of bullocks. In this convey- ance, suffering much from the heat and dust and joltings on the rough hard road, I was carried back to the settlement. Oxen travel slowly, and we were on the road all day and all night, and only reached our destination when the eastern sky bad begun to grow bright, and the swallows from a thousand roosting-^jlaces were rising in wide circles into the still, dusky air, making it vocal with their warblinfifs. My miserable journey ended at the Mission House of the South American Missionary Society, in the village on the south bank of the river, facing the old town ; and the change from the jolting cart to a comfortable l^ed was an un- speakable relief, and soon induced refreshing sleep. Later in the day, on awakening, I found myself in the hands of a gentleman who was a skilful surgeon as well as a divine, one who had extracted more bullets and mended broken bones than most sur- geons who do not practise on battle-fields. My bullet, however, refused to be extracted, or even found in its hiding-place, and every morning for a fortnight I had a bad quarter of an hour, when my host would present himself in my room with a quiet smile on his lips and holding in his hands a bundle of probes — oh, those probes ! — of all forms, sizes, 30 Idle Days ?« Patagonia. and materials — wood, ivoiy, steel, and gutta-percha. These painful moments over, with no result except the re-opening of a wound that wished to heal, there would be nothing more for me to do but to lie watching the flies, as I have said, and dreaming. To conclude this vari-coloured chapter, I may here remark that some of the happiest moments of my life have been occasioned by those very circumstances which one would imao^ine would have made me most unhappy — by grave accidents, and sickness, which have disabled and cast me a burden upon strangers; and by adversity, — Which, like a toad, ugly ami vonomoiij;, Yet -wears a precious jewel in its head. Familiar words, but here newly interpreted ; for this jewel which I have found — man's love for man, and the law of helpful kindness written in the heart ■ — -is worthy to be prized above all our possessions, and is most beautiful, outshining the lapidary's gems, and of so sovereign a virtue that cynicism itself grows mute and ashamed in its light. CHAPTER III. VALLEY OP THE CLACK IMVEK. Still a lingerer in the hospitable shade of the Mission House, my chief pleasure during the early days of February was in observing the autumnal muster of the purple swallows — Progne furcata — a species which was abundant at this point, breeding in the cliffs overhanging the river; also, like so many other swallows in all places, under the eaves of houses. It is a large, beautiful bird, its whole upper plumage of a rich, glossy, deep purple hue, its iinder surface black. Xo such large swallows as this, with other members of its genus, are known in the Old World; and a visitor from Europe would probably, on first seeing one of these birds, mistake it for a swift; biit it has not got the narrow, scythe-shaped wings of the swift, nor does it rush through the air in the swift's mad way; on the contrary, its flight is much calmer, with fewer quick doublings than that of other swallows. It also differs from most members of its family in possess- ing a set song of several modulated notes, which are occasionally warbled in a leisurely manner as the bird soars high in the air : as a melodist it should rank high among the hirundines. Idle Days in Patagonia. The trees of the Mission House proved very attractive to these birds ; the tall Lombardy poplars were specially favoured, -which seems strange, for in a high wind (and it was veiy windy just then) the >^ V ^ slim unresting tree forms as bad a perehing- place as a bird could well settle on. Never the- '' less, to the poplars they would come when the wind Avas most violent ; first hovering or wheeling about in an immense flock, then, as occasion offered, dropping down a few at a time, to cling. ike roosting Val/cy of the Black River. 33 locusts, to tlie thin vertical brandies, clustering thickei' and thicker until the high trees looked black with them ; then a mightier gust would smite and sway the tall tops down, and the swal- lows, blown from their insecure perch, would rise in a purple cloud to scatter chattering all over the windy heavens, only to return and congregate, hovering and clinging as before. Lying on the grass, close to the river bank, I would Avatch them by the hour, noting their unrest and indecision, the strangeness and wild spirit that made the wind and vexed poplars congenial to them ; for somethino: new and strano-e had come to trouble them — the subtle breath Tliat in a powerful lani,'iiage, fi'lt, not lieanl, Instructs the fowls of heaven. But as to the character of that breath T vainly questioned Nature, — she being the only woman who can keep a secret, even from a lover. Rain came at last, and fell continuously during an entire night. Next morning (February 14th) when 1 went out and looked up at the sky, covered with grey hurrying clouds, I saw a flock of forty or fifty large swallows speeding north ; and after these I saw no more ; for on that first wet morning, before I had risen, the purple cloud had forsaken the valley. I missed them greatly, and wished that they had delayed their going, since it was easier and more hopeful to ponder on the mystery of their instinct D 34 I^tc Days in Patagonia. when they were with inc. That break in the tenor of their lives ; the enforced change of habits ; the conflict between two opposite emotions — the ties of place that held them back, seen and guessed in their actions, and the voice that called them away, speak- mg ever more imperatively, which so wrought in them that at moments they were beside themselves — noting all this, hearing and seeing it at all hours of the day, T seemed to be nearer to the discovery of some hidden truth than when they were no longer in sight. But now they were gone, and with their departure had vanished my last excuse for I'estiug longer inactive — at that spot, at all events. I started afresh on my up-river journey, and paid a long visit to an English estancia about sixty miles from the town. I spent much of my time there in solitary rambles, tasting once more of the "sweet and bitter cup of wild Nature." Her colour was grey, her mood pensive as winter deepened, and there was nothing in the cup to inflame the fancy. But it was tonic. ]\Iy rides were often to the hills, or terraced uplands, outside of the level valley; but my description of that grey desolate sohtude and its effects on me must be reserved for a later chapter, when T shall have dropped once for all this thread of narrative, slight and loosely held as it is. In the present chapter and the succeeding one I shall treat of the aspects of nature in the valley itself. For I did not remain too long at any one point, but during the autumn, winter, and spring months I resided at various points, and visited the Valley of t lie Black River. 35 moutli of tlie river and adjacent plains on botli sides, then Avent up river again to a distance of sometliing over a hundred miles. The valley, in this space, does not vaiy much in appearance ; it may be described as the level bed of an ancient river, five or six miles wide, cut out in the plateau, with the existing river — a swift, deep sti'eam, two hundred to three hundred yards broad — serpentining along its middle. But it does not keep to the middle ; in its windings it approaches now the north, now the south, plateau, and at some points touches the extreme limits of the valley, and even cuts into the bank-like front of the high land, which forms a sheer cliff above the current, in some spots a hundred feet high. The river was certainly miscalled Cusar-leofii, or Black River, by the aborigines, unless the epithet referred only to its swiftness and dangerous charac- ter ; for it is not black at all in appearance, like its Amazonian namesake. The water, which flows from the Andes across a continent of stone and gravel, is wonderfully pure, in colour a clear sea-green. So green does it look to the eye in some lights that when dipped up in a glass vessel one marvels to see it changed, no longer green, but crystal as dew or rain drop. Doubtless man is naturally scientific, and finds out why things are not what they seem, and gets to the bottom of all mysteries ; but his older, deeper, primitive, still persistent nature is non-scientific and mythical, and, in spite of i-eason, he wonders at the change ; — it is a miracle, a mani- 36 Idle Days in Patagonia. festatiou of tlio iiitolligeiif life and ]»o\vnr that is in all tilings. The river has its turbid days, although few and far between. One morning, on going down to the water, I was astonished to find it no longer the lovely hue of the previous evening, but dull red — red with the red earth that some swollen tributary hundreds of miles to the west had poured into its current. This change lasts only a day or two, after which the river runs green and pure again. The valley at the end of a long hot windy summer had an excessively dry and barren appear- ance. The country, I was told, had suffered from scarcity of rain for three years : at some points even the roots of the dry dead grass had been blown away, and when the wind was strong a cloud of yellow dust hung all day over the valley. In such places sheep were dying of starvation : cattle and horses fared bettor, as they went out into the uplands to browse on the bushes. The valley soil is thin, being principally sand and gravel, with a slight admixture of vegetalile luould ; and its original vegetation was made up of coarse peren- nial grasses, herbaceous shrubs and rushes : the domestic cattle introduced by the white settlers destroyed these slow-growing grasses and plants, and, as has happened in most temperate regions of the globe colonized by Europeans, the sweet, quick- growing, short-lived grasses and clovers of the Old World sprang up and occupied the soil. Here, however, owing to its poverty, the excessive dry- Valley of the Black River. T,y ness of the climate, and tlio violence of the winds tliat prevail in summer, the nevi^ imported vegeta- tion has proved but a sorry substitute for the old. and vanished. It does not grow large enough to retain the scanty moisture, it is too short-lived, and the frail quickly-perishing rootlets do not bind the earth together, like the tough fibrous blanket formed b}^ the old grasses. The heat burns it to dust and ashes, the wind blows it away, blade and root, and the surface soil with it, in many places disclosing the yellow underlying sand with all that was buried in it of old. For the results of this stripping of the surface has been that the sites of numberless villages of the former inhabitants of the valley have been brought to light. I have visited a dozen such village sites in the course of one hour's walk, so numerous were they. Where the village had been a populous one, or inhabited for a long period, the ground was a perfect bed of chipped stones, and among these fragments were found arrow-heads, flint knives and scrapers, mortars and pestles, large round stones with a groove in the middle, pieces of hard polished stone used as anvils, perforated shells, fragments of pottery, and bones of animals. My host remarked one day that the valley that year had produced nothing but a plentiful crop of arrow- heads. The anthropologist could not have wished for a more favourable year or for a better crop. I collected a large number of these objects; and some three or four hundred arrow-heads which I 38 Idle Days in Patagonia. picked up are at present, I believe, in the famous Pitt-Rivers collection. But I was over careful. The finest of my treasures, the most curious and beautiful objects I could select, packed apart for greater safety, were unfortunately lost in transit — a severe blow, which hurt me more than the wouud I had received on the knee. At some of the villages I examined, within a few yards of the ground where the huts had stood, I found deposits of bones of animals that had been used as food. These were of the rhea, huanaco, deer, peccary, dolichotis or Patagonian hare, arma- dillo, coypii, vizcacha, with others of smaller mam- mals and birds. Most numerous among them were the bones of the small cavy (Cavia australis), a form of the guinea-pig; and of the tuco-tuco (Ctenom^ys magellanica), a small rodent with the habits of the mole. A most interesting fact was that the arrow- heads I picked up in different villages were of two widely different kinds — the large and rudely fashioned, resembling the Palaeolithic arrow-heads of Europe, and the highl^'-finished, or Neolithic, arrow-heads of various forms and sizes, but in most specimens an inch and a half to two inches long. Here there were the remains of the two great periods of the Stone Age, the last of which continued down till the discovery and colonization of the country by Europeans. The weapons and other objects of the latter period were the most abundant, and occurred in the valley : the ruder Valley of tlic Black River. 39 more ancient weapoiis were fonnd on the hill-sides, in places where the river cnts into the plateau. The site where I picked np the largest number had been buried to a tlepth of seven or eight feet ; only where the water after heavy rains had washed great masses of sand and gravel awav, the arrow- heads, with other weapons and implements, had been exposed. These deeply-buried settlements were doubtless very ancient. Coming back to the more modern work, I was delighted to find traces of a something like division of labour in different villages ; of the individuality of the worker, and a distinct artistic or aesthetic taste. I was led to this conclusion by the dis- covery of a village site where no large round stones, knives and scrapers were found, and no large arrow-heads of the usual type. The only arrow- heads at this spot were about half an inch long, and were probably used only to shoot small birds and mammals. Not only were they minute but most exquisitely finished, with a fine serration, and, without an exception, made of some beautiful stone — crystal, agate, and green, yellow, and horn- coloured flint. It was impossible to take half-a- dozen of these gems of colour and workmanship in the hand and not be impressed at once with the idea that beauty had been as much an aim to the worker as utility. Along with these fiue arrow-heads I found nothing except one small well-pointed dagger of red stone, its handle a cross, about four inches long, and as slender 40 Idle Days in Patagonia. and almost as ■\vell-rouudecl as an ordinary lead pencil. When on this quest I sometimes attempted to picture to myself something of the outer and inner life of the long-vanislied inhal^itants. The red men of to-day may be of tlie same race aud blood, the lineal descendants of tlie workers in stone in Patagonia ; but tliey are without doubt so changed, and have lost so much, that their pi'ogenitors would not know them, nor acknowledge them as relations. Here, as in North America, contact with a superior race has debased them and ensured their de- struction. Some of their wild blood will continue to flow in the veins of those who have taken their place ; but as a race they will be blotted out from earth, as utterly extinct in a few decades as the mound-makers of the Mississippi valley, and the races that built the forest-o-rown cities of Yucutan and Central America. The men of the past in the Patagonian valley were alone with nature, makers of their own weapons and self-sustaining, luitouched by any outside influence, and with no knowledge of any world beyond their valley and the adjacent uninhabited uplands. And yet, judging even from that dim partial glimpse I had had of their vanished life, in the weapons and fragments I had picked up, it seemed evident that the mind was not wholly dormant in them, and that they were slowly pro- a'ressino- to a liiiT;-her condition. Beyond that fact I could not go : all efforts to know more, or to imagine more, ended in failure, Valley of the Black River. 41 -XfZ-^- ~" -'^•-' / ■■'■ "h ^> j^ An Indian Barial-place *i'' ■ f It as all such efforts must end. On another occasion, as T propose to show in a later chapter, the wished vision of the past came unsought and unexpectedly 42 Idle Days in Patagonia. to me, and for a while T saw nature as the savage sees it, and as he saw it in that stone age I pondered over, only without the suj^ernaturalism that has so large a place in his mind. By taking thought I am con- vinced that we can make no progress in this direc- tion, simply because we cannot voluntarily escape from our own personality, our environment, our outlook on Nature. Not only were my efforts idle, but merely to think on the subject sometimes had the effect of l)ringing a shadow, a something of melancholy, over my mind, the temper Avliicli is fatal to investigation, causing " all things to droop and languisli." In such a mood I would make my way to one of the half-a-dozen ancieut burial-places existing in the neighbourhood of the house I was staying at. As a preference I would go to the largest and most popu- lous, where half an acre of earth was strewn thick with crumbling skeletons. Here by searching closely a few arrow-heads and ornaments, that had been interred with the dead, could also be ibund. And here I Avould sit and walk about on the hot barren yellow sand — the faithless sand to which the bitter secret had so long ago been vainly entrusted ; careful in walking not to touch an exposed skull with my foot, although the hoof of the next wild thing that passed would shatter it to pieces like a vessel of fragile glass. The polished intensely white surfaces of such skulls as had been longest exposed to the sun reflected the noonday light so powerfully that it almost pained the eyes to look at them. In Valley of the Black River. 43 places where tliej^ were thickly crowded together, I would stop to take them up and examine them, one by one, only to put them carefully down again ; and sometimes holding one in my hand, I would pour out the yellow sand that filled its cavity ; and watching the shining stream as it fell, only the vainest of vain thoughts and conjectures were mine. CHAPTER IV. ASl'ElTS OF THE VAl.LRV. To go back for a brief space to those Golgotlias tliat I frequently visited in the vallej^, not as collector nor archaeologist, and in no scientific spirit, but only, as it seemed, to indulge in mournful thoughts. If by looking into the empty cavity of one of those broken unburicd skulls I had been able to see, as in a maffic o-lass, an imao-e of the world as it once existed in the living brain, what should I have seen ? Such a question would not and could not, I imagine, be suggested by the sight of a bleached broken hmiian skull in any other region ; but in Patagonia it does not seem grotesque, nor merely idle, nor quite fanciful, like Buffon's notion of a geometric figure impressed on the hive-bee's brain. On the contrary, it strikes one there as natural ; and the answer to it is easy, and only one answer is possible. In the cavity, extending from side to side, there would have appeared a band of colour ; its margins grey, growing fainter and bluer outwardly, and finally fading into nothing ; between the grej^ edges the band would bo green ; and along this green middle band, not always Iceeping to tlie centre. Aspects of the VaUev. 45 there would appear a sinuous sliiuy line, like a serpent with gUtterinp;- skin lying at rest on the grass. For the river must have been to the abori- ginal inhabitants of the -valley the one great central vinforgettable fact in nature and man's life. If as Jiomads or colonists from some cis- or trans- Andean country, they had originally brought hither ■gJB**** The River by moonlight. traditions, and some super- natural system that took its form and colour from a different natm^e, these had been modified, if not wholly dissolved and washed away in that swift eternal green current, by the side of which they continued to dwell from generation to generation, forgetting all ancient things. The shining stream was always in sight, and when, turning their backs on it, they climbed out of the valley, they saw only 46 Idle Days in Patagonia. to grey desolation — a desert where life was impossible to mau — fading into the blue haze of the horizon ; and there was nothing beyond it. On that grey strip, on the borders oE the unknown beyond, they could search for tortoises, and hunt a few wild animals, and gather a few wild fruits, and hard woods and spines for weapons ; and then return to the river, as children o-o back to their mother. All thino-s were reflected in its w^aters, the infinite blue sky, the clouds and heavenly bodies ; the trees and tall herbage on its banks, and their dark faces ; and just as they were mirrored iu it, so its current was mirrored in their minds. The old man, grown blind with age, from constantly seeing its image so bright and persistent, would be unconscious of his blindness. It was thus more to him than all other objects and forces in nature ; the Inca might worship sun and lightning and rainbow ; to the inhabitant of the valley the river was more than these, the most powerful thing in nature, the most beneficent, and his chief god. I do not know, nor can anjr one know, whether the former dwellers in the valley left any descen- dants, any survivors of that age that left some traces of a brightening intellect on its stone work. Pro- bably not ; the few Indians now inhabiting the valley are most probably modern colonists of another family or nation ; yet it did not surprise me to hear that some of these half-tame, half-christianized savages had, not long before my visit, sacrificed a white bull to the river, slaying it on the bank Aspects of t lie I'alley. 47 and casting its warm, bleeding body into tlio current. Even the European colonists have not been un- affected psychologically by the peculiar conditions they live in, and by the river, on which they are dependent. When tirst I became cognizant of this feeling, which was very soon, I was disposed to laugh a little at the very large place ihe river occupied in all men's minds ; but after a few months of life on its banks it was hardly less to me than to others, and I experienced a kind of shame when I recalled my former waut of reverence, as if I had made a jest of something sacred. iSTor to this day can I think of the Pata- gonian river merely as one of the rivers I know. Other streams, by comparison, seem vulgar, with no higher purpose than to watei' man and beast, and to serve, like canals, as a means of transport. One day, to the house where I was staying near the town, there came a native lady on a visit, bring- ing with her six bright blue-eyed children. As we, the elders, sat in the living-room, sipping mate and talking, one of the youngsters, an intelligent-looking boy of nine, came in from play, and getting him by me I amused him for a while with some yarns and with talk about beasts and birds. He asked me where I lived. My home, I said, was in the Buenos Ayrean pampas, far north of Patagonia. " Is it near the river," he asked, "right on the bank, hke this house ? " I explained that it was on a great, grassy, level 48 Idle Days in Pataooiiia. j)lain, that, tliero was no rivei- tlicre, and that when I went ont on horsel)ack [ did not have to ride up and down a valley, but galloped away in any direc- tion — north, south, east, or west. He listened with a twinkle in his eyes, then with a merry laugh ran out ao-ain to ioin the others at their game. It was as if I had told him that I lived up in a tree that grew to the clouds, or under the sea, or some such impossible thing; it was nothing but a joke to him. His mother, sitting near, had been listening to us, and when the boy laughed and ran out, I remai'ked to her that to a child born and living always in that valley, shut in by the thorny, waterless uplands, it was, ^lerhaps, inconceivable that in other places people could exist out of a valley and away from a river. She looked at me with a pnzzled expression in her eyes, as if trying to see something mentally wdiich her eyes had never seen — trying, in fact, to create something ont of nothing. She agreed with me in some hesitating words, and I felt that I had put my foot in it ; for only then I recalled the fact that she also had been born in the valley — the great- grand-daughter of one of the original founders of the colony — and was probably as incapable as the child of imagining any other conditions than those she had always been accustomed to. It struck me that the children here have a very healthy, happy life, especially those whose homes are in the narrow parts of the valley, who are able to ramble every day into the thorny uplands in search of birds' eggs and other pretty things, and the .-hpccls of llic \ 'alley. 49 wild li;ivour8 and little adventures that count for so nmcli witli tlie veiy young. In birds' eggs, the greatest prizes are those of tlie partridge-like tina- nious, the beautifully mottled and crested martineta (Calodroraas elegans), that lays a dozen eggs as large as those of a fowl, with deep-green polished sliells ; and the smaller Nothura darwini, whose eggs vary in tint from wine-purple to a reddish-purple or liver colour. In sumnier and autumn fruits and sweet gums are not scarce. One grey-leafed herbaceous shrub is much sought after for its sap, that oozes from the stem and hardens in small globes and lumps that look and taste like white sugar. There is a small disc-shaped cactus, growing close to the sur- face, and well defended with sharp spines, which bears a pinkish-yellow fruit with a pleasant taste. There is also a largo cactus, four or five feet high, so dark-green as to appear almost black among the pale-grey bushes. It bears a splendid crimson flower, and a crimson fruit that is insipid and not considered worth eating ; but being of so beautiful a colour to see it is sufficient pleasure. The plant is not very common, and one does not see too many of the fruits even in a long day's ramble : Like stoues of worth, they tliinly placeJ are. The chahar bears a fruit like a cherry in size, and, like a cherry, with a stone inside ; it has a white pidp and a golden skin ; the flavour is peculiar and delicious, and seemed to be greatly appreciated by the birds, so that the children get little. Another 50 Idle Days in Patagonia. wild fruit is that of the PiqneUln (Condalia spinosa), the dark-leaf ed bush which was mentioned in the first chapter. Its oval-shaped berries are less than currants in size, but are in such profusion that the broad tops of the bushes become masses of deep colour in autumn. There are two varieties, one crimson, the other purple-black, like sloes and blackberries. They have a strong but not un- pleasant flavour, and the children are so fond of them that, like the babes in the wood, their little lips are all bestained and red with the beautiful juice. The magnetism of the river (to go back to that subject) is probably intensified by the prevailing monotonous greys, greens, and browns of nature on either side of it. It has the powerful effect of bright- ness, which fascinates us, as it does the moth, and the eye is drawn to it as to a path of shining silver — that is, of silver in some conditions of the atmosphere, and of polislied steel in others. At ordinary times there is no other brightness in nature to draw the sight away and divide the attention. Only twice in the year, for a brief season in spring and again in autumn, there is anything like large masses of bright colour in the vegetation to delight the eyes. The commonest of the grey-foliaged plants that grow on the hio'h ofrounds alonef the borders of the vallev is the cliahar, Gurliaca decorticans, a tree in form, but scarcely }nore than a bush in size. In late October it l^ears a profusion of flowers in clusters, in shape, size, and brilliant yellow colour resembling Aspects of tlic 1 "alley. 51 the flowov of the broom. At this season the up- hmds along the valley have a strangely gay ap- pearance. Again, there is yellow in the antumn — the deeper yellow of xanthophyl — when the leaves of the red willows growing on the banks of the river change their colonr before falling. This willow (Salix hnmboldtiana) is the only large wild tree in the country ; but whether it grew here prior to tlie advent of the Spanish or not, I do not know. But its existence is now doomed as a large tree of a century's majestic growth, forming a suitable perch and lookout for the harpy and grey eagles, common in the valley, and the still more common vultures and Polyl)ori, and of the high-roosting, noble black-faced ibis ; a home and house, too, of the Magellanic eagle-owl and the spotted wild cat (Felis geoffroyi) ; and where even the puma could lie at ease on a horizontal branch thirty or forty feet above the earth. Being of soft wood, it can be cut down very easily ; and when felled and lashed in rafts on the river, it is floated down stream to supply the inhabitants with a cheap wood for fuel, building, and other purposes. At the highest point 1 reached in my rambles alone the valley, about a hundred and twenty miles from the coast, there was a very extensive grove or wood of this willow, many of the trees very large, and some dead from age. I visited this spot with an English friend, who resided some twenty miles lower down, and spent a day and a half wading about waist-deep through the tall, coarse grasses and 52 Idle Days in Patas'on la. rushes uuder tlie gaunt, leafless trees, for the sea- son was midwinter. The weather was the worst I had experienced in the country, being piercingly cold, with a violent wind and frequent storms of Black Vulture. rain and sleet. The rough, wet boles of the trees rose up tall and straight like black pillars from the rank herbage beneath, and on the higher branches Aspects of the J^allev. 53 imuimerable black vultures (Cathartes atratus) were perclied, waiting all the dreary day long for fliir weather to fly abroad in seai'ch of food. On the ground this vulture does not appear to advantage, especially when l:)obbing and jumping about, performing the " buzzard lope," when quar- relling with his fellows over a carcase : but when perched aloft, his small naked rugous head and neck and horny curved beak seen well-defined above the broad black surface of the folded wing, he does not show badly. As I had no wish to make a bag of vultures and saw nothing- else, T shot nothing". A little past noon on the second day we saddled our horses and started on our homeward ride ; and although the wiud still blew a gale, lashing the river into a long line of foam on the opposite shore, and bringing storms of rain and sleet at inter- vals, this proved a very delightful ride, one that shines in memory above all other rides I have taken. We went at a swift gallop along the north bank, aud never had grey Patagonia looked more soberly and sadly grey than on this afternoon. The soil, except in jjlaces where the winter grass had spread over it, had taken a darker brown colour from the rain it had imbibed, and the bosky uplands a deeper grey than ever, while the whole vast sky was stormy and dark. But after a time the west- ering sun began to shine through the rifts behind us, while before us on the wild flying clouds appeared a rainbow with hues so vivid that we shouted aloud with joy at the sight of such loveliness. 54 Iiil^e Days in Pataoonia. For nearly an hour we rode with this vision of glory always before us ; grove after grove of leafless black-barked willow-trees on our right hand, and grey thorny hill after hill on our left, did we pass in our swift ride, while great flocks of upland geese continiially rose up before us, with shrill whistlings mingled with solemn deep droning cries ; and the arch of watery fire still lived, now fading as the flying wrack grew thinner and thinner, then, just when it seemed about to vanish, brightening once more to a new and more wonderful splendour, its arch ever widening to greater proportions as the sun sunk lower in the sk}'. I do not suppose that the colours were reallv more vivid than in numberless other rainbows I have seen ; it was, T think, the universal greyness of earth and heaven in that grey winter season, in a region where colour is so sparsely used by Nature, that made it seem so supremely beautiful, so that the sight of it affected us like wine. The eyes, says Bacon, are ever most pleased with a lively embroidery on a sad and sombre g-round. This was taught to us by the green and violet arch on the slaty grey vapour. But Nature is too wise To Lluiit tlio line point of seldom pleasure. The day of supernatural splendour and glory comes only after many days that are only natural, and of a neutral colour. It is watched and waited for, and when it comes is like a day of some great Aspects of the ]\illcy. 55 festival and rejoicing — tlie day when peace was made, wlien our love was returned, wlien a child was born to us. Such sights are like certain sounds, that not only delight us with their pure and beautiful quality, but wake in us feelings that we cannot fathom nor analyze. They are familiar, yet stranger than the strangest things, with a beauty that is not of the earth, as if a loved friend, long dead, had unexpectedly looked back to us from heaven, transfigured. It strikes me as strange that, so far as we know, the Incas were the only worshippers of the rainbow. One evening in the autumn of the year, near tlie town, I was witness of an extraordinary and very magnificent sunset effect. The sky was clear except for a few masses of cloud low down in the west ; and these, some time after the sun had disappeared, assumed more vivid and glowing- colours, while the pale yellow sky beyond became more luminous and flame-like. All at once, as I stood not far from the bank, looking westward across the river, the water changed from green to an intense crimson hue, this extending on both hands as far as I could see. The tide was running- out, and in the middle of the river, where the sur- face was roughened into waves by the current, it quivered and sparkled like crimson flame, while near the opposite shore, where rows of tall Lombardy poplars threw their shadow on the surface, it was violet-coloured. This appearance lasted for five or six minutes, then the crimson colour grew darker 56 Idle Days in Patagonia. by degrees until it. disappeared. I have frequently read and beard of sucli a phenomenon, and many persons have assured me that they have witnessed it " with their own eyes." But what they have witnessed one does not know. I have often seen the surface of water, of the ocean, or a lake, or river, flushed with a rosy colour at sunset ; but to see, some time after sunset, the waters of a river changed to blood and crimson fire, this appearance lasting Tintil the twilight drew on, and the earth and trees looked black by contrast, has been my lot once only on this occasion ; and I imagine that if any river on the globe was known to take such an appearance frequently, it would become as celebrated, and draw piloTims as far to see it, as Chimborazo and the J o Falls of A'iagara. Between the town and the sea, a distance of about twenty miles, the valley is mostly on the south side of the river ; on the north side the current comes A'ery near, and in many places washes the upland. I visited the sea by both ways, and rode for some distance along the coast on both sides of the river. North of the river the beach was shingle and sand, backed Ijy low^ sand dunes extending away into in- finitude ; but on the south side, outside the valley, a sheer stupendous precipice faced the ocean. A slight adventure I had with a condor, the only bird of that species 1 met with in Patagonia, will give some idea of the height of this sheer wall of rock. I was riding A\'ith a friend along the cliff when the majestic bird ap- peared, and swooping downwards hovered at a height of forty feet above our lieads, ls\\ companion raised Aspects of flic Valley. 57 liis gun and fired, and we heard the shot rattle loudly on the stiff quills of the broad motionless wings. There is no doubt that some of the shot entered its flesh, as it quickly swept down over the edge of the cliff and disappeared from our sight. We got off our horses, and crawling to the edge of the dreadful cliff looked down, but could see nothing of the bird. Remounting we rode on for a little over a mile, until coming to the end of the cliff we went down under it and galloped back over the narrow strip of beach which appears at low tide. Arrived at the spot where the bird had been lost we caught sight of it once more, perched at the mouth of a small cavity in the face of the rocky wall near the summit, and lookinof at that heigfht no biffger than a buzzard. He was far beyond the reach of shot, and safe, and if not fatally wounded, may soar above that desolate coast, and fight with vultures and grey eagles over the carcases of stranded fishes and seals for half a century to come. Close to the mouth of the river there is a low flat island, about half a mile in length, covered in most part by a dense growth of coarse grass and rushes. It is inhabited by a herd of swine ; and although these animals do not increase, they have been able to maintain their existence for along period without diminishing in number, in spite of the occasional great tides that flood the whole island, and of multi- tudes of hungry eagles and caranchos always on the look out foT' stray sucklings. Many years ago, while some gauchos were driving a troop of half wild cows near the shore on the neighbouring mainland. 5S Idle Days in Patagonia. a heifer took to the water and succeeded in swim- niing to the island, where she was lost to her owner. About a year later this animal was seen by a man who had gone to the island to cut rushes for thatch- ing purposes. The cow and the pigs, to the number of about twenty-five or twenty-six, were lying fast asleep in a small grassy hollow where he found them, the cow stretched out at full length on the ground, and the pigs grouped or rather heaped round her; for they were all apparently ambitious to rest with their heads pillowed on her, so that she was almost concealed under them. Presently one of the drove, more wakeful than his fellows, became aware of his presence and gave the alarm, whereupon they started up like one animal and vanished into a rush-bed. The cow, thus doomed to live " alone, yet not alone," was subsequently seen on sevei^al occasions by the rush-cutters, always with her fierce followers grouped round her like a bodyguard. This con- tinued for some years, and the fame of the cow that had become the leader and queen of the wild island pigs was spread abroad in the valley ; then a human being, who was not a " sentimentalist," betook liim- self to her little kingdom with a musket loaded with ball, and succeeded in finding and shooting her. Tn spite of what we have been taught, it is some- times borne in on us that man is a little lower than the brutes. After hearing this incident one does not at once sit down with a good appetite to roast beef or swine's flesh. CHAPTER V. A DOG TN EXILE. At the English estate up the river, wliere I made so long a stay, there were several clogs, some of them of the common doa: of no breed found throughout Argentina, a smooth-haired animal, varying greatly in colour, but oftenest red or black ; also differing much in size, but in a majority of cases about as big as a Scotch collejr. There were also a few others, dogs of good breeds, and these were specially in- teresting to me, because they were not restrained nor directed in any way, nor any use made of them in their special lines. Left to their own devices, and to rough it with the others, the result was rather curious. The only one among them that had proved capable of accommodating himself to the new circumstances was a Scotch coUey — a fine animal of pure blood. The common dog of the country is a jack-of-all- trades ; a great lover of the chase, but a bad hunter, a splendid scavenger, a good watch-dog and vermin- killer; an indifferent sheep-dog, but invaluable in o-athering up and driving cattle. Beyond these thino-s which he picks up, you can really teach him nothing useful, although with considerable trouble 6o Idle Days in Pafas^oiiia. you might be able to add a few ornamental subjects, such as giving his paw, and keeping guard over a coat or stick left in his charge. He is a generalized beast, grandson to the jackal, and first cousin to the cur of Europe and the Eastern pariah. To this primitive, or only slightly-improved type of dog, the colley perhaps conies nearest of all the breeds we value ; and when he is thrown back on natiire he is " all there," and not hindered as the pointer and other varieties are by more deeply-rooted special in- stincts. At all events, this individual took very kindly to the rude life and work of his new com- panions, and by means of his hardihood and inex- haustible energy, became their leader and superior, especially in hunting. Above anything he loved to chase a fox ; and when in the course of a ride in the valley one was started, he invariably threw all the native dogs out and caught and killed it himself. If these dogs had all together taken to a feral life, I do not think the colley would have been worse off than the others. It was very different with the greyhounds. There were foiu% all of pure breed ; and as they were never taken out to hunt, and could not, like the colley, take their share in the ordinary work of the establish- ment, they were al;)Solutely useless, and certainly not ornamental. "When I first noticed them they were pitiable objects, thin as skeletons, so lame that they could scarcely walk, and wounded and scratched all over with thorns. I was told that they had been out hunting on their own account in the thorny .1 DoQ- in Exile. 6i v> upland, and that this was the result. For three or four days they remained inactive, sleeping the whole time, except when they limped to the kitchen to be fed. But day by day they improved in con- dition ; their scratches healed, their ribbed sides grew smooth and sleek, and they recovered from their lameness ; but scarcely had they got well be- fore it was discovered one morning that they had vanished. They had gone off during the night to hunt again on the uplands. Thejr were absent two nights and a day, then returned, looking even more I'educed and miserable than \vhen I first saw them, to recover slowly from their hurts and fatigue ; and when well again they were off once more; and so it continued during the whole time of my visit. These hounds, if left to themselves, would have soon perished. Another member of this somewhat heterogeneous o canine community was a retriever, one of the hand- somest I have ever seen, rather small, and with a most perfect head. The extreme curliness of his coat made him look at a little distance like a dog cut out of a block of ebony, with the surface carved to almost symmetrical knobbiness. Major — that was his name — would have lent himself well to sculpture. He was old, but not too fat, nor in- active ; sometimes he would go out with the other dogs, but apparently he could not keep up the pace, as after a few hours he Avould return always alone, looking rather disconsolate. I have always been partial to dogs of this breed; 62 Idle Davs ill Pat a 'JO ma. not on account of the assistance they have been to me, but because when I have wished to have a dog at my side I liave found them more suitable than other kinds for companions. They are not stupid nor restless, but ready to fall in with a quiet mood, and never irritate by a perpetual impatient craving for notice. A fussy, demonstrative dog, that can never efface himself, 1 object to : he compels your attention, and puts you in a subordinate place : you are his attendant, not he yours. Major's appearance attracted me fi'om the first, and he, on his side, joyfully responded to my ad- vances, and at once attached himself to me, following me about the place as if he feared to lose sight of me even for a minute. My host, however, hastened to warn me not to take him with me when I went out shooting, as he was old and blind, and subject, moreover, to strange freaks, which made him worse than useless. He had formerly been an excellent retriever, he informed me, but even in his best days not wholly to be trusted, and now he was nothing but bad. I could scarcely credit the blindness, as he did not show it in his brown intelligent and wistfid eyes, and always appeared keenly alive and interested in everything going on about him ; but by experi- menting I found that he could scarcely see further than about six inches from his nose; but his hearing and scent were so good, and guided him so well, that no person on a slight acquaintance would have made the discovery of his defective sight. A Doo- in Exile. 63 Of course, after this, I could bave iiotlnng more to do with the retriever, further than patting him on the head, and speaking a kind word to him wlien- ever he chanced to be in my way. But this was not enough for old Major. He was a sporting dog, full of energy, and with nndiminished faith in his own powers, in spite of his years, and when a sports- man had come to the house, and had deliberately singled him out for friendly notice, he could not and would not believe that it was to go no further. Day after day he clung to the delusion that he was to accompany me in my walks and little shooting- excursions in the neighbourhood ; and every time I took down a gun he would rush forward from his post by the door with so many demonstrations of joy, and with such imploring looi