There Were Other Open Spaces Covered With A Vegetation Almost As
Interesting As The Canes And The Trees:
This was where what were
called "weeds" were allowed to flourish.
Here were the thorn-apple,
chenopodium, sow-thistle, wild mustard, redweed, viper's bugloss, and
others, both native and introduced, in dense thickets five or six feet
high. It was difficult to push one's way through these thickets, and
one was always in dread of treading on a snake. At another spot fennel
flourished by itself, as if it had some mysterious power, perhaps its
peculiar smell, of keeping other plants at a proper distance. It
formed quite a thicket, and grew to a height of ten or twelve feet.
This spot was a favourite haunt of mine, as it was in a waste place at
the furthest point from the house, a wild solitary spot where I could
spend long hours by myself watching the birds. But I also loved the
fennel for itself, its beautiful green feathery foliage and the smell
of it, also the taste, so that whenever I visited that secluded spot I
would rub the crushed leaves in my palms and chew the small twigs for
their peculiar fennel flavour.
Winter made a great change in the plantation, since it not only
stripped the trees of their leaves but swept away all that rank
herbage, the fennel included, allowing the grass to grow again. The
large luxuriantly-growing annuals also disappeared from the garden and
all about the house, the big four-o'clock bushes with deep red stems
and wealth of crimson blossoms, and the morning-glory convolvulus with
its great blue trumpets, climbing over and covering every available
place with its hop-like mass of leaves and abundant blooms. My life in
the plantation in winter was a constant watching for spring. May,
June, and July were the leafless months, but not wholly songless. On
any genial and windless day of sunshine in winter a few swallows would
reappear, nobody could guess from where, to spend the bright hours
wheeling like house-martins about the house, revisiting their old
breeding-holes under the eaves, and uttering their lively little
rippling songs, as of water running in a pebbly stream. When the sun
declined they would vanish, to be seen no more until we had another
perfect spring-like day.
On such days in July and on any mild misty morning, standing on the
mound within the moat I would listen to the sounds from the wide open
plain, and they were sounds of spring - the constant drumming and
rhythmic cries of the spur-wing lapwings engaged in their social
meetings and "dances," and the song of the pipit soaring high up and
pouring out its thick prolonged strains as it slowly floated downwards
to the earth.
In August the peach blossomed. The great old trees standing wide apart
on their grassy carpet, barely touching each other with the tips of
their widest branches, were like great mound-shaped clouds of
exquisite rosy-pink blossoms. There was then nothing in the universe
which could compare in loveliness to that spectacle. I was a
worshipper of trees at this season, and I remember my shocked and
indignant feeling when one day a flock of green paroquets came
screaming down and alighted on one of the trees near me. This paroquet
never bred in our plantation; they were occasional visitors from their
home in an old grove about nine miles away, and their visits were
always a great pleasure to us. On this occasion I was particularly
glad, because the birds had elected to settle on a tree close to where
I was standing. But the blossoms thickly covering every twig annoyed
the parrots, as they could not find space enough to grasp a twig
without grasping its flower as well; so what did the birds do in their
impatience but begin stripping the blossoms off the branches on which
they were perched with their sharp beaks, so rapidly that the flowers
came down in a pink shower, and in this way in half a minute every
bird made a twig bare where he could sit perched at ease. There were
millions of blossoms; only one here and there would ever be a peach,
yet it vexed me to see the parrots cut them off in that heedless way:
it was a desecration, a crime even in a bird.
Even now when I recall the sight of those old flowering peach trees,
with trunks as thick as a man's body, and the huge mounds or clouds of
myriads of roseate blossoms seen against the blue ethereal sky, I am
not sure that I have seen anything in my life more perfectly
beautiful. Yet this great beauty was but half the charm I found in
these trees: the other half was in the bird-music that issued from
them. It was the music of but one kind of bird, a small greenish
yellow field finch, in size like the linnet though with a longer and
slimmer body, and resembling a linnet too in its general habits. Thus,
in autumn it unites in immense flocks, which keep together during the
winter months and sing in concert and do not break up until the return
of the breeding season. In a country where there were no bird-catchers
or human persecutors of small birds, the flocks of this finch, called
_Misto_ by the natives, were far larger than any linnet flocks ever
seen in England. The flock we used to have about our plantation
numbered many thousands, and you would see them like a cloud wheeling
about in the air, then suddenly dropping and vanishing from sight in
the grass, where they fed on small seeds and tender leaves and buds.
On going to the spot they would rise with a loud humming sound of
innumerable wings, and begin rushing and whirling about again, chasing
each other in play and chirping, and presently all would drop to the
ground again.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 17 of 96
Words from 17176 to 18183
of 98444
