The Days of a Man CiSqs 



earlier pages, was presented to us by Dr. Rogers. 

 The smallest of them, the perroquitos, scarcely 

 larger than sparrows, kept up a soft, minute con- 

 versation among themselves, " povere perroquito, 

 perroquito perron It was soon remarked that we 

 showed much interest in the birds, and trade began 

 to look up. Two or three times small owls even 

 Good were offered with the insistent claim that they were 

 talkers good talkers, " hahla mucho," " he talks much." 



The woods about the town swarmed with small, 

 bright green loritos that screamed in unison, flying 

 from tree to tree. Strolling one day through the 

 deeper forest, we found monstrous lizards — iguafias 

 — hibernating in hollow trunks, and occasionally 

 across our path stalked a huge tarantula with furry 

 coat of brilliant orange and black. 



In Ygnacio's family lived a young pelican with 

 broken wing, who played with the gamins of the 

 street, never once noticing that he was only a bird, 

 not a boy or a dog. At the lighthouse on Creston 

 we made the acquaintance of a domesticated wild 

 turkey-gobbler trained to stand patiently on your 

 finger, precisely like a parrot, until his heavy weight 

 forced you to put him down. 

 Hidden At Camarron, a lava cliff by the sea, men were 



digging in the hard rock for treasure said to have 

 been hastily buried in the almost impenetrable stone 

 by some early corsair. Their operations were 

 directed, we understood, by a fortune-teller in a 

 shabby boarding house on Sacramento Street, San 

 Francisco. '^A sucker is born every hour." 



Parting from Ygnacio, I asked him to suggest 

 some souvenir which we might send him from Cali- 

 fornia. An " escopete," he confessed, was what his 



C 534 1 



treasure 



