their beautiful colour. However they became great pets, and were very
droll, with their long legs, and slender necks, and great curved bills.
They became extremely tame, and would, after a time, follow the girls
about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their
food always being placed in water, as they never feed by picking upon
the ground, for which, indeed, the peculiar construction of their beak
is entirely unfitted. They were perfectly fearless of the dogs, which,
on their part, were too well trained to touch them; and their funny way
and their extreme tameness were a source of constant amusement to the
whole family.

But we must now retrace our steps. After the important work of getting a
certain amount of land under cultivation, the next most urgent business
was the formation of a garden. The land inside the enclosure round the
house was first ploughed up, and then dug by hand, the turf being left
in front of the house to serve as a lawn. The rest was planted with
seeds brought from England,--peas, beans, tomatoes, vegetable marrows,
cucumbers, melons, and many others, some of which were natives of warm
climates, while others were planted in small patches as an experiment.
Fortunately, the well supplied an abundance of water, whose only
drawback was that, like most water upon the Pampas, it had a strong
saline taste, which was, until they had become accustomed to it, very
disagreeable to the Hardys. As the well had been dug close to the house
on the highest part of the slope, the water was conducted from the pump
by small channels all over the garden; and the growth of the various
vegetables was surprising. But long before these could come into
bearing, a welcome supply was afforded by the yams and Indian corn. The
yams resemble a sweet potato; and if the Indian corn is gathered green,
and the little corns nibbed off, boiled, and mixed with a little butter,
they exactly resemble the most delicate and delicious young peas.

The young potatoes, too, had come in, so that they had now an abundance
of vegetables, the only point in which they had before been deficient.
Their drink was the mate, which may be termed the national beverage of
Paraguay, Brazil, and the Argentine Republic. It is made from the leaves
of the mate yuba, a plant which grows in Paraguay and Brazil. The
natives generally drink it without sugar or milk, sucking it up from the
vessel in which it is made, through a small tube. It