He regarded men and women as the only
suitable associates for an ostrich, but was not allowed in the rooms
on account of his inconvenient habit of swallowing metal objects such
as scissors, spoons, thimbles, bodkins, copper coins, and anything of
the kind he could snatch up when no one was looking. In the orchard
when he saw us eating peaches he would do the same, and if he couldn't
reach high enough to pluck them for himself he would beg of us. It was
great fun to give him half a dozen or more at a time, then, when they
had been quickly gobbled up, watch their progress as the long row of
big round lumps slowly travelled down his neck and disappeared one by
one as the peaches passed into his crop.
Gandara's great business was horse-breeding, and as a rule he kept
about a thousand brood mares, so that the herds usually numbered about
three thousand head. Strange to say, they were nearly all piebalds.
The gaucho, from the poorest worker on horseback to the largest owner
of lands and cattle, has, or had in those days, a fancy for having all
his riding-horses of one colour. Every man as a rule had his
_tropilla_--his own half a dozen or a dozen or more saddle-horses, and
he would have them all as nearly alike as possible, so that one man
had chestnuts, another browns, bays, silver- or iron-greys, duns,
fawns, cream-noses, or blacks, or whites, or piebalds.
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