called the Valley of Death, because the air was so poisoned with the
noxious vapors of the Upas trees that no animal ever went through the
valley. It dropped dead before the short journey was completed, and
the ground was strewn with the bones of creatures that had perished
there. The natives were willing to conduct their visitors to a hill
that overlooked this valley at a safe distance. When they arrived at
this hill, there, sure enough, was the valley, Upas trees, dead grass,
bones, and all, just as the savages had described it. This settled the
matter for a great many years in regard to the death dealing Upas tree.
Other travelers to Java, rode up this hill, looked at the Valley of
Death, shuddered, and rode down again.
At last there arrived on the hill-top a man who made up his mind he
would ride _through_ this valley! And so he did! Everybody said he was
going to his death, but he was resolved to solve the mystery of the
valley. He rode into it, and through it, and back again, and came out
alive and well! Nevertheless he found the skeletons of wild animals,
and of birds strewn the whole length of the valley.
It was a mystery, but it was all cleared up afterwards. The valley was
fatal to all animals except man. But the Upas tree had nothing to do
with it. The valley was filled with carbonic acid gas to the height of
a couple of feet from the ground.
I cannot explain to you in this place how this gas is formed by plants.
It would be a good plan for you to study up this subject, for it is
quite curious, and very interesting. The gas is fatal to animal life.
Neither man, beast, or bird can breathe it for even a short time and
live. But the gas is heavier than the common air, and sinks in it. In
this valley, as I have said, it extended only about two feet above the
ground, and a man’s lungs were above it, so he could not inhale it. On
horseback of course he was far above it. But low animals, and birds
that alighted on the ground at once fell victims to it.
This led to an examination of the Upas tree stories, and most of them
were found to be fables. Grass and flowers do grow around these trees
in most places; birds sport upon their branches, and lizards run up and
down unhurt; and it is possible to remain under them without injury of
any kind.
But it is true that the juice of the upas is a powerful poison. The
savages use it as a weapon to kill their enemies in war, and to slay
the wild beasts. They dip the points of their spears and arrows in the
poisonous sap. An animal dies in five or six minutes after being struck
with one of these poisoned weapons. They take great precautions in
collecting the sap, so terrible is their fear of this tree.
On some plants the blossoms are so small they can scarcely be seen by
the naked eye, and on others they are of enormous proportions.
An African flower, the Aristolochia, has a large and curiously shaped
blossom. It is shaped like a helmet with flaring edges, and the opening
is so large that it will admit the head of a man, and can be worn as a
hat.
The flowers of the Victoria Regia, which are shaped very much like
those of our water lily, are a yard in circumference.
But the giant of blossoms is the Rafflesia Arnoldi. This is a long
name, but the flower can bear it very well.
[Illustration: RAFFLESIA ARNOLDI.]
It grows in the islands of Java and Sumatra, and the buds and blossoms
seem to be pretty much all there is of the plant. And quite enough too.
The full blown flower is a yard wide. Each of its five petals is a foot
long, and they stand at about the distance of a foot from each other.
In the centre there is a deep honey-cup, which is capable of holding a
dozen pints of fluid. The whole weighs fifteen pounds. The central cup
is violet and red, and the petals are of a brilliant orange color, so
that it makes a gorgeous display indeed.
But this flower, so magnificent in size and color, has such a
disagreeable smell, that after having satisfied your curiosity by
looking at its gigantic blossom, you will be glad to get away from its
neighborhood.
From the bark of a tree, the Cinchona, we get one of our most useful
and powerful medicines. The bark is known under the name of Peruvian
bark, and there are several preparations from it—quinine being the
one most generally used. It is a valuable medicine everywhere, but is
especially so in the hot countries where it grows, for very malignant
fevers prevail in those localities. It got its name, Cinchona, from
the first European who used it. The Countess Chinchon of Spain, while
living in Peru was attacked by one of the terrible fevers of the
country, and was near dying, when she heard that in such fevers the
natives cured themselves with the bark of a tree. She tried it, and
recovered; and, after she got well, she took pains to make known the
virtues of this bark, and gave away great quantities of it. It is now
a very important article of export from Peru, and a source of great
wealth.
There are other barks of plants and trees used in medicine. A great
many are useful as dyes. The inner bark of a species of oak furnishes
us with corks. Some trees have aromatic barks. The black birch of our
own woods is highly spiced. Of some the flavor is so pleasant that they
are used as spices. Cinnamon bark, for instance, which, of course, you
know all about.
So you see that even in the bark of vegetables there are pleasant
things stored away, and wonderful secrets, if we choose to take the
trouble to get at them.
The fragrance of a plant, if it has any, we expect to find in its
blossoms. But this quality is not confined to the flowers. It is found
sometimes in the leaves, occasionally in the bark, and very frequently
in the fruit. We are familiar with the fragrance of strawberries,
raspberries, peaches, grapes, bananas, lemons, and oranges; and many
others might be named. In fact nearly all eatable fruits have some sort
of a pleasant odor, though in some it is very faint.
Sometimes the fragrance is in the nuts. There are but few examples
of this. The Black Walnut has an agreeable smell. The most famous
of fragrant nuts is the Nutmeg, with which we are all familiar in
the spice-boxes. But perhaps you don’t know how beautifully it looks
growing upon the tree. So we will break off a branch for you to look at.
[Illustration: BRANCH OF A NUTMEG TREE.]
This nut ripens under the hot sun of India. Not only is the nut itself
fragrant, but the second coat of its envelope, or shell, that you
see in the picture, also has a pleasing perfume of its own, entirely
distinct from its nut. This you are also familiar with in the spice
box, broken up into thin yellow chips, and called Mace.
No more delicious fragrance can be found than that of a South American
bean, the Vanilla.
As for leaves, you can think of a great many fragrant kinds in a few
minutes, not only green-house plants, like some of the geraniums, but
many of the weeds of the fields.
Some vegetables produce very remarkable fruits.
[Illustration: FRUIT OF THE BREAD FRUIT TREE, REDUCED IN SIZE.]
A species of fig-tree bears loaves of bread! It is quite a large tree,
about forty feet high, and has wide spreading branches, thickly covered
with very large leaves. It bears fruit abundantly, and during eight
months of the year, there is always some ripe fruit to be found on the
boughs.
This fruit is round; is larger than a child’s head; weighs three or
four pounds, and is rough and hairy on the outside.
The thick green rind encloses a pulp, which is as white as wheat bread,
and, when cooked, tastes very much like it, and is equally nourishing.
To prepare it to be eaten, it is cut into thick slices, and laid upon a
gridiron over a bed of hot coals. In a few minutes the “bread” is ready.
Thus the natives of the countries where this fruit grows have bread for
eight months of the year with very little trouble. If they did not have
this kind they would not have any bread at all, for wheat and rye will
not grow there.
But they want bread the rest of the year too. So they take advantage
of the time when the fruit is most abundant, and, from that which they
do not want for immediate use, they prepare a paste that can be kept a
long time without turning sour. And, during the four months the tree is
without ripe fruit, they live upon this preparation.
Tapioca is the singular production of a vegetable root. It is singular
because, though wholesome and nutritious as food, it is produced from a
strong poison. It is prepared as follows by native women.
Roots of the manioc plant are gathered, and bruised into pulp with a
wooden pestle. This pulp is wrapped in a net made of lily leaves. This
is stuck upon a fork, and a heavy weight tied to the bottom of the net
so as to press it tightly to squeeze out the manioc juice. A calabash
receives the juice, which is very poisonous. Arrows and spear heads are
dipped into it to make them certainly fatal. While this is going on the
liquid is all the time depositing a white, starch-like substance in
the bottom of the calabash. When all of this that the poisonous liquid
contains is deposited, the juice is poured off, and the white substance
is passed through clear water, and becomes tapioca.
[Illustration: A FOREST OF MANGROVES.]
When we are in the tropics we must not forget to visit the Mangroves.
These trees grow thickly together in the ocean mud near the shore, and
are very queer specimens of the vegetable world. To look at them from
a little distance you would hardly know whether they were trees, or
fishes, or sea-serpents. Their upper branches and trunks are like the
first, their lower branches covered with oysters and other shell-fish
appear like the second; and their long curiously twisted roots,
standing partly out of the water, seem like the third. Sometimes, in
passing over wet and swampy places, men walk on these roots. In such a
case, a naked savage gets along much more easily than an European, with
his boots and clothes, and perhaps a heavy gun.
But there is a strange thing about this tree, apart from its uncommon
growth. And that is the way that its seeds germinate. We put a seed
into the ground, and when it sends up its little stalk and leaves we
say it has germinated or sprouted. Now the mangrove seeds germinate
on the branches, in the fruit. The seed sends forth the little stalk
which grows up there until it is a foot long. This stalk is shaped
like a pointed club and is quite heavy. When it is ready to fall, it
goes plump down through the leaves and branches of the tree, sharp end
downwards, and sticks itself firmly upright in the mud at the bottom of
the water. And, after some time, it thrusts itself above the surface,
and grows into a comical mangrove tree.
If you will study the marvels of vegetable life you will find strange
things of which I have said nothing.
Many wonderful plants grow high up in the air on the branches of trees;
and many very curious ones thrive only in the water.
BRON AND KRUGE.
Old King Rhine sat upon his rocky throne among the reeds. He had given
his kingly word that for three months his river, the Rhine, should not
overflow its banks, and that there should be no manner of tempest upon
its waters. The old gentleman was sad and gloomy. A month had passed
since he gave this promise, and all that time he had had nothing to
do. This was hard upon him, for he had led a very busy life. Many an
army had he helped across his river, and many a one had he broken to
pieces with floods, and tempests. Christians and savages, knights and
nobles, and men of low degree had fought upon his banks. Men had built
castles, and he had swept them away, or crumbled them into ruins. And,
sometimes, he had helped beautify them, and spread grass and flowers
all around them. And he had occupied himself in many other ways.
[Illustration: KING RHINE.]
And now there was nothing for him to do. He looked up and down the
length of the stream. The waters were still and blue, and vessels
glided over them, and the little boats rocked gaily on the swelling
waves. At the wharves of the cities men were busy loading and unloading
the ships, and all rejoiced in the pleasant and prosperous season. On
the hill-sides the vineyards were as full of grapes as ever they could
be, and the vines found their way up the very walls of the ruined
castles, and hung their purple clusters on the loosened stones.
It was very pretty, and the old king took pleasure in it, but he always
liked to have something going on that was not quite in the ordinary way.
Suddenly he remembered that there were other creatures under his care
besides men. There were Nixies, and Fairies, and Gnomes, and Dwarfs,
and Undines, and Elves, and Sylphs, and Peris, and Nymphs, and Dryads,
and Giants.
[Illustration: A RHINE VINEYARD.]
Giants! Here was something for him to attend to! There were not a great
many giants left on the banks of the Rhine, but the few that were there
were capable of doing a great deal of mischief; and king Rhine had
been hearing bad reports of them for a long time. But he had been so
busy with men and their affairs that he had neglected looking after
anything else. It was high time that these giants were taught better
manners.
But who was to teach them? Who should he employ to subdue these giants,
who were as tall as oak trees? Men could do nothing against them.
Since the death of Jack the Giant-Killer no man had ever been known to
conquer a giant.
In his perplexity he summoned a wise woman, who lived on the highest
peak of the highest mountain on the river, and who always gave wise
counsel; but would never leave her rocky home except when some one was
in great need of good advice. She came to the king at his bidding and
this is what she said:
“Good dwarfs can conquer bad giants.”
Not another word would she utter. She made this same answer to every
question the king put to her, until, finally, he flew into a rage, and
shook his reedy sceptre at her. Whereupon this wise woman disappeared.
The king spent several days thinking about this matter. He could not
fight the giants himself, for that would be beneath the dignity of a
king. As for what the wise woman had said about the dwarfs, that was
ridiculous. A little creature, scarcely a foot high, to conquer a
mighty giant! But, after considering the matter a good while, it did
not seem quite so absurd. He recalled to mind something the gnomes had
done some years before.
Now a gnome is as small a being as a dwarf, and his home is under the
ground, so that he seldom sees the light of day. Consequently he is not
as bright and quick-witted as a dwarf. And yet a few of these creatures
had first astonished all the civilized nations on the globe, and then
set them all to quarreling. In order to make you understand how this
was I must go back for a minute to the world before the Flood.
[Illustration: THE GNOMES AT WORK.]
A long time before the Flood, before man was created, the world was
inhabited by beasts, fishes, and reptiles of enormous size; very much
larger than any at present upon the earth. We know this because parts
of the skeletons of these animals have been found in various places;
and the learned men of different countries have written a great deal
about them.
Now it happened that some years before this trouble had arisen between
King Rhine and the giants, and before his talk with the wise woman,
some gnomes while digging in a cave for gold, found buried in the
earth the skeleton of an immense head. Astonished at this sight they
determined to let gold hunting alone for a while, and to see if they
could not find the rest of the animal to which the head belonged. They
worked carefully and industriously for many months with their little
picks and spades, and, finally they laid bare the whole skeleton of a
monstrous creature of the very queerest shape the gnomes had ever seen.
I say the whole of it, but there were a few bones wanting here and
there, for which the gnomes searched in vain in the earth around the
spot where the creature lay.
This animal measured thirty-three feet in length. It was shaped
somewhat like a great lizard, but it had the back-bone of a fish, and
the fins of a dolphin, with the head and teeth of a crocodile. But what
eyes it must have had while living! The gnomes amused themselves by
crawling in and out of the sockets! The ball of the eye must have been
as large as a man’s head!
When the gnomes had finished this great piece of work they did not
know what to do with the huge creature they had found. It was of no
use to them, and, after they had taken a few of the smallest bones for
drum-sticks, they would have nothing more to do with it. After a time,
the sight of this terrible, fleshless monster was hateful to them, and
they could not move it away.
In this dilemma they went to King Rhine to know what it was best to
do with this fruit of their long labors. He told them they had been
very foolish gnomes to spend so much time on a thing that was of no use
to anybody, and that ought to be covered up from the sight of men. He
advised them to put all the earth and stones back again, and bury the
horrid creature.
The gnomes could not make up their minds to do this, and they moved out
of the cave into another part of the same mountain, and left the lizard
in possession of their old home.
Soon after a wood-cutter, being caught in a storm, took refuge in
this cave; and the sight of this gigantic skeleton frightened him
more than the storm. He ran to his village with the wonderful news. A
very learned man who lived there, hearing the story, went to look at
the skeleton, and was filled with astonishment, for he had never even
imagined such an animal.
He immediately wrote a book about it.
And then old Rhine found that, in this case, the gnomes were wiser than
their king. For, so far from this creature they had dug out of the
ground being of no account, it caused a greater stir than anything that
had happened in his kingdom since the last army had been driven across
the river a good many years ago. People flocked from all quarters to
the cave, and business was lively the whole length of the river.
Learned men came from every country in the civilized world. And each
one wrote a book about the lizard-fish. But the worst of it was that
no two of them agreed as to what it was. They disputed so long, and so
earnestly over this skeleton that, at last, the unlearned took up the
quarrel, each country feeling bound to support its own learned men. And
in this way the governments were drawn into the dispute, and there had
liked to have been a war over the old bones. Letters of instruction
to Consuls were flying about, and there was a great examination into
treaties; when, all at once, it became known that the learned men all
agreed that the animal was the _Ichthyosaurus_, and that the last one
had died thousands of years ago. So the war was happily averted.
Then the dispute was as to who had first found out this fact, but this
was amicably settled by the discovery that all the learned men had
found it out at precisely the same time.
During all this the gnomes had worked away in their new home at their
own affairs, and knew nothing of the great commotion they had caused.
But king Rhine nodded his old head, and said to himself; “The gnomes
are a very little people, but they have managed to set the whole world
by the ears.”
He recalled all this now, and thought perhaps the wise woman meant what
she said about the dwarfs and giants.
He despatched a trusty messenger to a colony of dwarfs who lived in a
large ruined castle. These dwarfs, or Kobolds, as they are called in
that part of the country, sleep all day, and do their work at night.
Therefore the king chose an owl, venerable with age and wisdom, for his
messenger. He was to travel in the night-time, and rest in the day.
On the second night, quite early, the owl arrived at the castle. He
flew quietly into the ruin, so as not to frighten the dwarfs, but he
found they had already gone. He was afraid he was too late; and that
they had all dispersed to perform their several duties; but, hearing
a great noise outside, on the opposite wall from that he had entered,
he flew up into a narrow window where there was no glass, and looked
solemnly down, with his great staring eyes, upon a very merry scene.
[Illustration: THE KOBOLDS.]
The little kobolds were having a frolic before they separated for the
night’s adventures. They were chiefly employed in running up and down
the wall, chasing lizards, though some were dancing on the grass at
the foot of the castle, and others were swinging on the vines, and
gathering grapes. They were making such a hubbub that the owl thought
he had better wait for them to get quiet before attempting to make
himself heard.
He soon noticed that there were three dwarfs who took no part in the
fun, and these sat upon the root of a tree near the castle talking
very earnestly together. The owl knew something of the habits of the
kobolds, and he supposed this trio to be the Council, chosen yearly by
the colony. It was the business of the Council to assign to each dwarf
his nightly task, and the affairs of the colony were mainly placed in
its hands.
While the three are holding counsel together, and the owl is waiting, I
will tell you something about these dwarfs.
They were generally larger than Fairies, although some of them were
very small indeed.
There were three or four kinds of these little people, all called
dwarfs, although there was a great difference in their characters, and
labors. Some were wicked, and thought only of doing spiteful tricks;
some were lazy drones, some mingled publicly with men, and became
kings’ fools; some would never show themselves to human beings; and
some were gnomes and worked underground.
The kobolds were the brightest, and most industrious of all the dwarfs,
and were famed for being good-tempered and obliging. Every night these
little creatures were busy in the fields, and the stables, and the
kitchens of the neighborhood. They never quarrelled among themselves,
and they gave nobody any trouble. Hence they were spoken of as the
_Peaceful People_.
Sometimes field laborers, on going out in the morning to weed, or to
reap, would find the work already done. A poor farmer’s wife coming
into her kitchen in the morning to make the fire would find the wood
all cut, and laid in order, and a pail of water brought from the
spring. Sometimes the little people would go into the dining room, and
wash the glasses, and clean the silver. Occasionally they would go to
work, and drive all the mice and spiders out of a house. They washed
dishes, and cleaned vegetables, and made themselves useful about the
house in every possible way. All they required in return was a little
food. A bowl of milk, or some nice fresh bread, was set upon the
kitchen table, and that was supper enough for a kobold.
Some of them preferred to work in stables. They would curry the horses;
comb out their manes; shake down straw for the litters, and clean the
stables. But this is hard work, and the little things would get very
tired. So the coachmen, and the farmers used to tie knots in the manes
of the horses to afford resting places for the kobolds. They would sit
in these to rest their weary limbs and often take a little nap there to
refresh themselves.
They visited the sheep in the fold, or on the hill-sides, and kept the
fleeces white and clean.
[Illustration: TAKING A REST.]
There were many other things the kobolds did, but I have told enough to
give you an idea of the busy, and helpful life they led; and will now
return to the colony that lived in the old castle.
The owl looked down and watched the frolic of the dwarfs for nearly
an hour. Then one of the three dwarfs, who formed the Council, blew a
shrill blast upon a whistle. At this signal the whole colony gathered
into a group in front of the Council. Now all were quiet, and the owl
knew this was his time to speak, for the tasks of the night were to be
given out, and as each one received his commission, he would go away.
The owl flapped his wings, and they all looked up. Some of them had
seen him before, and knew him to be one of the king’s messengers.
So they invited him to a seat on a rock near them, and listened with
respectful attention while he told them of the bad behavior of the
giants, and of the advice of the wise woman. He took good care not
to tell them that the king at first thought this advice ridiculous,
but made it appear that his majesty relied upon the good dwarfs to
conquer the giants, and to make them behave peaceably. The method of
accomplishing this he left entirely to their wisdom.