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There were rheas ostriches and small pampas-deer on this plain; the coloration of the rheas made it difficult to see them at a distance, whereas the bright red coats of the little deer, and their uplifted flags as they ran, advertised them afar off. We also saw the footprints of cougars and of the small-toothed, big, red wolf.
Up to within about twenty years ago, rheas were seldom or never shot in La Plata and Patagonia, but were always hunted on horseback and caught with the bolas.
Not the particular one which exclusively forms their repast, but of ostriches in general, and more especially those of South America commonly called rheas; though to the gauchos better known by the name avestruz. Both the boys are pretty well acquainted with these birds and their habits; Cypriano having several times taken part in their chase; while Ludwig best knows them in a scientific sense.
The wonder was that any man in the position of a sheep-farmer in a semi-barbarous land, far from any town, could provide such dinners for his visitors. After dinner my best time would come, when I would steal off to look for Estanislao, the young native horseman, who was only too enthusiastic about wild life and spent more time hunting rheas than in attending to his duties.
If fear of man ever becomes hereditary in birds, we ought certainly to find some trace of such an instinct in this species. I have been unable to detect any, though I have observed scores of young rheas in captivity, taken before the parent bird had taught them what to fear. I also once kept a brood myself, captured just after they had hatched out.
For by this the rheas have pretty well recovered from their scare, and are again tranquilly striding about. Moreover, they have moved somewhat nearer to the bank of the riacho, where a bordering of leafy evergreens offers to the stalker cover of the best kind. Taking advantage of it, he, in the guise of a garzon, steps briskly on, and steals in among the bushes.
Just where these furthest sheep were grazing there was a scattered troop of seventy or eighty horses grazing too, and when I rode to that spot I all at once found myself among a lot of rheas, feeding too among the sheep and horses. Their grey plumage being so much like the cardoon bushes in colour had prevented me from seeing them before I was right among them.
Flocks of rheas ostrichlike birds were common in the open country. They were so wary that the two had only infrequent glimpses of the long-legged, long-necked birds as they dashed away and faded into the horizon. To pursue them was out of the question and Suma knew it for they ran with the speed of the wind.
After delivering this quaint rigmarole, he sits watching them till their heads finally sink below the sea of grass, the rheas feathers in Caspar's high crowned hat being the last to disappear, as it were waving back defiance and to the death!
How could the ostriches of Africa, the emus of Australia, and the rheas of South America, get there, birds that never fly? There are three species of the rhea, or South-American ostrich; and forty-two of these would have a journey of eight thousand miles before them, by the shortest route: but how could they cross the Atlantic?
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