He had been out on that cardoon-
covered spot where we had seen the fighting deer, and at that very
spot in the little green space he had come upon the skeletons of two
deer with their horns interlocked.
Tragedies of this kind in the wild animal world have often been
recorded, but they are exceedingly rare on the pampas, as the smooth
few-pronged antlers of the native deer, _corvus campestris_, are not
so liable to get hopelessly locked as in many other species.
Deer were common in our district in those days, and were partial to
land overgrown with cardoon thistle, which in the absence of trees and
thickets afforded them some sort of cover. I seldom rode to that side
without getting a sight of a group of deer, often looking exceedingly
conspicuous in their bright fawn colour as they stood gazing at the
intruder amidst the wide waste of grey cardoon bushes.
These rough plains were also the haunt of the rhea, our ostrich, and
it was here that I first had a close sight of this greatest and most
unbird-like bird of our continent. I was eight years old then, when
one afternoon in late summer I was just setting off for a ride on my
pony, when I was told to go out on the east side till I came to the
cardoon-covered land about a mile beyond the shepherd's ranch. The
shepherd was wanted in the plantation and could not go to the flock
just yet, and I was told to look for the flock and turn it towards
home.
I found the flock just where I had been told to look for it, the sheep
very widely scattered, and some groups of a dozen or two to a hundred
were just visible at a distance among the rough bushes. Just where
these furthest sheep were grazing there was a scattered troop of
seventy or eighty horses grazing too, and when I rode to that spot I
all at once found myself among a lot of rheas, feeding too among the
sheep and horses. Their grey plumage being so much like the cardoon
bushes in colour had prevented me from seeing them before I was right
among them.
The strange thing was that they paid not the slightest attention to
me, and pulling up my pony I sat staring in astonishment at them,
particularly at one, a very big one and nearest to me, engaged in
leisurely pecking at the clover plants growing among the big prickly
thistle leaves, and as it seemed carefully selecting the best sprays.
What a great noble-looking bird it was and how beautiful in its loose
grey-and-white plumage, hanging like a picturesquely-worn mantle about
its body! Why were they so tame? I wondered. The sight of a mounted
gaucho, even at a great distance, will invariably set them off at
their topmost speed; yet here I was within a dozen yards of one of
them, with several others about me, all occupied in examining the
herbage and selecting the nicest-looking leaves to pluck, just as if I
was not there at all! I suppose it was because I was only a small boy
on a small horse and was not associated in the ostrich brain with the
wild-looking gaucho on his big animal charging upon him with a deadly
purpose. Presently I went straight at the one near me, and he then
raised his head and neck and moved carelessly away to a distance of a
few yards, then began cropping the clover once more. I rode at him
again, putting my pony to a trot, and when within two yards of him he
all at once swung his body round in a quaint way towards me, and
breaking into a sort of dancing trot brushed past me.
Pulling up again and looking back I found he was ten or twelve yards
behind me, once more quietly engaged in cropping clover leaves!
Again and again this bird, and one of the others I rode at, practised
the same pretty trick, first appearing perfectly unconcerned at my
presence and then, when I made a charge at them, with just one little
careless movement placing themselves a dozen yards behind me.
But this same trick of the rhea is wonderful to see when the hunted
bird is spent with running and is finally overtaken by one of the
hunters who has perhaps lost the bolas with which he captures his
quarry, and who endeavours to place himself side by side with it so as
to reach it with his knife. It seems an easy thing to do: the bird is
plainly exhausted, panting, his wings hanging, as he lopes on, yet no
sooner is the man within striking distance than the sudden motion
comes into play, and the bird as by a miracle is now behind instead of
at the side of the horse. And before the horse going at top speed can
be reined in and turned round, the rhea has had time to recover his
wind and get a hundred yards away or more. It is on account of this
tricky instinct of the rhea that the gauchos say, "El avestruz es el
mas _gaucho_ de los animales," which means that the ostrich, in its
resourcefulness and the tricks it practises to save itself when
hard pressed, is as clever as the gaucho knows himself to be.
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.
