THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY ii 



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. 



Garibaldi was beaten again and again, and finally 

 driven from the Plate by a better fighter — an English- 

 man of the name of Brown; but the beaten "pirate" 

 lived to liberate his own country and to see his people 

 going out annually in tens of thousands to settle in the 

 land where he had fought and lost. How melancholy 

 to think that from the bird-lover's point of view they 

 have been a curse to it, that, but for the wealthy native 

 and English landowners who are able to give some pro- 

 tection to wild life on their estates, the detestable swarm 

 of aliens would have made the land they have popu- 

 lated as birdless as their native Italy. 



