16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
falls but once in a hundred years. He
has already shown me little bright green
parakeets in the desolation of bare rock
at fifteen thousand feet, mountain viscachas,
fat creatures like rabbits with a
squirrel's tail that live among the boulders,
piping and whistling cheerfully,
and many other delights in those prodigious
solitudes with snowy peaks on
every hand, some of them volcanoes
that glow red by night; and he promises
more to come, for extreme conditions
beget extremities in every form of life. I
could however wish that one of the extremities
was not the guinea-pig or
cavy. He is neither beautiful nor intelligent,
and he is the most indifferent eating
imaginable – barely edible at all,
indeed, after the first half dozen braces.
Unhappily he is readily domesticated;