Far Away and Long Ago

Far Away and Long Ago 1 Far Away and Long Ago The Project Gutenberg EBook of Far Away and Long Ago, by W. H. Hudson (#4 in our series by W. H. Hudson) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Far Away and Long Ago Author: W. H. Hudson Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6093] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on November 4, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG 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 2 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 3 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 4 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. Hoyd`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 CHAPTER XIV 5 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 ... - tailieumienphi.vn