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:
