The people in Patagonia eat gua-na-co and ostrich meat.  Some of the people drink a kind of tea made from the leaves of a plant.  The leaves are first crushed fine, then put into water.  They drink this tea through a small tube with many holes in it.  The holes are so small that the pieces of leaves cannot come through.  This tea is very good to drink.  It makes the people very strong.

[Illustration:  Guanaco.]

The women do all the work about the house.  They make the clothes, carry home the wood for the fire, and bring water from the streams or wells.

The men do nothing but hunt.  They hunt the guanaco and the ostrich.  The guanaco is nearly as large as a cow, and has a head like a camel.  Its flesh is good to eat, and the people make cloaks of its skin.

[Illustration:  Hunting Ostriches.]

The ostrich is the largest bird in the world.  Its legs are very long, and it has a long neck.  It cannot fly, for its wings are too small, but it can run very fast.  It can run faster than a horse.  It is hard for the hunter to catch it.  He rides on horseback, and catches the ostrich with a bo’las.  A bolas is a rope with a stone, a metal ball, or a lump of hard clay fastened to each end.  The hunter swings one end of the bolas round and round his head, and then hurls it with great force at the ostrich.  It strikes the ostrich or catches it by the legs and throws it down.  Then the hunter runs up and kills the ostrich with a knife.  The hunters also hunt the ostrich with dogs.  Sometimes an ostrich will spring suddenly up from the long grass almost in front of the hunter and his dogs.  Then the dogs can easily catch it.

The ostrich makes a hole in the ground under a bush for its eggs.  This is its nest.  The eggs are very large, and they are good to eat.  Its flesh is also good to eat.  Of course you know ostrich feathers are pretty for ladies’ hats.  The feathers for hats are taken from the tail and from the ends of the wings.  But the feathers of the ostrich in Patagonia are not so fine and pretty as the feathers of the ostrich found in Africa.

There is an animal in Patagonia called the puma.  It is like a cat, but it is much stronger.  Often it kills and eats the guanaco.

[Illustration:  Pumas.]

The boys and girls in Patagonia have very few toys, but they are merry and happy.  As the boys grow up, they soon learn to hunt; and then they go out with their fathers to hunt the guanaco and the ostrich.

The pygmies.

Perhaps you have read in fairy tales of very little people called dwarfs.  There are old stories which tell us about very small men who lived a long time ago in Africa.  They were called pygmies.  They were only one foot high, and they built their houses with eggshells.  They lived in holes in the ground.  They had goats and sheep which were much smaller than themselves, and they had corn which they cut down with axes, as we cut down trees.