Near the end of Darwin’s famous narrative of the voyage of the Beagle there is a passage which, for me, has a very special interest and significance. It is as follows, and the italicisation is mine: “In calling up images of the past, I find the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all to be most wretched and useless. They are characterised only by negative possessions; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support only a few dwarf plants. WHY, THEN— AND THE CASE IS NOT PECULIAR TO MYSELF— HAVE THESE ARID WASTES TAKEN SO FIRM POSSESSION OF MY MIND?’ Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can scarcely analyse these feelings, but it must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely practicable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having thus lasted for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last boundaries to man’s knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations?”

That he did not in this passage hit on the right explanation of the sensations he experienced in Patagonia, and of the strength of the impressions it made on his mind, I am quite convinced; for the thing is just as true of today as of the time, in 1836, when he wrote that the case was not peculiar to himself. Yet since that date — which now, thanks to Darwin, seems so remote to the naturalist — those desolate regions have ceased to be impracticable, and, although still uninhabited and uninhabitable, except for a few nomads, they are no longer unknown. During the last twenty years the country has been crossed in various directions, from the Atlantic to the Andes, and from the Rio Negro to the Straits of Magellan, and has been found all barren. The mysterious illusive city, peopled by whites, which was long believed to exist in the unknown interior, in a valley called Trapalanda, is to moderns a myth, a mirage of the mind, as little to the traveller’s imagination as the glittering capital of great Manoa, which Alonzo Pizarro and his false friend Orellana failed to discover. The traveller of today really expects to see nothing more exciting than a solitary huanaco keeping watch on a hilltop, and a few grey-plumaged rheas flying from him, and, possibly, a band of long-haired roving savages, with their faces painted black and red. Yet, in spite of accurate knowledge, the old charm still exists in all its freshness; and after all the discomforts and sufferings endured in a desert cursed with eternal barrenness, the returned traveller finds in after years that it still keeps its hold on him, that it shines brighter in memory, and is dearer to him than any other region he may have visited.

We know that the more deeply our feelings are moved by any scene the more vivid and lasting will its image be in memory — a fact which accounts for the comparatively unfading character of the images that date back to the period of childhood, when we are most emotional. Judging from my own case, I believe that we have here the secret of the persistence of Patagonian images, and their frequent recurrence in the minds of many who have visited that grey, monotonous, and, in one sense, eminently uninteresting region. It is not the effect of the unknown, it is not imagination; it is that nature in these desolate scenes, for a reason to be guessed at by-and-by, moves us more deeply than in others. In describing his rambles in one of the most desolate spots in Patagonia, Darwin remarks: “Yet, in passing over these scenes, without one bright object near, an ill-defined but strong sense of pleasure is vividly excited.” When I recall a Patagonian scene, it comes before me so complete in all its vast extent, with all its details so clearly outlined, that, if I were actually gazing on it, I could scarcely see it more distinctly; yet other scenes, even those that were beautiful and sublime, with forest, and ocean, and mountain, and over all the deep blue sky and brilliant sunshine of the tropics, appear no longer distinct and entire in memory, and only become more broken and clouded if any attempt is made to regard them attentively. Here and there I see a wooded mountain, a grove of palms, a flowery tree, green waves dashing on a rocky shore — nothing but isolated patches of bright colour, the parts of the picture that have not faded on a great blurred canvas, or series of canvases. These last are images of scenes which were looked on with wonder and admiration — feelings which the Patagonian wastes could not inspire — but the grey, monotonous solitude woke other and deeper feelings, and in that mental state the scene was indelibly impressed on the mind.

I spent the greater part of one winter at a point on the Rio Negro, seventy or eighty miles from the sea, where the valley on my side of the water was about five miles wide. The valley alone was habitable, where there was water for man and beast, and a thin soil producing grass and grain; it is perfectly level, and ends abruptly at the foot of the bank or terrace-like formation of the higher barren plateau. It was my custom to go out every morning on horse-back with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley; and no sooner would I climb the terrace and plunge into the grey universal thicket, than I would find myself as completely alone and cut off from all sight and sound of human occupancy as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the hidden green valley and river. So wild and solitary and remote seemed that grey waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness of thorns. There I might have dropped down and died, and my flesh been devoured by birds, and my bones bleached white in sun and wind, and no person would have found them, and it would have been forgotten that one had ridden forth in the morning and had not returned. Or if, like the few wild animals there — puma, huanaco, and hare-like Dolichotis, or Darwin’s rhea and the crested tinamou among the birds — I had been able to exist without water, I might have made myself a hermitage of brushwood or dug-out in the side of a cliff, and dwelt there until I had grown grey as the stones and trees around me, and no human foot would have stumbled on my hiding-place.

Not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but day after day I returned to this solitude, going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, and leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me. And yet I had no object in going — no motive which could be put into words; for although I carried a gun, there was nothing to shoot — the shooting was all left behind in the valley. Sometimes a Dolichotis, starting up at my approach, flashed for one moment on my sight, to vanish the next moment in the continuous thicket; or a covey of tinamous sprang rocket-like into the air, and fled away with long wailing notes and loud whur of wings; or on some distant hill-side a bright patch of yellow, of a deer that was watching me, appeared and remained motionless for two or three minutes. But the animals were few, and sometimes I would pass an entire day without seeing one mammal, and perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. The weather at that time was cheerless, generally with a grey film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak wind, often cold enough to make my bridle hand feel quite numb. Moreover, it was not possible to enjoy a canter; the bushes grew so close together that it was as much as one could do to pass through at a walk without brushing against them; and at this slow pace, which would have seemed intolerable in other circumstances, I would ride about for hours at a stretch. In the scene itself there was nothing to delight the eye. Everywhere through the light, grey mould, grey as ashes and formed by the ashes of myriads of generations of dead trees, where the wind had blown on it, or the rain had washed it away, the underlying yellow sand appeared, and the old ocean-polished pebbles, dull red, and grey, and green, and yellow. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to its summit, and stand there to survey the prospect. On every side it stretched away in great undulations; but the undulations were wild and irregular; the hills were rounded and cone-shaped, they were solitary and in groups and ranges; some sloped gently, others were ridge-like and stretched away in league-long terraces, with other terraces beyond; and all alike were clothed in the grey everlasting thorny vegetation. How grey it all was! hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon, where the hills were dim and the outline blurred by distance. Sometimes I would see the large eagle-like, white-breasted buzzard, ‘Buteo erythronotus’, perched on the summit of a bush half a mile away; and so long as it would continue stationed motionless before me my eyes would remain involuntarily fixed on it, just as one keeps his eyes on a bright light shining in the gloom; for the whiteness of the hawk seemed to exercise a fascinating power on the vision, so surpassingly bright was it by contrast in the midst of that universal unrelieved greyness. Descending from my look-out, I would take up my aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations to gaze on the same landscape from another point; and so on for hours, and at noon I would dismount and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or longer. One day, in these rambles, I discovered a small grove composed of twenty to thirty trees, about eighteen feet high, and taller than the surrounding trees. They were growing at a convenient distance apart, and had evidently been resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals for a very long time, for the boles were polished to a glassy smoothness with much rubbing, and the ground beneath was trodden to a floor of clean, loose yellow sand. This grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neighbourhood, so that it was easy for me to find it on other occasions; and after a time I made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of that one spot, sometimes going miles out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes covering the country, on any other hillside. I thought nothing at all about it, but acted unconsciously; only afterwards, when revolving the subject, it seemed to me that after having rested there once, each time I wished to rest again the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of trees, with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath; and in a short time I formed a habit of returning, animal-like, to repose at that same spot.

It was perhaps a mistake to say that I would sit down and rest, since I was never tired: and yet without being tired, that noonday pause, during which I sat for an hour without moving, was strangely grateful. All day the silence seemed grateful, it was very perfect, very profound. These were no insects, and the only bird-sound — a feeble chirp of alarm emitted by a small skulking wren-like species — was not heard oftener than two or three times an hour. The only sounds as I rode were the muffled hoof-strokes of my horse, scratching of twigs against my boot or saddle-flap, and the low panting of the dog. And it seemed to be a relief to escape even from these sounds when I dismounted and sat down: for in a few moments the dog would stretch his head out on his paws and go to sleep, and then there would be no sound, not even the rustle of a leaf. For unless the wind blows strong there is no fluttering motion and no whisper in the small stiff undeciduous leaves; and the bushes stand unmoving as if carved out of stone. One day while ‘listening’ to the silence, it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if I were to shout aloud. This seemed at the time a horrible suggestion of fancy, a “lawless and uncertain thought” which almost made me shudder, and I was anxious to dismiss it quickly from my mind. But during those solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind; animal forms did not cross my vision or bird-voices assail my hearing more rarely. In that novel state of mind I was in, thought had become impossible. Elsewhere I had always been able to think most freely on horseback; and on the pampas, even in the most lonely places, my mind was always most active when I travelled at a swinging gallop. This was doubtless habit; but now, with a horse under me, I had become incapable of reflection: my mind had suddenly transformed itself from a thinking machine into a machine for some other unknown purpose. To think was like setting in motion a noisy engine in my brain; and there was something there which bade me be still, and I was forced to obey. My state was one of SUSPENSE and WATCHFULNESS: yet I had no expectation of meeting with an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I feel now when sitting in a room in London. The change in me was just as great and wonderful as if I had changed my identity for that of another man or animal; but at the time I was powerless to wonder at or speculate about it; the state seemed familiar rather than strange, and although accompanied by a strong feeling of elation, I did not know it — did not know that something had come between me and my intellect — until I lost it and returned to my former self — to thinking, and the old insipid existence.

Such changes in us, however brief in duration they may be, and in most cases they are very brief, but which so long as they last seem to affect us down to the very roots of our being, and come as a great surprise — a revelation of an unfamiliar and unsuspected nature hidden under the nature we are conscious of — can only be attributed to an instantaneous reversion to the primitive and wholly savage mental conditions. Probably not many men exist who would be unable to recall similar cases in their own experience; but it frequently happens that the revived instinct is so purely animal in character and repugnant to our refined or humanitarian feelings, that it is sedulously concealed and its promptings resisted. In the military and seafaring vocations, and in lives of travel and adventure, these sudden and surprising reversions are most frequently experienced. The excitement affecting men going into battle, which even affects those who are constitutionally timid and will cause them to exhibit a reckless daring and contempt of danger astonishing to themselves, is a familiar instance. This instinctive courage has been compared to intoxication, but it does not, like alcohol, obscure a man’s faculties: on the contrary, he is far more keenly active to everything going on around him than the person who keeps perfectly cool. The man who is coolly courageous in fight has his faculties in their ordinary condition: the faculties of the man who goes into battle inflamed with instinctive, joyous excitement are sharpened to a preternatural keenness. (1) When the constitutionally timid man has had an experience of this kind he looks back on the day that brought it to him as the happiest he has known, one that stands out brightly and shines with a strange glory among his days.

[footnote] (1) In an article on “Courage” by Lord Wolseley, in the Fortnightly Review for August 1889, there occurs the following passage, descriptive of the state of mind experienced by men in fight; “All maddening pleasures seem to be compressed into that very short space of time, and yet every sensation experienced in those fleeting moments is so indelibly impressed on the brain that not even the most trifling incident is ever forgotten in after life.”

When we are suddenly confronted with any terrible danger, the change of nature we undergo is equally great. In some cases fear paralyses us, and, like animals, we stand still, powerless to move a step in flight, or to lift a hand in defence of our lives; and sometimes we are seized with panic, and, again, act more like the inferior animals than rational beings. On the other hand, frequently in cases of sudden extreme peril, which cannot be escaped by flight, and must be instantly faced, even the most timid men at once, as if by miracle, become possessed of the necessary courage, sharp, quick apprehension, and swift decision. This is a miracle very common in nature; man and the inferior animals alike, when confronted with almost certain death “gather resolution from despair.” We are accustomed to call this the “courage of despair”; but there can really be no trace of so debilitating a feeling in the person fighting, or prepared to fight, for dear life. At such times the mind is clearer than it has ever been; the nerves are steel; there is nothing felt but a wonderful strength and fury and daring. Looking back at certain perilous moments in my own life, I remember them with a kind of joy; not that there was any joyful excitement then, but because they brought me a new experience — a new nature, as it were — and lifted me for a time above myself. And yet, comparing myself with other men, I find that on ordinary occasions my courage is rather below than above the average. And probably this instinctive courage, which flashes out so brightly on occasions, is inherited by a very large majority of the male children born into the world; only in civilised life the exact conjuncture of circumstances needed to call it into activity rarely occurs.

In hunting, again, instinctive impulses come very much to the surface. Leech caricatured Gallic ignorance of fox-hunting in England when he made his French gentleman gallop over the hounds and dash away to capture the fox himself; but the sketch may be also taken as a comic illustration of a feeling that exists in every one of us. If any sportsman among my readers has ever been confronted with some wild animal — a wild dog, a pig, or cat, let us say — when he had no firearm or other weapon to kill it in the usual civilised way, and has nevertheless attacked it, driven by a sudden uncontrollable impulse, with a hunting-knife, or anything that came to hand, and has succeeded in slaying it, I would ask such a one whether this victory did not give him a greater satisfaction than all his other achievements in the field? After it, all legitimate sport would seem illegitimate, and whole hecatombs of hares and pheasants, and even large animals, fallen before his gun, would only stir in him a feeling of disgust and self-contempt. He would probably hold his tongue about a combat of that brutal kind, but all the same he would gladly remember how in some strange, unaccountable way he suddenly became possessed of the daring, quickness, and certitude necessary to hold his wily, desperate foe in check, to escape its fangs and claws, and finally to overcome it. Above all, he would remember the keen feeling of savage joy experienced in the contest. This would make all ordinary sport seem insipid; to kill a rat in some natural way would seem better to him than to murder elephants scientifically from a safe distance. The feeling occasionally bursts out in The Story of My Heart: “To shoot with a gun is nothing . . . . Give me an iron mace that I may crush the savage beast and hammer him down. A spear to thrust him through with, so that I may feel the long blade enter, and the push of the shaft.” And more in the same strain, shocking to some, perhaps, but showing that gentle Richard Jefferies had in him some of the elements of a fine barbarian.

But it is in childhood and boyhood when instincts are nearest to the surface, and ready when occasion serves to spring into activity. Inherited second nature is weakest then; and habit has not progressed far in weaving its fine network of restraining influences over the primitive nature. The network is continually being strengthened in the individual’s life, and, in the end, he is eased, like the caterpillar, in an impervious cocoon; only, as we have seen, there are in life miraculous moments when the cocoon suddenly dissolves, or becomes transparent, and he is permitted to see himself in his original nakedness. The delight which children experience on entering woods and other wild pl............