y between the shoulders. One day I saw what I
at first thought was a small yellow-bellied kingfisher hovering over a
pond, and finally plunging down to the surface of the water after a
school of tiny young fish; but it proved to be a bien-te-vi king-bird.
Curved-bill wood-hewers, birds the size and somewhat the coloration of
veeries, but with long, slender sickle-bills, were common in the
little garden back of the house; their habits were those of creepers,
and they scrambled with agility up, along, and under the trunks and
branches, and along the posts and rails of the fence, thrusting the
bill into crevices for insects. The oven-birds, which had the carriage
and somewhat the look of wood-thrushes, I am sure would prove
delightful friends on a close acquaintance; they are very individual,
not only in the extraordinary domed mud nests they build, but in all
their ways, in their bright alertness; their interest in and curiosity
about whatever goes on, their rather jerky quickness of movement, and
their loud and varied calls. With a little encouragement they become
tame and familiar. The parakeets were too noisy, but otherwise were
most attractive little birds, as they flew to and fro and scrambled
about in the top of the palm behind the house. There was one showy
kind of king-bird or tyrant flycatcher, lustrous black with a white
head.

One afternoon several score cattle were driven into a big square
corral near the house, in order to brand the calves and a number of
unbranded yearlings and two-year-olds. A special element of excitement
was added by the presence of a dozen big bulls which were to be turned
into draught-oxen. The agility, nerve, and prowess of the ranch
workmen, the herders or gauchos, were noteworthy. The dark-skinned men
were obviously mainly of Indian and negro descent, although some of
them also showed a strong strain of white blood. They wore the usual
shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, with jim-crow hats. Their
bare feet must have been literally as tough as horn; for when one of
them roped a big bull he would brace himself, bending back until he
was almost sitting down and digging his heels into the ground, and the
galloping beast would be stopped short and whirled completely round
when the rope tautened. The maddened bulls, and an occasional steer or
cow, charged again and again with furious wrath; but two or three
ropes would settle on the doomed beast, and down it would go; and when
it