quarters! This was on the fourteenth of a month. If my calculation was
correct they would reach home on the tenth of the following month, in
three weeks and five days. Truly oriental, if not, indeed, elemental
patience! This planet-like journey was deviated from its path by a
hospital stretcher and a swift return over the four-hour course,
although this cosmic disturbance aroused comment from neither the man
nor his wife. I checked off another helpless being salvaged from the
stream of ignorance.
From serio-comic tragedy the village street led us to pure comedy. At
the roadside we discovered a tiny white flag, and beneath it a bit of
worn and grimy cloth stretched between a frame of wood. This was a
poster announcing the impending performance of one "Profesor
Rabintrapore," who, the painfully inked-in printing went on to relate,
"craled from ankoffs" and "esskaped from cofens," and, besides, dealt
with "spirits INvisibal." The professor's system of spelling would have
warmed the heart of our modern schoolteachers, but his seances did not
seem to be tempting many shekels from the pockets of coolie
spiritualists.
After tea at the Colony House, I leaned out of my window and watched the
moonlight gather power and slowly usurp the place of the sun. Then, like
the succession of light, there followed sound: the last sleepy twitter
came from the martin's nest under the eaves, and was sustained and
deepened until it changed to the reverberating bass rumble of a great
nocturnal frog.
In the moonlight the road lay white, though I knew in the warm sun it
was a rich, foxy red. It vanished beyond some huts, and I wondered
whither it went and remembered that tomorrow I should learn for certain.
Then a ghostly goatsucker called eerily, "Who-are-you?" and the next
sound for me was the summons to early coffee.
During the morning the missing orderly arrived, and with him the wig and
gown and the ham. And now the matter of Ram Narine became pressing, and
my friends Lawyer and Judge became less human and increasingly legal. I
attended court and was accorded the honor of a chair between a bewigged
official and the Inspector of Police, the latter resplendent in starched
duck, gold lace, spiked helmet, and sword. Being a mere scientist and
wholly ignorant of legal matters, I am quite like my fellow human beings
and associate fear with my ignorance. So under the curious eyes of the
black and Indian witnesses and other attendants, I had all the weaving
little spinal thrills which one must experience on being, or being about
to be, a criminal. There was I betwixt law and police, and quite ready
to believe that I had committed something or other, with malicious or
related intent.
But my thoughts were soon given another turn as a loud rapping summoned
us to our feet at the entrance of the Judge. A few minutes before, we
had been joking together and companionably messing our fingers with
oranges upstairs. Now I gazed in awe at this impassive being in wig and
scarlet vestments, whose mere entrance had brought us to our feet as if
by religious or royal command. I shuddered at my memory of intimacies,
and felt quite certain we could never again sit down at table as equals.
When we had resumed our seats there was a stir at the opposite end of
the courtroom, and a half-dozen gigantic black policemen entered, and
with them a little, calm-faced, womanly man--Ram Narine, the wielder of
the club and the rock. He ascended to the fenced-in prisoners' dock,
looking, amid all his superstrong barriers to freedom, ridiculously
small and inoffensive, like a very small puppy tethered with a cable. He
gazed quietly down at the various ominous exhibits. A and B were the
club and the rock, with their glued labels reminding one of museum
specimens. Exhibit C was a rum-bottle--an empty one. Perhaps if it had
been full, some flash of interest might have crossed Ram's face. Then
weighty legal phrases and accusations passed, and the Judge's voice was
raised, sonorous and impressive, and I felt that nothing but memory
remained of that jovial personality which I had known so recently.
The proceeding which impressed me most was the uncanny skill of the
official interpreter, who seemed almost to anticipate the words of the
Judge or the Clerk. And, too, he gestured and shook his finger at the
prisoner at the appropriate places, though he had his back fairly to the
Judge and so could have had none but verbal clues. Ram Narine, it seems,
was indicted on four counts, among which I could distinguish only that
he was accused of maltreating his friend with intent to kill, and this
in soft Hindustani tones he gently denied. Finally, that he had at least
done the damage to his friend's face and very nearly killed him. To this
he acquiesced, and the Court, as the Judge called himself, would now
proceed to pass sentence. I was relieved to hear him thus re-name
himself, for it seemed as if he too realized his changed personality.
And now the flow of legal reiteration and alliteration ceased for a
moment, and I listened to the buzzing of a _marabunta_ wasp and the
warbling of a blue tanager among the fronds. For a moment, in the warm
sunshine, the hot, woolly wigs and the starched coats and the shining
scabbard seemed out of place. One felt all the discomfort of the tight
boots and stiff collars, and a glance at Ram Narine showed his slim
figure clothed in the looped, soft linen of his race. And he seemed the
only wholly normal tropic thing there--he and the wasp and the tanager
and the drooping motionless palm shading the window. In comparison, all
else seemed almost Arctic, unacclimatized.
Then the deep tones of the Court rose, and in more simple
verbiage,--almost crude and quite unlegal to my ears,--we heard Ram
Narine sentenced to twelve months' hard labor. And the final words of
the interpreter left Ram's face as unconcerned and emotionless as that
of the Buddhas in the Burmese pagodas. And the simile recurred again and
again after it was all over. So Ram and I parted, to meet again a few
weeks later under strangely different conditions.
Robes and wigs and other legal properties were thrown aside, and once
more we were all genial friends in the little automobile, with no trace
of the terribly formal side of justice and right. The red Pomeroon road
slipped past, and I, for one, wished for a dozen eyes and a score of
memories to record the unrolling of that road. It was baffling in its
interest.
The first ten or twenty miles consisted of huge sugar estates, recently
awakened to feverish activity by the war prices of this commodity.
Golden Fleece, Taymouth Manor, Capoey, Move Success, Anna Regina,
Hampton Court--all old names long famous in the history of the colony.
In many other districts the Dutch have left not only a heritage of
names, such as Vreeden-Hoop and Kyk-over-al, but the memory of a grim
sense of humor, as in the case of three estates lying one beyond the
other, which the owners named in turn, Trouble, More Trouble, and Most
Trouble. Unlike our southern plantations, the workers' quarters are
along the road, with the big house of the manager well back, often quite
concealed. The coolies usually live in long, communal, barrack-like
structures, the negroes in half-open huts.
This first part of the Pomeroon road was one long ribbon of variegated
color: Hundreds of tiny huts, with picturesque groups of coolies and
negroes and a smaller number of Chinese, all the huts dilapidated, some
leaning over, others so perforated that they looked like the ruins of
European farmhouses after being shelled. Patched, propped up, tied
together, it was difficult to believe that they were habitable. All were
embowered in masses of color and shadowed by the graceful curves of
cocoanut palms and bananas. The sheets of bougainvillea blossoms, of
yellow allamandas, and the white frangipani temple flowers of the East,
brought joy to the eye and the nostril; the scarlet lilies growing rank
as weeds--all these emphasized the ruinous character of the huts. Along
the front ran a trench, doubling all the glorious color in reflection,
except where it was filled with lotus blossoms and Victoria regia.
As we passed swiftly, the natives rushed out on the shaky board-and-log
bridges, staring in wonder, the women with babies astride of their
hips, the copper-skinned children now and then tumbling into the water
in their excitement. The yellows and reds and greens of the coolies
added another color-note. Everything seemed a riot of brilliant pigment.
Against the blue sky great orange-headed vultures balanced and
volplaned; yellow-gold kiskadees shrieked blatantly, and, silhouetted
against the green fronds, smote both eye and ear.
We were among the first to pass the road in an automobile. Awkward,
big-wheeled carts, drawn by the tiniest of burros and heaped high with
wood, were the only other vehicles. For the rest, the road was a Noah's
Ark, studded with all the domestic animals of the world: pigs, calves,
horses, burros, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and hordes of gaunt, pariah
curs. Drive as carefully as we might, we left behind a succession of
defunct dogs and fowls. For the other species, especially those of
respectable size, we slowed down, more for our sake than theirs. Calves
were the least intelligent, and would run ahead of us, gazing fearfully
back, first over one, then the other shoulder, until from fatigue they
leaped into the wayside ditch. The natives themselves barely moved
aside, and why we did not topple over more of the great head-carried
loads I do not know. We left behind us a world of scared coolies and
gaping children.
The road was excellent, but it twisted and turned bewilderingly. It was
always the same rich red hue--made of earth-clinker burned under sods.
Preparing this seemed a frequent occupation of the natives, and the wood
piles on the carts melted away in the charcoal-like fires of these
subterranean furnaces. Here and there tiny red flags fluttered from tall
bamboo poles, reminiscent of the evil-spirit flags in India and Burma.
But with the transportation across the sea of these oriental customs
certain improvements had entered in,--adaptations to the gods of ill of
this new world. So the huts in course of alteration, and the new ones
being erected, were guarded, not only by the fluttering and the color,
but by a weird little figure of a dragon demon himself drawn on the
cloth, a quite unoriental visualizing of the dreaded one.
As we flew along, we gradually left the villages of huts behind. Single
thatched houses were separated by expanses of rice-fields, green
rectangles framed in sepia mud walls, picked out here and there by
intensely white and intensely Japanesque egrets. Great black muscovy
ducks spattered up from amber pools, and tri-colored herons stood like
detached shadows of birds, mere cardboard figures, so attenuated that
they appeared to exist in only two planes of space.
The rice-fields gave place to pastures and these to marshes; thin lines
of grass trisected the red road--the first hint of the passing of the
road and the coming of the trail. Rough places became more frequent.
Then came shrub, and an occasional branch whipped our faces. Black
cuckoos or old witch-birds flew up like disheveled grackles;
cotton-birds flashed by, and black-throated orioles glowed among the
foliage. Carrion crows and laughing falcons watched us from nearby
perches, and our chauffeur went into second gear.
Now and then some strange human being passed,--man or woman, we could
hardly tell which,--clad in rags which flapped in the breeze, long hair
waving, leaning unsteadily on a staff, like a perambulating scarecrow.
The eyes, fixed ahead, were fastened on things other than those of this
world, so detached that their first sight of an automobile aroused them
not at all. The gulf between the thoughts of these creatures and the
world today was too deep to be bridged by any transient curiosity or
fear. They trudged onward without a glance, and we steered aside to let
them pass.
The grass between the ruts now brushed the body of the car; even the
wild people passed no more, and the huts vanished utterly. Forest palms
appeared, then taller brush, and trees in the distance. Finally, the
last three miles became a scar through the heart of the primeval jungle,
open under the lofty sky of foliage, the great buttresses of the trunks
exposed for the first time to the full glare of day. The trail was raw
with all the snags and concealed roots with which the jungle likes to
block entrance to its privacy; and, rocking and pitching like a ship in
the waves, we drew up to a woodpile directly in our path. Standing up in
our seats, we could see, just beyond it, the dark flood of the Pomeroon
surging slowly down to the sea. Seven years ago I had passed this way en
route from Morawhanna, paddled by six Indians. _Maintenant ce n'est
qu'une memoire._
For centuries the woodskins of the Indians had passed up and down and
left no trace. Only by this tidal road could one reach the mouth of
tributaries. And now the sacred isolation of this great tropical river
was forever gone. The tiny scar along which we had bumped marked the
permanent coming of man. And his grip would never relax. Already
capillaries were spreading through the wilderness tissues. Across the
river from our woodpile were two tiny Portuguese houses--those petty
pioneers of today whose forefathers were worldwide explorers. Around us,
scarcely separable from the bush, was the coffee plantation of one Senor
Serrao. He and his mother greeted us, and with beaming courtesy we were
led to their wattled hut, where a timid sister gave us grapefruit. I
talked with him of his work and of the passing of the animals of the
surrounding forest. Tapir were still common, and the wild pigs and deer
waged war on his vegetables. Then a swirl drew our eyes to the brown
flood and he said, "Perai."
And this was the end of the tropical trail which had started out as a
road, with its beginning, for me, in the matter of Ram Narine. Along its
route we had passed civilization as men know it here, and had seen it
gradually fray out into single aged outcasts, brooding on thoughts
rooted and hidden in the mystery of the Far East. From the water and the
jungle the trail had vouchsafed us glimpses and whispers of the wild
creatures of this great continent, of the web of whose lives we hoped to
unravel a few strands. The end of the trail was barred with the closed
toll-gate of memory.
V
A HUNT FOR HOATZINS
Lines of gray, plunging tropic rain slanted across the whole world.
Outward-curving waves of red mud lost themselves in the steady downpour
beyond the guards on the motor-car of the Inspector of Police. It is
surprising to think how many times and in what a multitude of places I
have been indebted to inspectors of police. In New York the average
visitor would never think of meeting that official except under
extraordinary and perhaps compromising circumstances; but in tropical
British possessions the head of the police combines with his requisite
large quantity of gold lace and tact a delightful way of placing
visitors, and especially those of serious scientific intent, under
considerable obligation. So my present Inspector of Police, at an
official banquet the preceding evening, had insisted that I travel along
the seafront of Guiana--betwixt muddy salt water and cane-fields--in his
car. But an inspector of police is not necessarily a weather prophet,
and now the close-drawn curtains forbade any view, so it was decided
that I tranship to the single daily train.
Three times I had to pass the ticket-collector at the station to see
after my luggage, and three times a large clover-leaf was punched out of
my exceedingly small bit of pasteboard. A can of formaline still eluded
me, but I looked dubiously at my limp trey of clubs. Like a soggy
gingersnap, it drooped with its own weight, and the chances seemed about
even whether another trip past the hopelessly conscientious coolie
gate-man would find me with a totally dismembered ticket or an
asymmetrical four of clubs of lace-like consistency. I forebore, and
walking to the end of the platform, looked out at a long line of
feathery cocoanut palms, pasteled by the intervening rain. They were
silhouetted in a station aperture of corrugated iron, of all building
materials the most hideous; but the aperture was of that most graceful
of all shapes, a Moorish arch.
Neither my color nor my caste, in this ultra-democratic country, forced
me to travel first-class, but that necessary, unwritten distinction,
felt so keenly wherever there is a mingling of race, compelled me to
step into a deserted car upholstered in soiled dusty blue. I regretted
that I must "save my face," as a Chinaman would say, and not sit on the
greasy bare boards of the second-class coach, where fascinating coolie
persons sat, squatting on the seats with their heads mixed up with their
knees. Desire, prompted by interest and curiosity, drew me to them, and
frequently I got up and walked past, listening to the subdued clink of
silver bracelets and anklets, and sniffing the wisps of ghee and curry
and hemp which drifted out. Nose-rings flashed, and in the dim station
light I caught faint gleams of pastel scarves--sea-green and rose. I
longed for Kim's disguise, but I knew that before many stations were
passed the concentration of mingled odors would have driven me back to
my solitude. Perhaps the chief joy of it all lay in the vignettes of
memory which it aroused: that unbelievable hot midnight at Agra; the
glimpse of sheer Paradise in a sunrise on the slopes of Kinchinjunga;
the odors of a caravan headed for the Khyber Pass.
When I returned to my coach I found I was to have company. A stout--no,
exceedingly fat--bespectacled gentleman, with pigment of ebony, and
arrayed in full evening dress and high hat, was guarding a small
dilapidated suitcase, and glaring at him across the aisle was a man of
chocolate hue, with the straight black hair of the East Indian and the
high cheekbones and slanting eyes of the Mongolian. His dress was a
black suit of heavy Scotch plaid, waistcoat and all, with diamonds and
loud tie, and a monocle which he did not attempt to use. Far off in the
distant corner lounged a bronzed planter in comfortable muddy clothes.
But we three upheld the prestige of the west end of the carriage.
Soon, impelled by the great heat, I removed my coat and was looked at
askance; but I was the only comfortable one of the three. With the
planter I should have liked to converse, but with those who sat near I
held no communication. I could think of them only as insincere imitators
of customs wholly unadapted to their present lives and country. I could
have respected them so much more if they had clad themselves in cool
white duck. I hold that a man is not worth knowing who will endure
excessive tropical heat, perspiring at every pore, because his pride
demands a waistcoat and coat of thickest woolen material, which would
have been comfortable in a blizzard. So I went out again to look at the
coolies with their honest garb of draped linen, and they seemed more
sincere and worthy of acquaintance.
We started at last, and only a few miles of glistening rails had passed
beneath us when, finally, proof of the complete schism between police
and weather bureaus became evident: the fresh tradewind dispersed the
rain! The clouds remained, however--low, swirling masses of ashy-blue,
billowing out like smoke from a bursting shell, or fraying in pale gray
tatters, tangling the fronds of lofty palms. For the rest of the day the
light came from the horizon--a thrillingly weird, indirect illumination,
which lent vividness and intensity to every view. The world was scoured
clean, the air cleansed of every particle of dust, while the clouds lent
a cool freshness wholly untropical, and hour after hour the splendid
savannah lands of the coast of Guiana slipped past, as we rumbled
swiftly southward along the entire shore-front.
At first we passed close to the sea, and this was the most exciting part
of the trip. In places the dikes had given way and the turbulent muddy
waters had swept inland over rice and cane-fields, submerging in one
implacable tide the labor of years. A new dike, of mud and timbers and
sweet-smelling hurdles of black sage, had been erected at the roadside,
and past this went all traffic. Now and then an automobile had to slow
up until a great wave broke, and then dash at full speed across the
danger-spot. In spite of the swiftness, the wind-flung spray of the next
wave would drench the occupants. The lowering sea-water glistened among
the sickly plants, and strange fish troubled the salty pools as they
sought uneasily for an outlet to the ocean. A flock of skimmers looked
wholly out of place driving past a clump of bamboos.
Then the roadbed shifted inland, and lines of patient, humped zebus
trailed slowly from their sheds--sheds of larger size and better built
than the huts of their owners. These open-work homes were picturesque and
unobtrusive; they fitted into the landscape as if, like the palms, they
had come into being through years of quiet assimilation of water and
warmth. Their walls were of mud, adobe, mere casual upliftings of the
sticky soil which glistened in every direction. Their roofs were of
_trooly_-palm fronds, brown and withered, as though they had dropped
from invisible trees high overhead. Like the coolies themselves, the
houses offered no note of discord.
I had just come from the deep jungle of the interior with its varying
lights and shadows, its myriad color-grades, pastel, neutral in quality.
Here was boldness of stroke, sharpness of outline, strength of pigment.
All the dominant tones of this newly washed coastal region were distinct
and incisive. Clear-cut silhouettes of vultures and black witch-birds
were hunched on fence-posts and shrubs. Egrets, like manikins cut from
the whitest of celluloid, shone as far as the eye could see them. As if
the rain had dissolved and washed away every mixed shade and hue, the
eye registered only flaming, clashing colors; great flocks of birds
black as night, save for a glowing scarlet gorget; other black birds
with heads of shining gold, flashing as the filigree nose-beads flash
against the rich dark skin of the coolies.
Like the colors, the sounds were individualized by sharpness of tone,
incisiveness of utterance. The violent cries of flycatchers cleft the
air, and, swiftly as we passed, struck on my ear fair and strong. The
notes of the blackbirds were harmonious shafts of sound, cleaving the
air like the whistle of the meadowlark. Hawks with plumage of bright
cinnamon and cream, hurled crisp, piercing shrieks at the train. Only
the vultures, strung like ebony beads along the fronds of the cocoanut
palms, spread their wings to dry, and dumbly craned their necks down as
we passed.
Past Mahaica and Abary we rushed, the world about us a sliding carpet of
all the emerald tints in the universe. And just as the last tint had
been used up and I knew there must be some repetition, the clouds split
and a ray of pure sunlight shot through the clear air and lit up a field
of growing rice with living green of a still newer hue, an unearthly
concentrated essence of emerald which was comparable to nothing but
sprouting rice in rain-washed sunlight. Whether this be on the hot
coastlands of Java, in tiny sod-banked terraces far up on the slopes of
Dehra Dun, or in the shadow of Fuji itself, makes no manner of
difference. The miracle of color never fails.