BY W. H. HUDSON
Author of "Idle Days In Patagonia," "The Purple Land,"
"A Crystal Age," "Adventures Among Birds," Etc.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST MEMORIES
Preamble - The house where I was born - The singular ombu tree - A tree
without a name - The plain - The ghost of a murdered slave - Our
playmate, the old sheep-dog - A first riding-lesson - The cattle: an
evening scene - My mother - Captain Scott - The hermit and his awful
penance
CHAPTER II
MY NEW HOME
We quit our old home - A winter day journey - Aspect of the country - Our
new home - A prisoner in the barn - The plantation - A paradise of rats -
An evening scene - The people of the house - A beggar on horseback - Mr.
Trigg our schoolmaster - His double nature - Impersonates an old woman -
Reading Dickens - Mr. Trigg degenerates - Once more a homeless wanderer
on the great plain
CHAPTER III
DEATH OF AN OLD DOG
The old dog Caesar - His powerful personality - Last days and end - The
old dog's burial - The fact of death is brought home to me - A child's
mental anguish - My mother comforts me - Limitations of the child's
mind - Fear of death - Witnessing the slaughter of cattle - A man in the
moat - Margarita, the nursery-maid - Her beauty and lovableness - Her
death - I refuse to see her dead
CHAPTER IV
THE PLANTATION
Living with trees - Winter violets - The house is made habitable - Red
willow - Scizzor-tail and carrion-hawk - Lombardy poplars - Black acacia
- Other trees - The fosse or moat - Rats - A trial of strength with an
armadillo - Opossums living with a snake - Alfalfa field and
butterflies - Cane brake - Weeds and fennel - Peach trees in blossom -
Paroquets - Singing of a field finch - Concert-singing in birds - Old
John - Cow-birds' singing - Arrival of summer migrants
CHAPTER V
ASPECTS OF THE PLAIN
Appearance of a green level land - Cardoon and giant thistles - Villages
of the _vizcacha_, a large burrowing rodent - Groves and plantations
seen like islands on the wide level plains - Trees planted by the early
colonists - Decline of the colonists from an agricultural to a pastoral
people - Houses as part of the landscape - Flesh diet of the gauchos -
Summer change in the aspect of the plain - The water-like mirage - The
giant thistle and a "thistle year" - Fear of fires - An incident at a
fire - The _pampero_, or south-west wind, and the fall of the thistles
- Thistle-down and thistle-seed as food for animals - A great pampero
storm - Big hailstones - Damage caused by hail - Zango, an old horse,
killed - Zango and his master
CHAPTER VI
SOME BIRD ADVENTURES
Visit to a river on the pampas - A first long walk - Water-fowl - My
first sight of flamingoes - A great dove visitation - Strange tameness
of the birds - Vain attempts at putting salt on their tails - An ethical
question: When is a lie not a lie? - The _carancho_, a vulture-eagle -
Our pair of _caranchos_ - Their nest in a peach tree - I am ambitious to
take their eggs - The birds' crimes - I am driven off by the birds - The
nest pulled down
CHAPTER VII
MY FIRST VISIT TO BUENOS AYRES
Happiest time - First visit to the capital - Old and New Buenos Ayres -
Vivid impressions - Solitary walk - How I learnt to go alone - Lost - The
house we stayed at and the sea-like river - Rough and narrow streets -
Rows of posts - Carts and noise - A great church festival - Young men in
black and scarlet - River scenes - Washerwomen and their language - Their
word-fights with young fashionables - Night watchmen - A young
gentleman's pastime - A fishing dog - A fine gentleman seen stoning
little birds - A glimpse of Don Eusebio, the Dictator's fool
CHAPTER VIII
THE TYRANT'S FALL AND WHAT FOLLOWED
The portraits in our drawing-room - The Dictator Rosas who was like an
Englishman - The strange face of his wife, Encarnacion - The traitor
Urquiza - The Minister of War, his peacocks and his son - Home again
from the city - The war deprives us of our playmate - Natalia, our
shepherd's wife - Her son, Medardo - The Alcalde, our grand old man -
Battle of Monte Caseros - The defeated army - Demands for fresh horses -
In peril - My father's shining defects - His pleasure in a thunderstorm
- A childlike trust in his fellow-men - Soldiers turn upon their
officer - A refugee given up and murdered - Our Alcalde again - On
cutting throats - Ferocity and cynicism - Native blood-lust and its
effects on a boy's mind - Feeling about Rosas - A bird poem or tale -
Vain search for lost poem and story of its authorship - The Dictator's
daughter - Time, the old god
CHAPTER IX
OUR NEIGHBOURS AT THE POPLARS
Homes on the great green plain - Making the acquaintance of our
neighbours - The attraction of birds - Los Alamos and the old lady of
the house - Her treatment of St. Anthony - The strange Barboza family -
The man of blood - Great fighters - Barboza as a singer - A great quarrel
but no fight - A cattle-marking - Dona Lucia del Ombu - A feast - Barboza
sings and is insulted by El Rengo - Refuses to fight - The two kinds of
fighters - A poor little angel on horseback - My feeling for Anjelita -
Boys unable to express sympathy - A quarrel with a friend - Enduring
image of a little girl
CHAPTER X
OUR NEAREST ENGLISH NEIGHBOUR
Casa Antigua, our nearest English neighbour's house - Old Lombardy
poplars - Cardoon thistle or wild artichoke - Mr. Royd, an English
sheep-farmer - Making sheep's-milk cheeses under difficulties - Mr.
Hoyd's native wife - The negro servants - The two daughters: a striking
contrast - The white blue-eyed child and her dusky playmate - A happy
family - Our visits to Casa Antigua - Gorgeous dinners - Estanislao and
his love of wild life - The Royds' return visit - A home-made carriage -
The gaucho's primitive conveyance - The happy home broken up
CHAPTER XI
A BREEDER OF PIEBALDS
La Tapera, a native estancia - Don Gregorio Gandara - His grotesque
appearance and strange laugh - Gandara's wife and her habits and pets -
My dislike of hairless dogs - Gandara's daughters - A pet ostrich - In
the peach orchard - Gandara's herds of piebald brood mares - His
masterful temper - His own saddle-horses - Creating a sensation at
gaucho gatherings - The younger daughter's lovers - Her marriage at our
house - The priest and the wedding breakfast - Demetria forsaken by her
husband
CHAPTER XII
THE HEAD OF A DECAYED HOUSE
The Estancia Canada Seca - Low lands and floods - Don Anastacio, a
gaucho exquisite - A greatly respected man - Poor relations - Don
Anastacio a pig-fancier - Narrow escape from a pig - Charm of the low
green lands - The flower called _macachina_ - A sweet-tasting bulb
- Beauty of the green flower-sprinkled turf - A haunt of the golden
plover - The _bolas_ - My plover-hunting experience - Rebuked by a
gaucho - A green spot, our playground in summer and lake in winter - The
venomous toad - like _Ceratophrys_ - Vocal performance of the toad-like
creature - We make war on them - The great lake battle and its results
CHAPTER XIII
A PATRIARCH OF THE PAMPAS
The grand old man of the plains - Don Evaristo Penalva, the Patriarch -
My first sight of his estancia house - Don Evaristo described - A
husband of six wives - How he was esteemed and loved by every one - On
leaving home I lose sight of Don Evaristo - I meet him again after
seven years - His failing health - His old first wife and her daughter,
Cipriana - The tragedy of Cipriana - Don Evaristo dies and I lose sight
of the family
CHAPTER XIV
THE DOVECOTE
A favourite climbing tree - The desire to fly - Soaring birds-A
peregrine falcon - The dovecote and pigeon-pies - The falcon's
depredations - A splendid aerial feat - A secret enemy of the dovecote -
A short-eared owl in a loft - My father and birds - A strange flower -
The owls' nesting-place - Great owl visitations
CHAPTER XV
SERPENT AND CHILD
My pleasure in bird life - Mammals at our new home - Snakes and how
children are taught to regard them - A colony of snakes in the house -
Their hissing confabulations - Finding serpent sloughs - A serpent's
saviour - A brief history of our English neighbours, the Blakes
CHAPTER XVI
A SERPENT MYSTERY
A new feeling about snakes - Common snakes of the country - A barren
weedy patch - Discovery of a large black snake - Watching for its
reappearance - Seen going to its den - The desire to see it again - A
vain search - Watching a bat - The black serpent reappears at my feet -
Emotions and conjectures - Melanism - My baby sister and a strange
snake - The mystery solved
CHAPTER XVII
A BOY'S ANIMISM
The animistic faculty and its survival in us - A boy's animism and its
persistence - Impossibility of seeing our past exactly as it was - Serge
Aksakoff's history of his childhood - The child's delight in nature
purely physical - First intimations of animism in the child - How it
affected me - Feeling with regard to flowers - A flower and my mother
- History of a flower - Animism with regard to trees - Locust trees by
moonlight - Animism and nature-worship - Animistic emotion not uncommon
- Cowper and the Yardley oak - The religionist's fear of nature -
Pantheistic Christianity - Survival of nature-worship in England -
The feeling for nature - Wordsworth's pantheism and animistic emotion
in poetry
CHAPTER XVIII
THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER
Mr. Trigg recalled - His successor - Father O'Keefe - His mild rule and
love of angling - My brother is assisted in his studies by the priest -
Happy fishing afternoons - The priest leaves us - How he had been
working out his own salvation - We run wild once more - My brother's
plan for a journal to be called _The Tin Box_ - Our imperious editor's
exactions - My little brother revolts - _The Tin Box_ smashed up - The
loss it was to me
CHAPTER XIX
BROTHERS
Our third and last schoolmaster - His many accomplishments - His
weakness and final breakdown - My important brother - Four brothers,
unlike in everything except the voice - A strange meeting - Jack the
Killer, his life and character - A terrible fight - My brother seeks
instructions from Jack - The gaucho's way of fighting and Jack's
contrasted - Our sham fight with knives - A wound and the result - My
feeling about Jack and his eyes - Bird-lore - My two elder brothers'
practical joke
CHAPTER XX
BIRDING IN THE MARSHES
Visiting the marshes - Pajonales and juncales - Abundant bird life - A
coots' metropolis - Frightening the coots - Grebe and painted snipe
colonies - The haunt of the social marsh hawk - The beautiful jacana and
its eggs - The colony of marsh trupials - The bird's music - The aquatic
plant durasmillo - The trupial's nest and eggs - Recalling a beauty
that has vanished - Our games with gaucho boys - I am injured by a bad
boy - The shepherd's advice - Getting my revenge in a treacherous
manner - Was it right or wrong?
