WILD ADVENTURES ON PRAIRIE AND PAMPAS.
If I were to describe even one half of the strange creatures we saw in the hermit's glen, the reader would be tired before I had finished, and even then I should not have succeeded in conveying anything like a correct impression of this floral wilderness and natural menagerie.
It puzzled me to know, and it puzzles me still, how so many wild creatures could have been got together in one place.
'I brought many of them here,' the hermit told us, 'but the others came, lured, no doubt, by the water, the trees, and the flowers.'
'But was the water here when you arrived?'
'Oh yes, else I would not have settled down here. The glen was a sort of oasis even then, and there were more bushes and trees than ever I had seen before in one place. The ducks and geese and swans, in fact, all the web-footed fraternity, had been here before me, and many birds and beasts besides—the biscachas, the armadilloes, the beetle-eating pichithiego, for instance—the great ant-eater, and the skunk—I have banished that, however—wolves, foxes, kites, owls, and condors. I also found peccaries, and some deer. These latter, and the guanaco, give me a wide berth now. They do not care for dogs, pumas, and jaguars. 222 Insects are rather too numerous, and I have several species of snakes.'
Archie's—our Archie's—face fell.
'Are they?' he began, 'are they very—'
'Very beautiful? Yes; indeed, some are charming in colour. One, for example, is of the brightest crimson streaked with black.'
'I was not referring to their beauty; I meant were they dangerous?'