When I First Started On My Riding Rambles About The Plain I Began To
Make The Acquaintance Of Some Of Our Nearest Neighbours, But At First
It Was A Slow Process.
As a child I was excessively shy of strangers,
and I also greatly feared the big savage house-dogs that would rush
out to attack any one approaching the gate.
But a house with a grove
or plantation fascinated me, for where there were trees there were
birds, and I had soon made the discovery that you could sometimes meet
with birds of a new kind in a plantation quite near to your own.
Little by little I found out that the people were invariably friendly
towards a small boy, even the child of an alien and heretic race; also
that the dogs in spite of all their noise and fury never really tried
to pull me off my horse and tear me to pieces. In this way, thinking
of and looking only for the birds, I became acquainted with some of
the people individually, and as I grew to know them better from year
to year I sometimes became interested in them too, and in this and
three or four succeeding chapters I will describe those I knew best or
that interested me the most. Not only as I first knew or began to know
them in my seventh year, but in several instances I shall be able to
trace their lives and fortunes for some years further on.
When out riding I went oftenest in the direction of Los Alamos, which
was west of us, or as the gauchos would say, "on the side where the
sun sets." For just behind the plantation, enclosed in its rows of
tall old poplars, was that bird-haunted stream which was an
irresistible attraction. The sight of running water, too, was a never-
failing joy, also the odours which greeted me in that moist green
place - odours earthy, herby, fishy, flowery, and even birdy,
particularly that peculiar musky odour given out on hot days by large
flocks of the glossy ibis.
The person - owner or tenant, I forget which - who lived in the house
was an old woman named Dona Pascuala, whom I never saw without a cigar
in her mouth. Her hair was white, and her thousand-wrinkled face was
as brown as the cigar, and she had fun-loving eyes, a loud
authoritative voice and a masterful manner, and she was esteemed by
her neighbours as a wise and good woman. I was shy of her and avoided
the house while anxious to get peeps into the plantation to watch the
birds and look for nests, as whenever she caught sight of me she would
not let me off without a sharp cross-examination as to my motives and
doings. She would also have a hundred questions besides about the
family, how they were, what they were all doing, and whether it was
really true that we drank coffee every morning for breakfast; also if
it was true that all of us children, even the girls, when big enough
were going to be taught to read the almanac.
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