THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY ii 



— that he had been infected with the friendly feeling 

 towards birds of his fellow " pirates and rufhans " 

 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. 



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 protection to wild life on their estates, the 

 detestable swarm of aliens would have made the land 

 they have populated as birdless as their native Italy. 



