t 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."

"Oh! but birds can't think, uncle," I said.

"How do you know?"

Well, of course I did not know, and could produce no argument in support
of my case. So I looked up at him at last in a puzzled way and saw that
he was smiling.

"You can't answer that question, Nat," he said. "It is one of the
matters that science sees no way of compassing. Still, I feel certain
that birds have a good deal of sense."

"But you don't think they can talk to one another, do you, uncle?"

"No, it cannot be