On the Pampas; Or, The Young SettlersHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
General
On the Pampas; Or, The Young Settlers
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
Pampas (Argentina) -- Juvenile fiction
The excitement of the scene, the difficulty of keeping their feet,
and the influence of the rushing wind, soon had the effect which
their father predicted. The boys' looks brightened, their courage
returned; and although they still had an occasional relapse of
sickness, they felt quite different beings, and would not have
returned to the blank misery of their cabins upon any consideration.
They were soon able to eat a piece of dry toast, which Mr. Hardy
brought them up with a cup of tea at breakfast-time, and to enjoy a
basin of soup at twelve o'clock, after which they pronounced
themselves as cured.
By the afternoon the force of the wind had greatly abated, and
although a heavy sea still ran, the motion of the vessel was
perceptibly easier. The sun, too, shone out brightly and cheeringly,
and Mr. Hardy was able to bring the little girls, who had not suffered
so severely as their brothers, upon deck. Two more days of fine
weather quite recruited all the party; and great was their enjoyment
as the Barbadoes entered the Tagus, and, steaming between its
picturesque banks and past Cintra, dropped her anchor off Lisbon.
As our object, however, is to relate the adventures of our young
settlers upon the Pampas of La Plata, we must not delay to describe
the pleasure they enjoyed in this their first experience in foreign
lands, nor to give an account of their subsequent voyage across the
Atlantic, or their admiration at the superb harbor of Rio. A few
days' further steaming and they arrived at the harbor of Buenos
Ayres, where the two great rivers, the Uruguay and the Parana,
unite to form the wide sheet of water called the river La Plata. It
was night when the Barbadoes dropped her anchor, and it was not
until the morning that they obtained their first view of their
future home.
Very early were they astir, and as soon as it was broad daylight
all four of the young ones were up on deck. Their first exclamation
was one of disappointment. The shores were perfectly flat, and,
seen from the distance at which they were anchored, little except
the spires of the churches and the roofs of a few of the more lofty
houses could be seen. After the magnificent harbor of Rio, this
flat, uninteresting coast was most disappointing.
"What a distance we are anchored from the shore!" Hubert said, when
they had recovered a little from their first feeling. "It must be
three or four miles off."
"Not so much as that, Hubert," Maud, who was just a little fond of
contradicting, said; "not more than two miles, I should think."
Hubert stuck to his opinion; and as the captain came on deck they
referred the matter to him.
"The distance of objects across water is very deceiving," he said.
"It is from eight to nine miles to those buildings you see."
Maud looked rather crestfallen, and Charley asked, "Why do we
anchor such a long way off, captain?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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