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?
