black with scarlet seams and four marvellous wings. As wings they
seemed hopelessly inadequate, but as ornaments they had much merit. If
a crow were to shed all his wing feathers and was provided instead with
four, small ostrich plumes, we would not expect him to fly. A mature
thrips sports four delicate feathers with narrow shafts and wide, soft
fringes down each side.
I was once astonished to see a bony horse hitched to a decrepit car,
slowly traversing a cross street in New York City, and learned that
it was a mere gesture, a childish fulfilling of certain legal phrases
in order to hold the franchise of the horse-car line. I recalled this
when I saw an adult thrips coming through the air, slowly, uncertainly,
with dangling body and pitiful feather wings barely sustaining the
owner. This too was a gesture, a needless effort, for he landed heavily
on the same branch, quite exhausted, a few feet away from the point
of departure. On foot he could have made the distance quickly and
with little exertion. Again I admired the thrips, for as in his youth
he had played and danced as well as eaten, so now in adult phase he
made the beau geste--the pitiful clinging to the franchise of his
volant ancestors. His wings might be dwarfed by disuse, frayed by
degeneration, but he could still cast with shrivelled muscles a shadow
of past achievements.
The coming of the thrips was sudden, their ways were inexplicable,
their going wholly mysterious. One day there were uncounted millions.
Shortly afterward, needing a new more notes on their activities
I went out and found every one gone,--not a single one remained.
In their haunts were growths of evil-looking fungi, semi-liquid
drops of scarlet trembling on yellow stalks, and around and among
these sinister growths crept vast numbers of extremely small mites.
These--plant and animal--were in turn evanescent and lasted but two
days, but the going of the thrips will never be explained,--whether by
migration, poison from the omnipotent fungus, or, as with so many other
peoples of earth, through enervating lives of ease.
By sense of smell I could tell that radical chemical changes were going
forward in the fallen tree. At first the glade was filled with the tang
of aromatic wood, the clean, fresh odor of new split plant tissues;
then the sap became heated and fermentation set in. The first stages
were unpleasant, musty and acrid, but finally a malty whiff developed,
which during my hours of research, awoke exhilarating pre-prohibition
memories. If my coarse sense could detect these successive changes,
what staggering olfactory blows must have been dealt to the delicate
flies which came with the first hint of ruptured plant cells. Unlike
the beetles they undertook their business in life with an apparent
joyousness, and like the thrips they all had an inordinate love of the
dance. It is a strange thing that at carrion and decaying wood we find
so much graceful and intricate action, such varied courtship, so much
effort only indirectly concerned with the odorous maelstrom which has
summoned them all together. The visitors to beautiful and sweet-scented
flowers and fruit, on the contrary, come and sip and leave, without
delay or distraction.
I soon realized that I could spend all my time for at least a year on
the study of the flies alone which came to the fallen tree. For ten
mornings there came hundreds of small marble-wings, which wave their
two, parti-colored banners alternately about. I looked closer and saw
that they were clustered in groups of six to twelve, or more usually
seven to thirteen. All the fortunate ones who had secured a mate were
busy every moment protecting her from roaming males. The female fly
had very short legs on which she walked briskly about, searching for
suitable crevices to deposit her eggs. Her mate, on his elongated legs,
stalked just above her, apparently anticipating every move. The pair
would progress by quick, short spurts until a wing-waving stranger
hove in sight. No introduction or preliminary challenge was necessary.
The newcomer rushed up and tried to butt the husband out of the way.
The rightful fly would haunch his thorax and brace his legs, for all
the world like a football player meeting interference. Running swiftly
around, the assailant would make another attempt on the opposite side.
Meanwhile the female, apparently oblivious of all this strife on
the second floor, went calmly on her way, making the engagement very
confused and ineffective by thus constantly shifting the field of
battle.
We should emphasize this admirable, domestic preoccupation to the
full, for otherwise it pains me to record a lamentable lack of
Lucystonism. The lady flies seemed indeed to care little what might be
the outcome of the battles. When, now and then, her faithful guardian
was overthrown and pushed into outer loneliness, the new protector was
accepted without demur. In fact her bark-searching position allowed her
glimpses of little more than the ankles of her Lord and Master, and it
must indeed be difficult to be deeply moved emotionally by choice of
ankles alone.
The battling of the mates was as it should be and has been since the
beginning of time--brave gentlemen waging war over the weaker sex, but
what shall we say of another group of seven where the seventh was an
ignored wall flower! The poor little virgin did not accept her neglect
in humble resignation, but proved herself a militant feminist, and made
one attempt after another to drag her more fortunate sisters from the
protection of their towering mates. She was always rebuffed and the
last I saw of her, she was washing her face and hands, fly-fashion,
after an ignominious tumble into a thimbleful of dirty water, which
is fly-size for lake. How I longed to tell her of a scene being
enacted only a few inches away, where I observed the meeting of two
lonely bachelors. They began a most terrific head-pulling contest,
until finally they separated unharmed and quite exhausted, and went
peacefully off, perhaps realizing that after all in their case there
was nothing in particular to fight about.
From a fly’s eye height I looked down the prostrate trunk with twenty
or thirty groups of tussling marble-wings in sight, their earnest but
futile efforts to injure one another very comic to my eyes, but to them
as serious as only fate can be serious.
Other flies had very different ensigns and dances. In one the wings
were divided lengthwise, the front half being black, the rear
transparent. These wandered singly over the bark and as they went, they
swung first to one side, then to the other, at each swing opening out
the wing on that side. The movement was exactly that of a skater taking
long, oblique strokes, and swinging his arms far out to the side (a
simile which could have no meaning for any native of this country).
When two flies meet they do the outer edge around one another, closing
in to battle if of the same sex, or to courtship if of the opposite.
Others are perky peacock flies, with head and tail lifted in a position
of eternal alertness, who slither along without perceptible individual
leg motion, going sideways or backwards with equal ease. Their battle
technique is like that of the bulldog, leaping from a distance, but the
ferocity of their intent far exceeds their power of injury, and they
bounce harmlessly off each other. They remind me of
“Empusa’s crew, so naked-new, they may not face the fire,
But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire.”
The creatures who come to gnaw and chew the dead wood are only one
component of the complex maelstrom of life, siphoned hither by the
smell of sap and decaying bark. One day an army of white fungus tents
sprang up on a rotting branch, and a foot away even my poor human sense
could detect a mildewy odor from them. Hundreds of insects scattered
far and wide through the jungle, to whom the infinitely more powerful
sap smell had meant nothing, were now vitalized into instant action,
and there came into existence a whirlpool within the maelstrom. Great
wine-colored beetles and smaller ones of various pigments, gathered in
scores, dancing flies which were never seen on bark or carrion were
summoned, and strange short-winged beings with scarlet tips to their
slender bodies which they waved in mid-air like mock torches. As I knew
from past experience the delicate, lace umbrellas would last only three
days, and I watched with interest the race which these vital beings ran
against time. No tunnels or mines for them, no prolonged courtship, but
a quick mating and depositing of eggs which became grubs or maggots
almost on the instant. Two days later, grubs were eating and molting
with frenzied haste, and on the third day, when their nutritious
shelters blackened and melted away, the larvæ dropped with them into
the mat of leaf mold beneath.
The dilettante flies of the fungus puzzled me. Theirs were aerial
dances, and for hour after hour they swung and feinted, swooped or
hung like motionless motes. This mystery was solved when I took a
number of the beetle pupæ to the laboratory and confined them in a
glass observation dish. In a few days, instead of beetles, out came
dancing flies. No wonder they had no need of haste; as parasites they
could batten at leisure on others’ labors. I looked askance at the
rich regard of life and the new generation granted to what my Puritan
fore-fathers would have decried as sinful, ungodly gaiety.
Returning again to my bark I found a hundred similar cases. Spiders and
wasps and many other enemies were gathering. Day by day the chains of
life were forged longer and longer. Within my first week at the tree I
could write the following from direct observation:
This is the bird
That caught the lizard
That ate the wasp
That stung the spider
That sucked the fly
That killed the grub
The son of the beetle
That gnawed the tree
That fell in the storm at Kartabo.
Or to be more technically explicit:
This is the Attila
That caught the Cnemidophorus
That ate the Pompilid
That stung the Ctenid
That sucked the Tachinid
That killed the immature Coleopteron
The son of the Elater
That gnawed the Vochisia
That fell in the meteorological disturbance of Kartabo.
And so the wonderful adventure went on. It had happened a thousand
thousand times, and for uncounted miles in all directions were untold
numbers of these trees whose lives would sooner or later terminate.
My Etaballi, whose roots reached deep into the ground, and more than
seven centuries into time, was dissolving. Bark and branch, sap and
heartwood, by the alchemy of life were being rekneaded into a host of
lesser beings--crawling, flying, dull and brilliant, hard and soft,
clever and stupid, and as these poured forth from crevice or tunnel,
cocoon or pupa, and their gauzy wings dried, their armor crystallized
into malachite or emerald, there confronted them enemies in every guise
and form. And presently the substance of the Etaballi, translated into
the bodies of the borers, was resurrected into spider, lizard and bird.
[Illustration: “The giant Etaballi fell last night”]
Now and then I turn back to my journal for May the twelfth, and read
the sentence: “The giant Etaballi fell last night.” Science, Religion,
Philosophy--how clear all these would be if we could solve this one
mystery. I had hoped for some faint clew to the meaning of it all. I
left my tree for the last time certain only of the profound inadequacy
of my human mind.
OLD-TIME PEOPLE
PART I--FACT
A volcano in eruption and a jungle monkey--nothing can ever quite
prepare our minds for the first sight of these. Neither the crude
wood-cut of Vesuvius in our old school geography, nor the latest
colored moving picture of Kilauea, adumbrates the awe of the silent,
ascending line of smoke, or the nocturnal glow of fires, old as earth
itself is old. Your canoe slips through the reflection of everhanging
jungle, and you suddenly spy a little face peering out from the
fronds,--a face wistful, serious, grave as with the weight of planetary
responsibilities; and so human that you feel that somewhere in its
past it too could tell of an Eden tragedy. If not an apple, it must at
least have nibbled a berry of some little vine of self-consciousness.
How unlike the immobile features of the deer and rodents and jungle
cats is this sober, anxious little ego! And how vividly our orchid
climbing days return when we see a family of bandarlog swarming up a
liana. These miniatures of ourselves seem to climb as easily against
gravitation as we loll down hill with it.
This Guiana jungle is a strange and wonderful place when we think of
it from the view-point of its monkey tenants. Their floors are swaying
vines and bending branches, their roofs green waving fans and banners.
Their nearer neighbors are humming-birds and leaf-winged butterflies,
gaudy toucans and screeching parrots. Far up through skylights they
catch glimpses of vultures, soaring a mile above earth, and yet with
eyes so keen that an accidental headlong fall to earth of any little
monkey would bring a score of hungry ghouls. Through the skylight, too,
hurtles swift death,--harpy eagles, whose grip is the end.
The jungle sends up enormous trees, one hundred, two hundred feet,
among the branches of some of which fifteen hundred generations of
monkeys have gambolled. If these stood like oaks in a meadow, isolated
and alone, the four-handed ones would perish or have to take to the
ground. But lignum vitæ rather than arbor vitæ should be the simian’s
password, for the vines which bind together the whole tropical forest
are the way of life of the monkey. By means of the untold fathoms of
ratlines and suspension bridges, tight ropes and ladders, these jungle
people can range for thousands of miles without ever coming to earth,
living in the realm of orchids and birds’ nests, of sloths and tree
lizards.
Their very name has come to be a byword, although, like their physical
bodies in past ages, it is bound to us etymologically by monna and
madonna. We laugh at their comic little faces and ways and, if we are
incurably fanatic or quite egocentric, or fearful of what comes after
death, we indignantly deny all past kinship of a common ancestor. On
the other hand, if we love the truth and have a sense of humor, we
recognize that these little jungle folk have missed being human by some
very little accident, being, but for the grace of some side-tracking,
ourselves. And while we swagger upright and think of our brains with
complacency, are we sure that all the advantage is on our side?
As with us, the whole of the lives of these monkeys is one long
struggle against gravitation. They are born and weaned, they play and
fight, they eat and sleep, in midair far from the ground, and only when
death comes, do the tiny fingers relax and headlong they slip through
fronds and leaves to the earth itself. This same eternal pull of earth
holds us completely in thrall at birth, then we roll over, struggle to
hands and knees and creep reptile-like for a space. At last we rise
upon unsteady soles and from three to seventy we walk or run, swinging
our arms to balance us, frequently tumbling to earth again, exhausted
after a few hours and sinking upon chair or bed to gather strength
against another day of upright struggle.
The joys of climbing, of balance, of swaying limbs, of headlong leaps
from self-earned lofty vistas, pass with boyhood for most of us. They
are renewed for me sometimes when I mount the ratlines of a ship
plunging through heavy seas, or in the first rush of a nose dive from
high in air.
We cheat the power of earth with elevators, though to do so we must
call upon the lightning or waters for aid. Instead of holding to
clean-barked boughs, swaying aloft in the sunlight, we creep beneath
the ground and dangle unsteadily from dirty straps. In place of
plucking our fruit fresh from its native stem and eating it amid the
green glow of its own foliage, we barter for its shrivelled pulp sealed
in cans of tin. We gape at and applaud those of our kind who dare, upon
tight-rope or trapeze, feats which any self-respecting monkey would
smack her child for thus bungling.
The Capuchin, the bourgeois organ-grinder’s friend, in past years now
and then climbed our gutter-pipe and at the reminding jerk on his
cord, pitifully doffed his little cap and took our pennies. Here in
his home we tame him and bind him to us with affection, so that with
full liberty he chooses his sleeping box on our laps. He is silent,
and gentle and serious like the coolies who work on the coastal
rice-plantations.
This is, of course, merely generalization, comparable to the immortal
description, “The French are a gay and polite people, fond of dancing
and light wines.” Anyone who has been a friend to creatures,--dogs,
birds, monkeys or any other of our quaint companions in this curious
world,--knows that individuals vary in disposition and temperament only
less than what we are pleased to call the highest order, Man.
_Some_ Capuchins are silent; we have known some whose garrulity tried
our patience and our hearing. There was once a man who took a cage
to the African jungle and so far reversed the usual procedure as to
enter it himself, while the gorillas congregated outside,--or so he
hoped,--to gaze on the strange sight. His purpose was to study the
language of gorillas. One suspects that the vocabulary thus acquired
would be chiefly of a scurrilous nature, but who is so lacking in a
sense of justice as to grudge the apes a chance to get even at last?
We have acquired some knowledge of monkey talk, especially from our
Capuchin pets. It does not seem an extensive tongue but the same
sound can, as with us, be given many different meanings by inflection,
pantomime, or even facial expression. When one of our small Cebus
friends is confronted by some terrifying sight, such as a monstrous
iguana, he springs away precipitately, wide-open mouth expelling on a
sharp breath a guttural hissing grunt. Engaged with us in a game of tag
around the laboratory, he sometimes finds himself cornered; then he
emits the same sound, but no one could now take it for an expression of
fear. It is much prolonged, without the abrupt tone of real terror, and
his white teeth gleam in his open mouth in an unmistakable grin as he
capitulates and flings himself confidently into our outstretched hands.
[Illustration: “One wistful little chap”]
One wistful little chap who was once a member of the laboratory family
would sustain his part in serious discussion for minutes at a time.
To open the conversation, one had only to approach him closely, look
him in the eye, and smack the lips gently and repeatedly. To this he
never failed to respond in kind, but much more rapidly than human lips
could move, wrinkling his brows mightily the while with the effort of
concentration, and occasionally varying his remarks by an emphatic
shake of the head and a curious throaty chuckle with a falling cadence,
which sounded for all the world as though he demanded briefly,
“Whatcher got?”
Monkeys have bad dreams, nightmares that perhaps are shared by us.
Often in the evening I have been distracted from some microscopic
business in hand by a clamor from the compound, and going out have seen
a pitiful monkey face, with frightened drowsy eyes peering anxiously
for insubstantial bugbears, and heard small whimpers of allayed
distress as nervous little hands clung to my solid and reassuring
fingers.
Most Capuchins have in their repertoires some almost bird-like tones of
clear twitters and chirrups, and, when they are particularly anxious
to be noticed, a sweet call, Coo-coo-coo, whose blandishment it is
difficult to resist. This same phrase, loud and prolonged is the call
of the clan when widely separated in the jungle. It carries over half a
mile.
The Beesa monkey, like the native Indian, is a silent mystery. Neither
likes close confinement, and no emotion is shown by their placid,
inscrutable faces. The young do not understand the strange new beings
who have come into their lives, and soon pine away; as long as they
live they are extremely affectionate, but mentally dull and timid.
Beesas are strange-looking beasts. The fur is black, very long and
coarse, the tail appearing as large around as the whole body. The
face is purplish-brown, surrounded in the adult, with a great ruff of
yellowish-white. The young Beesa is more frowsy and less judicial in
appearance. They roam through mid-jungle heights, a single great male
leading his harem of five or six females, while as many half-grown
youngsters trail behind. As they climb from tree to tree, sliding
down vines or scaling steep aerial ladders, they utter a low, abrupt,
penetrating grunt or cough sounding like a faint, dull blow of wood on
wood, which ordinarily would never be noticed among the rustling of
leaves and the occasional thump of a falling fruit or dead branch. When
alarmed they slip away rapidly, and so short are their legs and so long
their fur that they seem to flow instead of walk along the branches.
The squirrel monkeys or sackawinkis are, next to the marmosets, the
smallest of the Guiana monkeys. Their noses appear to have been dipped
into an ink bottle, and their brains into spirits of ammonia. They are
living springs, never running down, but withal sober and silent in
their contacts with life and ourselves.
There seems to be in some respects a relation between size and
intelligence, not only as in elephants and shrews, but in monkeys. The
marmosets,--tiny, furry, nervous little beings, are very stupid, food
and safety occupying their almost every moment.
The monkey of monkeys of this jungle is the big red Howler. He lives
in families, and when the great male raises his head and in the light
of early dawn sends forth his mighty voice, its reverberations are
distinctly audible three miles away. His tail is long and full-muscled,
and the bare skin beneath its tip has lines and cushions which tell of
things forever lost to us. The color of the long, silky hair is that
of the gold nuggets in the streams which trickle through the jungle
far below, and the emotions of our tame young Howler are those of a
very young child,--he is curious, timid, resentful, excitable, greedy,
affectionate, serious; as fond of lifting his voice in anger or joy as
a negro at a revival and as volatile as a twenty-four-hour thermometer
chart in a desert. Jungle monkeys, and an active volcano,--see them
before you die, or you will have missed two splendid thrills in life.
PART II--THEORY
A little monkey climbed down a swaying vine, hand over hand, until
his face was close to a quiet pool of sweet water. The day before at
evening, he had done the same thing. His mother and his ancestors for
generations had done likewise. And always they chattered at the monkey
they saw in the water, and finally in anger snatched at him, and their
little fingers troubled the water and the monkey vanished. Then they
drank eagerly, turned quickly, and clambered swiftly up to rest.
Today the little monkey began to chatter, then stopped. He moved, and
the monkey in the water moved. He brushed away some hairs from his face
and the water monkey. Then something happened. He stopped chattering
and peered again and again at the face in the water. He put his little
paw over his eyes and slowly took it away. Then he forgot his thirst,
raised his head and gazed fixedly before him, wrinkling his forehead
and remaining very quiet. And the more distant his gaze, the less he
seemed to observe, and the deeper became the wrinkles.