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 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