Page:Dick Sands the Boy Captain.djvu/226

 patience, and you shall see hundreds of India-rubber-trees when you get to the hacienda.”

“And will they be nice and elastic?” asked Jack, whose ideas upon the subject were of the vaguest order.

“Oh, yes, they will stretch as long as you like,” Harris answered, laughing. “But here is something to amuse you,” he added, and as he spoke, he gathered a fruit that looked as tempting as a peach.

“You are quite sure that it is safe to give it him?” said Mrs. Weldon anxiously.

“To satisfy you, madam, I will eat one first myself.”

The example he set was soon followed by all the rest. The fruit was a mango; that which had been so opportunely discovered was of the sort that ripens in March or April; there is a later kind which ripens in September. With his mouth full of juice, Jack pronounced that it was very nice, but did not seem to be altogether diverted from his sense of disappointment at not coming to an India-rubber-tree. Evidently the little man thought himself rather injured.

“And Dick promised me some humming-birds too!” he murmured.

“Plenty of humming-birds for you, when you get to the farm; lots of them where my brother lives,” said Harris.

And to say the truth, there was nothing extravagant in the way the child’s anticipations had been raised, for in Bolivia humming-birds are found in great abundance. The Indians, who weave their plumage into all kinds of artistic designs, have bestowed the most poetical epithets upon these gems of the feathered race. They call them “rays of the sun,” and “tresses of the day-star;” at one time they will describe them as “king of flowers,” at another as “blossoms of heaven kissing blossoms of earth,” or as “the jewel that reflects the sunbeam.” In fact their imagination seems to have shaped a suitable distinction for almost every one of the 150 known species of this dazzling little beauty.

But however numerous humming-birds might be expected to be in the Bolivian forest, they proved scarce enough at present, and Jack had to content himself with Harris’s re-