io ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



I will remark in passing that the actual words of 

 his blessing are hardly translatable; for he didn't 

 call them "little birds," but addressed them affec- 

 tionately as fellow-mortals of diminutive size — "little 

 children of a thousand unvirtuous mothers" was more 

 nearly his expression. 



One is reminded of a famous historical incident 

 — of the exclamation of the dying Garibaldi, when 

 a small bird of unrecorded species alighted for a 

 moment on the ledge of his open window, and burst 

 out into a lively twittering song. " Quanto e allegro ! " 

 murmured the old passing fighter. The exclamation 

 would have seemed quite natural on the lips of a 

 dying Englishman, but how strange on his! Does 

 it find an echo in the heart of the people he liberated, 

 who appreciate a bird not for its soul-gladdening 

 voice but for its flavour? It can only be supposed 

 that Garibaldi during his furious fighting years in 

 the Argentine Confederation, in the forties of the 

 last century, had become in some ways de-Italianised 

 — that he had been infected with the friendly feeling 

 towards birds of his fellow "pirates and ruffians," 

 as they were called, and of the people generally, from 

 his enemy the Dictator Rosas himself, the "Nero 

 of South America," down to the poorest gaucho in 

 the land. They, the fighters, were mostly ruffians 

 in those days in a country where revolution (with 

 atrocities) was endemic, but they did not kill or 

 persecute "God's little birds," as they called them. 

 The foreigners who did such things were regarded 

 with contempt. 



