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Visit to a river on the pampas A first long walk Waterfowl My first sight of flamingoes A great dove visitation Strange tameness of the birds Vain attempts at putting salt on their tails An ethical question: When is a lie not a lie?

I have said to the astonishment of all that is not strictly correct. Guapo saw nothing to astonish him in that sight. He had witnessed a similar one many a time, and so does every one who travels either on the Amazon or the Orinoco. These flamingoes were perfectly safe, so far as the crocodile was concerned, and they knew it.

When the sun arose, a legion of living creatures came out from wood and swamp and reedy isle to welcome him. Flamingoes, otters, herons white and grey, and even jaguars, then began to set about their daily work of fishing for breakfast.

VII. ANSERES. Preeminent in size and beauty, the tall flamingoes , with rose-coloured plumage, line the beach in long files. The Singhalese have been led, from their colour and their military order, to designate them the "English Soldier birds."

It was not yet bright day when breakfast was already cooked, and they sat down to eat it. While engaged in this operation, they noticed a string of flamingoes on the muddy promontory, at the end where it joined the land. They were ranged in line, like soldiers, some of them balanced on one long thin leg, as these birds do.

The gaunt cacti stood rigid, and the palms made no motion where they dropped against the blue. In cohorts to and fro went the colored birds; along the sandy shores, rose pink and scarlet and white, crowded the flamingoes. Crept on the noonday stillness; came the slow afternoon, the sun declined, and every hour of that day had been long, long!

Upon the ground, the large curassows, and gurns, and the "gallo," with his plumage of bright red. Upon the trees, the macaws, and parrots, and toucans, and trogons. In the waters, the scarlet flamingoes, the ibises, and the tall herons; and in the air, the hawks, the zamuros, the king-vultures, and the eagles. We shall see much of the reptile world, both by land and water.

Away back in the woods they could hear the chattering of monkeys; parrots and birds of bright plumage screamed and sang and fluttered among the trees near the beach; and several bright-plumaged flamingoes stalked gravely about the shallows, seeking their morning meal in the limpid water.

Beyond these, as far as the eye could penetrate the clouds of dust, every hill and valley teemed with horsemen, camp-followers, sumpter-mules, and men carrying sheaves of spears, and leading caparisoned horses, all mixed in the most picturesque confusion. After a march of fifteen miles, the female cooks halted, like a flight of flamingoes, in a pretty, secluded valley.

But out in the waste, beyond the seven deserts where Ranorada looms enormous in the dusk, at evening his prayer was heard; and from the rim of the waste whither had gone his prayer, came three flamingoes flying, and their voices said: "Going South, Going South" at every stroke of their wings.