of excellent roads, record the date of establishment, and the number
of species of palms and orchids. But it will have nothing to say of
the marvels of the slow decay of a Victoria Regia leaf, or of the
spiral descent of a white egret, or of the feelings which Roosevelt
and I shared one evening, when four manatees rose beneath us. It was
from a little curved Japanese bridge, and the next morning we were to
start up-country to my jungle laboratory. There was not a ripple on
the water, but here I chose to stand still and wait. After ten minutes
of silence, I put a question and Roosevelt said, "I would willingly
stand for two days to catch a good glimpse of a wild manatee." And
St. Francis heard, and, one after another, four great backs slowly
heaved up; then an ill-formed head and an impossible mouth, with the
unbelievable harelip, and before our eyes the sea-cows snorted and
gamboled.
Again, four years later, I put my whole soul into a prayer for
manatees, and again with success. During a few moments' interval of a
tropical downpour, I stood on the same little bridge with Henry
Fairfield Osborn. We had only half an hour left in the tropics; the
steamer was on the point of sailing; what, in ten minutes, could be
seen of tropical life! I stood helpless, waiting, hoping for anything
which might show itself in this magic garden, where to-day the foliage
was glistening malachite and the clouds a great flat bowl of oxidized
silver.
The air brightened, and a tree leaning far across the water came into
view. On its under side was a long silhouetted line of one and twenty
little fish-eating bats, tiny spots of fur and skinny web, all so much
alike that they might well have been one bat and twenty shadows.
A small crocodile broke water into air which for him held no moisture,
looked at the bats, then at us, and slipped back into the world of
crocodiles. A cackle arose, so shrill and sudden, that it seemed to
have been the cause of the shower of drops from the palm-fronds; and
then, on the great leaves of the Regia, which defy simile, we
perceived the first feathered folk of this single tropical
glimpse--spur-winged jacanas, whose rich rufus and cool lemon-yellow
no dampness could deaden. With them were gallinules and small green
herons, and across the pink mist of lotos blossoms just beyond, three
egrets drew three lines of purest white--and vanished. It was not at
all real, this onrush of bird and blossom revealed by the temporary
erasing of the driven lines of gray rain.
Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning game, I still watched
eagerly and ungratefully for manatees. Kiskadees splashed rather than
flew through the drenched air, an invisible black witch bubbled
somewhere to herself, and a wren sang three notes and a trill which
died out in a liquid gurgle. Then came another crocodile, and finally
the manatees. Not only did they rise and splash and roll and
indolently flick themselves with their great flippers, but they stood
upright on their tails, like Alice's carpenter's companion, and one
fondled its young as a water-mamma should. Then the largest stretched
up as far as any manatee can ever leave the water, and caught and
munched a drooping sprig of bamboo. Watching the great puffing lips,
we again thought of walruses; but only a caterpillar could emulate
that sideways mumbling--the strangest mouth of any mammal. But from
behind, the rounded head, the shapely neck, the little baby manatee
held carefully in the curve of a flipper, made legends of mermaids
seem very reasonable; and if I had been an early _voyageur_, I should
assuredly have had stories to tell of mer-kiddies as well. As we
watched, the young one played about, slowly and deliberately, without
frisk or gambol, but determinedly, intently, as if realizing its duty
to an abstract conception of youth and warm-blooded mammalness.
The earth holds few breathing beings stranger than these manatees.
Their life is a slow progression through muddy water from one bed of
lilies or reeds to another. Every few minutes, day and night, year
after year, they come to the surface for a lungful of the air which
they must have, but in which they cannot live. In place of hands they
have flippers, which paddle them leisurely along, which also serve to
hold the infant manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves when
leeches irritate. The courtship of sea-cows, the qualities which
appeal most to their dull minds, the way they protect the callow
youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or where they sleep--of all
this we are ignorant. We belong to the same class, but the line
between water and air is a no man's land which neither of us can pass
for more than a few seconds.
When their big black hulks heaved slowly upward, it brought to my mind
the huge glistening backs of elephants bathing in Indian streams; and
this resemblance is not wholly fantastic. Not far from the oldest
Egyptian ruins, excavations have brought to light ruins millions of
years more ancient--the fossil bones of great creatures as strange as
any that live in the realm of fairyland or fiction. Among them was
revealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also that of manatees.
Far back in geological times the tapir-like Moeritherium, which
wandered through Eocene swamps, had within itself the prophecy of two
diverse lines. One would gain great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and
live its life in distant tropical jungles; and another branch was to
sink still deeper into the swamp-water, where its hind-legs would
weaken and vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And here
to-day we watched a quartette of these manatees, living contented
lives and breeding in the gardens of Georgetown.
The mist again drifted its skeins around leaf and branch, gray things
became grayer, drops formed in mid-air and slipped slowly through
other slower forming drops, and a moment later rain was falling
gently. We went away, and to our mind's eye the manatees behind that
gray curtain still munch bamboos, the spur-wings stretch their
colorful wings cloudward, and the bubble-eyed crocodiles float
intermittently between two watery zones.
To say that these are beautiful botanical gardens is like the
statement that sunsets are admirable events. It is better to think of
them as a setting, focusing about the greatest water-lily in the
world, or, as we have seen, the strangest mammal; or as an exhibit of
roots--roots as varied and as exquisite as a hall of famous sculpture;
or as a wilderness of tapestry foliage, in texture from cobweb to
burlap; or as a heaven-roofed, sun-furnaced greenhouse of blossoms,
from the tiniest of dull-green orchids to the fifty-foot spike of
taliput bloom. With this foundation of vegetation recall that the
Demerara coast is a paradise for herons, egrets, bitterns, gallinules,
jacanas, and hawks, and think of these trees and foliage, islands and
marsh, as a nesting and roosting focus for hundreds of such birds.
Thus, considering the gardens indirectly, one comes gradually to the
realization of their wonderful character.
The Victoria Regia has one thing in common with a volcano--no amount
of description or of colored plates prepares one for the plant itself.
In analysis we recall its dimensions, colors, and form. Standing by a
trench filled with its leaves and flowers, we discard the records of
memory, and cleansing the senses of pre-impressions, begin anew. The
marvel is for each of us, individually, an exception to evolution; it
is a special creation, like all the rainbows seen in one's life--a
thing to be reverently absorbed by sight, by scent, by touch, absorbed
and realized without precedent or limit. Only ultimately do we find it
necessary to adulterate this fine perception with definitive words and
phrases, and so attempt to register it for ourselves or others.
I have seen many wonderful sights from an automobile,--such as my
first Boche barrage and the tree ferns of Martinique,--but none to
compare with the joys of vision from prehistoric _tikka gharries_,
ancient victorias, and aged hacks. It was from the low curves of these
equine rickshaws that I first learned to love Paris and Calcutta and
the water-lilies of Georgetown. One of the first rites which I perform
upon returning to New York is to go to the Lafayette and, after
dinner, brush aside the taxi men and hail a victoria. The last time I
did this, my driver was so old that two fellow drivers, younger than
he and yet grandfatherly, assisted him, one holding the horse and the
other helping him to his seat. Slowly ascending Fifth Avenue close to
the curb and on through Central Park is like no other experience. The
vehicle is so low and open that all resemblance to bus or taxi is
lost. Everything is seen from a new angle. One learns incidentally
that there is a guild of cab-drivers--proud, restrained, jealous. A
hundred cars rush by without notice. Suddenly we see the whip brought
up in salute to the dingy green top-hat, and across the avenue we
perceive another victoria. And we are thrilled at the discovery, as
if we had unearthed a new codex of some ancient ritual.
And so, initiated by such precedent, I have found it a worthy thing to
spend hours in decrepit cabs loitering along side roads in the
Botanical Gardens, watching herons and crocodiles, lilies and
manatees, from the rusty leather seats. At first the driver looked at
me in astonishment as I photographed or watched or wrote; but later he
attended to his horse, whispering strange things into its ears, and
finally deserted me. My writing was punctuated by graceful flourishes,
resulting from an occasional lurch of the vehicle as the horse stepped
from one to another patch of luscious grass.
Like Fujiyama, the Victoria Regia changes from hour to hour,
color-shifted, wind-swung, and the mechanism of the blossoms never
ceasing. In northern greenhouses it is nursed by skilled gardeners,
kept in indifferent vitality by artificial heat and ventilation, with
gaged light and selected water; here it was a rank growth, in its
natural home, and here we knew of its antiquity from birds whose toes
had been molded through scores of centuries to tread its great
leaves.
In the cool fragrance of early morning, with the sun low across the
water, the leaves appeared like huge, milky-white platters, with now
and then little dancing silhouettes running over them. In another
slant of light they seemed atolls scattered thickly through a dark,
quiet sea, with new-blown flowers filling the whole air with
slow-drifting perfume. Best of all, in late afternoon, the true colors
came to the eye--six-foot circles of smooth emerald, with up-turned
hem of rich wine-color. Each had a tell-tale cable lying along the
surface, a score of leaves radiating from one deep hidden root.
Up through mud and black trench-water came the leaf, like a tiny fist
of wrinkles, and day by day spread and uncurled, looking like the
unwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and ribs covering the
under-side increased in size and strength, and finally the great leaf
was ironed out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of smooth, emerald
chlorophyll. Then, for a time,--no one has ever taken the trouble to
find out how long,--it was at its best, swinging back and forth at its
moorings with deep upright rim, a notch at one side revealing the
almost invisible seam of the great lobes, and serving, also, as
drainage outlet for excess of rain.
A young leaf occasionally came to grief by reaching the surface amid
several large ones floating close together. Such a leaf expanded, as
usual, but, like a beached boat, was gradually forced high and dry,
hardening into a distorted shape and sinking only with the decay of
the underlying leaves.
The deep crimson of the outside of the rim was merely a reflection
tint, and vanished when the sun shone directly through; but the masses
of sharp spines were very real, and quite efficient in repelling
boarders. The leaf offered safe haven to any creature that could leap
or fly to its surface; but its life would be short indeed if the
casual whim of every baby crocodile or flipper of a young manatee met
with no opposition.
Insects came from water and from air and called the floating leaf
home, and, from now on, its surface was one of the most interesting
and busy arenas in this tropical landscape.
In late September I spread my observation chair at the very edge of
one of the dark tarns and watched the life on the leaves. Out at the
center a fussy jacana was feeding with her two spindly-legged babies,
while, still nearer, three scarlet-helmeted gallinules lumbered about,
now and then tipping over a silvery and black infant which seemed
puzzled as to which it should call parent. Here was a clear example,
not only of the abundance of life in the tropics, but of the keen
competition. The jacana invariably lays four eggs, and the gallinule,
at this latitude, six or eight, yet only a fraction of the young had
survived even to this tender age.
As I looked, a small crocodile rose, splashed, and sank, sending
terror among the gallinules, but arousing the spur-wing jacana to a
high pitch of anger. It left its young and flew directly to the
widening circles and hovered, cackling loudly. These birds have ample
ability to cope with the dangers which menace from beneath; but their
fear was from above, and every passing heron, egret, or harmless hawk
was given a quick scrutiny, with an instinctive crouch and half-spread
wings.
But still the whole scene was peaceful; and as the sun grew warmer,
young herons and egrets crawled out of their nests on the island a few
yards away and preened their scanty plumage. Kiskadees splashed and
dipped along the margin of the water. Everywhere this species seems
seized with an aquatic fervor, and in localities hundreds of miles
apart I have seen them gradually desert their fly-catching for surface
feeding, or often plunging, kingfisher-like, bodily beneath, to emerge
with a small wriggling fish--another certain reflection of
overpopulation and competition.
As I sat I heard a rustle behind me, and there, not eight feet away,
narrow snout held high, one tiny foot lifted, was that furry fiend,
Rikki-tikki. He was too quick for me, and dived into a small clump of
undergrowth and bamboos. But I wanted a specimen of mongoose, and the
artist offered to beat one end of the bush. Soon I saw the gray form
undulating along, and as the rustling came nearer, he shot forth,
moving in great bounds. I waited until he had covered half the
distance to the next clump and rolled him over. Going back to my
chair, I found that neither jacana, nor gallinules, nor herons had
been disturbed by my shot.
While the introduction of the mongoose into Guiana was a very
reckless, foolish act, yet he seems to be having a rather hard time of
it, and with islands and lily-pads as havens, and waterways in every
direction, Rikki is reduced chiefly to grasshoppers and such small
game. He has spread along the entire coast, through the cane-fields
and around the rice-swamps, and it will not be his fault if he does
not eventually get a foothold in the jungle itself.
No month or day or hour fails to bring vital changes--tragedies and
comedies--to the network of life of these tropical gardens; but as we
drive along the broad paths of an afternoon, the quiet vistas show
only waving palms, weaving vultures, and swooping kiskadees, with
bursts of color from bougainvillea, flamboyant, and queen of the
flowers. At certain times, however, the tide of visible change swelled
into a veritable bore of life, gently and gradually, as quiet waters
become troubled and then pass into the seething uproar of rapids. In
late afternoon, when the long shadows of palms stretched their
blue-black bars across the terra-cotta roads, the foliage of the green
bamboo islands was dotted here and there with a scattering of young
herons, white and blue and parti-colored. Idly watching them through
glasses, I saw them sleepily preening their sprouting feathers, making
ineffectual attempts at pecking one another, or else hunched in
silent heron-dream. They were scarcely more alive than the creeping,
hour-hand tendrils about them, mere double-stemmed, fluffy petaled
blossoms, no more strange than the nearest vegetable blooms--the
cannon-ball mystery, the sand-box puzzle, sinister orchids, and the
false color-alarms of the white-bracted silver-leaf. Compared with
these, perching herons are right and seemly fruit.
As I watched them I suddenly stiffened in sympathy, as I saw all
vegetable sloth drop away and each bird become a detached individual,
plucked by an electric emotion from the appearance of a thing of sap
and fiber to a vital being of tingling nerves. I followed their united
glance, and overhead there vibrated, lightly as a thistledown, the
first incoming adult heron, swinging in from a day's fishing along the
coast. It went on and vanished among the fronds of a distant island;
but the calm had been broken, and through all the stems there ran a
restless sense of anticipation, a zeitgeist of prophetic import. One
felt that memory of past things was dimming, and content with present
comfort was no longer dominant. It was the future to which both the
baby herons and I were looking, and for them realization came quickly.
The sun had sunk still lower, and great clouds had begun to spread
their robes and choose their tints for the coming pageant.
And now the vanguard of the homing host appeared,--black dots against
blue and white and salmon,--thin, gaunt forms with slow-moving wings
which cut the air through half the sky. The little herons and I
watched them come--first a single white egret, which spiralled down,
just as I had many times seen the first returning Spad eddy downward
to a cluster of great hump-backed hangars; then a trio of tricolored
herons, and six little blues, and after that I lost count. It seemed
as if these tiny islands were magnets drawing all the herons in the
world.
Parrakeets whirl roostwards with machine-like synchronism of flight;
geese wheel down in more or less regular formation; but these herons
concentrated along straight lines, each describing its individual
radius from the spot where it caught its last fish or shrimp to its
nest or the particular branch on which it will spend the night. With a
hemicircle of sufficient size, one might plot all of the hundreds upon
hundreds of these radii, and each would represent a distinct line, if
only a heron's width apart.
At the height of the evening's flight there were sometimes fifty
herons in sight at once, beating steadily onward until almost
overhead, when they put on brakes and dropped. Some, as the little
egrets, were rather awkward; while the tricolors were the most
skilful, sometimes nose-diving, with a sudden flattening out just in
time to reach out and grasp a branch. Once or twice, when a fitful
breeze blew at sunset, I had a magnificent exhibition of aeronautics.
The birds came upwind slowly, beating their way obliquely but
steadily, long legs stretched out far behind the tail and swinging
pendulum-like whenever a shift of ballast was needed. They apparently
did not realize the unevenness of the wind, for when they backed air,
ready to descend, a sudden gust would often undercut them and over
they would go, legs, wings, and neck sprawling in mid-air. After one
or two somersaults or a short, swift dive, they would right
themselves, feathers on end, and frantically grasp at the first leaf
or twig within reach. Panting, they looked helplessly around,
reorientation coming gradually.
At each arrival, a hoarse chorus went up from hungry throats, and
every youngster within reach scrambled wildly forward, hopeful of a
fish course. They received but scant courtesy and usually a vicious
peck tumbled them off the branch. I saw a young bird fall to the
water, and this mishap was from no attack, but due to his tripping
over his own feet, the claws of one foot gripping those of the other
in an insane clasp, which overbalanced him. He fell through a thin
screen of vines and splashed half onto a small Regia leaf. With neck
and wings he struggled to pull himself up, and had almost succeeded
when heron and leaf sank slowly, and only the bare stem swung up
again. A few bubbles led off in a silvery path toward deeper water,
showing where a crocodile swam slowly off with his prey.
For a time the birds remained still, and then crept within the
tangles, to their mates or nests, or quieted the clamor of the young
with warm-storage fish. How each one knew its own offspring was beyond
my ken, but on three separate evenings scattered through one week, I
observed an individual, marked by a wing-gap of two lost feathers,
come, within a quarter-hour of six o'clock, and feed a great awkward
youngster which had lost a single feather from each wing. So there
was no hit-or-miss method--no luck in the strongest birds taking toll
from more than two of the returning parents.
Observing this vesper migration in different places, I began to see
orderly segregation on a large scale. All the smaller herons dwelt
together on certain islands in more or less social tolerance; and on
adjoining trees, separated by only a few yards, scores of hawks
concentrated and roosted, content with their snail diet, and wholly
ignoring their neighbors. On the other side of the gardens, in
aristocratic isolation, was a colony of stately American egrets,
dainty and graceful. Their circumference of radiation was almost or
quite a circle, for they preferred the ricefields for their daily
hunting. Here the great birds, snowy white, with flowing aigrettes,
and long, curving necks, settled with dignity, and here they slept and
sat on their rough nests of sticks.
When the height of homing flight of the host of herons had passed, I
noticed a new element of restlessness, and here and there among the
foliage appeared dull-brown figures. There occurred the comic
explanation of white herons who had crept deep among the branches,
again emerging in house coat of drab! These were not the same,
however, and the first glance through binoculars showed the thick-set,
humped figures and huge, staring eyes of night herons.
As the last rays of the sun left the summit of the royal palms,
something like the shadow of a heron flashed out and away, and then
the import of these facts was impressed upon me. The egret, the night
heron, the vampire--here were three types of organisms, characterizing
the actions and reactions in nature. The islands were receiving and
giving up. Their heart was becoming filled with the many day-feeding
birds, and now the night-shift was leaving, and the very branch on
which a night heron might have been dozing all day was now occupied,
perhaps, by a sleeping egret. With eyes enlarged to gather together
the scanty rays of light, the night herons were slipping away in the
path of the vampires--both nocturnal, but unlike in all other ways.
And I wondered if, in the very early morning, infant night herons
would greet their returning parents; and if their callow young ever
fell into the dark waters, what awful deathly alternates would night
reveal; or were the slow-living crocodiles sleepless, with cruel eyes
which never closed so soundly but that the splash of a young night
heron brought instant response?
XI
THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES
Butterflies doing strange things in very beautiful ways were in my
mind when I sat down, but by the time my pen was uncapped my thoughts
had shifted to rocks. The ink was refractory and a vigorous flick sent
a shower of green drops over the sand on which I was sitting, and as I
watched the ink settle into the absorbent quartz--the inversions of
our grandmothers' blotters--I thought of what jolly things the lost
ink might have been made to say about butterflies and rocks, if it
could have flowed out slowly in curves and angles and dots over
paper--for the things we might have done are always so much more
worthy than those which we actually accomplish. When at last I began
to write, a song came to my ears and my mind again looped backward. At
least, there came from the very deeps of the water beyond the
mangroves a low, metallic murmur; and my Stormouth says that in
Icelandic _sangra_ means to murmur. So what is a murmur in Iceland
may very well be a song in Guiana. At any rate, my pen would have to
do only with words of singing catfish; yet from butterflies to rock,
to fish, all was logical looping--mental giant-swings which came as
relaxation after hours of observation of unrelated sheer facts.