It is as pleasant to travel afoot in the tropics, so long as you keep
intact the curiosity of a newcomer and do not expect life to be buoyant
near towns, as it is in Devonshire; though one ought not to stroll
off into the deep end of the unhelpful wilderness, like Smith, if the
vital organs are lardaceous. To walk is the only way to learn where
you are. Yet perhaps it does not get done so easily as this paragraph.
Trifles that would be disregarded at home may become perilous where
the sun can be an evil-doer. An extra risk should be looked at before
it is taken; and fretfulness when all goes awry is as bad as ptomaine
poisoning, though its effects are not so quickly obvious. Shelter and
food on numerous occasions will be worse than sketchy, yet as to that
it should improve the morals of a civilized man to realize how narrow
is the division between his precious life and what comes after it. That
division between here and hereafter in a tropical wild is so thin that
you might see clean through it if what is behind it were not so dark. I
set out into the woods without a mosquito curtain, because those who had
never been so far advised me that I should not want it. No fever there,
naturally. There never is. Yet later I used good measures of quinine and
aspirin on natives who looked as sad as malaria usually makes a victim.
And one despondent exile to whom I spoke of this replied simply, “I don’t
know why some of ’em make such a devil of a fuss about West Africa, when
there’s this place.” The mosquito net should have been an essential part
of the kit. We slept in native huts, where any lurking _anopheles_ are
almost sure to be infected. Besides the mosquitoes, there are the little
extras. A bug of some kind—the jungle bugs are of many kinds—stung me
the first night, and left a weal which was not as large as a hot cheese
plate, but felt like it. That reminder I retained for about a week. The
little things count, most decidedly. We had floundered, one day, through
the mud and ordure where a herd of wild elephants had rested during the
heat; then we spent some hours in a canoe, and a bare foot, though I
did not know it, was exposed to the sun. The consequent blisters, which
became confluent, were alarming if I looked at them too long.
Then there are the leeches. An injection of the determined character of
these shameless little parasites would carry a broken-spirited man to
fortune against all the laws of the land, unless the gun of an indignant
victim stopped him. The leeches are after blood, and they get it, if a
body comes their way. They confess only to salt or tobacco juice, once
they have attached themselves. A traveler, his mind occupied, may feel
nothing when some leeches take hold of him, but later he is sure to
note the nasty crimson mess he is in. They are small creatures, at the
most not more than an inch and a half in length, and not thicker than
twine before they have fed. Their color is almost black or dark olive,
sometimes with yellow markings. Wherever the woods are moist these
patient creatures sit on their behinds, on the ground, on the foliage,
and wait. At the first tremor betokening an approaching wayfarer, man
or beast, they stretch out eagerly and rotate in the air for a grip.
Should you stand still and watch the track you will see them converging
frantically for your boots, all overjoyed by the lucky chance that you
are waiting for them and fearful of being late. They never miss such a
chance. There are no sluggards among the leeches. And you cannot always
be ready to fence with them. If they reach a boot heel they keep up
their pace; they do not stop to congratulate themselves with a partial
success, but mount desperately till they find a loophole in the clothes—a
pinhole seems enough—and the instant they touch flesh they are fast to
it. On one occasion I picked a leech off my sleeve just as it had arrived
(from Heaven knows where) and it became part of a finger at once. They
are as tough as rubber piping; no good treading on them; that helps them
to a landing. In some places their numbers make a traveler furiously
indignant, and but for the fact that they go off duty at sundown a night
in the forest might become a very long sleep. Puttees do not sufficiently
protect when on the march. It is necessary to carry carbolic soap, and
after wading through a stream to give the wet puttees so generous a
rubbing with it that the movements of walking convert the soap into a
pungent lather. I liked to see that pretty lacework of soap suds round my
ankles. It certainly disheartened the industrious little wretches.
On the chart the place was called Gemang—the usual tiny circle on the
map with a name beside it to show that men had congregated on that spot
of earth. But in fact it was only a large communal dwelling, a raft
of boughs, raised on stilts ten feet off the ground and reached by a
ladder. Round three sides of the raft were cabins. One was given to us.
This dwelling, like all of its kind, was of some substance; the main
beams and props were of fairly heavy boles, and the superstructure of
bamboo. The walls were of flattened bamboo worked into matting, and
the roof was thatched with palm leaves. All was bound together with
rattan. There was no iron in it. Smith felt he would like a rest before
going over the divide between the Golok and Kelantan rivers. We stayed
at Gemang for a day. The novelty of our position sustained me, for the
people were good natured and went quietly about their business, the
women husking rice in a wooden trough with pounders, while the children
chased away the chickens. I don’t know what the men did except that
they crouched by us and talked, though sometimes one would take out a
monkey to climb for cocoanuts. When the monkey was not climbing for our
refreshment it was chasing the cats headlong over the thatch for its own,
which in Malaya is sensational activity.
I felt that night that I should be glad to go in the morning. There were
many ants. A spider like a mouse ran out of my mat when I unrolled it.
Other things were flying and crawling. It was an old and harboring place.
Each bamboo of the floor under me had its separate reminder on my body;
and beneath them a buffalo had taken refuge. When he rose to change his
uneasy couch, then I too rose several inches. The buffalo smell was
adulterated with that of durian—a quaint mixture. One side of our cabin
was open, and so, when not watching the black patterns of leaves against
the stars, I could look at the heads of the gossips round the tripod
flesh-pot, with its inconstant flames. There had been a whisper of a
supernatural creature in this community, of which I took the usual notice
of a tired skeptic. During the night, however, I did hear inhuman howls
and gibbering and some thumping, and put it down, not to a revelation
of the supernatural, but to the monkey, which was a robust creature. In
the morning, from the cabin opposite, the head of a man on his belly
poked out from the interior darkness, and his mouth slavered. The sacred
creature was an idiot, and we learned that he had been there for twenty
years and had never come out of his hut. It was a pleasure to pack up and
go.