"As a stylist, Mr. Hudson has few if any living equals." -Galsworthy, Nobel Prize author
"Almost mystic." -The Yale Review
"He takes his place among the immortals ... nobody who has once fallen under the spell of Mr. Hudson's writing ever again escapes." -Fortnightly Review
"Sure artistry ... it took me wholly captive." - Pennsylvania Gazette
"A master of prose style." -The Academy
When the country below the Rio Negro was an unknown wilderness, Hudson went to Patagonia to secure specimens of a rare species of birds but was shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia, and had a weary tramp to El Carmen. Afterwards, when on a visit to a friend, he met with a revolver accident which rendered him partially helpless and restricted the field of his observations.
In these enforcedly idle days he made minute and careful observations of the bird animal and human life about him and of the physical features of the country which he compiled in his widely acclaimed 1893 book "Idle Days in Patagonia." His work provides a very vivid picture of both animate and inanimate nature in one of the least known portions of the Southern Hemisphere.
The study of nature, which is the proper study of the naturalist, has no specialized limits in Mr. Hudson's practice. It is of unrestricted range, and is marked by qualities of sympathy and insight that are natural to the poet. There is not an object that falls within his study as a naturalist, be it some item of the mere catalogue of common things, or some beautiful or grandiose product of nature, that is not transmuted by his imagination, and revealed in its true, its primal relation to man.
Anything but a pleasing picture is drawn of the struggle the he has with Nature in his new home. Animals, birds, insects, and even inanimate forces are all arrayed against him, but the author considers even the severity of the struggle conducive to the well-being of the individual concerned. An interesting account of leaf-cutting ants is given and the bird-music of South America is stoutly defended and favorably compared to that of Europe.
It appeared that the idler, riding in the gray monotonous waste, found himself each day falling into a singular mental state, and remaining there until his return at nightfall to the river and the habitations of man. He concluded afterward that it must have been the mental state of the pure savage or quasi-animal, a case of atavism and return to an ancient prime, induced by the hypnotism of the desert.
Hudson relates the story of an encounter between ranchers and natives:
"They drove their animals into the corral, and, after unsaddling and turning loose the beasts they had ridden, were about to catch fresh horses, when a troop of Indians was spied charging down upon them. "Follow me, boys!" shouted Marcos, for there was no time to lose, and away they rushed to the river, throwing off their clothes as they ran. In a few moments they were in the water swimming for life, the shouts of the savages ringing in their ears....But when they approached it and were beginning to congratulate themselves on their escape, they were suddenly confronted with another party of mounted Indians, standing a few yards back from the margin and quietly waiting their arrival...."
About the author:
William Henry Hudson (1841 –1922) was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist. Hudson was born in Quilmes, near Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was the son of Daniel Hudson and his wife Catherine née Kemble, United States settlers of English and Irish origin.
