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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 12
Page 02
The Second Punic War was not so much a contest between the powers of two great nations--between Carthage and Rome--as between the individual genius of Hannibal on one hand, and the combined energies of the Roman people on the other. The position of Hannibal was indeed very peculiar. His command in Spain, and the powerful army there, which was entirely at his own disposal, rendered him in great measure independent of the government at Carthage, and the latter seemed disposed to devolve all responsibility upon him. Even now they did little themselves to prepare for the impending contest. All was left to Hannibal, who, after the conquest of Saguntum, had returned once more to New Carthage for the winter, and was there actively engaged in preparations for transporting the scene of war in the ensuing campaign from Spain into Italy. At the same time he did not neglect to provide for the defense of Spain and Africa during his absence. In the former country he placed his brother Hasdrubal, with a considerable army, great part of which was composed of Africans, while he sent over a large body of Spanish troops to contribute to the defense of Africa, and even of Carthage itself.
It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. For the most glutinously indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his own interests except the retention of his snuff-box, concerning which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch.
I shall never forget the circumstance of observing a pair of yellow-bellied woodpeckers,--the most rare and secluded, and, next to the red-headed, the most beautiful species found in our woods,--breeding in an old, truncated beech in the Beaverkill Mountains, an off-shoot of the Catskills. We had been travelling, three of us, all day in search of a trout lake, which lay far in among the mountains, had twice lost our course in the trackless forest, and, weary and hungry, had sat down to rest upon a decayed log. The chattering of the young, and the passing to and fro of the parent birds, soon arrested my attention. The entrance to the nest was on the east side of the tree, about twenty-five feet from the ground. At intervals of scarcely a minute, the old birds, one after another, would light upon the edge of the hole with a grub or worm in their beaks; then each in turn would make a bow or two, cast an eye quickly around, and by a single movement place itself in the neck of the passage. Here it would pause a moment, as if to determine in which expectant mouth to place the morsel, and then disappear within. In about half a minute, during which time the chattering of the young gradually subsided, the bird would again emerge, but this time bearing in its beak the ordure of one of the helpless family. Flying away very slowly with head lowered and extended, as if anxious to hold the offensive object as far from its plumage as possible, the bird dropped the unsavory morsel in the course of a few yards, and, alighting on a tree, wiped its bill on the bark and moss. This seemed to be the order all day,--carrying in and carrying out. I watched the birds for an hour, while my companions were taking their turn in exploring the lay of the land around us, and noted no variation in the programme. It would be curious to know if the young are fed and waited upon in regular order, and how, amid the darkness and the crowded state of the apartment, the matter is so neatly managed. But ornithologists are all silent upon the subject.
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