EARLIEST MEMORIES
Preamble--The house where I was born--The singular ombu tree--A tree
without a name--The plain--The ghost of a murdered slave--Our
playmate, the old sheep-dog--A first riding-lesson--The cattle: an
evening scene--My mother--Captain Scott--The hermit and his awful
penance
CHAPTER II
MY NEW HOME
We quit our old home--A winter day journey--Aspect of the country--Our
new home--A prisoner in the barn--The plantation--A paradise of rats--
An evening scene--The people of the house--A beggar on horseback--Mr.
Trigg our schoolmaster--His double nature--Impersonates an old woman--
Reading Dickens--Mr. Trigg degenerates--Once more a homeless wanderer
on the great plain
CHAPTER III
DEATH OF AN OLD DOG
The old dog Caesar--His powerful personality--Last days and end--The
old dog's burial--The fact of death is brought home to me--A child's
mental anguish--My mother comforts me--Limitations of the child's
mind--Fear of death--Witnessing the slaughter of cattle--A man in the
moat--Margarita, the nursery-maid--Her beauty and lovableness--Her
death--I refuse to see her dead
CHAPTER IV
THE PLANTATION
Living with trees--Winter violets--The house is made habitable--Red
willow--Scizzor-tail and carrion-hawk--Lombardy poplars--Black acacia
--Other trees--The fosse or moat--Rats--A trial of strength with an
armadillo--Opossums living with a snake--Alfalfa field and
butterflies--Cane brake--Weeds and fennel--Peach trees in blossom--
Paroquets--Singing of a field finch--Concert-singing in birds--Old
John--Cow-birds' singing--Arrival of summer migrants
CHAPTER V
ASPECTS OF THE PLAIN
Appearance of a green level land--Cardoon and giant thistles--Villages
of the _vizcacha_, a large burrowing rodent--Groves and plantations
seen like islands on the wide level plains--Trees planted by the early
colonists--Decline of the colonists from an agricultural to a pastoral
people--Houses as part of the landscape--Flesh diet of the gauchos--
Summer change in the aspect of the plain--The water-like mirage--The
giant thistle and a "thistle year"--Fear of fires--An incident at a
fire--The _pampero_, or south-west wind, and the fall of the thistles
--Thistle-down and thistle-seed as food for animals--A great pampero
storm--Big hailstones--Damage caused by hail--Zango, an old horse,
killed--Zango and his master
CHAPTER VI
SOME BIRD ADVENTURES
Visit to a river on the pampas--A first long walk--Water-fowl--My
first sight of flamingoes--A great dove visitation--Strange tameness
of the birds--Vain attempts at putting salt on their tails--An ethical
question: When is a lie not a lie?--The _carancho_, a vulture-eagle--
Our pair of _caranchos_--Their nest in a peach tree--I am ambitious to
take their eggs--The birds' crimes--I am driven off by the birds--The
nest pulled down
CHAPTER VII
MY FIRST VISIT TO BUENOS AYRES
Happiest time--First visit to the capital--Old and New Buenos Ayres--
Vivid impressions--Solitary walk--How I learnt to go alone--Lost--The
house we stayed at and the sea-like river--Rough and narrow streets--
Rows of posts--Carts and noise--A great church festival--Young men in
black and scarlet--River scenes--Washerwomen and their language--Their
word-fights with young fashionables--Night watchmen--A young
gentleman's pastime--A fishing dog--A fine gentleman seen stoning
little birds--A glimpse of Don Eusebio, the Dictator's fool
CHAPTER VIII
THE TYRANT'S FALL AND WHAT FOLLOWED
The portraits in our drawing-room--The Dictator Rosas who was like an
Englishman--The strange face of his wife, Encarnacion--The traitor
Urquiza--The Minister of War, his peacocks and his son--Home again
from the city--The war deprives us of our playmate--Natalia, our
shepherd's wife--Her son, Medardo--The Alcalde, our grand old man--
Battle of Monte Caseros--The defeated army--Demands for fresh horses--
In peril--My father's shining defects--His pleasure in a thunderstorm
--A childlike trust in his fellow-men--Soldiers turn upon their
officer--A refugee given up and murdered--Our Alcalde again--On
cutting throats--Ferocity and cynicism--Native blood-lust and its
effects on a boy's mind--Feeling about Rosas--A bird poem or tale--
Vain search for lost poem and story of its authorship--The Dictator's
daughter--Time, the old god
CHAPTER IX
OUR NEIGHBOURS AT THE POPLARS
Homes on the great green plain--Making the acquaintance of our
neighbours--The attraction of birds--Los Alamos and the old lady of
the house--Her treatment of St. Anthony--The strange Barboza family--
The man of blood--Great fighters--Barboza as a singer--A great quarrel
but no fight--A cattle-marking--Dona Lucia del Ombu--A feast--Barboza
sings and is insulted by El Rengo--Refuses to fight--The two kinds of
fighters--A poor little angel on horseback--My feeling for Anjelita--
Boys unable to express sympathy--A quarrel with a friend--Enduring
image of a little girl
CHAPTER X
OUR NEAREST ENGLISH NEIGHBOUR
Casa Antigua, our nearest English neighbour's house--Old Lombardy
poplars--Cardoon thistle or wild artichoke--Mr. Royd, an English
sheep-farmer--Making sheep's-milk cheeses under difficulties--Mr.
Royd's native wife--The negro servants--The two daughters: a striking
contrast--The white blue-eyed child and her dusky playmate--A happy
family--Our visits to Casa Antigua--Gorgeous dinners--Estanislao and
his love of wild life--The Royds' return visit--A home-made carriage--
The gaucho's primitive conveyance--The happy home broken up
CHAPTER XI
A BREEDER OF PIEBALDS
La Tapera, a native estancia--Don Gregorio Gandara--His grotesque
appearance and strange laugh--Gandara's wife and her habits and pets--
My dislike of hairless dogs--Gandara's daughters--A pet ostrich--In
the peach orchard--Gandara's herds of piebald brood mares--His
masterful temper--His own saddle-horses--Creating a sensation at
gaucho gatherings--The younger daughter's lovers--Her marriage at our
house--The priest and the wedding breakfast--Demetria forsaken by her
husband
CHAPTER XII
THE HEAD OF A DECAYED HOUSE
The Estancia Canada Seca--Low lands and floods--Don Anastacio, a
gaucho exquisite--A greatly respected man--Poor relations--Don
Anastacio a pig-fancier--Narrow escape from a pig--Charm of the low
green lands--The flower called _macachina_--A sweet-tasting bulb
--Beauty of the green flower-sprinkled turf--A haunt of the golden
plover--The _bolas_--My plover-hunting experience--Rebuked by a
gaucho--A green spot, our playground in summer and lake in winter--The
venomous toad-like _Ceratophrys_--Vocal performance of the toad-like
creature--We make war on them--The great lake battle and its results
CHAPTER XIII
A PATRIARCH OF THE PAMPAS
The grand old man of the plains--Don Evaristo Penalva, the Patriarch--
My first sight of his estancia house--Don Evaristo described--A
husband of six wives--How he was esteemed and loved by every one--On
leaving home I lose sight of Don Evaristo--I meet him again after
seven years--His failing health--His old first wife and her daughter,
Cipriana--The tragedy of Cipriana--Don Evaristo dies and I lose sight
of the family
CHAPTER XIV
THE DOVECOTE
A favourite climbing tree--The desire to fly--Soaring birds-A
peregrine falcon--The dovecote and pigeon-pies--The falcon's
depredations--A splendid aerial feat--A secret enemy of the dovecote--
A short-eared owl in a loft--My father and birds--A strange flower--
The owls' nesting-place--Great owl visitations
CHAPTER XV
SERPENT AND CHILD
My pleasure in bird life--Mammals at our new home--Snakes and how
children are taught to regard them--A colony of snakes in the house--
Their hissing confabulations--Finding serpent sloughs--A serpent's
saviour--A brief history of our English neighbours, the Blakes
CHAPTER XVI
A SERPENT MYSTERY
A new feeling about snakes--Common snakes of the country--A barren
weedy patch--Discovery of a large black snake--Watching for its
reappearance--Seen going to its den--The desire to see it again--A
vain search--Watching a bat--The black serpent reappears at my feet--
Emotions and conjectures--Melanism--My baby sister and a strange
snake--The mystery solved
CHAPTER XVII
A BOY'S ANIMISM
The animistic faculty and its survival in us--A boy's animism and its
persistence--Impossibility of seeing our past exactly as it was--Serge
Aksakoff's history of his childhood--The child's delight in nature
purely physical--First intimations of animism in the child--How it
affected me--Feeling with regard to flowers--A flower and my mother
--History of a flower--Animism with regard to trees--Locust trees by
moonlight--Animism and nature-worship--Animistic emotion not uncommon
--Cowper and the Yardley oak--The religionist's fear of nature--
Pantheistic Christianity--Survival of nature-worship in England--
The feeling for nature--Wordsworth's pantheism and animistic emotion
in poetry
CHAPTER XVIII
THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER
Mr. Trigg recalled--His successor--Father O'Keefe--His mild rule and
love of angling--My brother is assisted in his studies by the priest--
Happy fishing afternoons--The priest leaves us--How he had been
working out his own salvation--We run wild once more--My brother's
plan for a journal to be called _The Tin Box_--Our imperious editor's
exactions--My little brother revolts--_The Tin Box_ smashed up--The
loss it was to me
CHAPTER XIX
BROTHERS
Our third and last schoolmaster--His many accomplishments--His
weakness and final breakdown--My important brother--Four brothers,
unlike in everything except the voice--A strange meeting--Jack the
Killer, his life and character--A terrible fight--My brother seeks
instructions from Jack--The gaucho's way of fighting and Jack's
contrasted--Our sham fight with knives--A wound and the result--My
feeling about Jack and his eyes--Bird-lore--My two elder brothers'
practical joke
CHAPTER XX
BIRDING IN THE MARSHES
Visiting the marshes--Pajonales and juncales--Abundant bird life--A
coots' metropolis--Frightening the coots--Grebe and painted snipe
colonies--The haunt of the social marsh hawk--The beautiful jacana and
its eggs--The colony of marsh trupials--The bird's music--The aquatic
plant durasmillo--The trupial's nest and eggs--Recalling a beauty
that has vanished--Our games with gaucho boys--I am injured by a bad
boy--The shepherd's advice--Getting my revenge in a treacherous
manner--Was it right or wrong?--The game of hunting the ostrich
CHAPTER XXI
WILD-FOWLING ADVENTURES
My sporting brother and the armoury--I attend him on his shooting
expeditions--Adventure with golden plover--A morning after wild duck--
Our punishment--I learn to shoot--My first gun--My first wild duck--My
ducking tactics--My gun's infirmities--Duck-shooting with a
blunderbuss--Ammunition runs out--An adventure with rosy-bill duck--
Coarse gunpowder and home-made shot--The war danger comes our way--We
prepare to defend the house--The danger over and my brother leaves
home
CHAPTER XXII
BOYHOOD'S END
The book--The Saladero, or killing-grounds, and their smell--Walls
built of bullocks' skulls--A pestilential city--River water and Aljibe
water--Days of lassitude--Novel scenes--Home again--Typhus--My first
day out--Birthday reflections--What I asked of life--A boy's mind--A
brother's resolution--End of our thousand and one nights--A reading
spell--My boyhood ends in disaster
CHAPTER XXIII
A DARKENED LIFE
A severe illness--Case pronounced hopeless--How it affected me--
Religious doubts and a mind distressed--Lawless thoughts--Conversation
with an old gaucho about religion--George Combe and the desire for
immortality
CHAPTER XXIV
LOSS AND GAIN
The soul's loneliness--My mother and her death--A mother's love for
her son--Her character--Anecdotes--A mystery and a revelation--The
autumnal migration of birds--Moonlight vigils--My absent brother's
return--He introduces me to Darwin's works--A new philosophy of life--
Conclusion
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST MEMORIES
Preamble--The house where I was born--The singular Ombu tree--A tree
without a name--The plain--The ghost of a murdered slave--Our
playmate, the old sheep-dog--A first riding-lesson--The cattle: an
evening scene--My mother--Captain Scott--The hermit and his awful
penance.
It was never my intention to write an autobiography. Since I took to
writing in my middle years I have, from time to time, related some
incident of my boyhood, and these are contained in various chapters in
_The Naturalist in La Plata, Birds and Man, Adventures among Birds,_
and other works, also in two or three magazine articles: all this
material would have been kept back if I had contemplated such a book
as this. When my friends have asked me in recent years why I did not
write a history of my early life on the pampas, my answer was that I
had already told all that was worth telling in these books. And I
really believed it was so; for when a person endeavours to recall his
early life in its entirety he finds it is not possible: he is like
one who ascends a hill to survey the prospect before him on a day of
heavy cloud and shadow, who sees at a distance, now here, now there,
some feature in the landscape--hill or wood or tower or spire--touched
and made conspicuous by a transitory sunbeam while all else remains in
obscurity. The scenes, people, events we are able by an effort to call
up do not present themselves in order; there is no order, no sequence
or regular progression--nothing, in fact, but isolated spots or
patches, brightly illumined and vividly seen, in the midst of a wide
shrouded mental landscape.
It is easy to fall into the delusion that the few things thus
distinctly remembered and visualized are precisely those which were
most important in our life, and on that account were saved by memory
while all the rest has been permanently blotted out. That is indeed
how our memory serves and fools us; for at some period of a man's
life--at all events of some lives--in some rare state of the mind, it
is all at once revealed to him as by a miracle that nothing is ever
blotted out.
It was through falling into some such state as that, during which I
had a wonderfully clear and continuous vision of the past, that I was
tempted--forced I may say--to write this account of my early years. I
will relate the occasion, as I imagine that the reader who is a
psychologist will find as much to interest him in this incident as in
anything else contained in the book.
I was feeling weak and depressed when I came down from London one
November evening to the south coast: the sea, the clear sky, the
bright colours of the afterglow kept me too long on the front in an
east wind in that low condition, with the result that I was laid up
for six weeks with a very serious illness. Yet when it was over I
looked back on those six weeks as a happy time! Never had I thought so
little of physical pain. Never had I felt confinement less--I who
feel, when I am out of sight of living, growing grass, and out of
sound of birds' voices and all rural sounds, that I am not properly
alive!
On the second day of my illness, during an interval of comparative
ease, I fell into recollections of my childhood, and at once I had
that far, that forgotten past with me again as I had never previously
had it. It was not like that mental condition, known to most persons,
when some sight or sound or, more frequently, the perfume of some
flower, associated with our early life, restores the past suddenly and
so vividly that it is almost an illusion. That is an intensely
emotional condition and vanishes as quickly as it comes. This was
different. To return to the simile and metaphor used at the beginning,
it was as if the cloud shadows and haze had passed away and the entire
wide prospect beneath me made clearly visible. Over it all my eyes
could range at will, choosing this or that point to dwell on, to
examine it in all its details; and, in the case of some person known
to me as a child, to follow his life till it ended or passed from
sight; then to return to the same point again to repeat the process
with other lives and resume my rambles in the old familiar haunts.
What a happiness it would be, I thought, in spite of discomfort and
pain and danger, if this vision would continue! It was not to be
expected; nevertheless it did not vanish, and on the second day I set
myself to try and save it from the oblivion which would presently
cover it again. Propped up with pillows I began with pencil and
writing-pad to put it down in some sort of order, and went on with it
at intervals during the whole six weeks of my confinement, and in this
way produced the first rough draft of the book.
And all this time I never ceased wondering at my own mental state; I
thought of it when, quickly tired, my trembling fingers dropped the
pencil; or when I woke from uneasy sleep to find the vision still
before me, inviting, insistently calling to me, to resume my childish
rambles and adventures of long ago in that strange world where I first
saw the light.
It was to me a marvellous experience; to be here, propped up with
pillows in a dimly-lighted room, the night-nurse idly dosing by the
fire; the sound of the everlasting wind in my ears, howling outside
and dashing the rain like hailstones against the window-panes; to be
awake to all this, feverish and ill and sore, conscious of my danger
too, and at the same time to be thousands of miles away, out in the
sun and wind, rejoicing in other sights and sounds, happy again with
that ancient long-lost and now recovered happiness!
During the three years that have passed since I had that strange
experience, I have from time to time, when in the mood, gone back to
the book and have had to cut it down a good deal and to reshape it, as
in the first draft it would have made too long and formless a history.
The house where I was born, on the South American pampas, was quaintly
named _Los Veinte-cinco Ombues,_ which means "The Twenty-five Ombu
Trees," there being just twenty-five of these indigenous trees--
gigantic in size, and standing wide apart in a row about 400 yards
long. The ombu is a very singular tree indeed, and being the only
representative of tree-vegetation, natural to the soil, on those great
level plains, and having also many curious superstitions connected
with it, it is a romance in itself. It belongs to the rare Phytolacca
family, and has an immense girth--forty or fifty feet in some cases;
at the same time the wood is so soft and spongy that it can be cut
into with a knife, and is utterly unfit for firewood, for when cut up
it refuses to dry, but simply rots away like a ripe water-melon. It
also grows slowly, and its leaves, which are large, glossy and deep
green, like laurel leaves, are poisonous; and because of its
uselessness it will probably become extinct, like the graceful pampas
grass in the same region. In this exceedingly practical age men
quickly lay the axe at the root of things which, in their view, only
cumber the ground; but before other trees had been planted the
antiquated and grand-looking ombu had its uses; it served as a
gigantic landmark to the traveller on the great monotonous plains, and
also afforded refreshing shade to man and horse in summer; while the
native doctor or herbalist would sometimes pluck a leaf for a patient
requiring a very violent remedy for his disorder. Our trees were about
a century old and very large, and, as they stood on an elevation, they
could be easily seen at a distance of ten miles. At noon in summer the
cattle and sheep, of which we had a large number, used to rest in
their shade; one large tree also afforded us children a splendid play-
house, and we used to carry up a number of planks to construct safe
bridges from branch to branch, and at noon, when our elders were
sleeping their siesta, we would have our arboreal games unmolested.
Besides the famous twenty-five, there was one other tree of a
different species, growing close to the house, and this was known all
over the neighbourhood as "The Tree," this proud name having been
bestowed on it because it was the only one of the kind known in that
part of the country; our native neighbours always affirmed that it was
the only one in the world. It was a fine large old tree, with a white
bark, long smooth white thorns, and dark-green undeciduous foliage.
Its blossoming time was in November--a month about as hot as an
English July--and it would then become covered with tassels of minute
wax-like flowers, pale straw-colour, and of a wonderful fragrance,
which the soft summer wind would carry for miles on its wings. And in
this way our neighbours would discover that the flowering season had
come to the tree they so much admired, and they would come to beg for
a branch to take home with them to perfume their lowly houses.
The pampas are, in most places, level as a billiard-table; just where
we lived, however, the country happened to be undulating, and our
house stood on the summit of one of the highest elevations. Before the
house stretched a great grassy plain, level to the horizon, while at
the back it sloped abruptly down to a broad, deep stream, which
emptied itself in the river Plata, about six miles to the east. This
stream, with its three ancient red willow-trees growing on the banks,
was a source of endless pleasure to us. Whenever we went down to play
on the banks, the fresh penetrating scent of the moist earth had a
strangely exhilarating effect, making us wild with joy. I am able now
to recall these sensations, and believe that the sense of smell, which
seems to diminish as we grow older, until it becomes something
scarcely worthy of being called a sense, is nearly as keen in little
children as in the inferior animals, and, when they live with nature,
contributes as much to their pleasure as sight or hearing. I have
often observed that small children, when brought on to low, moist
ground from a high level, give loose to a sudden spontaneous gladness,
running, shouting, and rolling over the grass just like dogs, and I
have no doubt that the fresh smell of the earth is the cause of their
joyous excitement.
Our house was a long low structure, built of brick, and, being very
old, naturally had the reputation of being haunted. A former
proprietor, half a century before I was born, once had among his
slaves a very handsome young negro, who, on account of his beauty and
amiability, was a special favourite with his mistress. Her preference
filled his poor silly brains with dreams and aspirations, and,
deceived by her gracious manner, he one day ventured to approach her
in the absence of his master and told her his feelings. She could not
forgive so terrible an insult to her pride, and when her husband
returned went to him, white with indignation, and told him how this
miserable slave had abused their kindness. The husband had an
implacable heart, and at his command the offender was suspended by the
wrists to a low, horizontal branch of "The Tree," and there, in sight
of his master and mistress, he was scourged to death by his fellow-
slaves. His battered body was then taken down and buried in a deep
hollow at some little distance from the last of the long row of ombu
trees. It was the ghost of this poor black, whose punishment had been
so much heavier than his offence deserved, that was supposed to haunt
the place. It was not, however, a conventional ghost, stalking about
in a white sheet; those who had seen it averred that it invariably
rose up from the spot where the body had been buried, like a pale,
luminous exhalation from the earth, and, assuming a human shape,
floated slowly towards the house, and roamed about the great trees,
or, seating itself on an old projecting root, would remain motionless
for hours in a dejected attitude. I never saw it.
Our constant companion and playmate in those days was a dog, whose
portrait has never faded from remembrance, for he was a dog with
features and a personality which impressed themselves deeply on the
mind. He came to us in a rather mysterious manner. One summer evening
the shepherd was galloping round the flock, and trying by means of
much shouting to induce the lazy sheep to move homewards. A strange-
looking lame dog suddenly appeared on the scene, as if it had dropped
from the clouds, and limping briskly after the astonished and
frightened sheep, drove them straight home and into the fold; and,
after thus earning his supper and showing what stuff was in him, he
established himself at the house, where he was well received. He was a
good-sized animal, with a very long body, a smooth black coat, tan
feet, muzzle, and "spectacles," and a face of extraordinary length,
which gave him a profoundly-wise baboon-like expression. One of his
hind legs had been broken or otherwise injured, so that he limped and
shuffled along in a peculiar lopsided fashion; he had no tail, and his
ears had been cropped close to his head: altogether he was like an old
soldier returned from the wars, where he had received many hard
knocks, besides having had sundry portions of his anatomy shot away.
No name to fit this singular canine visitor could be found, although
he responded readily enough to the word _Pechicho,_ which is used to
call any unnamed pup by, like pussy for a cat. So it came to pass that
this word _pechicho_--equivalent to "doggie" in English--stuck to him
for only name until the end of the chapter; and the end was that,
after spending some years with us, he mysteriously disappeared.
He very soon proved to us that he understood children as well as
sheep; at all events he would allow them to tease and pull him about
most unmercifully, and actually appeared to enjoy it. Our first
riding-lessons were taken on his back; but old Pechicho eventually
made one mistake, after which he was relieved from the labour of
carrying us. When I was about four years old, my two elder brothers,
in the character of riding-masters, set me on his back, and, in order
to test my capacity for sticking on under difficulties, they rushed
away, calling him. The old dog, infected with the pretended
excitement, bounded after them, and I was thrown and had my leg
broken, for, as the poet says--
Children, they are very little,
And their bones are very brittle.
Luckily their little brittle bones quickly solder, and it did not take
me long to recover from the effects of this mishap.
No doubt my canine steed was as much troubled as any one at the
accident. I seem to see the wise old fellow now, sitting in that
curious one-sided fashion he had acquired so as to rest his lame leg,
his mouth opened to a kind of immense smile, and his brown benevolent
eyes regarding us with just such an expression as one sees in a
faithful old negress nursing a flock of troublesome white children--so
proud and happy to be in charge of the little ones of a superior race!
All that I remember of my early life at this place comes between the
ages of three or four and five; a period which, to the eye of memory,
appears like a wide plain blurred over with a low-lying mist, with
here and there a group of trees, a house, a hill, or other large
object, standing out in the clear air with marvellous distinctness.
The picture that most often presents itself is of the cattle coming
home in the evening; the green quiet plain extending away from the
gate to the horizon; the western sky flushed with sunset hues, and the
herd of four or five hundred cattle trotting homewards with loud
lowings and bellowings, raising a great cloud of dust with their
hoofs, while behind gallop the herdsmen urging them on with wild
cries. Another picture is of my mother at the close of the day, when
we children, after our supper of bread and milk, join in a last grand
frolic on the green before the house. I see her sitting out of doors
watching our sport with a smile, her book lying in her lap, and the
last rays of the setting sun shining on her face.
When I think of her I remember with gratitude that our parents seldom
or never punished us, and never, unless we went too far in our
domestic dissensions or tricks, even chided us. This, I am convinced,
is the right attitude for parents to observe, modestly to admit that
nature is wiser than they are, and to let their little ones follow, as
far as possible, the bent of their own minds, or whatever it is they
have in place of minds. It is the attitude of the sensible hen towards
her ducklings, when she has had frequent experience of their
incongruous ways, and is satisfied that they know best what is good
for them; though, of course, their ways seem peculiar to her, and she
can never entirely sympathize with their fancy for going into water. I
need not be told that the hen is after all only step-mother to her
ducklings, since I am contending that the civilized woman--the
artificial product of our self-imposed conditions--cannot have the
same relation to her offspring as the uncivilized woman really has to
hers. The comparison, therefore, holds good, the mother with us being
practically step-mother to children of another race; and if she is
sensible, and amenable to nature's teaching, she will attribute their
seemingly unsuitable ways and appetites to the right cause, and not to
a hypothetical perversity or inherent depravity of heart, about which
many authors will have spoken to her in many books:
But though they wrote it all by rote
They did not write it right.
Of all the people outside of the domestic circle known to me in those
days, two individuals only are distinctly remembered. They were
certainly painted by memory in very strong unfading colours, so that
now they seem to stand like living men in a company of pale phantom
forms. This is probably due to the circumstance that they were
considerably more grotesque in appearance than the others, like old
Pechicho among our dogs--all now forgotten save him.
One was an Englishman named Captain Scott, who used to visit us
occasionally for a week's shooting or fishing, for he was a great
sportsman. We were all extremely fond of him, for he was one of those
simple men that love and sympathize with children; besides that, he
used to come to us from some distant wonderful place where sugar-plums
were made, and to our healthy appetites, unaccustomed to sweets of any
description, these things tasted like an angelic kind of food. He was
an immense man, with a great round face of a purplish-red colour, like
the sun setting in glory, and surrounded with a fringe of silvery-
white hair and whiskers, standing out like the petals round the disc
of a sunflower. It was always a great time when Captain Scott arrived,
and while he alighted from his horse we would surround him with loud
demonstrations of welcome, eager for the treasures which made his
pockets bulge out on all sides. When he went out gunning he always
remembered to shoot a hawk or some strangely-painted bird for us; it
was even better when he went fishing, for then he took us with him,
and while he stood motionless on the bank, rod in hand, looking, in
the light-blue suit he always wore, like a vast blue pillar crowned
with that broad red face, we romped on the sward, and revelled in the
dank fragrance of the earth and rushes.
I have not the faintest notion of who Captain Scott was, or of what he
was ever captain, or whether residence in a warm climate or hard
drinking had dyed his broad countenance with that deep magenta red,
nor of how and when he finished his earthly career; for when we moved
away the huge purple-faced strange-looking man dropped for ever out of
our lives; yet in my mind how beautiful his gigantic image looks! And
to this day I bless his memory for all the sweets he gave me, in a
land where sweets were scarce, and for his friendliness to me when I
was a very small boy.
The second well-remembered individual was also only an occasional
visitor at our house, and was known all over the surrounding country
as the Hermit, for his name was never discovered. He was perpetually
on the move, visiting in turn every house within a radius of forty or
fifty miles; and once about every seven or eight weeks he called on us
to receive a few articles of food--enough for the day's consumption.
Money he always refused with gestures of intense disgust, and he would
also decline cooked meat and broken bread. When hard biscuits were
given him, he would carefully examine them, and if one was found
chipped or cracked he would return it, pointing out the defect, and
ask for a sound one in return. He had a small, sun-parched face, and
silvery long hair; but his features were fine, his teeth white and
even, his eyes clear grey and keen as a falcon's. There was always a
set expression of deep mental anguish on his face, intensified with
perhaps a touch of insanity, which made it painful to look at him. As
he never accepted money or anything but food, he of course made his
own garments--and what garments they were! Many years ago I used to
see, strolling about St. James's Park, a huge hairy gentleman, with a
bludgeon in his hand, and clothed with a bear's skin to which the head
and paws were attached. It may be that this eccentric individual is
remembered by some of my readers, but I assure them that he was quite
a St. James's Park dandy compared with my hermit. He wore a pair of
gigantic shoes, about a foot broad at the toes, made out of thick cow-
hide with the hair on; and on his head was a tall rimless cow-hide hat
shaped like an inverted flower-pot. His bodily covering was, however,
the most extraordinary: the outer garment, if garment it can be
called, resembled a very large mattress in size and shape, with the
ticking made of innumerable pieces of raw hide sewn together. It was
about a foot in thickness and stuffed with sticks, stones, hard lumps
of clay, rams' horns, bleached bones, and other hard heavy objects; it
was fastened round him with straps of hide, and reached nearly to the
ground. The figure he made in this covering was most horribly uncouth
and grotesque, and his periodical visits used to throw us into a great
state of excitement. And as if this awful burden with which he had
saddled himself--enough to have crushed down any two ordinary men--was
not sufficient, he had weighted the heavy stick used to support his
steps with a great ball at the end, also with a large circular bell-
shaped object surrounding the middle. On arriving at the house, where
the dogs would become frantic with terror and rage at sight of him, he
would stand resting himself for eight or ten minutes; then in a
strange language, which might have been Hebrew or Sanscrit, for there
was no person learned enough in the country to understand it, he would
make a long speech or prayer in a clear ringing voice, intoning his
words in a monotonous sing-song. His speech done, he would beg, in
broken Spanish, for the usual charity; and, after receiving it, he
would commence another address, possibly invoking blessings of all
kinds on the donor, and lasting an unconscionable time. Then, bidding
a ceremonious farewell, he would take his departure.
From the sound of certain oft-recurring expressions in his recitations
we children called him "Con-stair Lo-vair"; perhaps some clever pundit
will be able to tell me what these words mean--the only fragment saved
of the hermit's mysterious language. It was commonly reported that he
had at one period of his life committed some terrible crime, and that,
pursued by the phantoms of remorse, he had fled to this distant
region, where he would never be met and denounced by any former
companion, and had adopted his singular mode of life by way of
penance. This was, of course, mere conjecture, for nothing could be
extracted from him. When closely questioned or otherwise interfered
with, then old Con-stair Lo-vair would show that his long cruel
penance had not yet banished the devil from his heart. A terrible
wrath would disfigure his countenance and kindle his eyes with
demoniac fire; and in sharp ringing tones, that wounded like strokes,
he would pour forth a torrent of words in his unknown language,
doubtless invoking every imaginable curse on his tormentor.
For upwards of twenty years after I as a small child made his
acquaintance he continued faithfully pursuing his dreary rounds,
exposed to cold and rain in winter and to the more trying heats of
summer; until at last he was discovered lying dead on the plain,
wasted by old age and famine to a mere skeleton, and even in death
still crushed down with that awful burden he had carried for so many
years. Thus, consistent to the end, and with his secret untold to any
sympathetic human soul, perished poor old Con-stair Lo-vair, the
strangest of all strange beings I have met with in my journey through
life.