A Most Remarkable Creature by Jonathan Meiburg

Author:Jonathan Meiburg [Meiburg, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

A cherry orchard surrounding the farmhouse was heavy with fruit, which “glowed like burning coals in the deep green foliage,” and that night Hudson ate his fill, glad that his grand adventure had finally begun. Two weeks later he set out for the wilderness, riding northwest with a young Englishman who wanted to visit friends upriver. For several days they rode beside the sparkling Río Negro, which carried water that had fallen as snow in the distant Andes, and Hudson was surprised by the inaccuracy of its name: it wasn’t black but a rich blue-green—a startling contrast to the desert’s dull browns, yellows, and grays.

They paused at a small cabin at the halfway point, built by the Englishman as a homestead on an unpromising patch of ground. It was more garden shed than dwelling: a single, low-ceilinged room stuffed with enough farming implements “to have enabled a small colony of men to fight the wilderness and found a city of the future.” Hudson noticed that his companion seemed more devoted to this hoard of tools than to the land he hoped to farm, and grew slightly alarmed at his new friend’s fondness. “The way to make him happy,” he noted, “was to tell him that you had injured something made of iron or brass—a gun-lock, watch, or anything complicated.

His eyes would shine, he would rub his hands and be all eagerness to get at the new patient to try his surgical skill on him. Now he had to give two or three days to all these wood and metal friends of his, to give a fresh edge to his chisels, and play the dentist to his saws; to spread them all out and count and stroke them lovingly, as a breeder pats his beasties, and feed and anoint them with oil to make them shine and look glad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.