CHAPTER IT. 



HOW I BECAME AN IDLEti. 



IF things had gone well with me, if I had spent 

 my twelve months on the Rio Negro, as I had meant 

 to do, watching and listening to the birds of that 

 district, these desultory chapters, which might be 

 described as a record of what I did not do, would 

 never have been written. For I should have been 

 wholly occupied with my special task, moving in a 

 groove too full of delights to allow of its being left, 

 even for an occasional run and taste of liberty ; and 

 seeing one class of objects too well would have made 

 all others look distant, obscure, and of little interest. 

 But it was not to be as I had planned it. An acci- 

 dent, to be described by-and-by, disabled me for a 

 period, and the winged people could no longer be 

 followed with secret steps to their haunts, and their 

 actions watched through a leafy screen. Lying 

 helpless on my back through the long sultry mid- 

 summer days, with the white-washed walls of my 

 room for landscape and horizon, and a score or two 

 of buzzing house-flies, perpetually engaged in their 

 intricate airy dance, for only company, I was forced 

 to think on a great variety of subjects, and to 

 occupy my mind with other problems than that of 



