little, until it rested high against the smooth trunk. One of us then
mounted the swaying rungs, reckless with excitement, and thrust his
hand into the nest. It was withdrawn and went to his mouth, and down he
came. To our impatient, impolite inquiries, he answered only with
inarticulate mumblings and grunts. He reached the ground and into his
pursed hands carefully regurgitated an egg--white, with clustered
markings of lavender and sepia about the larger end. We looked at each
other and grinned. Words seemed superfluous. Later I believe we quieted
down and danced some kind of a war-dance. Our feelings had then reached
the stage where they could at least be expressed in action. Perhaps it
was not altogether the scientific joy of gazing at and possessing the
first known egg of the _moriche_ oriole. I know that by sheer perversity
I kept thinking of the narrow-gauge canyon of a city street, as I
gloried in this cosmic openness of tropical river and jungle and sunset.
Only in an aeroplane have I experienced an equal spatial elation.
Our bird-nester told us that there was a second egg, and said something
about not daring to put two in his mouth lest he slip and swallow both.
But later, in a moment of weakness, he admitted the real reason,--that
he had not the heart, after the glorious song and this splendid omen of
our work, to do more than divide the spoils fifty-fifty with the
orioles. Self-control was rewarded, as the other egg hatched and we
learned a secret of the juvenile plumage of these birds, while the songs
of the _cadouries_, as the Indians call them, were heard month after
month at our windows.
When the idea of a tropical research station occurred to me, the first
person with whom I discussed the matter was Colonel Roosevelt. In all of
my scientific undertakings under the auspices of the New York Zooelogical
Society, I have found his attitude always one of whole-souled sympathy,
checked and practicalized by trenchant criticism and advice. For Colonel
Roosevelt, besides his other abilities and interests, is one of the best
of our American naturalists. To a solid foundation of scientific
knowledge, gained direct from literature, he adds one of the widest and
keenest of experiences in the field. His published work is always based
on a utilization of the two sources, and is characterized by a
commendable restraint and the leaven of a philosophy which combines an
unalterable adhesion to facts, with moderation of theory and an
unhesitating use of the three words which should be ready for instant
use in the vocabulary of every honest scientist, "I don't know."
My object in founding the research station was to destroy the bogie of
danger and difficulty supposed to attend all tropical investigation, and
to show that scientists from north temperate regions could accomplish
keen, intensive, protracted scientific work in tropical jungles without
injury to health or detriment to the facility of mental activity, and at
extremely moderate expense. This will open to direct personal
investigation, regions which, more than any others, promise dynamic
results from evolutional study, and will supplement the work of museums
with correlated researches upon living and freshly killed organisms.
This was a "progressive" doctrine which Colonel Roosevelt endorsed with
enthusiasm, and after we had brought semblance of a comfortable American
home to great, rambling Kalacoon, we were able to welcome Colonel and
Mrs. Roosevelt as the first visitors to the actual accomplishment of the
project which months before, we had so enthusiastically discussed at
Oyster Bay.
The jungles of South America were no novelty to Colonel Roosevelt, but
to be able to traverse them over smooth, easy trails, in a comfortable
temperature and with no annoyance of flies or mosquitoes, was an
experience which none of us had enjoyed before. To Mrs. Roosevelt it was
all new--the huge, buttressed trunks, the maze of lianas in tangles,
loops and spirals, the sudden burst of pink or lavender blossoms in a
sunlit spot, and the piercingly sweet, liquid notes of the goldbird,
"like the bird of Siegfried," as she aptly said. The coolie workmen in
their Eastern garb, the Akawai Indian hunters and their tattooed squaws
along the trail, all aroused that enthusiasm which a second meeting can
never quite elicit.
Most memorable to me were the long walks which Colonel Roosevelt and I
took on the Kaburi Trail, that narrow path which is the only entrance by
land to all the great hinterland lying between the Essequibo and
Mazaruni Rivers. Majestically the massive trees rose on either side, so
that while our contracted aisle was as lofty as the nave of a cathedral,
yet it was densely shaded by the interlocking foliage high overhead.
Our progress was thus through a glorified tunnel; we traveled molewise
with only here and there a glimpse of the sky. Every walk was filled to
the brim for me with that infinitely satisfying joy, derived from frank,
sympathetic communion with an enthusiastic, true friend. I know of no
earthly pleasure more to be desired. Perhaps this is because friends are
so rare with whom one can be wholly natural, with one's guard completely
down, unafraid of any misunderstanding--an omnimental communion.
It was with dismay, at the end of one long walk, that I realized we had
forgotten to search for the tropical creatures for which we had
presumably set out. We had kept the jungle birds and animals well at
distance by a constant flow of human speech--argumentative, eulogistic,
condemnatory--of literary and field and museum doings of the scientific
world.
But we did not wholly neglect the life around us and one of the last
problems which we solved that day was that of a small voice, one of
those apparently unattached sounds which come from no definite place,
nor are referable to any certain source. It might have been a cicada or
other insect, it could well have come from the throat of a bird. Were we
in the heart of a city we should unhesitatingly have pronounced it a
jewsharp played very badly. We set out in search, we stalked it through
the thin underbrush, we scanned every branch with our glasses, and when
we found it was bird and not insect we shamelessly played upon its
feelings and squeaked after the manner of a stricken nestling. We saw
that it was a small flycatcher, green with waistcoat of lemon-yellow.
Finally after we had learned its fashion of flight, the stratum of
jungle it inhabited and its notes, I secured it. Not until then did we
perceive that concealed on its head it wore a glorious crown of orange
and gold. When my reference books arrive, and we learn the technical
name of this little golden-crowned flycatcher or cotinga, I do not think
that this title will persist as vividly as the "jewsharp bird of Kaburi
trail."
Close to where we walked on those first days, we were later to find our
best hunting. During the next few months all the more interesting
animals of this part of South America were shot or their presence
noticed; jaguars, tapirs, deer, peccaries, howling monkeys, vampires,
agoutis, jaguarondis, otters, sloths, and armadillos. Hosts of birds,
almost half the entire number of species found in the Colony, made their
home hereabouts, macaws, bellbirds, curassows, trumpeters, toucans, the
great harpy eagle and the tiniest of iridescent hummingbirds.
Within a week our great front room, full thirty by sixty feet, with
sixteen large windows, was a laboratory in appearance and odor. Hundreds
of jars and vials, vivaria and insectaries, microscopes, guns, and
cameras, with all their details and mysterious inner workings, left no
table vacant. With book-shelves up, there remained only the walls, which
little by little became mosaics of maps, diagrams, sketches, drying
skins, Indian weapons, birds' nests and shot-holes. Whiffs of formaline,
chloroform, and xylol, together with the odors of occasional mislaid or
neglected specimens, left no doubt as to the character of the room. We
found that the tradewind came from the front, and also that we had much
to discuss after the lamps were put out; so we turned the couches into
their rightful functions of cots, and the three of us slept scattered
here and there in the great room.
The vampire bats never allowed us to become bored. There were no
mosquitoes or flies, so we used no nets; but for months we burned a
lantern. Low around our heads swept the soft wings of the little
creatures, while the bat enthusiast now and then fired his auxiliary
pistol. Later we found that a score of them roosted behind a broken
clapboard, and, by spreading a seine below and around this, we were able
to capture and examine the entire colony at will. Tarantulas were
common, but not in the least offensive, and we learned to know where to
look for a big black fellow and a small gray one who kept the room free
from cockroaches. One or two scorpions were caught indoors, but the
three centipedes which appeared occasionally were those which had been
brought in and were always escaping from a defective vivarium. There
were no other dangers or inconveniences, if we can apply such terms to
these comparatively harmless creatures.
This was the background of our labors, our la_bor_atory as our English
visitors called it: cool in the daytime, cold at night, where one could
work as well as in the north, and where a morning's tramp usually
furnished material sufficient for a week of research. We came to know it
as the house of a thousand noises. The partitions, like those of all
tropical houses, extended only part way to the ceiling, so, as some one
has said, one enjoyed about the privacy of a goldfish. It would have
been a terrible place for a victim of insomnia; but when we were kept
awake by noises it was because we were interested in them. After a day's
hard work in the jungle, it must indeed be a bad conscience or a serious
physical ailment which keeps one awake a minute after one rolls up in
his blanket. Through all the months of varying tropical seasons we slept
as soundly as we should at home. I can do with five or six hours' sleep
the year round, and I begrudged even this in the tropical wonderland,
where my utmost efforts seemed to result in such slight inroads into our
tremendous zooelogical ignorance. At night I spent many wonderful hours,
leaning first out of one, then out of another window, or occasionally
going down the outside lattice stairway and strolling about the
compound.
No two nights were alike, although almost all were peaceful, with
hardly a breath of air stirring--just the cool, velvet touch of the
tropics, always free from any trace of the heat of the day. Whether dark
rich olive under crescent or starlight, or glowing silvery-gray in the
flood of the full moon, the forest, so quiet, so motionless all about
me, was always mysterious, always alluring. To the north, at the foot of
the hill, lay the dark surface of the great river, its waters one amber,
homogeneous flood, yet drawn from a thousand tributaries: hidden creeks
seeping through mossy jungles far beyond the Spanish border, brown
cascades filtering through gravel which gleamed with yellow gold and
sparkled with the light from uncut diamonds. And to the south rose the
wall of the jungle itself, symbol of all that is wild and untamed in
nature.
Yet I am never conscious of the bloody fang, the poison tooth, of the
wilderness. The peace of this jungle at night was the same peace as that
of the trees in our city parks. I knew that well within my horizon,
jaguars and pumas were stalking their prey, while here and there on the
forest floor bushmasters lay coiled like mats of death. But quite as
vividly could I picture the stray cats pouncing on sleeping sparrows in
the shrubbery of Washington Square, or the screech owls working havoc in
the glades of Central Park where the glare of the electric lights is
less violent. And I have not forgotten the two-score gulls and swans
with torn throats--a single night's work of wild mink in the Bronx.
Nature is the same everywhere; only here the sparrows are not alien
immigrants, and the light is not measured in kilowatts, and the _hacka_
tigers are not so sated that they kill for pleasure.
A sound broke in upon my reverie, so low at first that it seemed but the
droning hum of a beetle's wing echoing against the hollow shield of
their ebony cases. It was deep, soothing, almost hypnotic; one did not
want it to cease. Then it gained in volume and depth, and from the heart
of the bass there arose a terrible, subdued shrilling--a muffled,
raucous grating which touched some secret chord of long-past fear. The
whole effect was most terrifying, but still one did not desire it to
cease. In itself it seemed wholly suited to its present jungle setting;
the emotion it aroused was alien to all modern life. My mind sped
swiftly back over the intervening years of sound, over the jeering
chorus of Malay gibbons, the roars of anger of orangutans, four-handing
themselves through the swaying Bornean jungle, and on past the impudent
chatter of the gray _langurs_ of Kashmir deodars. Memory came to rest in
a tent-boat, seven years ago and not many more miles distant, when I
heard my first red howlers. Then I shared my thrill. Now all with me
were asleep, and alone I reached far out into the night and with mouth
and ears absorbed every vibration of the wonderful chorus.
In spite of all this variety and immeasurable diversity, I came to
perceive a definite sequence of many daily and nightly events, as I
observed them from Kalacoon windows. Not only did the sun rise
invariably in the east and the tradewinds blow regularly every
afternoon, but a multitude of organic beings timed their activities to
these elemental phenomena. At half after five, when it was just light
enough to see distinctly, I went out into the calm dawn. The quiet of
the great spaces at this hour was absolute. No matter how tempestuous
the evening before or the night, the hours of early morning were
peaceful. Not a leaf stirred. The tide flowed silently up or down or
for a time held itself motionless. At the flood the mirror surface would
occasionally be shattered for a moment far from shore, where a porpoise
or a great _lucannani_ rolled, or a crocodile or a _water mama_ nosed
for breath. The calm was invariable, but the air might be crystal clear
to the horizon, or so drenched in mist that the nearest foliage was
invisible.
No matter how early I went out into the dawn, the wrens were always
singing--though they were recent arrivals at Kalacoon. Then, within a
few minutes, the chachalacas began their loud duets, answering one
another in couples from first one, then another direction, until the air
was ringing with _hanaqua! hanaqua! hanaqua!_ Dragonflies appeared in
mid-air, martins left their nests among the beams, parrakeets crossed
over from their roosts, and swifts met them coming from their sleeping
quarters in hollow trees. The quaint little grass-quits began their
absurd dance against gravity, and blatant kiskadees ushered in the sun
and day.
Then came an interval when every one was too busy feeding to sing, and
the wren's notes were hushed by an astounding succession of tiny
spiders, and the chirps of young martins were smothered in winged ants.
Swiftly the sun rose and the heat dissipated the mists and lured out a
host of flying things. Even at mid-day one might sit at a window and take
notes continuously of lesser happenings, while now and then something of
such note occurred that one could only watch and wonder. This might be a
migration of sulphur butterflies, thousands flying steadily toward the
southeast hour after hour, day after day. Or a host of hummingbirds of
nearly a score of species would descend upon the cashew blossoms in the
rear compound. Most exciting was a flight of winged termites. In the
rainy season the clouds would bank up about mid-day, and showers fall
with true tropical violence. After an exceptionally long downpour the
marriage flight would take place and logs, dead branches, and even the
steps and beams of Kalacoon would give up their multitudes. From great
rotted stumps the insects poured forth like curling smoke. The breeze
carried them slowly off toward the west, and at the first hint the birds
gathered to the feast. Only Rangoon vultures surpassed them in numbers
and voracity. The air was fretted with a kaleidoscopic network of
swifts--from great, collared fellows to the tiny dwellers in palms--with
swallows, martins, and, if late enough, nighthawks. Fork-tailed
flycatchers swept by scores round the vortex of insects, while a
fluttering host of kiskadees, tanagers, anis, thrushes, and wrens
gleaned as best they could from grass-top or branch. In ten minutes the
whole flight had vanished. Any queen termite which ran that gauntlet
safely, deserved to found her colony without further molestation.
Although I might have stalked and watched the white _campaneros_ for a
week past, yet whenever there came to ear the anvil-like _kong! kang!_
or the ringing, sonorous _kaaaaaaaaaaang!_ of a bell-bird three miles
away, I always stopped work and became one great ear to this jungle
angelus.
One could watch the changing seasons of the great tropical jungle from
the same wonder windows of Kalacoon. A dull rose suffused the tree-tops,
deepening day by day, and finally the green appeared, picked out
everywhere by a myriad blossoms--magenta, mauve, maroon, carmine, rose,
salmon-pink. Yet the glass showed only top-gallant foliage of wilted,
parti-colored leaves. Illusion upon illusion: these were not wilted,
but newborn leaves which thus in their spring glory rivaled our autumnal
tints. One never forgot the day when the first mora burst into full
bloom--a great mound of lavender pigment, swung nearly two hundred feet
in mid-air, dominating all the surrounding jungle growth. This was the
lush, prodigal way in which the tropics announced spring.
Whether I had spent the day in hard tramping or stalking in the jungle,
or at my laboratory table trying to disentangle the whys and wherefores
from the physical skein of my specimens, toward sunset I always went
down to the cement floor of an orchid-house long fallen in decay. This
was under the open sky, and from this spot on the highest hilltop in all
this region, I watched the end of the day.
No sunset should ever be described, and the Kalacoon sunsets were too
wonderful for aught but wordless reverence. They were explosions of wild
glory, palettefuls of unheard-of pigments splashed across the sky, and
most bewildering because they were chiefly in the east or north. This
evening on which I write was sealed with a sunset of negligible yellow,
but the east was a splendor of forest fires and minarets, great golden
castles and pale-green dragons and snow-capped mountains all conceived
and molded from glorious tumbled cloud-masses, and ultimately melting
back into them again. The moriche orioles met the beauty of the heavens
with their silver notes, and as the sky cooled, there arose the sweet,
trilled cadence of the little tinamou heralding the voices of night. The
silvery collared nighthawks began their eternal questioning
_who-are-you! who-are-you!_ and the coolness banished all thought of the
blistering sunshine now pouring down upon the waters of the Pacific.
Not until later, when the night-life was fairly under way, and all the
beings of the sun hidden and asleep, did the deep bass rumble of the big
toads commence, and the tinkling chorus of the little frogs. Last of all
came the essence of the nocturnal--the sound furthest removed from day.
All other voices seemed to become for an instant hushed, and the
poor-me-one spoke--a wail which rose, trembled, and broke into a falling
cadence of hopeless sighs.
And now, with the crescent moon writing its heliograph cipher upon the
water, a new sound arose, low and indistinct, lost for a moment, then
rising and lost again. Then it rang out rich and harmonious, the
full-throated paddling chanty of a gold-boat of blacks coming down river
with their tiny pokes of glittering dust. It tore at the heart-strings
of memory, and in its wildness, its sad minor strain, was strangely
moving. The steersman set the words and in high, quavering tones led the
chorus, which broke in, took up the phrase, different each time, and
repeated it twice over, with a sweet pathos, a finality of cadence which
no trained white chorus could reproduce.
There was much of savage African rhythm in these boat-songs, and instead
of the drum of the Zulus came the regular _thump-thump, thump-thump_, of
paddles on the thwarts. They were paddling slowly, weary and tired after
a long day of portaging, passing with the tide down to Bartica. Then on
to a short, exciting period of affluence in Georgetown, after which they
would return for another six months in the gold bush. They were
realizing their little El Dorados in these very waters more successfully
than Sir Walter Raleigh was able to do.
I have said that the wonder windows would take one to the Far East; and
hardly had the gold-boat passed out of hearing when the
never-to-be-forgotten _beat-beat-beat-beat_ of a tom-tom rose without
hint or introduction, and straightway the cecropias became deodars and
the palms dwarfed to _pipuls_ and _sal_, and the smells of the Calcutta
bazaars and the dust of Agra caravans lived again in that sound.
A voice in soft Hindustani tones was heard below--the low, inarticulate
phrases framing themselves into a gentle _honk-honka, honk, honk-honka_.
Then, still out of sight, came a voice on the stairway: "Salaam, sahib,
will sahib come see dance and see wedding?"
The sahib would; and I followed the wavering lantern of the bride's
father down the steep, rocky path which, at the water's edge, turned
toward the half-dozen huts of the East Indians.
For a week the coolie women had done no work in the fields, but had
spent much of their time squatted in chanting circles. I learned that a
marriage was to take place, and, to my surprise, the bride proved to be
Budhany, the little child who brought us milk each day from the only cow
south of the Mazaruni. Another day, as I passed to the tent-boat, I saw
the groom, naked save for his breech-clout, looking very foolish and
unhappy, seated on a box in the center of the one short street, and
surrounded by six or eight women, all who could reach him rigorously
slapping him and rubbing him with oil from head to foot. Every evening,
to the dull monotone of a tom-tom, the shrill voices of the women were
carried up to Kalacoon; but tonight a louder, more sonorous drum was
audible and the moaning whine of a short, misshapen Hindi violin.
Amid a murmur of salaams we seated ourselves on grocery boxes while the
audience ranged itself behind. In the flickering light of torches I
recognized my friends one by one. There was Guiadeen who had brought in
the first ant-eater; he seated us. Then Persaid of the prominent teeth,
who had tried to cheat me of a sixpence already paid for a mouse-opossum
with her young. Persaid gave us only a hasty salaam, for he was a very
busy and fussy master of ceremonies. From behind came the constant
droning chant of the priest, lingeringly reading from a tattered Pali
volume, an oil torch dripping close to his white turban. His voice was
cracked, but his intonation was careful and his words well articulated.
The day before we had greeted him and chaffingly admonished him to marry
them well.
"God only could promise that," he had replied with a quick smile.