Later, in
October when the weather was hot, I would hunt for the nest, a frail
platform made of a few sticks with four or five oval eggs like those
of the turtledove in size and of a pale green colour.
There were other summer visitors, but I must not speak of them as this
chapter contains too much on that subject. My feathered friends were
so much to me that I am constantly tempted to make this sketch of my
first years a book about birds and little else. There remains, too,
much more to say about the plantation, the trees and their effect on
my mind, also some adventures I met with, some with birds and others
with snakes, which will occupy two or three or more chapters later on.
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.
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