the waiter had _his_ repast, and the amount of fruit he got through
surprised us beyond measure. He squatted on the ground to eat. Well, when
he commenced his dinner he looked a little old gentleman of somewhat spare
habit; when he rose up--by the aid of his pole--he was decidedly plump,
not to say podgy. Even his cheeks were puffed out; and no wonder, they
were stuffed with nuts to eat at his leisure.

'I dare say Archie eats at all odd hours,' I said.

'No, he does not,' replied the hermit. 'I never encouraged him to do so,
and now he is quite of my way of thinking, and never eats between meals.
But come, will you light a cigarette and stroll round with me?'

'We will stroll round without the cigarette,' I said.

'Then fill your pockets with nuts and raisins; you must do something.'

'Feed the birds, Archie.'

'Ah, ah, ah! Yah, ah! Yah, yah!'

'The birds need not come to be fed; there is enough and to spare for them
in the woods, but they think whatever we eat must be extra nice. We have
all kinds of birds except the British sparrow. I really hope you have not
brought him. They say he follows Englishmen to the uttermost parts of the
world.'

We waited for a moment, and wondered at the flocks of lovely bright-winged
doves and pigeons and other birds that had alighted round the table to
receive their daily dole, then followed our hermit guide, to feast our
eyes on other wonders not a whit less wonderful than all we had seen.

CHAPTER XXI.

WILD ADVENTURES ON PRAIRIE AND PAMPAS.

If I were to describe even one half of the strange creatures we saw in the
hermit's glen, the reader would be tired before I had finished, and even
then I should not have succeeded in conveying anything like a correct
impression of this floral wilderness and natural menagerie.

It puzzled me to know, and it puzzles me still, how so many wild creatures
could have been got together in one place.

'I brought many of them here,' the hermit told us, 'but the others came,
lured, no doubt, by the water, the trees, and the flowers.'

'But was the water here when you arrived?'

'Oh yes, else I would not have settled down here. The glen was a sort of
oasis even then, and there were more bushes and trees than ever I had seen
before in one place. The ducks and geese and swans, in fact, all the
web-footed fraternity, had been here before me, and many birds and beasts
besides--the biscachas, the armadilloes, the beetle-eating pichi