Beautiful Birds

by Edmund Selous

This Mexico is such an interesting country. It belongs, now, to the Spaniards, whom I dare say you have heard about, but once it belonged to a quite different people, an old people who had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, long before Columbus discovered America. These people were civilised, only in a different way to ourselves. They did not wear the kind of clothes that we do, but only light linen things, dyed all sorts of colours, which were prettier and suited the climate. They had many cities, as we have, though they were built in a different way, and the largest was built all over a great lake, with bridges going from one side of it to another. One can build houses in the water, you know, for there is Venice in Italy, and Rotterdam in Holland, which are both built in the sea, and which your mother will tell you about.

These people, who were called Aztecs, were very clever workmen, and such wonderful goldsmiths and silversmiths, especially, that they used to make imitation gardens, with all sorts of flowers beaten out of gold and silver. Then they used feathers as we do a paint-box, to make pictures of things with. They would paint houses and ships and men and boats and landscapes with them, putting the right-coloured feathers just where they were wanted, blue ones for the sky, green ones for the grass, and so on. For the wicked little demon knew of those people just as well as he knows of us, and he had taught them to kill birds, too. Only as they had no guns they could not kill nearly so many of them as we can, so that there was no danger, then, of a beautiful bird getting rarer and rarer, until, at last, it is not to be found in the world any more, which is what happens now with us—at least it will if you do not stop it. But though it would have been much better to let these birds—which were often Humming-birds—go on living and flying about, and though no picture made with their feathers was nearly so beautiful as the feathers themselves were, growing upon them, yet these feather-pictures of the old Aztecs were very wonderful things, and it is a great pity that there are none of them left now, for us to look at. Nothing could bring the poor birds back to life, so we might just as well have had the pictures that they had helped to make.

And we might have had some other pictures, too, that these people made, for they used to draw things, just as we do, and when they wanted to describe a thing they would often draw a picture of it, instead of only saying what it was like. Even their writing was all in pictures, for when they wanted to write—say the word “sun” or the word “house”—they would draw a little picture of the sun or of a house, only so quickly and with such a few strokes of the pen or the paint-brush (I don't quite know which it was), that it was quite like proper writing. Of course there are some words that are not so easy to make a picture of—as you can try for yourself—but, wherever it could be done, these old Aztecs would do it. And if only we had some more of this writing (for we have very little of it), we should be able to know a great deal more about this old people, who were in America before Columbus came there, and what they did and what they thought about, and the remarks they made to each other, and just think how interesting that would be. It is always interesting to know something about people quite different to ourselves who lived a long time ago.

Unfortunately, when the Spaniards had conquered these people, instead of keeping the things which they had made, they burnt them. They burnt their houses, their temples, their cities, their picture-writings, their feather-pictures, their wonderful flowers—until the gold and silver they were made of were quite melted—their clothes, everything—even the people themselves—and, to save time, they often burnt the two last together. It is a great pity they did this, but, you see, everybody has a plan of doing things, and the plan of the Spaniards was to burn the people they conquered, and everything belonging to them. But was it not horribly cruel? Oh! most horribly; but so it is to shoot sea-gulls, and then to cut off their wings, before they are dead, and throw them back into the sea, to drown there or bleed to death. That is what we do, and it is horribly cruel, too. So do not let us think about the cruel things the Spaniards did—yet. Let us think, first, about the cruel things that are done by people in our own country, and try to stop them. When we have stopped them—all of them—then we can think about the Spaniards—and some other nations.

You know there is a proverb which says, “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones;” that is generally one of the first proverbs we learn, and always the very first one we forget. I am afraid that those old Aztecs lived in rather a glass house, for they had a plan of cutting people open, whilst they were still alive, and tearing their hearts out. Horrible! was it not? But they did not burn people; so, when they saw the Spaniards doing so, they were shocked at them. As for the Spaniards, they were shocked at the Aztecs doing this other thing, for that had never been their custom. So the Aztecs and the Spaniards were shocked at each other. People are very easily shocked at each other, but they are not nearly so easily shocked at themselves. Now I come to think of it, I never remember hearing any one say, “I am shocked at myself!” And yet it would often be a quite sensible remark.

But what I wanted to tell you about these old Aztecs, who lived in Mexico all that time ago, was that, when the Spaniards came there, they were ruled over by a great king named Montezuma, and this king, amongst many other wonderful things, had a great place, where he kept all the different kinds of birds that were found in his country. A place like that is called an aviary, and you may be quite sure that the beautiful Trogon or Quezal was one of the birds in King Montezuma's aviary, for it was more highly thought of than any other bird in the country. Let us hope that all the birds in this aviary had nice, large places to be in, with trees, and flowers, and everything that they wanted; and, as it was a king's aviary, I daresay they had.

Well, now, I will tell you what this beautiful bird, the Quezal or Resplendent Trogon, that used to be in King Montezuma's aviary, is like. It is about the size of a turtle-dove, but with the most beautiful, long, curling feathers in its tail, and these beautiful feathers, and all the feathers on its back and breast and on its head, too, are of the most lovely, rich, golden-green colour. Really I don't know whether there is more of gold or of green in them, but there is just the right quantity of each to make them the most beautiful, beautiful feathers you can possibly imagine. It is the tail-feathers that are the most beautiful, for they are so very long—the two longest are much longer than those in a pheasant's tail—but there are some feathers which begin on the back and lap softly round the sides, one a little way off from the other, so that you see their pretty shapes, and these are almost as beautiful, although they are ever so much shorter. But now there is something funny about those long feathers, which I have called the tail-feathers, and that is, that they are not really tail-feathers at all. They look as if they were, but really they are feathers which go over the tail and cover it up, so that the real tail is underneath them. It is like that—though I am sure you never knew it—with the peacock; those beautiful, long feathers which we call the tail are not really the tail, and you will see that, directly, if you watch a peacock when he spreads them out, for, as soon as he does, you will see the real tail underneath, which is nothing very particular to look at. Still, in both these birds the long feathers look so like the real tail that we may very well call them the tail-feathers, and we can always explain about it afterwards, to show how much we know. And, do you know, these beautiful, long, golden-green feathers of the Quezal, which we are going to call the tail-feathers, although we know very well they are not, were so highly valued by these people who used to live in Mexico, that no one was ever allowed to kill the bird, but only to catch it and cut them off and let it go again, so that new ones might grow on it. And only the chiefs were allowed to wear its feathers. And, indeed, there would be no great harm in wearing feathers in hats, if we got them only in that way. Only I cannot think what the little demon could have been about in that country. A law like that must have made him very angry indeed.

Then, besides his splendid tail-feathers, this beautiful bird has a crest on his head, which is something like the one the Cock-of-the-Rock has on his, for it is of the same tea-cosy shape, only it is green instead of crimson, and it does not quite cover up the beak. So perhaps you will think that, as the Cock-of-the-Rock is all blood-red, with a tea-cosy crest on his head, this beautiful golden-green Trogon, with the tea-cosy crest on his head, is all golden-green. But no, all the lower part of him—that part which is hidden when he sits down—instead of being golden-green, is the most splendid vermilion, as bright a colour—although it is not quite the same—as the Cock-of-the-Rock's himself. Just think, golden-green and splendidly bright vermilion! and you cannot think how beautiful the one looks against the other. Whether they would look quite so well together in a dress I am not quite sure, but your mother would know all about that. Only you must remember that such a golden-green and such a vermilion as this Trogon has were never seen together—no, or separately either—in any dress yet.