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 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
mooncraters 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--_halawoe_. 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. Somber 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 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 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 again into silence. The roar of another frog was
comforting to my eardrums.
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: gasoline, 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 _netsukes_, 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
to 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 unforgetable, 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.
Along the moonlit trail there came wavering whiffs of orchids, ranging
from attar of roses and carnations to the pungence of carrion, the
latter doubtless distilled from as delicate and beautiful blossoms as
the former. There were, besides, the myriad and bewildering smells of
sap, crushed leaves, and decaying wood; acrid, sweet, spicy and
suffocating, some like musty books, others recalling the paint on the
Noah's Ark of one's nursery.
But the scent of the giant armadillo eluded us. When we waded through
some new, strange odor I looked back at Nupee, hoping for some sign that
it was the one we sought. But that night the great armored creatures
went their way and we ours, and the two did not cross. Nupee showed me a
track at the trail-side made long ago, as wide and deep as the spoor of
a dinosaur, and I fingered it reverently as I would have touched the
imprint of a recently alighted pterodactyl, taking care not to spoil the
outlines of the huge claw-marks. All my search for him had been in vain
thus far, though I had been so close upon his trail as to have seen
fresh blood. I had made up my mind not to give up, but it seemed as if
success must wait for another year.
We watched and called the ghostly kinkajous and held them fascinated
with our stream of light; we roused unnamable creatures which squawked
companionably at us and rustled the tree-top leaves; we listened to the
whispered rush of passing vampires skimming our faces and were soothed
by the hypnotic droning hum which beetles left in their swift wake.
Finally we turned and circled through side trails so narrow and so dark
that we walked with outstretched arms, feeling for the trunks and
lianas, choosing a sloth's gait and the hope of new adventures rather
than the glare of my flash on our path.
When we entered the Convict Trail, we headed toward home. Within sight
of the first turn a great black limb of a tree had recently fallen
across the trail in a patch of moonlight. Before we reached it, the
branch had done something it should not have done--it had straightened
slightly. We strained our eyes to the utmost but could not, in this
eerie light, tell head from tail end of this great serpent. It moved
very slowly, and with a motion which perfectly confounded our
perception. Its progress seemed no faster than the hour hand of a watch,
but we knew that it moved, yet so close to the white sand that the whole
trail seemed to move with it. The eye refused to admit any motion except
in sudden shifts, like widely separated films of a motion-picture. For
minute after minute it seemed quiescent; then we would blink and realize
that it was two feet higher up the bank. One thing we could see--a
great thickening near the center of the snake: it had fed recently and
to repletion, and slowly it was making its way to some hidden lair,
perhaps to lie motionless until another moon should silver the jungle.
Was there any stranger life in the world?
Whether it was a giant bushmaster or a constrictor, we could not tell in
the diffused light. I allowed it to go unharmed, for the spell of
silence and the jungle night was too strongly woven to be shattered
again by the crash of gun or rifle. Nupee had been quite willing to
remain behind, and now, as so often with my savage friends, he looked at
me wonderingly. He did not understand and I could not explain. We were
at one in the enjoyment of direct phenomena; we could have passed months
of intimate companionship in the wilds as I had done with his
predecessors; but at the touch of abstract things, of letting a deadly
creature live for any reason except for lack of a gun--then they looked
at me always with that puzzled look, that straining to grasp the
something which they knew must be there. And at once always followed
instant acceptance, unquestioning, without protest. The transition was
smooth, direct, complete; the sahib had had opportunity to shoot; he
had not done so; what did the sahib wish to do now--to squat longer or
to go on?
We waited for many minutes at the edge of the small glade, and the event
which seemed most significant to me was in actual spectacle one of the
last of the night's happenings. I sat with chin on knees,
coolie-fashion--a position which, when once mastered, and with muscles
trained to withstand the unusual flexion for hour after hour, is one of
the most valuable assets of the wilderness lover and the watcher of wild
things. It enables one to spend long periods of time in the lowest of
umbrella tents, or to rest on wet ground or sharp stones where actual
sitting down would be impossible. Thus is one insulated from _betes
rouges_ and enthusiastic ants whose sole motto is eternal preparedness.
Thus, too, one slips as it were, under the visual guard of human-shy
creatures, whose eyes are on the lookout for their enemy at human
height. From such a position, a single upward leap prepares one
instantly for advance or retreat, either of which manoeuvers is well
within instant necessity at times. Then there were always the two
positions to which one could change if occasion required--flat-footed,
with arm-pits on knees, or on the balls of the feet with elbows on
knees. Thus is every muscle shifted and relaxed.
Squatting is one of the many things which a white man may learn from
watching his _shikarees_ and guides, and which, in the wilderness, he
may adopt without losing caste. We are a chair-ridden people, and dare
hardly even cross our knees in public. Yet how many of us enjoy sitting
Buddha-fashion, or as near to it as we can attain, when the ban of
society is lifted! A chairless people, however, does not necessarily
mean a more simple, primitive type. The Japanese method of sitting is
infinitely more difficult and complex than ours. The characters of our
weak-thighed, neolithic forbears are as yet too pronounced in our own
bodies for us to keep an upright position for long. Witness the
admirable admittance of this anthropological fact by the architects of
our subway cars, who know that only a tithe of their patrons will be
fortunate enough to find room on the cane-barked seats which have come
to take the place of the stumps and fallen logs of a hundred thousand
years ago. So they have thoughtfully strung upper reaches of the cars
with imitation branches and swaying lianas, to which the last-comers
cling jealously, and swing with more or less of the grace of their
distant forbears. Their fur, to be sure, is rubbed thinner; nuts and
fruits have given place to newspapers and novels, and the roar and odors
are not those of the wind among the leaves and blossoms. But the simile
is amusing enough to end abruptly, and permit individual imagination to
complete it.
When I see an overtired waiter or clerk swaying from foot to foot like a
rocking elephant, I sometimes place the blame further back than
immediate impatience for the striking of the closing hour. It were more
true to blame the gentlemen whose habits were formed before caste, whose
activities preceded speech.
We may be certain that chairs will never go out of fashion. We are at
the end of bodily evolution in that direction. But to see a
white-draped, lanky Hindu, or a red-cloaked lama of the hills, quietly
fold up, no matter where he may be, is to witness the perfection of
chairless rest. One can read or write or doze comfortably, swaying
slightly with a bird's unconscious balance, or, as in my case at
present, wholly disarm suspicion on the part of the wild creatures by
sinking from the height of a man to that of a jungle deer. And still I
had lost nothing of the insulation which my moccasins provided from all
the inconveniences of the forest floor. Looking at Nupee after this rush
of chaotic thoughts which came between jungle and happenings, I chuckled
as I hugged my knees, for I knew that Nupee had noticed and silently
considered my little accomplishment, and that he approved, and I knew
that I had acquired merit in his sight. Thus may we revel in the
approval of our super-servants, but they must never know it.
From this eulogy of squatting, my mind returned to the white light of
the glade. I watched the motionless leaves about me, many of them
drooping and rich maroon by daylight, for they were just unbudded.
Reaching far into the dark mystery of the upper jungle stretched the
air-roots, held so straight by gravity, so unheeding of the whirling of
the planet through space. Only one mighty liana--a monkey-ladder--had
revolted against this dominance of the earth's pull and writhed and
looped upon itself in fantastic whorls, while along its length rippled
ever the undulations which mark this uneasy growth, this crystallized
Saint Vitus plant.
A momentary shiver of leaves drew our eyes to the left, and we began to
destroy the optical images evolved by the moon-shadows and to seek for
the small reality which we knew lived and breathed somewhere on that
branch. Then a sharp crack like a rifle lost whatever it was to us
forever, and we half leaped to our feet as something swept downward
through the air and crashed length after length among the plants and
fallen logs. The branches overhead rocked to and fro, and for many
minutes, like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, came a shower, first
of twigs and swirling leaves, then of finer particles, and lastly of
motes which gleamed like silver dust as they sifted down to the trail.
When the air cleared I saw that the monkey-ladder had vanished and I
knew that its yards upon yards of length lay coiled and crushed among
the ferns and sprouting palms of the jungle floor. It seemed most
fitting that the vegetable kingdom, whose silence and majesty gave to
the jungle night its magic qualities, should have contributed this
memorable climax.
Long before the first Spaniard sailed up the neighboring river, the
monkey ladder had thrown its spirals aloft, and through all the
centuries, all the years, it had seen no change wrought beneath it. The
animal trail was trod now and then by Indian hunters, and lately we had
passed several times. The sound of our guns was less than the crashing
fall of an occasional forest tree. Now, with no leaf moved by the air,
with only the two of us squatting in the moonlight for audience, the
last cell had given way. The sap could no longer fight the decay which
had entered its heart; and at the appointed moment, the moment set by
the culmination of a greater nexus of forces than our human mind could
ever hope to grasp, the last fiber parted and the massive growth fell.
In the last few minutes, as it hung suspended, gracefully spiraled in
the moonlight, it had seemed as perfect as the new-sprouted _moras_ at
my feet. As I slowly walked out of the jungle I saw in this the
explanation of the simile of artificial scenery, of all the strange
magic which had come to me as I entered. The alchemy of moonlight turned
all the jungle to perfect growth, growth at rest. In the silvery light
was no trace of gnawing worm, of ravening ant, or corroding fungus. The
jungle was rejuvenated and made a place more wonderful than any
fairyland of which I have read or which I have conceived. The jungle by
day, as I have said--that, too, is wonderful. We may have two friends,
quite unlike in character, whom we love each for his own personality,
and yet it would be a hideous and unthinkable thing to see one
transformed into the other.
So, with the mist settling down and tarnishing the great plaque of
silver, I left the jungle, glad that I could be far away before the
first hint of dawn came to mar the magic. Thus in memory I can always
keep the dawn away until I return.
And some time in the future, when the lure of the full moon comes, and I
answer, I shall be certain of finding the same silence, the same
wonderful light, and the waiting trees and the magic. But Nupee may not
be there. He will perhaps have slipped into memory, with Drojak and
Aladdin. And if I find no one as silently friendly as Nupee, I shall
have to watch alone through my jungle night.
INDEX
Abary, 99
agouti, 189
allamandas, 85, 182
Amazon, 240
anaquas, 115
anchor, observation from, 22, 23
anis, 47, 100, 118
antbirds, 249
ants, 183, 256, 258;
immunity from killing, 231;
silvery gray, 223;
"white," 233
army ants,
behavior in rain, 228, 229;
castes, 217;
eyes, 219;
leap, 212, 213, 223;
methods of transportation, 215, 229;
moving of nest, 235, 236;
tube, 227;
trail makers, 221, 222;
virility, 234;
weight lifted, 216
Barbados, 59-65
Bartica, 141
Basseterre, 45
bat, vampire, 104, 152
batrachian, 212
beach, 62, 63, 70, 74, 75
Beckett, Mr., 124
beena, 274
beetles, 211, 227, 234, 256, 277;
mimicry, 257;
tiger, 63
bell bird, 159
Berbice, 102, 103, 124
bete rouge, 243, 255
blackbirds, 98, 99
blackfish, 12