EBOOK, FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO ***
Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO
A HISTORY OF MY EARLY LIFE
BY W. H. HUDSON
Author of "Idle Days In Patagonia," "The Purple Land,"
"A Crystal Age," "Adventures Among Birds," Etc.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST MEMORIES
Preamble--The house where I was born--The singular ombu tree--A tree
without a name--The plain--The ghost of a murdered slave--Our
playmate, the old sheep-dog--A first riding-lesson--The cattle: an
evening scene--My mother--Captain Scott--The hermit and his awful
penance
CHAPTER II
MY NEW HOME
We quit our old home--A winter day journey--Aspect of the country--Our
new home--A prisoner in the barn--The plantation--A paradise of rats--
An evening scene--The people of the house--A beggar on horseback--Mr.
Trigg our schoolmaster--His double nature--Impersonates an old woman--
Reading Dickens--Mr. Trigg degenerates--Once more a homeless wanderer
on the great plain
CHAPTER III
DEATH OF AN OLD DOG
The old dog Caesar--His powerful personality--Last days and end--The
old dog's burial--The fact of death is brought home to me--A child's
mental anguish--My mother comforts me--Limitations of the child's
mind--Fear of death--Witnessing the slaughter of cattle--A man in the
moat--Margarita, the nursery-maid--Her beauty and lovableness--Her
death--I refuse to see her dead
CHAPTER IV
THE PLANTATION
Living with trees--Winter violets--The house is made habitable--Red
willow--Scizzor-tail and carrion-hawk--Lombardy poplars--Black acacia
--Other trees--The fosse or moat--Rats--A trial of strength with an
armadillo--Opossums living with a snake--Alfalfa field and
butterflies--Cane brake--Weeds and fennel--Peach trees in blossom--
Paroquets--Singing of a field finch--Concert-singing in birds--Old
John--Cow-birds' singing--Arrival of summer migrants
CHAPTER V
ASPECTS OF THE PLAIN
Appearance of a green level land--Cardoon and giant thistles--Villages
of the _vizcacha_, a large burrowing rodent--Groves and plantations
seen like islands on the wide level plains--Trees planted by the early
colonists--Decline of the colonists from an agricultural to a pastoral
people--Houses as part of the landscape--Flesh diet of the gauchos--
Summer change in the aspect of the plain--The water-like mirage--The
giant thistle and a "thistle year"--Fear of fires--An incident at a
fire--The _pampero_, or south-west wind, and the fall of the thistles
--Thistle-down and thistle-seed as food for animals--A great pampero
storm--Big hailstones--Damage caused by hail--Zango, an old horse,
killed--Zango and his master
CHAPTER VI
SOME BIRD ADVENTURES
Visit to a river on the pampas--A first long walk--Water-fowl--My
first sight of flamingoes--A great dove visitation--Strange tameness
of the birds--Vain attempts at putting salt on their tails--An ethical
question: When is a lie not a lie?--The _carancho_, a vulture-eagle--
Our pair of _caranchos_--Their nest in a peach tree--I am ambitious to
take their eggs--The birds' crimes--I am driven off by the birds--The
nest pulled down
CHAPTER VII
MY FIRST VISIT TO BUENOS AYRES
Happiest time--First visit to the capital--Old and New Buenos Ayres--
Vivid impressions--Solitary walk--How I learnt to go alone--Lost--The
house we stayed at and the sea-like river--Rough and narrow streets--
Rows of posts--Carts and noise--A great church festival--Young men in
black and scarlet--River scenes--Washerwomen and their language--Their
word-fights with young fashionables--Night watchmen--A young
gentleman's pastime--A fishing dog--A fine gentleman seen stoning
little birds--A glimpse of Don Eusebio, the Dictator's fool
CHAPTER VIII
THE TYRANT'S FALL AND WHAT FOLLOWED
The portraits in our drawing-room--The Dictator Rosas who was like an
Englishman--The strange face of his wife, Encarnacion--The traitor
Urquiza--The Minister of War, his peacocks and his son--Home again
from the city--The war deprives us of our playmate--Natalia, our
shepherd's wife--Her son, Medardo--The Alcalde, our grand old man--
Battle of Monte Caseros--The defeated army--Demands for fresh horses--
In peril--My father's shining defects--His pleasure in a thunderstorm
--A childlike trust in his fellow-men--Soldiers turn upon their
officer--A refugee given up and murdered--Our Alcalde again--On
cutting throats--Ferocity and cynicism--Native blood-lust and its
effects on a boy's mind--Feeling about Rosas--A bird poem or tale--
Vain search for lost poem and story of its authorship--The Dictator's
daughter--Time, the old god
CHAPTER IX
OUR NEIGHBOURS AT THE POPLARS
Homes on the great green plain--Making the acquaintance of our
neighbours--The attraction of birds--Los Alamos and the old lady of
the house--Her treatment of St.
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