I Spent Many Hours On Several Consecutive Days Following The Flocks
About On My Pony, Hurling The _Bolas_ At Them Without Bringing Down
More Than One Bird.
My proceedings were no doubt watched with
amusement by the people of the estancia house, who were often sitting
Out of doors at the everlasting mate-drinking; and perhaps Don
Anastacio did not like it, as he was, I imagine, something of a St.
Francis with regard to the lower animals. He certainly loved his
abominable pigs. At all events on the last day of my vain efforts to
procure golden plover, a big, bearded gaucho, with hat stuck on the
back of his head, rode forth from the house on a large horse, and was
passing at a distance of about fifty yards when he all at once
stopped, and turning came at a gallop to within a few feet of me and
shouted in a loud voice: "Why do you come here, English boy,
frightening and chasing away God's little birds? Don't you know that
they do no harm to any one, and it is wrong to hurt them?" And with
that he galloped off.
I was angry at being rebuked by an ignorant ruffianly gaucho, who like
most of his kind would tell lies, gamble, cheat, fight, steal, and do
other naughty things without a qualm. Besides, it struck me as funny
to hear the golden plover, which I wanted for the table, called "God's
little birds," just as if they were wrens or swallows or humming-
birds, or the darling little many-coloured kinglet of the bulrush
beds.
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