If we had wanted a hundred times as many of the big pigeons we could easily have shot them, they were so little used to attack; but we only brought down a sufficiency for our present wants, and as soon as Ebo understood that these birds were not to be skinned but plucked for eating, he quickly had a good fire blazing and worked away stripping the feathers off so that they dropped on the fire and were consumed.
The plumage was so beautiful that it seemed to be like so much wanton destruction to throw it away, and I could not help thinking what delight it would have given me before I had seen Uncle Dick’s collection, to have been the possessor of one of these noble birds. But as my uncle very reasonably said, we should have required a little army of porters to carry our chests, and then a whole vessel to take them home, if we were to preserve every specimen we shot. We could only save the finest specimens; the rest must go for food; and of course we would only, after we had obtained a sufficiency of a particular kind, shoot those that we required for the table.
Ebo was invaluable in preparing fires and food for cooking, and upon this occasion, as he placed the birds on sticks close to the hot blaze, I watched him with no little interest, longing as I did to begin the feast.
But birds take time to cook, and instead of watching impatiently for them to be ready, I saw that Uncle Dick had taken his gun down a narrow little glade between two rows of trees growing so regularly that they seemed to have been planted by a gardener.
But no gardener had ever worked here, and as I overtook my uncle he began to talk of how singular it was that so beautiful a place should be without inhabitants.
“The soil must be rich, Nat, to produce such glorious trees and shrubs. Look at the beauty of what flowers there are, and the herbage, Nat. The place is a perfect paradise.”
“And do you feel sure, uncle, that there are no savages here?”
“None but ourselves, Nat,” said my uncle, laughing.
“Well, but we are not savages, uncle,” I said.
“That is a matter of opinion, my boy. I’m afraid the birds here, if they can think about such things, would be very much disposed to look upon us as savages for intruding upon their beautiful domain to shoot one here and one there for our own selfish purposes.”