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.
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