Far Away And Long Ago A History Of My Early Life By W. H. Hudson








































































 -  And it was also expressed in the new sound they gave out to
the wind. The change was really wonderful - Page 36
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And It Was Also Expressed In The New Sound They Gave Out To The Wind.

The change was really wonderful when the rows on rows of immensely tall trees which for months had talked

And cried in that strange sibilant language, rising to shrieks when a gale was blowing, now gave out a larger volume of sound, more continuous, softer, deeper, and like the wash of the sea on a wide shore.

The other trees would follow, and by and by all would be in full foliage once more, and ready to receive their strange beautiful guests from the tropical forests in the distant north.

The most striking of the newcomers was the small scarlet tyrant-bird, which is about the size of our spotted flycatcher; all a shining scarlet except the black wings and tail. This bird had a delicate bell-like voice, but it was the scarlet colour shining amid the green foliage which made me delight in it above all other birds. Yet the humming-bird, which arrived at the same time, was wonderfully beautiful too, especially when he flew close to your face and remained suspended motionless on mist-like wings for a few moments, his feathers looking and glittering like minute emerald scales.

Then came other tyrant-birds and the loved swallows - the house- swallow, which resembles the English house-martin, the large purple martin, the _Golodrina domestica_, and the brown tree-martin. Then, too, came the yellow-billed cuckoo - the _kowe-kowe_ as it is called from its cry. Year after year I listened for its deep mysterious call, which sounded like _gow-gow-gow-gow-gow,_ in late September, even as the small English boy listens for the call of _his_ cuckoo, in April; and the human-like character of the sound, together with the startlingly impressive way in which it was enunciated, always produced the idea that it was something more than a mere bird call. Later, in October when the weather was hot, I would hunt for the nest, a frail platform made of a few sticks with four or five oval eggs like those of the turtledove in size and of a pale green colour.

There were other summer visitors, but I must not speak of them as this chapter contains too much on that subject. My feathered friends were so much to me that I am constantly tempted to make this sketch of my first years a book about birds and little else. There remains, too, much more to say about the plantation, the trees and their effect on my mind, also some adventures I met with, some with birds and others with snakes, which will occupy two or three or more chapters later on.

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.

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