I stood in a patch of moonlight listening to the baying of a
hound--or so I thought: that musical ululation which links man’s
companion wolfwards. Then I thought of the packs of wild hunting
dogs, the dreaded ‘warracabra tigers,’ and I turned to the Indian
at my elbow, full of hopeful expectation. With his quiet smile he
whispered, ‘Kunama,’ and I knew I had heard the giant tree-frog of
Guiana--a frog of size and voice well in keeping with these mighty
jungles. I knew these were powerful _beenas_ with the Indians,
tokens of good hunting, and every fortunate benab would have its
dried mummy frog hung up with the tail of the giant armadillo and
other charms. Well might these batrachians arouse profound emotions
among the Indians, familiar as they are with the strange beings of
the forest. I could imagine the great goggle-eyed fellow sprawled
high near the roof of the jungle, clutching the leaves with his
vacuum-cupped toes. The moonlight would make him ghostly--a pastel
frog; but in the day he flaunted splashes of azure and green on his
scarlet body.
At a turn in the trail we squatted and waited for what the jungle
might send of sight or sound. And in whispers Nupee told me of the
big frog _kunama_, and its ways. It never came to the ground, or
even descended part way down the trees; and by some unknown method
of distillation it made little pools of its own in deep hollows,
and there lived. And this water was thick like honey and white
like milk, and when stirred became reddish. Besides which, it was
very bitter. If a man drank of it, forever after he hopped each
night and clasped all the trees which he encountered, endlessly
endeavoring to ascend them and always failing. And yet, if he could
once manage to reach a pool of _kunama_ water in an uncut tree and
drink, his manhood would return and his mind be healed.
When the Indians desired this _beena_, they marked a tree whence a
frog called at night, and in the daytime cut it down. Forming a big
circle, they searched and found the frog, and forthwith smoked it
and rubbed it on arrows and bow before they went out. I listened
gravely and found that it all fitted in with the magic of the
night. If an Indian had appeared down the trail, hopping endlessly
and gripping the trunks, gazing upward with staring eyes, I should
not have thought it more strange than the next thing that really
happened.
We had settled on our toes in another squatting-place--a dark
aisle with only scattered flecks of light. The silence and
breathlessness of the moon-craters could have been no more
complete than that which enveloped us. My eye wandered from spot
to spot, when suddenly I began to think of that great owl-like
goatsucker, the ‘poor-me-one.’ We had shot one at Kalacoon a month
before and no others had called since, and I had not thought of
the species again. Quite without reason I began to think of the
bird, of its wonderful markings, of the eyes which years ago in
Trinidad I had made to glow like iridescent globes in the light of
a flash--and then a poor-me-one called behind us, not fifty feet
away. Even this did not seem strange among these surroundings.
It was an interesting happening, one which I have experienced
many times in my life. It may have been just another coincidence.
I am quite certain it was not. In any event it was a Dantesque
touch, emphasized by the character of the call--the wail of a lost
soul being as good a simile as any other. It started as a high,
trembling wail, the final cry being lost in the depths of whispered
woe:--
Oo----ooh!
oh!
oh!
oh!
oh!
oh!
Nupee never moved; only his lips formed the name by which he knew
it--_kalawoe_. Whatever else characterized the sounds of the jungle
at night, none became monotonous or common. Five minutes later the
great bird called to us from far, far away, as if from another
round of purgatory--an eerie lure to enter still deeper into the
jungle depths. We never heard it again.
Nature seems to have apportioned the voices of many of her
creatures with sensitive regard for their environment. Sombre
voices seem fittingly to be associated with subdued light, and
joyous notes with the blaze of sunlit twigs and open meadows. A
bobolink’s bubbling carol is unthinkable in a jungle, and the
strain of a wood pewee on a sunny hillside would be like an organ
playing dance-music. This is even more pronounced in the tropics,
where, quite aside from any mental association on my part, the
voices and calls of the jungle reflect the qualities of that
twilight world. The poor-me-one proves too much. He is the very
essence of night, his wings edged with velvet silence, his plumage
the mingled concentration of moss and lichens and dead wood.
I was about to rise and lead Nupee still farther into the gloom
when the jungle showed another mood--a silent whimsy, the humor of
which I could not share with the little red man. Close to my face,
so near that it startled me for a moment, over the curved length
of a long, narrow caladium leaf, there came suddenly two brilliant
lights. Steadily they moved onward, coming up into view for all the
world like two tiny headlights of a motor-car. They passed, and
the broadside view of this great elater was still absurdly like
the profile of a miniature tonneau with the top down. I laughingly
thought to myself how perfect the illusion would be if a red
tail-light should be shown, when to my amazement a rosy red light
flashed out behind, and my bewildered eyes all but distinguished a
number! Naught but a tropical forest could present such contrasts
in such rapid succession as the poor-me-one and this parody of
man’s invention.
I captured the big beetle and slid him into a vial, where in his
disgust he clicked sharply against the glass. The vial went into
my pocket and we picked up our guns and crept on. As we traversed
a dark patch, dull gleams like heat lightning flashed over the
leaves, and, looking down, I saw that my khaki was aglow from
the illuminated insect within. This betrayed every motion, so I
wrapped the vial in several sheets of paper and rolled it up in my
handkerchief. The glow was duller but almost as penetrating. At
one time or another I have had to make use of all my garments,
from topee to moccasins, in order to confine captives armed with
stings, beaks, teeth, or fangs, but now I was at a complete loss.
I tried a gun-barrel with a handkerchief stopper, and found that I
now carried an excellent, long-handled flashlight. Besides, I might
have sudden use for the normal function of the gun. I had nothing
sufficiently opaque to quench those flaring headlights, and I had
to own myself beaten and release him. He spread his wings and flew
swiftly away, his red light glowing derisively; and even in the
flood of pure moonlight he moved within an aura which carried far
through the jungle. I knew that killing him was of no use, for a
week after death from chloroform I have seen the entire interior
of a large insect box brilliantly lighted by the glow of these
wonderful candles, still burning on the dead shoulders of the same
kind of insect.
Twice, deeper in the jungle, we squatted and listened, and twice
the silence remained unbroken and the air unmoved. Happening to
look up through a lofty, narrow canyon of dark foliage, I was
startled as by some sudden sound by seeing a pure white cloud,
moonlit, low down, pass rapidly across. It was first astounding,
then unreal: a bit of exceedingly poor work on the part of the
property man, who had mixed the hurricane scenery with that of the
dog-days. Even the elements seemed to have been laved with magic.
The zone of high wind, with its swift-flying clouds, must have
been flowing like a river just above the motionless foliage of the
tree-tops.
This piece of ultra-unnaturalism seemed to break part of the spell
and the magic silence was lifted. Two frogs boomed again, close at
hand, and now all the hound similitude was gone, and in its place
another, still more strange, when we think of the goggle-eyed
author far up in the trees. The sound now was identical with the
short cough or growl of a hungry lion, and though I have heard the
frogs many times since that night, this resemblance never changed
or weakened. It seemed as if the volume, the roaring outburst,
could come only from the throat of some large, full-lunged mammal.
A sudden tearing rush from the trail-side, and ripping of vines
and shrubs, was mingled with deep, hoarse snorts, and we knew that
we had disturbed one of the big red deer--big only in comparison
with the common tiny brown brockets. A few yards farther the
leaves rustled high overhead, although no breath of wind had
as yet touched the jungle. I began a slow, careful search with
my flashlight, and, mingled with the splotches and specks of
moonlight high overhead, I seemed to see scores of little eyes
peering down. But at last my faint electric beam found its mark
and evolved the first bit of real color which the jungle had
shown--always excepting the ruby tail-light. Two tiny red globes
gleamed down at us, and as they gleamed, moved without a sound,
apparently unattached, slowly through the foliage. Then came a
voice, as wandering, as impersonal as the eyes--a sharp, incisive
_wheeeeeat!_ with a cat-like timbre; and from the eyes and voice I
reconstructed a night monkey--a kinkajou.
Then another notch was slipped and the jungle for a time showed
something of the exuberance of its life. A paca leaped from
its meal of nuts and bounced away with quick, repeated pats; a
beetle with wings tuned to the bass clef droned by; some giant
tree-cricket tore the remaining intervals of silence to shreds
with unmuted wing-fiddles, _cricks_ so shrill and high that they
well-nigh passed beyond the upper register of my ear out into
silence again. The roar of another frog was comforting to my
ear-drum.
Then silence descended again, and hours passed in our search for
sound or smell of the animal we wished chiefest to find--the giant
armadillo. These rare beings have a distinct odor. Months of work
in the open had sharpened my nostrils so that on such a tramp as
this they were not much inferior to those of Nupee. This sense gave
me as keen pleasure as eye or ear, and furnished quite as much
information. The odors of city and civilization seemed very far
away: gasolene, paint, smoke, perfumery, leather--all these could
hardly be recalled. And how absurd seemed society’s unwritten taboo
on discussion of this admirable but pitifully degenerate sense!
Why may you look at your friend’s books, touch his collection of
_netsukés_, listen to his music, yet dare sniff at naught but his
blossoms!
In the open spaces of the earth, and more than anywhere in this
conservatory of unblown odors, we come more and more to appreciate
and envy a dog’s sensitive muzzle. Here we sniffed as naturally
as we turned ear, and were able to recognize many of our nasal
impressions, and even to follow a particularly strong scent to its
source. Few yards of trail but had their distinguishable scent,
whether violent, acrid smell or delectable fragrance. Long after
a crab-jackal had passed, we noted the stinging, bitter taint in
the air; and now and then the pungent wake of some big jungle-bug
struck us like a tangible barrier.
The most tantalizing odors were the wonderfully delicate and
penetrating ones from some great burst of blossoms, odors heavy
with sweetness, which seeped down from vine or tree high overhead,
wholly invisible from below even in broad daylight. These odors
remained longest in memory, perhaps because they were so completely
the product of a single sense. There were others too, which were
unforgettable, because, like the voice of the frog, they stirred
the memory a fraction before they excited curiosity. Such I found
the powerful musk from the bed of leaves which a fawn had just
left. For some reason this brought vividly to mind the fearful
compound of smells arising from the decks of Chinese junks.