BY W. H. HUDSON
Author of "Idle Days In Patagonia," "The Purple Land,"
"A Crystal Age," "Adventures Among Birds," Etc.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST MEMORIES
Preamble - The house where I was born - The singular ombu tree - A tree
without a name - The plain - The ghost of a murdered slave - Our
playmate, the old sheep-dog - A first riding-lesson - The cattle: an
evening scene - My mother - Captain Scott - The hermit and his awful
penance
CHAPTER II
MY NEW HOME
We quit our old home - A winter day journey - Aspect of the country - Our
new home - A prisoner in the barn - The plantation - A paradise of rats -
An evening scene - The people of the house - A beggar on horseback - Mr.
Trigg our schoolmaster - His double nature - Impersonates an old woman -
Reading Dickens - Mr. Trigg degenerates - Once more a homeless wanderer
on the great plain
CHAPTER III
DEATH OF AN OLD DOG
The old dog Caesar - His powerful personality - Last days and end - The
old dog's burial - The fact of death is brought home to me - A child's
mental anguish - My mother comforts me - Limitations of the child's
mind - Fear of death - Witnessing the slaughter of cattle - A man in the
moat - Margarita, the nursery-maid - Her beauty and lovableness - Her
death - I refuse to see her dead
CHAPTER IV
THE PLANTATION
Living with trees - Winter violets - The house is made habitable - Red
willow - Scizzor-tail and carrion-hawk - Lombardy poplars - Black acacia
- Other trees - The fosse or moat - Rats - A trial of strength with an
armadillo - Opossums living with a snake - Alfalfa field and
butterflies - Cane brake - Weeds and fennel - Peach trees in blossom -
Paroquets - Singing of a field finch - Concert-singing in birds - Old
John - Cow-birds' singing - Arrival of summer migrants
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
CHAPTER VI
SOME BIRD ADVENTURES
Visit to a river on the pampas - A first long walk - Water-fowl - My
first sight of flamingoes - A great dove visitation - Strange tameness
of the birds - Vain attempts at putting salt on their tails - An ethical
question: When is a lie not a lie? - The _carancho_, a vulture-eagle -
Our pair of _caranchos_ - Their nest in a peach tree - I am ambitious to
take their eggs - The birds' crimes - I am driven off by the birds - The
nest pulled down
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:
