The Red Bird of Paradise
Then there is another very beautiful Bird of Paradise which is called
the Red Bird of Paradise. It is no use trying to find out whether he
or the one I have just been telling you about is the most beautiful,
because if somebody were to think that one were, somebody else would
be sure to have a different opinion. But now I will tell you what this
Red Bird of Paradise is like, and then you will know how beautiful to
think him. You know those lovely plumes that I told you about, that
the Great Bird of Paradise has growing from both his sides, under the
wings, and how he lifts up his wings and shoots them right up into the
air, so that they fall all over him, like two most beautiful fountains
that meet in the air and mingle their waters together. Now the Red
Bird of Paradise has those plumes--those feather-fountains--too, and
he can shoot them up into the air and let them fall all over him,
and look out from amongst them as they bend and wave, and think "How
lovely I am!" just the same as the Great Bird of Paradise can. They
are not so long, it is true, but then they are very thick, and of a
most glorious crimson colour--such a colour as you see, sometimes, in
the western sky, when the sun is flushing it, just before he sinks
down for the night. People talk about a sky like that and call it a
glorious sunset when they see it in Switzerland. One can see it here,
too, if one likes, but it is not usual to talk about it or even to look
at it, unless one is in Switzerland (your mother will tell you the
reason of this). Fancy a bird that looks out of a crimson sunset of
feathers--crimson, but with beautiful white tips to them! Crimson and
white, that is almost more splendid than orange-gold and mauvy-brown;
unless you like orange-gold and mauvy-brown better--it is all a matter
of taste.
But there is another thing that the Red Bird of Paradise has, which the
Great Bird of Paradise has not got at all. He has two little crests
of feathers--beautiful metallic green feathers--on his forehead. Just
fancy! Not one crest, merely, but two. One talks about a feather in
one's cap (which, of course, a _bird_ may have without its being
wrong); but what is a feather in one's cap compared to two crests of
feathers on one's forehead? And such crests! And, besides his crimson
sunset plumes with their white tips and the two little lovely green
crests on his forehead, this bird has two wonderful feathers in his
tail; they are not feathers at all, really, that is to say, the soft
part of them on each side of the quill, which we call the web, is gone,
and there is only the quill left, but it is such a funny sort of quill
that you would never think it was one. It is flat and smooth and shiny,
and quite a quarter of an inch wide. In fact it looks like a ribbon, a
beautiful, black, glossy ribbon, twenty-two inches (which is almost two
feet) long.
These two wonderful ribbons--I told you there were two--hang down in
graceful curves as the bird sits on the branch of a tree, first a curve
out and then in and then out again, just at the tips, so that the two
together make quite a pretty figure. Of course, when there is any wind
at all, they float gracefully about and look very pretty indeed, and
when the Red Bird of Paradise flies, his two wonderful ribbons float
in the air behind him, just as if he had been into a linen-draper's
shop and bought something, and flown out again with it, in his tail.
And yet, to make these two pretty ribbons--which are feathers, really,
though they do not look like them--the soft part of the feather, which
is usually the pretty part, has been taken away, and only the quill,
which is usually almost ugly by comparison, has been left. And yet
they are so handsome. That is because Dame Nature is such a wonderful
workwoman. She can make almost anything she tries to, out of any kind
of material.
Now, I must tell you that the Great Bird of Paradise has two funny
feathers like this in _his_ tail too--feathers, I mean, without webs to
them--only his ones have just a little web at the beginning and, again,
at the very tips; all the part in between has none at all. These funny
feathers of the Great Bird of Paradise are even longer than those of
the red one, for they are from twenty-four to thirty-four inches long,
and thirty-four inches, you know, is almost three feet. But then they
are thin, not broad like ribbons, and the plumes of the Great Bird of
Paradise are so long that they are a good deal hidden by them, and,
sometimes, hardly noticed amongst such a lot of finery. I think that
must be why, when I was describing the Great Bird of Paradise to you,
I forgot all about them, which, of course, I ought not to have done.
But we all of us make mistakes sometimes, people who write books just
as much as people who only read them, although, of course, people who
_write_ books _ought_ to be more careful.
In fact, a great many of the Birds of Paradise have these funny
feathers, and some of them have more than two. If you look for page
77 you will see a picture of the King Bird of Paradise, who has two
beauties. He is not one of the birds that I talk about in this
book--there was no room for him--but that does not matter. He sent
me his picture, and it will show you what these "funny feathers" are
like. There _is_ a Bird of Paradise that has twelve of them, but now
I must finish talking about the Red Bird of Paradise. I have told you
about the glorious crimson plumes that he has on his sides, and the
two funny feathers, like ribbons, in his tail, and the double crest of
beautiful emerald-green feathers on his forehead, but, of course, there
are other parts of him besides these, and I must tell you what they
are like too. His head and his back and his shoulders are yellow, as
they are in the Great Bird of Paradise, but it is a deeper and richer
yellow, not the light, straw-coloured yellow which _he_ has and which
is very pretty too (I am sure we should never agree as to which is the
prettier of these two birds). His throat, too, is of a deep metallic
green colour--you know what metallic means now--but those lovely
green feathers go farther up, in fact right over the front part of
the head--which is his forehead--so as to make those two sweet little
crests which he has, and which help to make him such a very handsome
bird. The rest of his wings and body, and his tail, except the two
ribbons in it, are brown--a nice, handsome, rich, coffee-brown--his
legs are blue, and his beak is a fine gamboge-yellow. Ah, _there_ is
a beautiful bird indeed! What would you say if you were to see a bird
that was yellow and green with crimson-sunset plumes, and with two long
glossy ribbons in his tail, and two beautiful crests on his forehead,
with blue legs and a gamboge bill, flying from tree to tree in your
garden?
Ah, yes, if you were to see him like that he would be more beautiful
than any bird that has ever been in your garden or that has ever flown
about in the woods or fields all over England--for he would be alive
then--alive and happy. But if you were to see him dead he would not be
so beautiful as any of the birds in your garden--no, not even as the
sparrows (which is saying a good deal), for the beauty of life would be
gone out of him, and that is the greatest beauty of all. And even if
he were in a cage--unless it were a _very_ large one with a great many
trees in it--he would hardly look as beautiful as a lark does when he
sails and sings in the sky.
So, however beautiful this bird is, you must only want to see him
flying about in the forests or gardens of his native land, if ever you
go there. If you do not go there, then you must not mind, but you must
try to imagine him, which is almost as good as seeing him, if you do it
properly. But you must never want to see him in a cage that is smaller
than a large garden with trees in it, or dead in a glass case or a
hat. It is better that beautiful birds should be alive and you not see
them, than that they should be killed or made miserable for you to look
at.
Now you may be sure that if the poor Great Bird of Paradise is killed
because he is so beautiful, so is the poor Red Bird of Paradise because
_he_ is. It is dreadful to _be_ sure of such a thing, and it is all
because of the wicked little demon, and the Goddess of Pity being
asleep. When the wicked little demon has been driven away, and the
Goddess of Pity has been woken up--and it is you who are going to wake
her--then you may be sure that no beautiful birds will be killed, and
that the more beautiful they are the less people will ever think of
killing them. But that time is not come yet. It will not come till you
have read this book right through and finished it.
Now you remember that the Great Bird of Paradise is shot with arrows
by a naked black man with frizzly hair like a mop--a man that we call
a savage, though, really, he is not nearly so savage as some men who
wear clothes all over them. You see, where he lives it is very warm, so
that he does not want clothes, and he looks very much better without
them, for his black, smooth skin is very handsome indeed, and so is
his frizzly hair. If you saw him you would think him a very nice,
amiable person, for he is always laughing and springing about, and his
white teeth do flash so and his eyes beam, and he looks very pleasant
indeed. I think you would quite like him, so you must not despise him
because he is not civilised like us; never despise people because they
have a different coloured skin to your own and wear no clothes and are
called savages. Perhaps we may be better than people like that, but
remember that the angels are much better compared to us, than we are,
compared to such people. But do you think the angels _despise_ us? Oh
no, you _could_ not think that, so _you_ must not despise the savages.
Never despise any one, that is the best thing. Instead of doing that,
try to find out what is good about them--there is sure to be something,
and, often, it is something which _they_ have and _we_ have not. _Never
despise._
Well, it is this same naked, frizzly-haired Papuan who kills the
beautiful Red Bird of Paradise as well as the Great one, but he does
not do it with bows and arrows, but in quite another way, which I will
tell you about.
The Birds of Paradise are all fond of fruit; they like insects and
things of that sort too, but fruit they are _very_ fond of. They like
a nice ripe fig, and there are so many fig-trees in that country, both
growing wild and in the gardens too, that when the figs are ripe they
do not trouble to finish one before they begin another, but fly about
from tree to tree, making a bite here and another there, out of just
the ripest and nicest. That is a nice, delicate way of eating figs, _I_
think, just to take a little and leave the rest. We are so greedy that
we always eat the whole fig, but then _we_ are not Birds of Paradise.
But now there is one particular fruit which the Red Bird of Paradise
likes better than any other, much better, even, than a ripe fig. It is
a fruit which I do not know the name of, in fact I am not quite sure
that it has a name, except in some language which we would neither of
us understand. But you know what an arum lily is, and in those forests
that I told you of there is a kind of arum lily which climbs up trees,
for there are climbing lilies there as well as climbing palm-trees.
This climbing arum lily has a red fruit, and it is this red fruit
which the Red Bird of Paradise thinks so exceedingly nice. It will go
anywhere to get that fruit, and the naked black man with frizzly hair
knows that it will; so he makes a trap for it with the very fruit that
it is so fond of.
But besides the fruit, two other things are necessary for making this
trap; one of them is a forked stick like the handle of a catapult, and
the other is some string. The Papuan soon cuts the stick, either with a
knife that he has bought of a white man, or with a sharp piece of stone
or flint, and the string he makes from some creeper, or by rolling the
inner bark of a tree between his hands. When he has done this he takes
the fruit and ties it to the forked stick, then he climbs up a tree
that he knows the Red Birds of Paradise come to perch on, and ties the
stick, with the fruit fastened to it, to one of the branches. To do
this he takes a very long piece of string, one end of which hangs right
down to the ground, and he ties it so cleverly that he has only to pull
the string for the stick, with the fruit on it, to come away from the
branch, just as a sash that is tied in a bow will come undone when you
pull one of the ends. Then the black Papuan climbs down from the tree,
again, and sits underneath it with the end of the long string in his
hand, all ready to pull it when the right time comes.
Sometimes it will not be long before a Red Bird of Paradise comes to
the tree, sometimes the Papuan will have to sit there the whole day or
even for two or three days, for he is very patient and will not go away
till he has done what he came to do. All savages are like that; they
are ever so much more patient than civilised people who wear clothes.
But whenever the poor Red Bird of Paradise does come, he is sure to see
the fruit, and then he is sure to fly to it, to eat it, and _then_ he
is sure to get caught in the string. For the string has a noose in it
which gets round his legs, and the frizzly-haired man underneath, who
is watching the Bird of Paradise all the time, just pulls the cord,
and down he comes as well as the stick. You see he cannot fly very well
with the stick fastened to him, and, however much he tries to, it is no
use, for the black man has only to keep pulling the string.
That is how the poor Red Bird of Paradise is caught, and as soon as
he has caught him the black frizzly-haired man kills him and skins
him--I need hardly tell you that he does that, for you know in whose
service he is. Then the black man takes the skin to a yellow man, who
buys it of him and cheats him a little, and the yellow man takes it
to a white man who buys it of _him_ and cheats _him_ more, and it all
happens just the same as it did with the Great Bird of Paradise, until
the skin is lying on the floor of the warehouse, with all those other
beautiful skins of poor beautiful birds--all killed to be put into the
hats of women whose hearts the wicked little demon has frozen. Is it
not shocking? But you know how to stop it. You have only to make your
mother promise--yes, _promise_--_never_ to wear a hat that has the
skin or any of the feathers of a Red Bird of Paradise in it. Make her
promise this before reading the next chapter.