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:
