i8o AN UNFORGOTTEN SOUND 



attitude flirting its long tail up and down. At times 

 it flies up voluntarily, uttering a prolonged bubbling 

 and inflected cry, and alights on a post or some such 

 elevated place to open and hold its wings up verti- 

 cally and continue for some time in that attitude — 

 the artist's conventional figure of an angel. 



These birds never flocked with us, even before 

 departing; they were solitary, sprinkled evenly over 

 the entire country, so that when out for a day on 

 horseback I would flush one from the grass every 

 few minutes; and when travelling or driving cattle 

 on the pampas I have spent whole weeks on horse- 

 back from dawn to dark without being for a day 

 out of sight or sound of the bird. When migrating its 

 cry was heard at all hours from morning to night, from 

 February till April: and again at night, especially 

 when there was a moon. 



Lying awake in bed, I would listen by the hour to 

 that sound coming to me from the sky, mellowed 

 and made beautiful by distance and the profound 

 silence of the moonlit world, until it acquired a 

 fascination for me above all sounds on earth, so 

 that it lived ever after in me; and the image of it is 

 as vivid in my mind at this moment as that of any 

 bird call or cry, or any other striking sound heard 

 yesterday or but an hour ago. It was the sense 

 of mystery it conveyed which so attracted and im- 

 pressed me — the mystery of that delicate, frail, 

 beautiful being, travelling in the sky, alone, day 

 and night, crying aloud at intervals as if moved by 

 some powerful emotion, beating the air with its wings, 



