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I strolled for an hour or more, listening to the "wandering voice," heedless of what passed me by, at peace with all the world, and resolved to shoot no more. Alas, for good intentions! Coming suddenly into a great clearing girdled by argan trees, I flushed two large birds some forty yards away. The first was missed, the second came down and proved to be a Lesser Bustard or boozerat quite a prize.
From the stifling wynds and evil-smelling lanes of Paris, they had passed to the green uplands, the breezy woods and babbling streams of the upper Orleannais; from sights and sounds the most appalling, to the solitude of the sandy heath, haunt of the great bustard, or the sunshine of the hillside, vibrating with the songs of larks; from an atmosphere of terror and gloom to the freedom of God's earth and sky.
Among the shoals and sand banks of the coast, they saw many large birds, and some in particular of the same kind which they had seen in Botany Bay. These they judged to be pelicans, but they were so shy as never to come within reach of a musket. On the shore was found a species of the bustard, one of which was shot that was equal in size to a turkey, weighing seventeen pounds and a half.
Goomblegubbon the bustard, his two wives, Beeargah the hawk, and Ouyan the curlew, with the two children of Beeargah, had their camps right away in the bush; their only water supply was a small dungle, or gilguy hole. The wives and children camped in one camp, and Goomblegubbon a short distance off in another.
Jennings, in a note to the lines above quoted, observes, "There were formerly great flocks of Bustards in this country, upon the wastes and in woods, where they were hunted by greyhounds, and easily taken. They have been latterly recommended to be bred as domestic fowls; and, to those who desire novelty, the Bustard seems to be peculiarly an object for propagation.
The artillery under Colonel Burstall were with the First Brigade whilst the Cavalry were at Sling plantation, and Divisional Headquarters at Bustard Camp. Earl Roberts came out to review us on Saturday, the 27th of October. I had not seen the hero of Kandahar since the day he marched past the King, resplendant in the scarlet and gold of a Field-Marshal on the Plains of Abraham, at Quebec.
"Ah! but," said John, his eyes beginning to fill with tears, "there is the Grand Master of the Templars come now, and he says that to suck the poison is of no avail; and that nothing will save him but cutting away the living flesh as I would carve the wing of a bustard; and Dame Idonea says that is just the way King Coeur de Lion died, and the Princess is weeping, and the wound will not stop bleeding; and Hamlyn is gone to Acre for a surgeon, and they are all wrangling, and Dame Idonea boxed my ears at last, and said I was gaping there."
Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen round eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to converge upon a passer-by. Feathered species sojourned here in hiding which would have created wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard haunted the spot, and not many years before this five and twenty might have been seen in Egdon at one time.
True, those had been years with no time at all for looking at them years of almost passionate money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte had become solicitors to more limited Companies than they could properly attend to. Up to the City of a morning in a Pullman car, down from the City of an evening in a Pullman car.
This ant-eater is known as the "pangolin," or "manis," but there are several species of "pangolin" not African. Some are met with in Southern Asia and the Indian islands. Totty soon produced a roasted "peacock," or rather a hastily-broiled bustard. But, although, perhaps, not cooked "to a turn," it was sufficiently well done to satisfy the stomachs for which it was intended.
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