 CHAPTER XVIII. Mr. Trigg was in a small way a sort of juckland hide, all pleasantness in one of his states and all black looks and truculence in the other. So the out-of-doors and at table we children would say to ourselves in astonishment, is this our schoolmaster? But when in school we would ask, is this Mr. Trigg? But, as I have related, he had been forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on us, and was finally got rid of because in one of his demoniical moods he thrashed us brutally with his horse whip. When this occurred we, to our regret, were not permitted to go back to our aboriginal condition of young barbarians. Some restraint, some teaching, was still imposed upon us by our mother, who took or rather tried to take this additional burden on herself. Accordingly we had to meet with our lesson books and spend three or four hours every morning with her, or in the school room without her, for she was constantly being called away, and when present a portion of the time was spent in a little talk which was not concerned with our lessons. For we moved and breathed and had our being in a strange moral atmosphere, where through all us acts were common, and evil and good were scarcely distinguishable, and all this made her more anxious about our spiritual than our mental needs. My two elder brothers did not attend, as they had long discovered that their only safe plan was to be their own schoolmasters, and it was even more than she could manage very well to keep the four smaller ones to their tasks. She sympathized too much with our impatience at confinement when sun and wind and the cries of wild birds called insistently to us to come out and be alive and enjoy ourselves in our own way. At this stage, a successor to Mr. Trigg, a real schoolmaster, was unexpectedly found for us in the person of Father O'Keefe, an Irish priest without a curate and with nothing to do. Some friends of my father, on one of his periodical visits to Buenos Aires, mentioned this person to him. This priest, who in his wanderings about the world, had drifted hither and was anxious to find some place to stay at out on the plains while waiting for something to turn up. As he was without means, he said he would be glad of the position of schoolmaster in the house for a time, that it would exactly suit him. Father O'Keefe, who now appeared on the scene, was very unlike Mr. Trigg. He was a very big man in black but rusty clerical garments. He also had an extraordinarily big head and face, all of a dull reddish color, usually covered with a three or four days' growth of grizzly hair. Although his large face was unmistakably intensely Irish, it was not the guerrilla-like countenance so common in the Irish peasant priest, the priest one sees every day in the streets of Dublin. He was, perhaps, of a better class as his features were all good. A heavy man, as well as a big one, he was not so amusing and so fluent a talker out of school as his predecessor, nor, as we were delighted to discover, so exacting and tyrannical in school. On the contrary, in and out of school he was always the same, mild and placid in temper, with a gentle sort of humor, and he was also very absent-minded. He would forget all about school hours, roam about the gardens and plantations, get into long conversations with the workmen, and eventually, when he found that he was somewhat too casual to please his employer, he enjoined us to look him up and let him know when it was school time. Looking him up usually took a good deal of time. His teaching was not very effective. He could not be severe or even passively strict and never punished us in any way. When lessons were not learned he would sympathize with and comfort us by saying we had done our best and more could not be expected. He was also glad of any excuse to let us off for half a day. We found out that he was exceedingly fond of fishing, that with a rod and line in his hand he would spend hours of perfect happiness, even without a bite to cheer him. And on any fine day that called us to the plane we would tell him that it was a perfect day for fishing and ask him to let us off for the afternoon. At dinner time he would broach the subject and say that the children had been very hard at their studies all the morning and that it would be a mistake to force their young minds too much, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and so on and so forth, and that he considered it would be best for them instead of going back to more lessons in the afternoon to go for a ride. He always gained his point and dinner over we would rush out to catch and saddle our horses and one for Father O'Keefe. The younger of our two elder brothers, the sportsmen and fighter, and our leader and master in all our outdoor pastimes and peregrinations, had taken to the study of mathematics with tremendous enthusiasm, the same temper which he displayed in every subject and exercise that engaged him, fencing, boxing, shooting, hunting, and so on. And on Father O'Keefe's engagement he was anxious to know if the new master would be any use to him. The priest had sent a most satisfactory reply. He would be delighted to assist the young gentleman with his mathematics and to help him over all his difficulties. It was accordingly arranged that my brother was to have an early hour each morning with the master before school hours and an hour or two in the evening. Very soon it began to appear that the studies were not progressing smoothly. The priest would come forth as usual with a smiling placid countenance, my brother with a black scowl on his face, and gaining his room he would hurl his books down and protest in violent language that the O'Keefe was a perfect fraud that he knew as much of the infinitesimal calculus as a gaucho on horseback or a wild Indian. Then, beginning to see it in a humorous light, he would chat with laughter at the priest's pretensions to know anything and would say he was only fit to teach babies just out of the cradle to say their ABC. He only wished the priest had also pretended to some acquaintance with the manly art so that they could have a few bouts with the gloves on as it would have been a great pleasure to bruise that big humbugging face, black and blue. The mathematical lessons soon ceased altogether but whenever an afternoon outing was arranged my brother would throw aside his books to join us and take the lead. The ride to the river he would say would give us the opportunity for a little cavalry training and lance throwing exercise. In the cane break he would cut long straight canes for lances which at the fishing ground would be cut down to a proper length for rods. Then, mounting, we would set off. O'Keefe ahead, absorbed as usual in his own thoughts while we at a distance of a hundred yards or so would form in a line and go through our evolutions chasing the flying enemy, O'Keefe. And at intervals our commander would give the order to charge whereupon we would dash forward with a shout and when about forty yards from him we would all hurl our lances so as to make them fall just at the feet of his horse. In this way we would charge him a dozen or twenty times before getting to our destination, but never once would he turn his head or have any inkling of our carrying on in the rear, even when his horse lashed out viciously with his hind legs at the lances when they fell too near his feet. We enjoyed the advantage of the O'Keefe regime for about a year, then one day in his usual casual manner without a hint as to how his private affairs were going. He said that he had to go somewhere to see someone about something and we saw him no more. However, news of his movements and a good deal of information about him reached us incidentally, from all which it appeared that during his time with us and for some months previously, Father O'Keefe had been working out his own salvation in a quiet way in accordance with a rather elaborate plan which he had devised. Before he became our teacher he had lived in some priestly establishment in the capital and had been a hangar on at the bishop's palace waiting for a benefit or for some office. And at length, tired of waiting in vain, he had quietly withdrawn himself from the society and had got into communication with one of the Protestant clergymen of the town. He intimated or insinuated that he had long been troubled with certain scruples that his conscience demanded a little more liberty than his church would allow its followers, and this had caused him to cast a wistful eye on that other church whose followers were, alas, accorded a little more liberty than was perhaps good for their souls. But he didn't know and in any case he would like to correspond on these important matters with one on the other side. This letter met with a warm response and there was much correspondence and meetings with other clerics, Anglican or Episcopalian, I forget which. But there were also Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Methodist ministers, all with churches of their own in the town, and he may have flirted a little with all of them. Then he came for his year of waiting to us, during which he amused himself by teaching the little ones, smoothing the way for my mathematical brother and fishing. But the authorities of the church had not got rid of him, they heard not infrequently from him, and it was not pleasant hearing. He had come, he told them, a Roman Catholic priest to a Roman Catholic country, and had found himself a stranger in a strange land. He had waited patiently for months and had been put off with idle promises or thrust aside while every greedy, pushing priest that arrived from Spain and Italy was received with open arms and a place provided for him. Then, when his patience and private means had been exhausted, he had accidentally been thrown among those who were not of the faith, yet had received him with open arms. He had been humiliated and pained at the disinterested hospitality and Christian charity shown to him by those outside the pail after the treatment he had received from his fellow priests. Probably he said more than this, for it is a fact that he had been warmly invited to preach in one or two of the Protestant churches in the town. He did not go so far as to accept that offer. He was wise in his generation and eventually got his reward. Our schoolmaster gone. We were once more back in the old way. We did just what we liked. Our parents probably thought that our life would be on the plains with sheep and cattle breeding for only vocations, and that should any one of us, like my mathematical minded brother, take some line of his own, he would find out the way of it for himself. His own sense, the light of nature, would be his guide. I had no inclination to do anything with books myself. Books were lessons, therefore repellent, and that anyone should read a book for pleasure was inconceivable. The only attempt to improve our minds at this period came, oddly enough, from my masterful brother who despised our babyish intellects, especially mine. However, one day he announced that he had a grand scheme to put before us. He had heard or read of a family of boys living just like us in some wild isolated land where there were no schools or teachers and no newspapers. Who amused themselves by writing a journal of their own, which was issued once a week. There was a blue picture on a shelf in the house, and into this picture every boy dropped his contribution, and one of them, of course the most intelligent one, carefully went through them, selected the best and copied them all out in one large sheet, and this was their weekly journal called The Blue Picture, and it was read and enjoyed by the whole house. He proposed that we should do the same. He of course would edit the paper and write a large portion of it. It would occupy two or four sheets of quarto paper, all in his beautiful handwriting which resembled copper plate, and it would be issued for all of us to read every Saturday. We all agreed joyfully, and as the title had taken our fancy we started hunting for a blue picture all over the house, but couldn't find such a thing, and finally had to put up with a tin box with a wooden lid and a lock and key. The contributions were to be dropped in through a slit in the lid which the carpenter made for us, and my brother took possession of the key. The title of the paper was to be The Tin Box, and we were instructed to write about the happenings of the week and anything in fact which had interested us, and not to be such little asses as to try to deal with subjects we knew nothing about. I was to say something about birds. There was never a week went by in which I didn't tell them a wonderful story of a strange bird I had seen for the first time. Well, I could write about that strange bird and make it just as wonderful as I liked. We set about our task at once with great enthusiasm, trying for the first time in our lives to put our thoughts into writing. All went well for a few days. Then our editor called us together to hear an important communication he wished to make. First he showed us, but would not allow us to read or handle, a fair copy of the paper or of the portion he had done just to enable us to appreciate the care he was taking over it. He then went on to say that he could not give so much time to the task and pay for stationery as well without a small weekly contribution from us. This would only be about three half pens or tuppence from our pocket money and would not be much missed. To this we all agreed at once, except my younger brother, aged about seven at that time. Then he was told he would not be allowed to contribute to the paper. Very well, he wouldn't contribute to it, he said. In vain we all tried to coax him out of his stubborn resolve. He would not part with a copy of his money and would have nothing to do with the tin box. Then the editor's wrath broke out and he said he had already written his editorial but would now as a concluding article write a second one in order to show up the person who had tried to wreck the paper in his true colors. He would exhibit him as the meanest, most contemptible insect that ever crawled on the surface of the earth. In the middle of this furious tirade my poor little brother burst out crying. Keep your miserable tears to the papers out, shouted the other, as you will have good reason to shed them then. You will be a marked being, everyone will then point the finger of scorn at you and wonder how he could have ever thought well of such a pitiful little wretch. This was more than the little fellow could stand and he suddenly fled from the room, still crying. Then we all laughed and the angry editor laughed too, proud of the effect his words had produced. Our little brother did not join us at play that afternoon. He was in hiding somewhere, keeping watch on the movements of his enemy, who was no doubt engaged already in writing that dreadful article, which would make him a marked being for the rest of his life. In due time, the editor, his task finished, came forth and mounting his horse galloped off, and the little watcher came out and stealing into the room where the tin box was kept, carried it off to the carpenter's shop. There, with chisel and hammer, he broke the lid to pieces and taking out all the papers set to work to tear them up into the minutest fragments, which were carried out and scattered all over the place. When the big brother came home and discovered what had been done, he was in a mighty rage and went off in search of the avaricious little rebel who had dared to destroy his work. But the little rebel was not to be caught. At the right moment he fled from the coming tempest to his parents and claimed their protection. Then the whole matter had to be inquired into and the big boy was told that he was not a thrash's little brother, that he himself was to blame for everything on account of the extravagant language he had used, which the poor little fellow had taken quite seriously. If he actually believed the tin box article was going to have that disastrous effect on him, who could blame him for destroying it? That was the end of the tin box. Not a word about starting it afresh was said, and from that day my elder brother never mentioned it. But years later I came to think at a great pity that the scheme had miscarried. I believe from later experience that even if it had lasted but a few weeks it would have given me the habit of recording my observations, and that is a habit without which the keenest observation and the most faithful memory are not sufficient for the field naturalist. Thus, through the destruction of the tin box, I believe I lost a great part of the result of six years of life with wild nature. Since it was not until six years after my little brother's rebellious act that I discovered the necessity of making a note of every interesting thing I witnessed. End of Chapter 18. Recording by Step Heather in La Morata, California on August 5th, 2007. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Far away and long ago by W. H. Hudson. Chapter 19 Brothers The vanishing of the unholy priest from our can left us just about where we had been before his large red face had lifted itself above our horizon. At all events the illumination had not been great, and thereafter it was holiday once more for a goodish time, until yet a third tutor came upon the scene. Yet another stranger in a strange land who had fallen into low and hot water, and was willing to fill a vacant time in educating us. Just as in the case of O'Keeffe he was thrust upon my good-natured and credulous father by his friends in the capital, who had this gentleman with them, and were anxious to get him off their hands. He was, they assured my father, just the man he wanted, a fine fellow of good family, highly educated and all that, but he had been a bit wild, and all that was wanted to bring him round was to get him out a good distance from the capital and its temptations and into a quiet, peaceful home like ours. Strange to say he actually turned out to be all they had said and more. He had studied hard at college and when reading for a profession. He was a linguist, a musician, he had literary tastes, and was well read in science, and above all he was a first-rate mathematician. Naturally to my studious brother he came as an angel, beautiful and bright, with no suggestion of the fiend in him, for not only was he a mathematician, but he was also an accomplished fencer and boxer. And so the two were soon fast friends, and worked hard together over their books, and would then repair for an hour or two every day to the plantation, to fence and box and practice with pistol and rifle at the target. He also took to the humbler task of teaching the rest of us with considerable zeal, and succeeded in rousing a certain enthusiasm in us. We were, he told us, grossly ignorant, simply young barbarians, but he had penetrated beneath the thick crust that covered our minds, and was pleased to find that there were possibilities of better things, that if we would but second his efforts, and throw ourselves heart and soul into our studies, we should eventually develop from the grub condition to that of purple-winged butterflies. Our new teacher was tremendously eloquent, and it looked as if he had succeeded in conquering that wildness or weakness or whatever it was which had been his undoing in the past. Then came a time when he would ask for a horse and go for a long ride. He would make a call at some English estancia, and drink freely of the wine or spirits hospitably set on the table. And the result would be that he would come home raving like a lunatic. A very little alcohol would drive him mad. Then would follow a day or two of repentance and black melancholy, then recovery, and a fresh fair start. All this was somewhat upsetting to all of us. To my mother it was peculiarly distressing, and became more so when, in one of his repentant fits and touched by her words, he gave her a packet of his mother's letters to read. The pathetic letters of a broken-hearted woman to her son, her only and adored child, lost to her forever in a distant country thousands of miles from home. These sad appeals only made my mother more anxious to save him, and it was no doubt her influence that for a while did save, and make him able to succeed in his efforts to overcome his fatal weakness. But he was of two sanguiner temper, and by and by began to think that he had conquered, that he was safe, that it was time for him to do something great, and with some brilliant scheme he had hatched in his mind, he left us and went back to the capital to work it out. But alas! Before many months, when he was getting seriously to work with friends and money to help him, and every prospect of success, he broke down once more, so hopelessly that once more he had to be got rid of, and he was sent out of the country, but whether back to his own people, or to some other remote district in Argentina, I do not remember, nor do I know what became of him. Thus, disastrously, ended the third and last attempt my father made to have us instructed at home, nor could he send us to town, where there was but one English school for boys, run by a weak, sickly gentleman, whose house was a nest of fevers, and every sort of ailment incidental to boys herded together in an unhealthy boarding school. Prosperous English people sent their children home to be educated at that time, but it was enormously expensive, and we were not well off enough. A little later, an exception had to be made in the case of my elder brother, who would not settle down to sheep farming, or any other occupation out on the Pampas, but had set his heart on pursuing his studies abroad. At this period of my life, this brother was so important a person to me, that I shall have to give even more space to him in this chapter, than he had in the last one. Yet of my brothers, he was not the one nearest to my heart. He was five full years my senior, and naturally associated with an elder brother, while we two smaller ones were left to amuse ourselves together in our own childish way. With a younger brother for only playmate, I prolonged my childhood, and when I was ten, my brother of fifteen appeared a young man to me. We were all four extremely unlike in character, as well as appearance, and alike in one thing only, the voice, inherited from our father. But just as our relationship appeared in that one physical character, so I think that under all the diversities in our minds and temperaments, there was a hidden quality, a something of the spirit, which made us one, and this, I believe, came from the mother's side. That family lightness in the voice was brought home to us in a curious way, just about this time, when I was in my tenth year. My brother went one day to Buenos Aires, and arriving at the stable where our horses were always put up, long after dark, he left his horse, and on going out called the stableman, giving him some direction. As soon as he had spoken, a feeble voice was heard from the open door of a dark room near the gate, calling, that's a Hudson that spoke, father or son, who is it? My brother turned back and groped his way into the dark room and replied, yes, I'm a Hudson, Edwin's my name, who are you? Oh, I'm glad you're here, I'm your old friend Jack, returned the other, and it was a happy meeting between the boy in his sixteenth year and the grey-headed old battered vagabond and fighter, known far and wide in our part of the country, as Jack the killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition, and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been able to give him help. Jack the killer was one of those strange Englishmen frequently to be met with in those days who had taken to the Gaucho's manner of life, when the Gaucho had more liberty and was a more lawless being than he is now or can ever be again, unless that vast level area of the Pampas should at some future time become dispeepled and go back to what it was down to half a century ago. He had drifted into that outlandish place when young, and finding the native system of life congenial, had made himself as much of a native as he could and dressed like them and taught their language, and was horse-breaker, cattle-drover, and many other things by turn. And like any other Gaucho, he could make his own bridle and whip and horse gear and lasso and bolus out of raw hide. And when not working, he could gamble and drink like any Gaucho to the man born and fight, too. But here there was a difference. Jack could affiliate with the natives, yet could never be just like them. The stamp of the foreigner of the Englishman was never wholly eradicated. He retained a certain dignity, a reserve, almost a stiffness in his manner, which made him a marked man among them, and would have made him a butt to the wits and bullies among his comrades, but for his pride and deadly power. To be mocked as a foreigner, a gringo, an inferior being, was what he could not stand, and the result was that he had to fight, and it then came as a disagreeable revelation that when Jack fought, he fought to kill. This was considered bad form, for though men were often killed when fighting, the Gaucho's idea is that you do not fight with that intention, but rather to set your mark upon and conquer your adversary, and so give yourself fame and glory. Naturally, they were angry with Jack and became anxious to get rid of him, and by and by he gave them an excuse. He fought with and killed a man, a famous young fighter, who had many relations and friends, and some of these determined to avenge his death. And one night, a band of nine men came to the rancho where Jack was sleeping, and leaving two of their number at the door to kill him if he attempted to escape that way. The others burst into his room, their long knives in their hands. As the door was thrown open, Jack woke and instantly divining the cause of the intrusion. He snatched up the knife near his pillow and sprang like a cat out of his bed, and then began a strange and bloody fight. One man start naked with a short bladed knife in his hand, against seven men with their long facons in a small pitch dark room. The advantage Jack had was that his bare feet made no sound on the clay floor, and that he knew the exact position of a few pieces of furniture in the room. He had too a marvellous agility, and the intense darkness was all in his favour, as the attackers could hardly avoid wounding one another. At all events, the result was that three of them were killed, and the other four wounded, all more or less seriously. And from that time, Jack was allowed to live among them as a harmless, peaceful member of the community, so long as no person twitted him with being a gringo. Quite naturally, my brother regarded Jack as one of his greatest heroes, and whenever he heard of his being in our neighbourhood, he would mount his horse and go off in search of him, to spend long hours in his company, and persuade him to talk about that awful fight in a dark room with so many against him. One result of his intimacy with Jack was that he became dissatisfied with his own progress in the manly art of self-defense. It was all very well to make himself proficient with the foils and as a boxer, and to be a good shot, but he was living among people who had the knife for sole weapon, and if by chance he were attacked by a man with a knife, and had no pistol or other weapon, he would find himself in an exceedingly awkward position. There was then nothing to do but to practice with the knife, and he wanted Jack, who had been so successful with that weapon, to give him some lessons in its use. Jack shook his head. If his boyfriend wanted to learn the gaucho way of fighting, he could easily do so. The gaucho wrapped his poncho on his left arm to use it as a shield, and flourished his facon or knife, with a sword-like blade and a guard to the handle. This whirling about of the knife was quite an art, and had a fine look when two accomplished fighters stood up to each other, and made their weapons look like shining wheels or revolving mirrors in the sun. Meanwhile, the object of each man was to find his opportunity for a sweeping blow, which would lay his opponent's face open. Now all that was pretty to look at, but it was mere playing at fighting, and he never wanted to practice it. He was not a fighter by inclination. He wanted to live with and be one with the gauchos, but not to fight. There were numbers of men among them who never fought and were never challenged to fight, and he would be of those if they would let him. He never had a pistol. He wore a knife like everybody else, but a short knife for use and not to fight. But when he found that, after all, he had to fight, or else exist on sufferance as a despised creature among them, the bat of every fool and bully, he did fight in a way which he had never been taught and could not teach to another. It was nature. It was in him. When the dangerous moment came and knives flashed out, he was instantly transformed into a different being. He was on springs. He couldn't keep still or in one place for a second or a fraction of a second. He was like a cat, like India rubber, like steel, like anything you like, but something that flew round and about his opponent and was within striking distance one second and a dozen yards away the next. And when an onset was looked for, it never came where it was expected, but from another side, and in two minutes his opponent became confused and struck blindly at him, and his opportunity came not to slash and cut, but to drive his knife with all his power to the heart in the other's body and finish him forever. That was how he had fought and had killed, and because of that way of fighting, he had got his desire and had been permitted to live in peace and quiet until he had grown gray and no fighter or swashbuckler had said to him, Do you still count yourself a killer of men? Then kill me and prove your right to the title. And no one had jeered at or called him gringo. In spite of this discouragement, my brother was quite determined to learn the art of defending himself with a knife, and he would often go out into the plantation and practice for an hour with a tree for an opponent and try to capture Jack's unpremeditated art of darting hither and thither about his enemy and making his deadly strokes. But as the tree stood still and had no knife to oppose him, it was unsatisfactory, and one day he proposed to me and my youngest brother to have a fight with knives just to find out if he was making any progress. He took us out to the far end of the plantation where no one would see us and produced three very big knives with blades like butcher's knives and asked us to attack him with all our might and try our best to wound him while he would act solely on the defensive. At first we declined and reminded him that he had punished us terribly with gloves and foils and single stick and that it would be even worse with knives. He would cut us in pieces. No, he said. He would not dream of hurting us. It would be absolutely safe for us and for him too, as he didn't for a moment believe that we could touch him with our weapons no matter how hard we tried. And at last we were persuaded and taking off our jackets and wrapping them, gout show fashion, on our left arms as protection, we attacked him with the big knives and getting excited we slashed and lunged at him with all our power while he danced and jumped and flew about Ulla Jack the killer using his knife only to guard himself and to try and knock ours out of our hands. But in one such attempt at disarming me his weapon went too far and wounded my right arm about three inches below the shoulder. The blood rushed out and died my sleeve red and the fight came to an end. He was greatly distressed and running off to the house quickly returned with a jug of water, sponge, towel and linen to bind the wounded arm. It was a deep long cut and the scar has remained to this day so that I can never wash in the morning without seeing it and remembering that old fight with knives. Eventually he succeeded in stopping the flow of blood and binding my arm tightly round and then he made the desponding remark of course they'll have to know all about it now. Oh no I returned why should they my arm has stopped bleeding and they won't find out if they notice that I can't use it well I can just say I had a knock. He was immensely relieved and so pleased that he patted me on the back the first time he had ever done so and praised me for my manliness in taking it that way and to be praised by him was such a rare and precious thing that I felt very proud and began to think I was almost as good a fighter myself. And when all traces of blood had been removed and we were back in the house and at the supper table I was unusually talkative and hilarious not only to prevent anyone from suspecting that I had just been seriously wounded in a fight with knives but also to prove to my brother that I could take these knocks with proper fortitude. No doubt he was amused but he didn't laugh at me he was too delighted to escape being found out. There were no more fights with knives although when my wound was healed he did broach the subject again on two or three occasions and was anxious to convince me that it would be greatly to our advantage to know how to defend ourselves with a knife while living among people who were always as ready on any slight provocation to draw a knife on you as a cat was to unsheathe its claws. Nor could all he told us about the bloody and glorious deeds of Jack El Matador arouse any enthusiasm in me and though in his speech and manner Jack was as quiet and gentle a being as one could meet I could never overcome a curious shrinking an almost uncanny feeling in his presence particularly when he looked straight at me with those fine eyes of his. They were light gray in color clear and bright as in a young man but the expression pained me. It was too piercing too concentrated and it reminded me of the look in a cat's eyes when it crouches motionless just before making its dash at a bird. Nevertheless the fight and wound had one good result for me my brother had all at once become less masterful or tyrannical towards me and even began to show some interest in my solitary disposition and tastes. A little bird incident brought out this feeling in a way that was very agreeable to me. One evening I told him and our eldest brother that I had seen a strange thing in a bird which had led me to find out something new. Our commonest species was the parasitic cowbird which laid its eggs anywhere in the nests of all the other small birds. Its color was a deep glossy purple almost black and seeing two of these birds flying over my head I noticed that they had a small chestnut colored spot beneath the wing which showed that they were not the common species. It had then occurred to me that I had heard a peculiar note or cry uttered by what I took to be the cowbird which was unlike any note of that bird and following this clue I had discovered that we had a bird in our plantation which was like the cowbird in size color and general appearance but was a different species. They appeared amused by my story and a few days later they closely interrogated me on three consecutive evenings as to what I had seen that was remarkable that day in birds especially and were disappointed because I had nothing interesting to tell them. The next day my brother said he had a confession to make to me. He and the elder brother had agreed to play a practical joke on me and had snared a common cowbird and died or painted its tail a brilliant scarlet then liberated it expecting that I should meet with it in my day's rambles and bird watching in the plantation and would be greatly excited at the discovery of yet a third purple cowbird with the scarlet tail but otherwise not distinguishable from the common one. Now on reflection he was glad I had not found their bird and given them their laugh and he was ashamed at having tried to play such a mean trick on me. End of Chapter 19 In the spring and summer we often visited the lagoons or marshes, the most fascinating places I knew on account of their abundant wild bird life. There were four of these lagoons all in different directions and all within two or three miles from home. They were shallow lakelets called lagoonas, each occupying an area of three or four hundred acres with some open water and the rest overgrown with bright green sedges and dense beds called payonales and immense beds of bullrushes called yonkales. These last were always the best to explore when the water was not deeper than the saddle girth and where the round dark polished stems crowned with their bright brown tufts were higher than our heads when we urged our horses through them. These were the breeding places of some small birds that had their beautifully made nests a couple of feet or so above the water, attached in some cases to single and others to two or three rush stems. In here too we found the nests of several large species, egret, knight heron, cormorant, and occasionally a hawk. Birds which build on trees in forest districts but here on the treeless region of the Pampas they make their nests among the rushes. The fourth lakelet had no rush or sedge beds and no reeds and was almost covered with the luxuriant growth of the floating chemilote, a plant which at a distance resembles the wild musk or mimulus in its masses of bright green leaves and brilliant yellow blossoms. This too was a fascinating spot, as it swarmed with birds, some of them being kinds which should not breed in the reeds and rushes. It was a sort of metropolis of the coots and before and after the breeding season they would congregate in flocks of many hundreds on the low wet shore, where their black forms had a singular appearance on the moist green turf. It looked to me like a reproduction in small size of a scene I had witnessed, the vast level green Pampa with a scattered herd of two or three thousand black cattle grazing on it, in a large cattle estate where only black beasts were bred. We always thought it great fun when we found a big assembly of coots at some distance from the margin. Whipping up our horses, we would suddenly charge the flock and see them run and fly in a panic to the lake and rush over the open water, striking the surface with their feet and raising a perfect cloud of spray behind them. Coots, however, were common everywhere, but this water was the only breeding place of the Grebi in our neighborhood. Yet here we could find scores of nests any day, scores with eggs and a still greater number of false nests, and we could never tell which had eggs in it before pulling off the covering of wet weeds. Another bird rarely seen at any other spot than this was the painted snipe, a prettily marked species with a green curved bill. It has curiously sluggish habits, rising only when almost trodden upon and going off in a wild, sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it dormilon, sleepyhead. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding colony of these quaint birds. At every few yards one would spring up close to the hose, and dismounting we would find a little nest on the wet ground under the grass, always with two eggs so thickly blotched all over with black as to appear almost entirely black. There were other rushy lagoons at a greater distance which we visited only at long intervals, and one of these I must describe, as it was almost more attractive than any one of the others on account of its bird life. Here too there were some kinds which we never found breeding elsewhere. It was smaller than the other lagoons I have described and much shallower so that the big birds such as the stork, wood ibis, crested screamer, and the great blue ibis called venduria, and the roseate spoonbill could wade almost all over it without wetting their feathers. It was one of those lakes which appeared to be drying up and was pretty well covered with a growth of camelote plant mixed with reed, sedge, and bullrush patches. It was the only water in our part of the country where the large water snail was found, and the snails had brought the bird that feeds on them, the large social marsh hawk, a slate-colored bird resembling a buzzard in its size and manner of flight. But being exclusively a feeder on snails, it lives in peace and harmony with the other bird inhabitants of the marsh. There was always a colony of 40 or 50 of these big hawks to be seen at this spot. A still more interesting bird was the yakana as it is spelt in books, but pronounced yasana by the Indians of Paraguay, a quaint, rail-like bird supposed to be related to the plover family. Black and maroon red in color, the wingquills a shining greenish yellow, it has enormously long toes, spurs on its wings, and yellow wattles on its face. Here I first saw this strange, beautiful fowl, and here to my delight I found its nest in three consecutive summers, with three or four clay-colored eggs spotted with chestnut red. Here too was the breeding place of the beautiful black and white stilt, and of other species too many to mention. But my greatest delight was in finding breeding in this place a bird I loved more than all the others I have named, a species of marsh-trupule, a bird about the size of the common cowbird, and like it, of a uniform deep purple, but with a cap of chestnut-colored feathers on its head. I loved this bird for its song, the peculiar delicate tender opening notes and trills. In spring and autumn large flocks would occasionally visit our plantation, and the birds and hundreds would settle on a tree and all sing together, producing a marvelous and beautiful noise, as of hundreds of small bells all ringing at one time. It was by the water I first met their breeding place, where about three or four hundred birds had their nests quite near together, and nests and eggs and the plants on which they were placed, with the solicitous purple birds flying round me made a scene of enchanting beauty. The nesting site was on a low, swampy piece of ground, grown over with a semi-aquatic plant called Dureshmio in the vernacular. It has a single white stalk, woody in appearance, two or three feet high, and little thicker than a man's middle finger, with a palm-like crown of large, loose, lancyolate leaves so that it looks like a miniature palm, or rather an ailanthus tree, which has a slender, perfectly white bowl. The solanaceous flowers are purple, and it bears fruit the size of cherries, black as jet, in clusters of three to five or six. In this forest of tiny palms the nests were hanging, attached to the bowls, where two or three grew close together. It was a long and deep nest skillfully made of dry sedge-leaves woven together, and the eggs were white, or skim milk blue, spotted with black at the large end. That enchanting part of the marsh, with its forest of graceful miniature trees, where the social troupules sang and wove their nests and reared their young in company, that very spot is now, I dare say, one immense field of corn, lucerne, or flax, and the people who now live in labor there know nothing of its former beautiful inhabitants, nor have they ever seen or ever heard of the purple plumage troupule, with its chestnut cap and its delicate trilling song. And when I recall these vanished scenes, those rushy and flowery mirrors, with their varied and multitudinous wild birdlife, the cloud of shining wings, the heart enlivened wild cries, the joy unspeakable it was to me in those early years, I am glad to think I shall never revisit them, that I shall finish my life thousands of miles removed from them, cherishing to the end in my heart the image of a beauty which has vanished from earth. My elder brother occasionally accompanied us on our egg hunting visits to the lagoons, and he also joined us in our rides to the two or three streams where we used to go bathe and fish, but he took no part in our games and pastimes with the goucho boys. They were beneath him. We ran races on our ponies, and when there were race meetings in our neighbourhood, my father would give us a little money to go and enter our ponies in a boy's race. We rarely won when there were any stakes, as the native boys were too clever on horseback for us, and had all sorts of tricks to prevent us from winning, even when our ponies were better than theirs. We also went to tinamoo or partridge catching, and sometimes we had shamfights with lances, or long canes with which we supplied the others. These games were very rough, and one day when we were armed, not with canes, but with straight, pliant green poplar bowels we had cut for the purpose, we were having a running fight when one of the boys got in a rage with me for some reason, and dropping behind, then coming quietly up, gave me a blow on the face and head with his stick, which sent me flying off my pony. They all dashed on, leaving me there to pick myself up, and mounting my pony I went home crying with pain and rage. The blow had fallen on my head, but the pliant stick had come down over my face from the forehead to the chin, taking the skin off. On my way back I met our shepherd and told him my story, and said I would go to the boy's parents to tell them. He advised me not to do so. He said I must learn to take my own part, and if anyone injured me and I wanted him punished, I must do the punishing myself. If I made any fuss and complain about it, I should only get laughed at, and he would go scot-free. What then was I to do, I asked, seeing that he was older and stronger than myself, and had his heavy whip and knife to defend himself against attack. Oh, don't be in a hurry to do it, he returned. Wait for an opportunity, even if you have to wait for days, and when it comes, do to him just what he did to you. Don't warn him, but simply knock him off his horse, and then you will be quits. Now this shepherd was a good man, much respected by everyone, and I was glad that in his wisdom and sympathy he had put such a simple easy plan into my head, and I dried my tears and went home and washed the blood from my face, and when asked how I had got that awful wound that disfigured me, I made light of it. Two days later my enemy appeared on the scene. I heard his voice outside the gate calling to someone, and peering out I saw him sitting on his horse. His guilty conscience made him afraid to dismount, but he was anxious to find out what was going to be done about his treatment of me, also if he could see me, to discover my state of mind after two days. I went out to the timberpile and selected a bamboo cane about twenty feet long, not too heavy to be handled easily, and holding it up like a lance, I marched to the gate and started swinging it round as I approached him, and showing a cheerful countenance. What are you going to do with that cane? he shouted a little apprehensively. Wait and see, I returned, something to make you laugh. Then, after whirling it round half a dozen times more, I suddenly brought it down on his head with all my force, and did exactly what I had been counseled to do by the wise shepherd, knocked him clean off his horse. But he was not stunned, and staring up in a screeching fury, he pulled out his knife to kill me, and I, for strategic reasons, retreated rather hastily, but his wild cries quickly brought several persons on the scene, and recovering courage I went back and said triumphantly, Now we are quits. Then my father was called and asked to judge between us, and after hearing both sides he smiled, and said his judgment was not needed, that we had already settled it all ourselves, and there was nothing now between us. I laughed, and he glared at me, and mounting his horse rode off without another word. It was, however, only because he was suffering from the blow on his head. When I met him, we were good friends again. More than once during my life, when recalling that episode, I have asked myself if I did right in taking the shepherd's advice. Would it have been better when I went out to him with the bamboo cane, and he asked me what I was going to do with it, if I had gone out to him and shown him my face, would that broad band across it from chin to temple, where the skin had come off and a black crust had formed, and had said to him, This is the mark of the blow you gave me the day before yesterday, when you knocked me off my horse. You see it is on the right side of my face and head. Now take the cane and give me another blow on the left side. Tolstoy, my favourite author, by the way, would have answered, Yes, certainly it would have been better for you, better for your soul. Nevertheless, I still ask myself, would it? And if this incident should come before me half a second before my final disappearance from earth, I should still be in doubt. One of our favourite games at this period, the only game on foot we ever played with the goucho boys, was hunting the ostrich. To play this game we had bolas, only the balls at the end of the thong were not of lead like those with which the grown-up goucho hunter captures the real ostrich or rhea. We used light wood to make balls so as not to injure each other. The fastest boy was chosen to play the ostrich, and we were sent off to roam ostrich fashion on the plane, pretending to pick clover from the ground as he walked in a stooping attitude, or making little runs and waving his arms about like wings, then standing erect and mimicking the hollow booming sounds the cockbird emits when calling the flock together. The hunters would then come on the scene and the chase begin, the ostrich putting forth all his speed, doubling to this side and that, and occasionally thinking to escape by hiding, dropping upon the ground in the shelter of a cartoon thistle, only to jump up again when the shouts of the hunters drew near to rush on as before. At intervals the bolas would come whirling through the air, and he would dodge or avoid them by a quick turn, but eventually he would be hit, and the thong would wind itself about his legs and down he would come. Then the hunters would gather round him and pulling out their knives, begin operations by cutting off his head, then the body would be cut up, the wings and breasts removed, these being the best parts for eating, and there would be much talk about the condition and age of the bird and so on. Then would come the most exciting part of the proceedings, the cutting the gizzard open and the examination of its varied contents, and by and by there would be an exultant shout, and one of the boys would pretend to come on a valuable find, a big silver coin perhaps, a Patacon, and there would be a great gavel over it and perhaps a fight for its possession, and they would wrestle and roll on the grass struggling for the imaginary coin. That finish the dead ostrich would get up and place himself among the hunters, while the boy who had captured him with his bolus would then play ostrich and the chase would begin anew. When this game was played I was always chosen as the first ostrich, as at that time I could easily outrun and outjump any of my goucho playmates, even those who were three or four years older than myself. Nevertheless these games, horse racing, sham fights and ostrich hunting and the like gave me no abiding satisfaction. They were no sooner over than I would go back almost with a sense of relief to my solitary rambles and bird-watching, and to wishing that the day would come when my masterful brother would allow me to use a gun and practice the one sport of wild duck shooting I desired. That was soon to come and will form the subject of the ensuing chapter. End of chapter 20 I have said I was not allowed to shoot before the age of ten, but the desire had come long before that. I was no more than seven when I used to wish to be a big, or at all events a bigger, boy, so that like my brother I too might carry a gun and shoot big wild birds. But he said no, very emphatically, and there was an end of it. He had virtually made himself the owner of all the guns and weapons generally in the house. These included three fouling pieces, a rifle, an ancient tower musket with a flintlock, doubtless dropped from the dead hands of a slain British soldier in one of the fights in Buenos Aires in 1807 or 1808, a pair of heavy horse-pistols, and a ponderous, formidable-looking old blunderbuss, wide at the mouth as a teacup saucer. His two were the swords. To our native neighbours this appeared an astonishingly large collection of weapons, for in those days they possessed no firearm except in some rare instances a carbine, brought home by a runaway soldier and kept concealed lest the authorities should get wind of it. As the next best thing to doing the shooting myself, I attended my brother in his expeditions, to hold his horse or to pick up and carry the birds, and was deeply grateful to him for allowing me to serve him in this humble capacity. We had some exciting adventures together. One summer day he came rushing home to get his gun, having just seen an immense flock of golden plover come down at a spot a mile or so from home. With his gun and a sack to put the birds in, he mounted his pony, I with him, as our ponies were accustomed to carry two and even three at a pinch. We found the flock where he had seen it alight, thousands of birds evenly scattered, running about busily feeding on the wet-level ground. The bird I speak of is the Chiradrius domino cancer, which breeds in Arctic America and migrates in August and September to the plains of La Plata and Patagonia, so that it travels about sixteen thousand miles every year. In appearance it is so like our golden plover, Chiradrius pluvialis, as to be hardly distinguishable from it. The birds were quite tame. All our wild birds were if anything too tame, although not shockingly so, as Alexander Selkirk found them on his island, the poets not the real Selkirk. The birds being so scattered, all he could do was to lie flat down and fire with the barrel of his fowl in peace level with the flock, and the result was that the shot cut through the loose flock to a distance of thirty or forty yards, dropping thirty-nine birds, which we put into the sack and remounting our pony set off home at a far scallop. We were riding barebacked, and as our pony's back had a forward slope we slipped further and further forward until we were almost on his neck, and I, sitting behind my brother, shouted for him to stop. But he had his gun in one hand, and the sack in the other, and had lost the reins. The pony, however, appeared to have understood as he came to a dead stop of his own accord on the edge of a rain-pool, into which we were pitched headlong. When I raised my head I saw the bag of birds at my side, and the gun lying under water at a little distance. About three yards further on my brother was just sitting up, with the water streaming from his long hair and a look of astonishment on his face, but the pool was quite clean with the soft grass for bottom, and we were not hurt. However, we did sometimes get into serious trouble. On one occasion he persuaded me and the little brother to accompany him on a secret shooting expedition he had planned. We were to start on horseback before daybreak, ride to one of the marshes about two miles from home, shoot a lot of duck, and get back about breakfast time. The main thing was to keep the plan secret, then it would be all right, since the sight of the number of wild duck we should have to share on our return would cause our escapade to be overlooked. In the evening, instead of liberating our ponies as usual, we took and tethered them in the plantation, and next morning about three o'clock we crept cautiously out of the house and set off on our adventure. It was a winter morning, misty and cold when the light came, and the birds were excessively wild at that hour. In vain we followed the flocks, my brother stalking them through the sedges, above his knees in the water, not a bird he could get, and at last we were obliged to go back empty-handed to face the music. At half-past ten we rode to the door, wet and hungry and miserable, to find the whole house in a state of commotion at our disappearance. When we were first missed in the morning, one of the workmen reported that he had seen us taking our horses to conceal them in the plantation at a little after dark, and it was assumed that we had run away, that we had gone south, where the country was more thinly settled and wild animals more abundant, in quest of new and more staring adventures. They were greatly relieved to see us back, but as we had no ducks to placate them, we could not be forgiven, and as a punishment we had to go breakfastless that day, and our leader was in addition sternly lectured and forbidden to use a gun for the future. We thought this a very hard thing, and for the following days were inclined to look at life as a rather tame, insipid business, but soon to our joy the ban was removed. In forbidding us the use of the guns my father had punished himself as well as us, since he never thoroughly enjoyed a meal, breakfast, dinner, or supper, unless he had a bird on the table, wild duck, playver, or snipe. A cold roast duck was his favourite breakfast dish, and he was never quite happy when he didn't get it. Still, I was not happy, and could not be so long as I was not allowed to shoot. It was a privilege to be allowed to attend, but it seemed to me that at the age of ten I was quite old enough to have a gun. I had been a rider on horseback since the age of six, and in some exercises I was not much behind my brother, although when we practised with the foils or with the gloves he punished me in rather a barbarous manner. He was my guide and philosopher, and had also been a better friend ever since our fight with knives in the Cowbird episode. Nevertheless he still managed to dissemble his love, and when I revolted against his tyranny I generally got well punished for it. About that time an old friend of the family who took an interest in me and wished to do something to encourage me in my natural history tastes, made me a present of a set of pen and ink drawings. There was, however, nothing in these pictures to help me in the line I had taken. They were mostly architectural drawings made by himself of buildings—houses, churches, castles, and so on—but my brother fell in love with them, and began to try to get them from me. He could not rest without them, and was continually offering me something of his own in exchange for them. But though I soon grew tired of looking at them, I refused to part with them, either because his anxiety to have them gave them a fictitious value in my sight, or because it was pleasing to be able to inflict a little pain on him in return for the many smarts I had suffered at his hands. At length one day, finding me still unmoved, he all at once offered to teach me to shoot, and to allow me the use of one of the guns in exchange for the pictures. I could hardly believe my good fortune. It would have surprised me less if he had offered to give me his horse with saddle and bridle also. As soon as the drawings were in his hands, he took me to our gun room, and gave me a quite unneeded lesson in the art of loading a gun. First so much powder, then a wad well round down with the old obsolete ramrod, then so much shot, and a second wad and ramming down, then a percussion cap on the nipple. He then led the way to the plantation, and finding two wild pigeons sitting together in a tree, he ordered me to fire. I fired, and one fell, quite dead, and that completed my education, for now he declared he was not going to waste any more time on my instruction. The gun he had told me to use was a single barrel fouling-piece, an ancient converted flintlock, the stock made of an iron-hard black wood with silver mountings. When I stood it up and measured myself by it, I found it was nearly two inches taller than I was, but it was light to carry and served me well. I became as much attached to it as to any living thing, and it was like a living being to me, and I had great faith in its intelligence. My chief ambition was to shoot wild duck. My brother shot them in preference to anything else. They were so much esteemed, and he was so much commended when he came in with a few in his bag, that I looked on duck-shooting as the greatest thing I could go in for. Ducks were common enough with us, and in great variety, I know not in what country more kinds are to be found. There were no fewer than five species of teal, the commonest a dark brownbird with black mottlings. Another very common was pale gray, the plumage beautifully barred and penciled with brown and black. Then we had the blue-winged teal, a maroon-red duck which ranges from Patagonia to California, the ringed teal with salmon-coloured breast and velvet-black collar, the Brazilian teal, a lovely olive-brown and velvet-black duck with crimson beak and legs. There were two pintails, one of which was the most abundant species in the country, also a widgen, a lake duck, a shoveler duck with red plumage, gray head and neck and blue wings, and two species of the long-legged whistling or tree duck. Another common species was the rosy-billed duck, now to be seen on ornamental waters in England, and occasionally we saw the wild muscovy duck, called royal duck, by the natives, but it was a rare visitor so far south. We also had geese and swans, the upland geese from the Magellanic Straits that came to us in winter, that is to say our winter, from May to August, and there were two swans, the black-necked which has black flesh and is unfit to eat, and the white or Coscorabus one, as good a table bird as there is in the world. And oddly enough this bird has been known to the natives as a goose since the discovery of America, and now after three centuries our scientific ornithologists have made discovery that it is a link between the geese and swans, but is more goose than swan. It is a beautiful white bird with bright red bill and legs, the wings tipped with black, and has a loud musical cry of three notes, the last prolonged note with a falling inflection. These were the birds we sought after in winter, but we could shoot for the table all the year round, for no sooner was it the ducks' pairing and breeding season than another bird population from their breeding grounds in the Arctic and subarctic regions came on the scene, plover, sandpiper, godwit, curlew, wimbrill, a host of northern species that made a summer-dried pampas their winter abode. My first attempt at duck-shooting was made at a pond not many minutes' walk from the house, where I found a pair of shoveler ducks feeding in their usual way in the shallow water with head and neck immersed. Anxious not to fail in this first trial, I got down flat on the ground and crawled snake fashion for a distance of fifty or sixty yards, until I was less than twenty yards from one of the birds. Anxious not to fail in this first trial, I got down flat on the ground and crawled snake fashion for a distance of fifty or sixty yards, until I was less than twenty yards from the birds, when I fired and killed one. That first duck was a great joy, and having succeeded so well with my careful tactics, I continued in the same way, confining my attention to pairs or small parties of three or four birds, when by patiently creeping a long distance through the grass I could get very close to them. In this way I shot teal, widgen, pintail, shovelers, and finally the noble rosy bill, which was esteemed for the table above all the others. My brother, ambitious of a big bag, invariably went a distance from home in quest of the large flocks, and despised my way of duck-shooting. But it sometimes vexed him to find on his return from a day's expedition that I had succeeded in getting as many birds as himself, without having gone much more than a mile from home. Some months after I had started shooting I began to have trouble with my beloved gun, owing to a weakness it had developed in its lock, one of the infirmity's incidental to age which the gunsmiths of Buenos Aires were never able to cure effectually. Whenever it got bad I was permitted to put it into the cart sent to town periodically, to have it repaired, and would then go gunless for a week or ten days. On one of these occasions I one day saw a party of shoveler duck, dibbling in a small rain-pool at the side of the plantation, within a dozen yards of the old moat which surrounded it. Ducks always appeared to be exceptionally tame and bold when I was without a gun, but the boldness of those shovelers was more than I could stand, and running to the house I got out the old blender-bus, which I had never been forbidden to use since no one had ever thought it possible that I should want to use such a monster of a gun. But I was desperate, and loading it for the first and last time, I went after those shovelers. I had once been told that it would be impossible to shoot wild duck or anything with the blender-bus, unless one could get within a dozen yards of them, on account of its tremendous scattering power. Well, by going along the bottom of the moat, which was luckily without water just then, I could get as near the birds as I liked, and kill the whole flock. When I arrived abreast of the pool I crept up the grassy crumbling outside bank, and resting the ponderous barrel on the top of the bank, fired at the shovelers at a distance of about fifteen yards, and killed nothing, but received a kick which sent me flying to the bottom of the fos. It was several days before I got over that pain in my shoulder. Later on there was a period of trouble and scarcity in the land. There was war, and the city from which we obtained our supplies was besieged by an army from the upper provinces, which had come down to break the power and humble the pride of Buenos Aires. Our elders missed their tea and coffee most, but our anxiety was that we should soon be without powder and shot. My brother constantly warned me not to be so wasteful, although he fired half a dozen shots to my one, without getting more birds for the table. At length there came a day when there was little shot left, just about enough to fill one shot pouch, and knowing it was his intention to have a day out, I sneaked into the gun room and loaded my fouling-piece just to have one shot more. He was going to try for upland geese that day, and, as I had expected, carried off all the shot. After he had gone I took my gun, and being determined to make the most of my one shot, refused to be tempted by any of the small parties of duck I found in the pools near home, even when they appeared quite tame. At length I encountered a good-sized flock of rosy-bills by the side of a marshy stream about two miles from home. It was a still, warm day in mid-winter, and the ducks were dozing on the green bank in a beautiful crowd, and as the land near them was covered with long grass, I saw it would be possible to get quite close to them. Leaving my ponier to good distance, I got down flat on the ground and began my long, laborious crawl, and got within twenty-five yards of the flock, never had I had such a chance before. As I peeped through the grass and herbage, I imagined all sorts of delightful things, my brother far away vainly firing long-shots at the wary geese, and his return and disgust at the sight of my heap of noble rosy-bills, all obtained near home at one shot. Then I fired, just as the birds catching sight of my cap raised their long necks in alarm. Bang! Up they rose with a noise of wings, leaving not one behind. Vainly I watched the flock, thinking that some of the birds I must have hit would soon be seen to waver in their course and then drop to earth, but none wavered or fell. I went home as much puzzled as disappointed. Late in the day my brother returned with one upland goose and three or four ducks, and inquired if I had had any luck. I told him my sad story, whereupon he burst out laughing and informed me that he had taken care to draw the shot from my gun before going out. He was up to my little tricks, he said, he had seen what I had done, and was not going to allow me to waste the little shot we had left. Our duck-shooting was carried on under difficulties during those days. We searched for ammunition at all the houses for some leagues around, and at one house we found and purchased a quantity of exceedingly coarse gunpowder, with grain almost the size of canary seed. They told us it was cannonpowder, and to make it fit for use in our fouling pieces we ground it fine with glass and stone bottles for rollers on a tin plate. Shot we could not find, so had to make it for ourselves by cutting up plates of lead into small square bits with a knife and hammer. Eventually the civil war which had dragged on for a long time brought an unexpected danger to our house, and caused us to turn our minds to more important things than ducks. I have said that the city was besieged by an army from the provinces, but away on the southern frontier of the Province of Buenos Aires the besieged party, or faction, had a powerful friend in an Estanciero in those parts who was friendly with the Indians, and who collected an army of Indians hungry for loot and gauchos, mostly criminals and deserters, who in those days were accustomed to come from all parts of the country to put themselves under the protection of this good man. This horde of robbers and enthusiasts was now advancing upon the capital to raise the siege, and each day brought us alarming reports, whether true or false we could not know, of depredations they were committing on their march. The good man, their commander, was not a soldier, and there was no pretense of discipline of any kind. The men, it was said, did what they liked, swarming over the country on the line of march in bands, sacking in burning houses, killing or driving off the cattle, and so on. Our house was unfortunately on the main road running south from the capital, and directly in the way of the coming rabble, that the danger was a real and very great one we could see in the anxious faces of our elders. Besides, nothing was now talked of but the coming army and of all we had to fear. At this juncture my brother took it upon himself to make preparations for the defense of the house. Our oldest brother was away, shut up in the besieged city, but the three of us at home determined to make a good fight, and we set to work cleaning and polishing up our firearms, the tower musket, the awful blend of us, the three fouling pieces, double and single-barrelled, and the two big horse-pistols, and an old revolver. We collected all the old lead we could find about the place, and made bullets in a couple of bullet-molds we had found, one for ounce and one for small bullets, three to the ounce. The fire to melt the lead was in a shelter we had made behind an outhouse, and here one day, in spite of all our precautions, we were discovered at work, with rows and pyramids of shining bullets round us, and our secret was out. We were laughed at as a set of young fools for our pains. Never mind, said my brother, let them mock now, by and by when it comes to choosing between having our throats cut and defending ourselves, they will probably be glad the bullets were made. But though they laughed, our work was not interfered with, and some hundreds of bullets were turned out and made quite a pretty show. Meanwhile the besiegers were not idle, they had in their army a cavalry officer who had had a long experience of frontier warfare, and had always been successful in his fights with the Pampas Indians, and this man, with a picked force composed of veteran fighters, was dispatched against the barbarians. They had already crossed the Salado River, and were within two or three easy marches of us, when the small disciplined force met and gave them battle and utterly rooted them. Indians and Gauchos were sent flying south like thistle down before the wind, but all being well-mounted not many were killed. So ended that danger, and I think we boys were all a little disappointed that no use had been made of our bright beautiful bullets. I am sure my brother was, but soon after that he left home for a distant country, and our shooting and other adventures together were ended, for ever. For information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Far away and long ago by W. H. Hudson. Chapter 22. Boyhood's End. This book has already run to a greater length than was intended. Nevertheless, there must be yet another chapter or two to bring it to a proper ending, which I can only find by skipping over three years of my life, and so getting at once to the age of 15. For that was a time of great events and serious changes, bodily and mental, which practically brought the happy time of my boyhood to an end. On looking back over the book, I find that on three or four occasions I have placed some incident in the wrong chapter or group, thus making it take place a year or so too soon or too late. These small errors of memory are, however, not worth altering now, so long as the scene or event is rightly remembered and pictured. It doesn't matter much whether I was six or seven or eight years old at the time. I find too that I have admitted many things, which perhaps deserved a place in the book, scenes and events which are vividly remembered, but which unfortunately did not come up at the right moment, and so were left out. Of these scenes unconsciously omitted, I will now give one which should have appeared in the chapter describing my first visit to Buenos Aires City. Placed here, it was served very well as an introduction to this last chapter. In those days, and indeed down to the seventies of the last century, the south side of the capital was the site of the famous Saladero, or killing grounds, where the fat cattle, horses and sheep brought in from all over the country were slaughtered every day, some to supply the town with beef and mutton, and to make charque or sun-dried beef for exportation to Brazil, where it was used to feed the slaves, but the greater number of the animals, including all the horses, were killed solely for their hides and tallow. The grounds covered a space of three or four square miles where there were cattle enclosures made of upright posts placed close together, and some low buildings scattered about. To this spot were driven endless flocks of sheep, half or holy wild horses, and dangerous-looking long-horned cattle in herds of a hundred or so to a thousand, each moving in its cloud of dust, with noise of bellowings and bleatings, and furious shouting of the drovers as they galloped up and down, urging the doomed animals on. When the beasts arrived in two great numbers to be dealt with in the buildings, you could see hundreds of cattle being killed in the open, all over the grounds, in the old, barbarous way the gouchos use. Every animal, first being lassoed, then hamstrung, then its throat cut, a hideous and horrible spectacle, with a suitable accompaniment of sounds in the wild shouts of the slaughterers, and the awful bellowings of the tortured beasts. Just where the animal was knocked down and killed, it was stripped of its hide and the carcass cut up, a portion of the flesh in fact being removed, and all the rest left on the ground to be devoured by the pariah dogs, the carrion hawks, and a multitude of screaming black-headed gulls always in attendance. The blood so abundantly shed from day to day, mixing with the dust, had formed a crust half a foot thick all over the open space. Let the reader try to imagine the smell of this crust and of tons of awful and flesh and bones lying everywhere in heaps. But no, it cannot be imagined. The most dreadful scenes, the worst in Dante's Inferno, for example, can be visualized by the inner eye, and sounds too are conveyed to us in a description so that they can be heard mentally. But it is not so with smells. The reader can only take my word for it that this smell was probably the worst ever known on earth, unless he accepts as true the story of Tobit and the fishy fumes by means of which that ancient hero defended himself in his retreat from the pursuing devil. It was the smell of carrion, of putrefying flesh, and of that old and ever newly moistened crust of dust and coagulated blood. It was, or seemed, a curiously substantial and stationary smell. Travellers approaching or leaving the capital by the great south road, which skirted the killing grounds, would hold their noses and ride a mile or so at a furious gallop until they got out of the abominable stench. One extraordinary feature of the private quintas or orchards and plantations in the vicinity of the Saladeros was the walls or hedges. These were built entirely of cow skulls, seven, eight, or nine deep, placed evenly like stones, the horns projecting. Hundreds of thousands of skulls had been thus used, and some of the old, very long walls, crowned with green grass and with creepers and wild flowers growing from the cavities in the bones, had a strangely picturesque, but somewhat uncanny appearance. As a rule there were rows of old lombardy poplars behind these strange walls or fences. In those days, bones were not utilized, they were thrown away, and those who wanted walls in a stoneless land where bricks and wood for palings were dear to buy, found in the skulls a useful substitute. The abomination I have described was but one of many, the principal and sublime stench in the city of evil smells, a popular city built on a plain without drainage and without water supply beyond that which was sold by watermen in buckets, each bucket full containing about half a pound of red clay in solution. It is true that the best houses had alchives or cisterns under the courtyard where the rainwater from the flat roofs was deposited. I remember that water well, you always had one or two to half a dozen scarlet wrigglers the larvae of mosquitoes in a tumbler full and you drank your water quite calmly wrigglers and all. All this will serve to give an idea of the condition of the city of that time from the sanitary point of view and this state of things lasted down to the 70s of the last century when Buenos Aires came to be the chief pestilential city of the globe and was obliged to call in engineers from England to do something to save the inhabitants from extinction. When I was in my 15th year before any changes had taken place and the great outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever were yet to come I spent four or five weeks in the city greatly enjoying the novel scenes and new life. After about 10 or 12 days I began to feel tired and languid and this feeling grew on me day by day until it became almost painful to exert myself to visit even my most favoured haunts the great south market where caged birds were to be seen in hundreds green parakeets cardinals and bishop birds predominating or to the riverfront where I spent much time fishing for little silvery kingfishes from the rocks or further away to the kintas and gardens on the cliff where I first feasted my eyes on the sight of orange groves laden with golden fruit amidst the vivid green polished foliage and old olive trees with black egg-shaped fruit showing among the gray leaves and through it all the feeling of latitude continued and was I thought due to the fact that I was on foot instead of on horseback and walking on a stony pavement instead of on a green turf it never occurred to me that there might be another cause that I was breathing in a pestilential atmosphere and that the poison was working in me leaving town I traveled by some conveyance to spend a night at a friend's house and next morning set out for home on horseback I had about 27 miles across country to ride and never touched a road and I was no sooner on my way than my spirits revived I was well and unspeakably happy again on horseback on the wide green plain drinking in the pure air like a draft of eternal life it was autumn and the plain as far as one could see on every side a moist brilliant green with a crystal blue sky above over which floated shining white clouds the healthy glad feeling lasted through my ride and for a day or two after during which I revisited my favorite haunts in the grounds rejoicing to be with my beloved birds and trees once more then the hateful town feeling of latitude returned on me and all my vigor was gone all pleasure in life ended thereafter for a fortnight I spent the time moping about the house then there was a spell of frosty weather with a bleak cutting wind to tell us that it was winter which even in those latitudes can be very cold one day after early dinner my mother and sisters went in the carriage to pay a visit to a neighboring istancia and my brothers being out or absent from home I was left alone the veranda appeared to me the warmest place I could find as the sun shone on it warm and bright and there I settled down on a chair placed against the wall at the side of a heap of sacks of meal or something which had been left there and formed a nice shelter from the wind the house was strangely quiet and the western sun shining full on me made me feel quite comfortable and in a little while I fell asleep the sun sat and it grew bitterly cold but I did not wake and when my mother returned and inquired for me I could not be found finally the whole household turned out with lanterns and searched for me up and down through the plantation and the hunt was still going on when about 10 o'clock at night someone hurrying along the veranda stumbled on me in my sheltered corner by the sacks still in my chair but unconscious and in a burning fever it was the dread typhus an almost obsolete malady in europe and in fact in all civilized countries but not uncommon at that date in the pestilential city it was wonderful that I lived through it in a place where we were out of the reach of doctors and apothecaries with only my mother's skill in nursing and her knowledge of such drugs as were kept in the house to save me she nursed me day and night for the three weeks during which the fever lasted and when it left me a mere shadow of my former self I was dumb not even a little yes or no could I articulate however hard I tried and it was at last concluded that I would never speak again however after about a fortnight the lost faculty came back to my mother's inexpressible joy winter was nearing its end when one morning in late july I ventured out of doors for the first time though still but a skeleton a shadow of my former self it was a windy day of brilliant sunshine a day I shall never forget and the effect of the air and the sun and smell of earth and early flowers and the sounds of wild birds with the sight of the intensely green young grass and the vast crystal dome of heaven above was like deep draughts of some potent liquor that made the blood dance in my veins oh what an inexpressible immeasurable joy to be alive and not dead to have my feet still on the earth and drink in the wind and sunshine once more but the pleasure was more than I could endure in that feeble state the chilly wind pierced me like needles of ice my senses swam and I would have fallen to the ground if my elder brother had not caught me in his arms and taken me back to the house in spite of that fainting fit I was happy again with the old happiness and from day to day I regained strength until one day in early august I was suddenly reminded that it was my anniversary by my brothers and sisters all coming to me with birthday presents which they had been careful to provide beforehand and congratulations on my recovery 15 years old this was indeed the most memorable day of my life for on that evening I began to think about myself and my thoughts were strange and unhappy thoughts to me what I was what I was in the world for what I wanted what destiny was going to make of me or was it for me to do just what I wished to shape my own destiny as my elder brothers had done it was the first time such questions had come to me and I was startled at them it was as though I had only just become conscious I doubt that I had ever been fully conscious before I had lived now in a paradise of vivid sense impressions in which all thoughts came to me saturated with emotion and in that mental state reflection is well nigh impossible even the idea of death which had come as a surprise had not made me reflect death was a person a monstrous being who had sprung upon me in my flowery paradise and had inflicted a wound with a poisoned dagger in my flesh then had come the knowledge of immortality for the soul and the wound was healed or partly so for a time at all events after which the one thought that seriously troubled me was that I could not always remain a boy to pass from boyhood to manhood was not so bad as dying nevertheless it was a change painful to contemplate that everlasting delight and wonder rising to rapture which was in the child and boy would wither away and vanish and in its place there would be that dull low kind of satisfaction which men have in the sec task the daily and hourly intercourse with others of a light condition and in eating and drinking and sleeping I could not for example think of so advanced an age as 15 without the keenest apprehension and now I was actually at that age at that parting of the ways as it seemed to me what then did I want what did I ask to have if the question had been put to me then and if I had been capable of expressing what was in me I should have replied I want only to keep what I have to rise each morning and look out on the sky and the grassy dew wet earth from day to day from year to year to watch every June and July for spring to feel the same old sweet surprise and delight at the appearance of each familiar flower every newborn insect every bird returned once more from the north to listen in a trance of delight to the wild notes of the golden plover coming once more to the great plain flying flying south flock succeeding flock the whole day long all those wild beautiful cries of the golden plover I could exclaim with hafiz with but one word changed if after a thousand years that sound should float or my tomb my bones uprising in their gladness would dance in the sepulchre to climb trees and put my hand down in the deep hot nest of the beenteveo and feel the hot eggs the five long pointed cream colored eggs with chocolate spots and splashes at the larger end to lie on a grassy bank with the blue water between me and the beds of tall bull rushes listening to the mysterious sounds of the wind and of hidden rails and coots and corlands conversing together in strange human-like tones to let my sight dwell and feast on the camalote flower amid its floating masses of moist vivid green leaves the large alamander-like flower of a purist divine yellow that when plucked sheds its lovely petals to leave you with nothing but a green stem in your hand to ride at noon on the hottest days when the whole earth is a glitter with illusory water and see the cattle and horses in thousands covering the plain at their watering places to visit some haunt of large birds at that still hot hour and see storks, ibises, gray herons, egrets of a dazzling whiteness and rose colored spoon bills and flamingos standing in the shallow water in which their motionless forms are reflected to lie on my back on the rust brown grass in january and gaze up at the wide hot whitey blue sky peopled with millions and myriads of glistening balls of thistle down ever ever floating by to gaze and gaze until they are to me living things and I in an ecstasy and with them floating in that immense shining void and now it seemed that i was about to lose it this glad emotion which had made the world what it was to me an enchanted realm a nature at once natural and supernatural it would fade and lessen imperceptibly day by day year by year as I became more and more absorbed in the dull business of life until it would be lost as effectually as if I had ceased to see and hear and palpitate and my warm body had grown cold and stiff in death and like the dead and the living I should be unconscious of my loss it was not a unique nor a singular feeling it is known to other boys as I have read and heard also I have occasionally met with one who in a rare moment of confidence has confessed that he has been troubled at times at the thought of all he would lose but I doubt that it was ever more keenly felt than in my case I doubt too that it is common or strong in English boys considering the conditions in which they exist for restraint is irksome to all beings from a black beetle or an earthworm to an eagle or to go higher still in the scale to an orangutan or a man it is felt most keenly by the young in our species at all events and the British boy suffers the greatest restraint during the period when the call of nature the instincts of play and adventure are most urgent naturally he looks eagerly forward to the time of escape which he fondly imagines will be when his boyhood is over and he is free of masters to come back to my own case I did not and could not know that it was an exceptional case that my feeling for nature was something more than the sense of pleasure in sun and rain and wind and earth and water and in liberty of motion which is universal in children but was in part due to a faculty which is not universal or common the fear then was an idle one but I had good reason for it when I considered how it had been with my elder brothers who had been as little restrained as myself especially that masterful adventurous one now in a distant country thousands of miles from home who at about the age at which I had now arrived had made himself his own master to do what he liked with his life I had seen him at his parting of the ways how resolutely he had abandoned his open-air habits everything in fact that had been his delight to settle down to sheer hard mental work and this at our home on the Pampas where there were no masters and even the books and instruments required for his studies could only be procured with great difficulty and after long delays I remember one afternoon when we were gathered in the dining room for tea he was reading and my mother coming in looked over his shoulder and said you are reading a novel don't you think all that romantic stuff will take your mind off your studies now he'll flare up said I to myself he's so confoundedly independent and touchy that no one can say a word to him it surprised me when he answered quietly yes mother I know but I must finish this book now it will be the last novel I shall read for some years and so it was I believe his resolution impressed us even more in another matter he had an extraordinary talent for inventing stories mostly of wars and wild adventures with plenty of fighting in them and whenever we boys were all together which was usually after we had gone to bed and put the candle out he would begin one of his wonderful tales and go on for hours we all wide awake listening in breathless silence at length towards midnight the flow of the narrative would suddenly stop and after an interval we would all begin to cry out to him to go on oh you're awake he would exclaim with a chuckle of laughter very well then you know just where we are in our history to be resumed another day now you can go to sleep on the following evening he would take up the tale which would often last an entire week to be followed by another just as long then another and so on our thousand and one nights and this delightful yarn spinning was also dropped as he became more and more absorbed in his mathematical and other studies to this day I can recall portions of those tales especially those in which birds and beasts instead of men were the actors and so much did we miss them that sometimes when we were all assembled of an afternoon we would start begging him for a story just one more and the longer the better we would say to tempt him and he a little flattered at our keen appreciation of his talent as a yarn spinner would appear inclined to yield well now what story should I tell you he would say and then just when we were settling down to listen he would shout no no no more stories and to put the matter from him he would snatch up a book and order us to hold our tongues and clear out of the room it was not for me to follow his lead I had not the intellect or strength of will for such tasks and not only on that memorable evening of my anniversary but for days afterwards I continued in a troubled state of mind ashamed of my ignorance my indolence my disinclination to any kind of mental work ashamed even to think that my delight in nature and wish for no other thing in life was merely due to the fact that while the others were putting away childish things as they grew up I alone refused to part with them the result of all these deliberations was that I temporized I would not I could not give up the rides and rambles that took up most of my time but I would try to overcome my disinclination to serious reading there were plenty of books in the house it was always a puzzle to me how we came to have so many I was familiar with their appearance on the shelves they had been before me since I first opened my eyes their shape size color even their titles and that was all I knew about them a general natural history and two little works by James Ronnie on the habits and faculties of birds was all the literature suited to my wants in the entire collection of three or four hundred volumes for the rest I had read a few story books and novels but we had no novels when one came into the house it would be read and lent to our next neighbor five or six miles away and he in turn would lend it to another 20 miles further on and so on until it disappeared in space I made a beginning with Roland's ancient history in two huge quarto volumes I fancy it was a large clear type and numerous plates which illustrated it that determined my choice Roland the good old priest opened a new wonderful world to me and instead of the tedious task I had feared the reading would prove it was as delightful as it had formally been to listen to my brother's endless histories of imaginary heroes and their wars and adventures still a thirst for history after finishing Roland I began fingering other works of that kind there was Winston's Josephus two ponderous a book to be held in the hands when read out of doors and there was Gibbon in six stately volumes I was not yet able to appreciate the lofty artificial style and soon fell on something better suited to my boyish taste in letters a history of Christianity in I think 16 or 18 volumes of a convenient size the simple natural diction attracted me and I was soon convinced that I could not have stumbled on more fascinating reading than the lives of the fathers of the church included in some of the earlier volumes especially that of Augustine the greatest of all how beautiful and marvellous his life was and his mother Monica's what wonderful books he wrote his confessions and city of God from which long excerpts were given in this volume these biographies sent me to another old book Leland on Revelation which told me much I was curious to know about the mythologies and systems of philosophy of the ancients the innumerable false cults which had flourished in a darkened world before the dawn of the true religion next came Carlisle's french revolution and at last Gibbon and I was still deep in the decline and fall when disaster came to us my father was practically ruined owing as I have said in a former chapter to his childlike trust in his fellow men and we quitted the home he had counted as a permanent one which in due time would have become his property had he but made his position secure by a proper deed on first consenting to take over the place in its then ruinous condition thus ended sadly enough the enchanting years of my boyhood and here too the book should finish but having gone so far I will venture a little further and give a brief account of what followed and the life which for several succeeding years was to be mine the life that is to say of the mind and spirit end of chapter 22 chapter 23 of far away and long ago this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for further information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org far away and long ago by William Henry Hudson chapter 23 a darkened life after we had gone back impoverished to our old home where I first saw the light which was still my father's property and all he had left I continued my reading and was so taken up with affairs of the universe seen and unseen that I did not feel the change in our position and comforts too greatly I took my share in the rough work and was much out of doors on horseback looking after the animals and not unhappy I was already very tall and thin at that time in my 16th year still growing rapidly and though athletic it was probable that some weakness had been left in me by the fever on all events I had scarcely settled down to the new way of life before a fresh blow fell upon me a malady which though it failed to kill me yet made shipwreck of all my newborn earthly hopes and dreams and a dismal failure of my after life one day I undertook unaided to drive home a small troop of cattle we had purchased at a distance of a good many leagues and was in the saddle from morning till after dark in a continuous flooding rain and violent wind the wind was against me and the beasts were incessantly trying to turn and rush back to the place they had been taken from and the fight with wind and cattle went weirdly on the driving rain gradually soaking through my woolen poncho cleft through my clothes to my skin and trickling down until my long boots were full and slopping over at the knees for the last half of that midwinter day my feet and legs were devoid of feeling the result of it was rheumatic fever and years of bad health with constant attacks of acute pain and violent palpitation of the heart which would last for hours at a stretch from time to time I was sent or taken to consult a doctor in the city and in that way from first to last I was in the hands of pretty well all the english doctors in the place but they did me no permanent good nor did they say anything to give me a hope of complete recovery eventually we were told that it was a practically hopeless case that I had outgrown my strength and had a permanently bad heart and might drop down at any moment naturally this pronouncement had a most disastrous effect on me that their diagnosis proved in the end to be wrong mattered nothing since the injury had been done and could not be undone if I lived a century for the blow had fallen at the most critical period in life the period of transition when the newly awakened mind is in its freshest most receptive stage and is most curious most eager when knowledge is most readily assimilated and above everything when the foundations of character and the entire life of the man are laid I speak it will be understood of a mind that had not been trained or pressed into a mold or groove by school masters and schools of a mind that was a forest wilding rather than a plant one in ten thousand like it grown under glass in a prepared soil in a nursery that I had to say goodbye to all thoughts of a career all bright dreams of the future which recent readings had put into my mind was not felt as the chief loss it was in fact a small matter compared with the dreadful thought that I must soon resign this earthly life which was so much more to me as I could not help thinking than to most others I was like that young man with a ghastly face I had seen bound to a post in our barn or like any wretched captive tied hand and foot and left to lie there until it suited his captor to come back and cut his throat or thrust him through with a spear or cut him into strips with a sword in a leisurely manner so as to get all the satisfaction possible out of the exercise of his skill and the spectacle of gushing blood and his victims agony nor was this all nor even the worst which had befallen me I now discovered that in spite of all my strivings after the religious mind that old dread of annihilation which I had first experienced as a small child was not dead as I had fondly imagined but still lived and worked in me this visible world this paradise of which I had had so far but a fleeting glimpse the sun and moon and other worlds peopling all space with their brilliant constellations and still other suns and systems so utterly remote in such inconceivable numbers as to appear to our vision as a faint luminous mist in the sky all this universe which had existed for millions and billions of ages or from eternity would have existed in vain since now it was doomed with my last breath my last gleam of consciousness to come to nothing for that was how the thought of death presented itself to me against this appalling thought I struggled with all my power and prayed and prayed again morning noon and night wrestling with God as the phrase was trying as it were to ring something from his hands which would save me and which he for no reason that I could discover withheld from me it was not strange in these circumstances that I became more and more absorbed in the religious literature of which we had a good amount on our bookshelves theology sermons meditations for every day in the year the whole duty of man a call to the unconverted and many other old works of a similar character among these I found one entitled if I remember rightly an answer to the infidel and this work which I took up eagerly in the expectation that it would allay those maddening doubts perpetually rising in my mind and be a help and comfort to me only served to make matters worse at all events for a time for in this book I was first made acquainted with many of the arguments of the free thinkers both of the dayists who were opposed to the christian creed and those who denied the truth of all supernatural religion and the answers to the arguments were not always convincing it was idle then to seek for proofs in the books the books themselves after all their arguments told me as much when they said that only by faith could a man be saved and to the sad question how was it to be attained the only answer was by striving and striving until it came and as there was nothing else to do I continued striving with the result that I believed and did not believe and my soul or rather my hope of immortality trembled in the balance this from first to last was the one thing that mattered so much was it to me that in reading one of the religious books entitled the saint's everlasting rest in which the pious author Richard Baxter expatiates on and labors to make his readers realize the condition of the eternally damned I have said to myself if an angel or one returned from the dead could come to assure me that life does not end with death that we mortals are destined to live forever but that for me there can be no blessed hereafter on account of my want of faith and because I loved or worship nature rather than the author of my being it would be not a message of despair but of consolation for in that dreadful place to which I should be sent I should be alive and not dead and have my memories of earth and perhaps meet and have communion there with others of like mind with myself and with recollections like mine this was but one of many lawless thoughts which assailed me at this time another very persistent was the view I took of the sufferings of the savior of mankind why I asked were they made so much of why was it said that he suffered as no man had suffered it was nothing but the physical pain which thousands and millions have had to endure and if I could be as sure of immortality as Jesus death would be to me no more than the prick of a thorn what would it matter to be nailed to a cross and perish in slow agony if I believed that the agony over I should sit down refreshed to suck in paradise the worst of it was that when I tried to banish these bitter rebellious ideas taking them to be the whisperings of the evil one as the books taught the quick reply would come that the supposed evil one was nothing but the voice of my own reason striving to make itself heard but the contest could not be abandoned devil or reason or whatever it was must be overcome else there was no hope for me and such is the powerful effect of fixing all one's thoughts on one object assisted no doubt by the reflex effect on the mind of prayer that in due time I did succeed in making myself believe all I wish to believe and had my reward since after many days or weeks of mental misery there would come beautiful intervals of peace and of more than peace a new and surprising experience a state of exaltation when it would seem to me that I was lifted or translated into a purely spiritual atmosphere and was in communion and one with the unseen world it was wonderful at last and forever my dark night of the soul was over no more bitter broodings and mocking whispers and shrinking from the awful phantom of death continually hovering near me and above all no more difficulties the rocky barriers I had vainly beaten bruised myself against for I had been miraculously lifted over them and set safely on the other side where it was all plain walking unhappily these blissful intervals would not last long a recollection of something I had heard or read would come back to startle me out of the confident happy mood reason would revive as from a benumbed or hypnotized condition and the mocking voice would be heard telling me that I had been under a delusion once more I would abhor and shudder at the black phantom and when the thought of annihilation was most insistent I would often recall the bitter poignant words about death and immortality spoken to me about two years before by an old goucho landowner who had been our neighbour in my former home he was a rough rather stern looking man with a mass of silver white hair and gray eyes a goucho in his dress and primitive way of life the owner of a little land and a few animals the small remnant of the estancia which had once belonged to his people but he was a vigorous old man who spent half of his day on horseback looking after the animals he's only living one day he was at our house and coming out to where I was doing something in the grounds he sat down on a bench and called me to him I went gladly enough thinking that he had some interesting bird news to give me he remained silent for some time smoking a cigar and staring at the sky as if watching the smoke vanish in the air at length he opened fire look he said you are only a boy but you can tell me something I don't know your parents read books and you listen to their conversation and learn things we are Roman Catholics and you are Protestants we call you heretics and say that for such there is no salvation now I want you to tell me what is the difference between our religion and yours I explained the matter as well as I knew how and added somewhat maliciously that the main difference was his religion was a corrupt form of Christianity and ours a pure one this had no effect on him he went on smoking and staring at the sky as if he hadn't heard me then he began again now I know these differences are nothing to me and though I was curious to know what they were they are not worth talking about because as I know all religions are false what did he mean how did he know I asked very much surprised the priests tell us he replied that we must believe and live a religious life in this world to be saved your priests tell you the same and as there is no other world and we have no souls all they say must be false you see all this with your eyes he continued waving his hands to indicate the whole visible world and when you shut them or go blind you see no more it is the same with our brains we think of a thousand things and remember and when the brain decays we forget everything and we die and everything dies with us have not the catalyzed to see and brains to think and remember too and when they die no priest tells us that they have a soul and have to go to purgatory or wherever he likes to send them now in return for what you told me I've told you something you didn't know it came as a great shock to me to hear this here the two I had thought that what was wrong with our native friends was that they believed too much and this man this good honest old goucho we all respected believed nothing I tried to argue with him and told him he had said a dreadful thing since everyone knew in his heart that he had an immortal soul and had to be judged after death he had distressed and even frightened me but he went on calmly smoking and appeared not to be listening to me and as he refused to speak I at last burst out how'd you know why'd you say you know at last he spoke listen I was once a boy too and I know that a boy of 14 can understand things as well as a man I was an only child and my mother was a widow and I was more than all the world to her and she was more than everything else to me we were alone together in the world we too then she died and what her loss was to me how can I say it how could you understand and after she was taken away and buried I said she's not dead and wherever she now is in heaven or in purgatory or in the sun she will remember and come to me and comfort me when it was dark I went out alone and sat at the end of the house and spent hours waiting for her she will surely come I said but I don't know whether I shall see her or not perhaps it will be just a whisper in my ear perhaps a touch of her hand on mine but I shall know that she is with me and at last worn out with waiting and watching I went to my bed and said she will come tomorrow and the next night and the next it was the same sometimes I would go up the ladder always standing against the gable so that one could go up and standing on the roof look out over the plane and see where our horses were grazing there I would sit or lie on the thatch for hours and I would cry come to me my mother I cannot live without you come soon come soon before I die of a broken heart that was my cry every night until worn out with my vigil I would go back to my room and she never came and at last I knew that she was dead and that we were separated forever that there is no life after death his story pierced me to the heart and without another word I left him but I succeeded in making myself believe that grief for his mother had made him mad that as a boy he had got these delusions in his mind and had kept them all his life now this recollection haunted me then one day with my mind in this troubled state in reading George Coombs physiology I came on a passage in which the question of the desire for immortality is discussed his contention being that it is not universal and as a proof of this he affirms that he himself had no such desire this came as a great shock to me since up to the moment of reading it I had in my ignorance taken it for granted that the desire is inherent in every human being from the dawn of consciousness to the end of life that it is our chief desire and is an instinct of the soul like that physical instinct of the migratory bird which calls it annually from the most distant regions back to its natal home I had also taken it for granted that our hope of immortality or rather our belief in it was founded on this same passion in us and in its universality the fact that there were those who had no such desire was sufficient to show that it was no spiritual instinct or not of divine origin there were many more shocks of this kind when I go back in memory to that sad time it seems almost incredible to me that that poor doubtful faith in revealed religion still survived and that the struggle still went on but go on it certainly did to many of my readers to all who have interested themselves in the history of religion and its effect on individual minds its psychology all I have written concerning my mental condition at that period will come as a twice-told tale since thousands and millions of men have undergone similar experiences and have related them in numberless books and here I must beg my reader to bear in mind that in the days of my youth we had not yet fallen into the indifference and skepticism which now infects the entire christian world in those days people still believed and here in England in the very center and mind of the world many thousands of miles from my rude wilderness the champions of the church were in deadly conflict with the evolutionists I knew nothing about all that I had no modern books those we had were mostly about a hundred years old my fight up to this period was all on the old lines and on this account I have related it as briefly as possible but it had to be told since it comes into the story of the development of my mind at that period I have no doubt that my sufferings through these religious experiences were far greater than in the majority of cases and this for the special reason which I have already intimated and of chapter 23