Edge of the jungle

JUNC

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GIFT OF

Professor
Russell H. Fitzgibbon

WILLIAM BEEBE

Author of Edge of the Jungle, Jungle Days, Gallapagos,
World s End, The Arcturus Adventure, etc.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "JUNGLE DAYS"
"THE LOG OF THE SUN," ETC.

EDGE OF THE
JUNGLE

By WILLIAM BEEBE

Honorary Curator of Birds and Director of the Tropical
Research Station of the New York Zoological Society.

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC,

COPTMGHT, 1921

BT HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

PWHTED m THE UlTITED STATES O» AKEEUCA

College
Library

a//

83

/Jet/

TO

THB BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES,
THE ANTS AND TRBB- FROGS
WHO HAVE TOLERATED MB IN
THEIR JTJNOLB ANTB-CHAMBBBS
I OFPEE THIS VOLTJME OF
PRIBNDLY WORDS

1G60570

NOTE

This second series of essays, following those in
Jiwgle Peace, are republished by the kindness of
the Editors of The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's
Magazine and House and Garden.

With the exception of A Tropic Garden which
refers to the Botanical Gardens of Georgetown,
all deal with the jungle immediately about the
Tropical Research Station of the New York
Zoological Society, situated at Kartabo, at the
junction of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni Rivers, in
British Guiana.

For the accurate identification of the more im-
portant organisms mentioned, a brief appendix
of scientific names has been prepared.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE LURE OF KARTABO . . 3

II A JUNGLE CLEARING ... 34

III THE HOME TOWN OF THE ARMY

ANTS ...... 58

IV A JUNGLE BEACH ..... 90
V A BIT OF USELESSNESS . . . 112

VI GUINEYERE THE MYSTERIOUS . 123

VII A JUNGLE LABOR UNION . . 149

VIII THE ATTAS AT HOME ... 172

IX HAMMOCK NIGHTS . . . 195

X A TROPIC GARDEN . . . 230

XI THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES . . 252

XII SEQUELS 274

APPENDIX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES 295

INDEX . > 299

EDGE OF THE JUNGU&

"For the tree scientific method is this:
To trust no statements without verification,
to test all things as rigorously as possible,
to keep no secrets, to attempt no monopolies,
to give out one's best modestly and plainly,
servinjr no other end but knowledge."

H. G. WKU*.

I

THE LURE OF KARTABO

A HOUSE may be inherited, as when a wren
rears its brood in turn within its own natal hol-
low; or one may build a new home such as is
fashioned from year to year by gaunt and shad-
owy herons; or we may have it built to order,
as do the drones of the wild jungle bees. In my
case, I flitted like a hermit crab from one used
shell to another. This little crustacean, living
his oblique life in the shallows, changes doorways
when his home becomes too small or hinders him
in searching for the things which he covets in
life. The difference between our estates was
that the hermit crab sought only for food, I
chiefly for strange new facts — which was a dis-
tinction as trivial as that he achieved his desires
sideways and on eight legs, while I traversed my
environment usually forward and generally on
two.

The word of finance went forth and demanded
the felling of the second growth around Kala-

4 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

coon, and for the second time the land was given
over to cutlass and fire. But again there was
a halting in the affairs of man, and the rubber
saplings were not planted or were smothered;
and again the jungle smiled patiently through
a knee-tangle of thorns and blossoms, and the
charred clumps of razor-grass sent forth skeins
of saws and hanks of living barbs.

I stood beneath the familiar cashew trees,
which had yielded for me so bountifully of their
crops of blossoms and hummingbirds, of fruit and
of tanagers, and looked out toward the distant
jungle, which trembled through the expanse of
palpitating heat-waves; and I knew how a her-
mit crab feels when its home pinches, or is out
of gear with the world. And, too, Nupee was
dead, and the jungle to the south seemed to call
less strongly. So I wandered through the old
house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable
odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark
room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and
traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my
mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had re-
turned to their chosen roost, the martins still
swept through the corridors, and as I went down
the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of

THE LURE OF KAJRTABO 5

song after me from the sentinel palm, just as
he had greeted me four years ago.

Then I gathered about me all the strange and
unnamable possessions of a tropical laboratory —
and moved. A wren reaches its home after hun-
dreds of miles of fast aerial travel; a hermit
crab achieves a new lease with a flip of his tail.
Between these extremes, and in no less strange
a fashion, I moved. A great barge pushed off
from the Penal Settlement, piled high with my
zoological Lares and Penates, and along each
side squatted a line of paddlers, — white-garbed
burglars and murderers, forgers and fighters, —
while seated aloft on one of my ammunition
trunks, with a microscope case and a camera close
under his watchful eye, sat Case, King of the
Warders, the biggest, blackest, and kindest-
hearted man in the world.

Three miles up river swept my moving-van;
and from the distance I could hear the half-
whisper — which was yet a roar — of Case as he
admonished his children. "Mon," he would say
to a shirking, shrinking coolie second-story man,
"mon, do you t'ink dis the time to sleep ? What
toughts have you in your bosom, dat you delay
de Professor's household?'* And then a chanty

6 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

would rise, the voice of the leader quavering with
that wild rhythm which had come down to him,
a vocal heritage, through centuries of tom-toms
and generations of savages striving for emotional
expression. But the words were laughable or
pathetic. I was adjured to

"Blow de mon down with a bottle of rum,
Oh, de mon — mon — blow de mon down."

Or the jungle reechoed the edifying reitera-
tion of

"Sardines — and bread — OH 1

Sardines — and bread,
Sardines — and bread — AND !
Sardines — ^and bread."

The thrill that a whole-lunged chanty gives is
difficult to describe. It arouses some deep emo-^
tional response, as surely as a military band, or
the reverberating cadence of an organ, or a sud-
denly remembered theme of opera.

As my aquatic van drew up to the sandy
landing-beach, I looked at the motley array of
paddlers, and my mind went back hundreds of
years to the first Spanish crew which landed
here, and I wondered whether these pirates of

THE LURE OF KAHTABO 7

early days had any fewer sins to their credit than
Case's convicts — and I doubted it.

Across my doorstep a line of leaf -cutting ants
was passing, each bearing aloft a huge bit of
green leaf, or a long yellow petal, or a halberd of
a stamen. A shadow fell over the line, and I
looked up to see an anthropomorphic enlarge-
ment of the ants, — the convicts winding up the
steep bank, each with cot, lamp, table, pitcher,
trunk, or aquarium balanced on his head, — all
my possessions suspended between earth and sky
by the neck-muscles of worthy sinners. The first
thing to be brought in was a great war-bag
packed to bursting, and Number 214, with eight
more years to serve, let it slide down his shoul-
der with a grunt — the self -same sound that I
have heard from a Tibetan woman carrier, and
a Mexican peon, and a Japanese porter,
all of whom had in past years toted this very
bag.

I led the way up the steps, and there in the
doorway was a tenant, one who had already
taken possession, and who now faced me and
the trailing line of convicts with that dignity,
poise, and perfect self-possession which only a
toad, a giant grandmother of a toad, can ex-

S EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

hibit. I, and all the law-breakers who followed,
recognized the nine tenths involved in this in-
stance and carefully stepped around. When the
heavy things began to arrive, I approached dif-
fidently, and half suggested, half directed her
deliberate hops toward a safer corner. My feel-
ings toward her were mingled, but altogether
kindly, — as guest in her home, I could not but
treat her with respect, — while my scientific soul
revelled in the addition of Bufo guttatus to the
fauna of this part of British Guiana. Whether
flashing gold of oriole, or the blinking solemnity
of a great toad, it mattered little — Kartabo had
welcomed me with as propitious an omen as had
Kalacoon.

Houses have distinct personalities, either be-
queathed to them by their builders or tenants,
absorbed from their materials, or emanating from
the general environment. Neither the mind
which had planned our Kartabo bungalow, nor
the hands which fashioned it ; neither the mahog-
any walls hewn from the adjoining jungle, nor
the white-pine beams which had known many
decades of snowy winters — none of these were
obtrusive. The first had passed into oblivion,

THE LURE OF KARTABO 9

the second had been seasoned by sun and rain,
papered by lichens, and gnawed and bored by
tiny wood-folk into a neutral inconspicuousness
as complete as an Indian's deserted benab. The
wide verandah was open on all sides, and from
the bamboos of the front compound one looked
straight through the central hallway to bamboos
at the back. It seemed like a happy accident of
the natural surroundings, a jungle-bound cave,
or the low rambling chambers of a mighty hol-
low tree.

No thought of who had been here last came
to us that first evening. We unlimbered the
creaky-legged cots, stiff and complaining after
their three years' rest, and the air was filled with
the clean odor of micaceous showers of naphtha-
line from long-packed pillows and sheets. From
the rear came the clatter of plates, the scent of
ripe papaws and bananas, mingled with the smell
of the first fire in a new stove. Then I went
out and sat on my own twelve-foot bank, looking
down on the sandy beach and out and over to
the most beautiful view in the Guianas. Down
from the right swept slowly the Mazaruni, and
from the left the Cuyuni, mingling with one wide
expanse like a great rounded lake, bounded by

10 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

solid jungle, with only Kalacoon and the
Penal Settlement as tiny breaks in the wall of
green.

The tide was falling, and as I sat watching
the light grow dim, the water receded slowly,
and strange little things floated past down-
stream. And I thought of the no less real hu-
man tide which long years ago had flowed to my
very feet and then ebbed, leaving, as drift is left
upon the sand, the convicts, a few scattered In-
dians, and myself. In the peace and quiet of
this evening, time seemed a thing of no especial
account. The great jungle trees might always
have been lifeless emerald water-barriers, rather
than things of a few centuries' growth ; the ripple-
less water bore with equal disregard the last mora
seed which floated past, as it had held aloft the
keel of an unknown Spanish ship three centuries
before. These men came up-river and landed on
a little island a few hundred yards from Kartabo.
Here they built a low stone wall, lost a few but-
tons, coins, and bullets, and vanished. Then
came the Dutch in sturdy ships, cleared the islet
of everything except the Spanish wall, and built
them a jolly little fort intended to command all

THE LURE OF KARTABO 11

the rivers, naming it Kyk-over-al. To-day the
name and a strong archway of flat Holland
bricks survive.

In this wilderness, so wild and so quiet to-day,
it was amazing to think of Dutch soldiers doing
sentry duty and practising with their little bell-
mouthed cannon on the islet, and of scores of
negro and Indian slaves working in cassava fields
all about where I sat. And this not fifty or a
hundred or two hundred years ago, but about
the year 1613, before John Smith had named
New England, while the Hudson was still known
as the Maurice, before the Mayflower landed with
all our ancestors on board. For many years the
story of this settlement and of the handful of
neighboring sugar-plantations is one of privateer
raids, capture, torture, slave-revolts, disease, bad
government, and small profits, until we marvel
at the perseverance of these sturdy Hollanders.
From the records still extant, we glean here and
there amusing details of the life which was so
soon to falter and perish before the onpressing
jungle. Exactly two hundred and fifty years
ago one Hendrik Hoi was appointed comman-
der of Kyk-over-al. He was governor, captain,

12 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

store-keeper and Indian trader, and his salary
was thirty guilders, or about twelve dollars, a
month — about what I paid my cook-boy.

The high tide of development at Kartabo came
two hundred and three years ago, when, as we
read in the old records, a Colony House was
erected here. It went by the name of Huis Naby
(the house near-by), from its situation near the
fort. Kyk-over-al was now left to the garrison,
while the commander and the civil servants lived
in the new building. One of its rooms was used
as a council chamber and church, while the lower
floor was occupied by the company's store. The
land in the neighborhood was laid out in build-
ing lots, with a view to establishing a town; it
even went by the name of Stad Cartabo and had
a tavern and two or three small houses, but never
contained enough dwellings to entitle it to the
name of town, or even village.

The ebb-tide soon began, and in 1739 Kartabo
was deserted, and thirty years before the United
States became a nation, the old fort on Kyk-
over-al was demolished. The rivers and rolling
jungle were attractive, but the soil was poor,
while the noisome mud-swamps of the coast
proved to be fertile and profitable.

THE LURE OF KAHTABO 13

Some fatality seemed to attach to all future
attempts in this region. Gold was discovered,
and diamonds, and to-day the wilderness here
and there is powdering with rust and wreathing
with creeping tendrils great piles of machinery.
Pounds of gold have been taken out and hun-
dreds of diamonds, but thus far the negro pork-
knocker, with his pack and washing-pan, is the
only really successful miner.

The jungle sends forth healthy trees two hun-
dred feet in height, thriving for centuries, but
it reaches out and blights the attempts of man,
whether sisal, rubber, cocoa, or coffee. So far
the ebb-tide has left but two successful crops to
those of us whose kismet has led us hither —
crime and science. The concentration of negroes,
coolies, Chinese and Portuguese on the coast fur-
nishes an unfailing supply of convicts to the set-
tlement, while the great world of life all about
affords to the naturalist a bounty rich beyond all
conception.

So here was I, a grateful legatee of past fail-
ures, shaded by magnificent clumps of bamboo,
brought from Java and planted two or three hun-
dred years ago by the Dutch, and sheltered by
a bungalow which had played its part in the

14 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

development and relinquishment of a great gold
mine.

For a time we arranged and adjusted and
shifted our equipment,— tables, books, vials,
guns, nets, cameras and microscopes, — as a dog
turns round and round before it composes itself
to rest. And then one day I drew a long breath
and looked about, and realized that I was at
home. The newness began to pass from my
little shelves and niches and blotters ; in the dark-
ness I could put my hand on flash or watch or
gun; and in the morning I settled snugly into
my woolen shirt, khakis, and sneakers, as if they
were merely accessory skin.

In the beginning we were three white men and
four servants — the latter all young, all individ-
ual, all picked up by instinct, except Sam, who
was as inevitable as the tides. Our cook was too
good-looking and too athletic to last. He had
the reputation of being the fastest sprinter in
Guiana, with a record, so we were solemnly told,
of 9% seconds for the hundred — a veritable Mer-
cury, as the last world's record of which I knew
was 9%. His stay with us was like the orbit of
some comets, which make a single lap around the

THE LURE OF KARTABO 15

sun never to return, and his successor Edward,
with unbelievably large and graceful hands and
feet, was a better cook, with the softest voice and
gentlest manner in the world.

But Bertie was our joy and delight. He too
may be compared to a star — one which, origi-
nally bright, becomes temporarily dim, and
finally attains to greater magnitude than before.
Ultimately he became a fixed ornament of our
culinary and taxidermic cosmic system, and what-
ever he did was accomplished with the most re-
markable contortions of limbs and body. To
watch him rake was to learn new anatomical pos-
sibilities; when he paddled, a surgeon would be
moved to astonishment; when he caught butter-
flies, a teacher of physical culture would not have
believed his eyes.

At night, when our servants had sealed them-
selves hermetically in their room in the neigh-
boring thatched quarters, and the last squeak
from our cots had passed out on its journey to
the far distant goal of all nocturnal sounds, we
began to realize that our new home held many
more occupants than our three selves. Stealthy
rustlings, indistinct scrapings, and low murmurs
kept us interested for as long as ten minutes;

16 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

and in the morning we would remember and won-
der who our fellow tenants could be. Some
nights the bungalow seemed as full of life as
the tiny French homes labeled, "Hommes 40:
Chevaux 8," when the hastily estimated billeting
possibilities were actually achieved, and one won-
dered whether it were not better to be the cheval
premier., than the komme quarantieme.

For years the bungalow had stood in sun and
rain unoccupied, with a watchman and his wife,
named Hope, who lived close by. The aptness
of his name was that of the little Barbadian mule-
tram which creeps through the coral- white streets,
striving forever to divorce motion from progress
and bearing the name Alert. Hope had done
his duty and watched the bungalow. It was un-
doubtedly still there and nothing had been taken
from it ; but he had received no orders as to accre-
tions, and so, to our infinite joy and entertain-
ment, we found that in many ways it was not
only near jungle, it was jungle. I have com-
pared it with a natural cave. It was also like a
fallen jungle-log, and we some of the small folk
who shared its dark recesses with hosts of others.
Through the air, on wings of skin or feathers

THE LURE OF KARTABO 17

or tissue membrane; crawling or leaping by
night; burrowing underground; gnawing up
through the great supporting posts; swarming
up the bamboos and along the pliant curving
stems to drop quietly on the shingled roof; —
thus had the jungle-life come past Hope's un-
seeing eyes and found the bungalow worthy resi-
dence.

The bats were with us from first to last. We
exterminated one colony which spent its inverted
days clustered over the center of our supply
chamber, but others came immediately and dis-
puted the ownership of the dark room. Little
chaps with great ears and nose-tissue of sensi-
tive skin, spent the night beneath my shelves and
chairs, and even my cot. They hunted at dusk
and again at dawn, slept in my room and van-
ished in the day. Even for bats they were fero-
cious, and whenever I caught one in a butterfly-
net, he went into paroxysms of rage, squealing
in angry passion, striving to bite my hand and,
failing that, chewing vainly on his own long fin-
gers and arms. Their teeth were wonderfully
intricate and seemed adapted for some very spe-
cial diet, although beetles seemed to satisfy those

18 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

which I caught. For once, the systematist had
labeled them opportunely, and we never called
them anything but Furipterus horrens.

In the evening, great bats as large as small
herons swept down the long front gallery where
we worked, gleaning as they went; but the vam-
pires were long in coming, and for months we
neither saw nor heard of one. Then they at-
tacked our servants, and we took heart, and night
after night exposed our toes, as conventionally
accepted vampire-bait. When at last they found
that the color of our skins was no criterion of
dilution of blood, they came in crowds. For
three nights they swept about us with hardly a
whisper of wings, and accepted either toe or
elbow or finger, or all three, and the cots and
floor in the morning looked like an emergency
hospital behind an active front. In spite of
every attempt at keeping awake, we dropped off
to sleep before the bats had begun, and did not
waken until they left. We ascertained, how-
ever, that there was no truth in the belief that
they hovered or kept fanning with their wings.
Instead, they settled on the person with an ap-
preciable flop and then crawled to the desired
spot.

THE LURE OF KARTABO 19

One night I made a special effort and, with
bared arm, prepared for a long vigil. In a few
minutes bats began to fan my face, the wings
almost brushing, but never quite touching my
skin. I could distinguish the difference between
the smaller and the larger, the latter having a
deeper swish, deeper and longer drawn-out.
Their voices were so high and shrill that the sing-
ing of the jungle crickets seemed almost con-
tralto in comparison. Finally, I began to feel
myself the focus of one or more of these winged
weasels. The swishes became more frequent, the
returnings almost doubling on their track. Now
and then a small body touched the sheet for an
instant, and then, with a soft little tap, a vam-
pire alighted on my chest. I was half sitting
up, yet I could not see him, for I had found that
the least hint of light ended any possibility of
a visit. I breathed as quietly as I could, and
made sure that both hands were clear. For a
long time there was no movement, and the re-
newed swishes made me suspect that the bat had
again taken flight. "Not until I felt a tickling
on my wrist did I know that my visitor had
shifted and, unerringly, was making for the arm
which I had exposed. Slowly it crept forward,

20 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

but I hardly felt the pushing of the feet and
pulling of the thumbs as it crawled along. If
I had been asleep, I should not have awakened.
It continued up my forearm and came to rest
at my elbow. Here another long period of rest,
and then several short, quick shifts of body.
With my whole attention concentrated on my
elbow, I began to imagine various sensations as
my mind pictured the long, lancet tooth sink-
ing deep into the skin, and the blood pumping
up. I even began to feel the hot rush of my
vital fluid over my arm, and then found that I
had dozed for a moment and that all my sensa-
tions were imaginary. But soon a gentle tick-
ling became apparent, and, in spite of putting
this out of my mind and with increasing doubts
as to the bat being still there, the tickling con-
tinued. It changed to a tingling, rather pleasant
than otherwise, like the first stage of having one's
hand asleep.

It really seemed as if this were the critical
time. Somehow or other the vampire was at
work with no pain or even inconvenience to me,
and now was the moment to seize him, call for
a lantern, and solve his supersurgical skill, the
exact method of this vespertilial anaesthetist.

THE LURE OF KARTABO 21

Slowly, very slowly, I lifted the other hand,
always thinking of my elbow, so that I might
keep all the muscles relaxed. Very slowly it
approached, and with as swift a motion as I could
achieve, I grasped at the vampire. I felt a
touch of fur and I gripped a struggling, skinny
wing; there came a single nip of teeth, and the
wing-tip slipped through my fingers. I could
detect no trace of blood by feeling, so turned over
and went to sleep. In the morning I found a
tiny scratch, with the skin barely broken; and,
heartily disappointed, I realized that my tick-
ling and tingling had been the preliminary symp-
toms of the operation.

Marvelous moths which slipped into the bun-
galow like shadows ; pet tarantulas ; golden-eyed
gongasocka geckos; automatic, house-cleaning
ants ; opossums large and small ; tiny lizards who
had tongues in place of eyelids; wasps who had
doorsteps and watched the passing from their
windows; — all these were intimates of my lab-
oratory table, whose riches must be spread else-
where ; but the sounds of the bungalow were com-
mon to the whole structure.

One of the first things I noticed, as I lay on
my cot, was the new voice of the wind at night.

22 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Now and then I caught a familiar sound, — faint,
but not to be forgotten, — the clattering of palm
fronds. But this came from Boomboom Point,
fifty yards away (an out jutting of rocks where
we had secured our first giant catfish of that
name) . The steady rhythm of sound which rose
and fell with the breeze and sifted into my win-
dow with the moonbeams, was the gentlest
shussssss'mg, a fine whispering, a veritable fern
of a sound, high and crisp and wholly apart from
the moaning around the eaves which arose at
stronger gusts. It brought to mind the steep
mountain-sides of Pahang, and windy nights
which presaged great storms in high passes of
Yunnan.

But these wonder times lived only through
memory and were misted with intervening years,
while it came upon me during early nights, again
and again, that this was Now, and that into the
hour-glass neck of Now was headed a maelstrom
of untold riches of the Future — minutes and
hours and sapphire days ahead — a Now which
was wholly unconcerned with leagues and liquor,
with strikes and salaries. So I turned over with
the peace which passes all telling — the forecast
of delving into the private affairs of birds and

THE LURE OF KARTABO 23

monkeys, of great butterflies and strange frogs
and flowers. The seeping wind had led my mind
on and on from memory and distant sorrows to
thoughts of the joy of labor and life.

At half-past five a kiskadee shouted at the
top of his lungs from the bamboos, but he prob-
ably had a nightmare, for he went to sleep and
did not wake again for half-an-hour. The final
swish of a bat's wing came to my ear, and the
light of a fog-dimmed day slowly tempered the
darkness among the dusty beams and rafters.
From high overhead a sprawling tarantula tossed
aside the shriveled remains of his night's banquet,
the emerald cuirass and empty mahogany helmet
of a long-horned beetle, which eddied downward
and landed upon my sheet.

Immediately around the bungalow the bam-
boos held absolute sway, and while forming a
very tangible link between the roof and the out-
liers of the jungle, yet no plant could obtain
foothold beneath their shade. They withheld
light, and the mat of myriads of slender leaves
killed off every sprouting thing. This was of
the utmost value to us, providing shade, clear
passage to every breeze, and an absolute dearth
of flies and mosquitoes. We found that the

24 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

clumps needed clearing of old stems, and for two
days we indulged in the strangest of weeding^
The dead stems were as hard as stone outside, but
the ax bit through easily, and they were so light
that we could easily carry enormous ones, which
made us feel like giants, though, when I thought
of them in their true botanical relationship, I
dwarfed in imagination as quickly as Alice, to a
pigmy tottering under a blade of grass. It was
like a Brobdingnagian game of jack-straws, as
the cutting or prying loose of a single stem often
brought several others crashing to earth in unex-
pected places, keeping us running and dodging to
avoid their terrific impact. The fall of these
great masts awakened a roaring swish ending in
a hollow rattling, wholly unlike the crash and
dull boom of a solid trunk. When we finished
with each clump, it stood as a perfect giant bou*
quet, looking, at a distance, like a tuft of green
feathery plumes, with the bungalow snuggled
heneath as a toadstool is overshadowed by ferns.
Scores of the homes of small folk were uncov-
ered by our weeding out — wasps, termites, ants,
bees, wood-roaches, centipedes; and occasionally
a small snake or great solemn toad came out from
the debris at the roots, the latter blinking and

THE LURE OF KARTABO 25

swelling indignantly at this sudden interruption
of his siesta. In a strong wind the stems bent
and swayed, thrashing off every imperfect leaf
and sweeping low across the roof, with strange
scrapings and bamboo mutterings. But they
hardly ever broke and fell. In the evening, how-
ever, and in the night, after a terrific storm, a
sharp, unexpected rat-tat-tat-tat, exactly like a
machine-gun, would smash in on the silence, and
two or three of the great grasses, which per-
haps sheltered Dutchmen generations ago, would
snap and fall. But the Indians and Bovianders
who lived nearby, knew this was no wind, nor yet
weakness of stem, but Sinclair, who was abroad
and who was cutting down the bamboos for his
own secret reasons. He was evil, and it was well
to be indoors with all windows closed; but fur-
ther details were lacking, and we were driven to
clothe this imperfect ghost with history and habits
of our own devising.

The birds and other inhabitants of the bam-
boos, were those of the more open jungle, — flocks
drifting through the clumps, monkeys occasion-
ally swinging from one to another of the elastic
tips, while toucans came and went. At evening,
flocks of parrakeets and great black orioles came

26 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to roost, courting the safety which they had come
to associate with the clearings of human pioneers
in the jungle. A box on a bamboo stalk drew
forth joyous hymns of praise from a pair of little
God-birds, as the natives call the house-wrens,
who straightway collected all the grass and
feathers in the world, stuffed them into the tiny
chamber, and after a time performed the ever-
marvelous feat of producing three replicas of
themselves from this trash-filled box. The
father-parent was one concentrated mite of song,
with just enough feathers for wings to enable
him to pursue caterpillars and grasshoppers as
raw material for the production of more song.
He sang at the prospect of a home ; then he sang
to attract and win a mate; more song at the joy
of finding wonderful grass and feathers; again
melody to beguile his mate, patiently giving the
hours and days of her body-warmth in instinct-
compelled belief in the future. He sang while
he took his turn at sitting; then he nearly choked
to death trying to sing while stuffing a bug down
a nestling's throat; finally, he sang at the end of a
perfect nesting season; again, in hopes of per-
suading his mate to repeat it all, and this failing,
sang in chorus in the wren quintette — I hoped, in

THE LURE OF KARTABO 27

gratitude to us. At least from April to Septem-
ber he sang every day, and if my interpretation
be anthropomorphic, why, so much the better for
anthropomorphism. At any rate, before we left,
all five wrens sat on a little shrub and imitated
the morning stars, and our hearts went out to
the little virile f eatherlings, who had lost none of
their enthusiasm for life in this tropical jungle.
Their one demand in this great wilderness was
man's presence, being never found in the jungle
except in an inhabited clearing, or, as I have
found them, clinging hopefully to the vanishing
ruins of a dead Indian's bendb, waiting and sing-
ing in perfect faith, until the jungle had crept
over it all and they were compelled to give up
and set out in search of another home, within
sound of human voices.

Bare as our leaf-carpeted bamboo-glade ap-
peared, yet a select little company found life
worth living there. The dry sand beneath the
house was covered with the pits of ant-lions, and
as we watched them month after month, they
seemed to have more in common with the grains
of quartz which composed their cosmos than with
the organic world. By day or night no ant or
other edible thing seemed ever to approach or be

28 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

entrapped ; and month after month there was no
sign of change to imago. Yet each pit held a
fat, enthusiastic inmate, ready at a touch to turn
steam-shovel, battering-ram, bayonet, and gour-
mand. Among the first thousand-and-one mys-
teries of Kartabo I give a place to the source of
nourishment of the sub-bungalow ant-lions.

Walking one day back of the house, I observed
a number of small holes, with a little shining head
just visible in each, which vanished at my ap-
proach. Looking closer, I was surprised to find
a colony of tropical doodle-bugs. Straightway I
chose a grass-stem and squatting, began fishing
as I had fished many years ago in the southern
states. Soon a nibble and then an angry pull,
and I j erked out the irate little chap. He had the
same naked bumpy body and the fierce head, and
when two or three were put together, they fought
blindly and with the ferocity of bulldogs.

To write of pets is as bad taste as to write in
diary form, and, besides, I had made up my mind
to have no pets on this expedition. They were a
great deal of trouble and a source of distraction
from work while they were alive; and one's heart
was wrung and one's concentration disturbed at

THE LURE OF KARTABO 29

their death. But Kib came one day, brought by
a tiny copper-bronze Indian. He looked at me,
touched me tentatively with a mobile little paw,
and my firm resolution melted away. A young
coati-mundi cannot sit man-fashion like a bear-
cub, nor is he as fuzzy as a kitten or as helpless
as a puppy, but he has ways of winning to the hu-
man heart, past all obstacles.

The small Indian thought that three shillings
would be a fair exchange; but I knew the par
value of such stock, and Kib changed hands for
three bits. A week later a thousand shillings
would have seemed cheap to his new master. A
coati-mundi is a tropical, arboreal raccoon of
sorts, with a long, ever-wriggling snout, sharp
teeth, eyes that twinkle with humor, and clawed
paws which are more skilful than many a fingered
hand. By the scientists of the world he is ad-
dressed as Nasua nasua nasua — which lays itself
open to the twin ambiguity of stuttering Latin,
or the echoes of a Princetonian football yell.
The natural histories call him coati-mundi, while
the Indian has by far the best of it, with the ring-
ing, climactic syllables, Kibihee! And so, in the
case of a being who has received much more than
his share of vitality, it was altogether fitting to

30 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

shorten this to Kib— Dunsany's giver of life

upon the earth.

My heart's desire is to run on and tell many
paragraphs of Kib; but that, as I have said,
would be bad taste, which is one form of immo-
rality. For in such things sentiment runs too
closely parallel to sentimentality, — moderation
becomes maudlinism, — and one enters the caste
of those who tell anecdotes of children, and the
latest symptoms of their physical ills. And the
deeper one feels the joys of friendship with in-
dividual small folk of the jungle, the more diffi-
cult it is to convey them to others. And so it is
not of the tropical mammal coati-mundi, nor even
of the humorous Kib that I think, but of the soul
of him galloping up and down his slanting log,
of his little inner ego, which changed from a wild
thing to one who would hurl himself from any
height or distance into a lap, confident that we
would save his neck, welcome him, and waste
good time playing the game which he invented, of
seeing whether we could touch his little cold snout
before he hid it beneath his curved arms.

So, in spite of my resolves, our bamboo groves
became the homes of numerous little souls of wild
folk, whose individuality shone out and doini-

THE LURE OF KARTABO 31

nated the less important incidental casement,
whether it happened to be feathers, or fur, or
scales. It is interesting to observe how the Adam
in one comes to the surface in the matter of names
for pets. I know exactly the uncomfortable
feeling which must have perturbed the heart of
that pioneer of nomenclaturists, to be plumped
down in the midst of "the greatest aggregation
of animals ever assembled" before the time of
Noah, and to be able to speak of them only as this
or that, he or she. So we felt when inundated by
a host of pets. It is easy to speak of the species
by the lawful Latin or Greek name ; we mention
the specimen on our laboratory table by its com-
mon natural-history appellation. But the individ-
ual who touches our pity, or concern, or affec-
tion, demands a special title — usually absurdly
inapt.

Soon, in the bamboo glade about our bungalow,
ten little jungle friends came to live; and to us
they will always be Kib and Gawain, George and
Gregory, Robert and Grandmother, Raoul and
Pansy, Jennie and Jellicoe.

Gawain was not a double personality — he was
an intermittent reincarnation, vibrating between
the inorganic and the essence of vitality. In a

32 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

reasonable scheme of earthly things he filled the
niche of a giant green tree-frog, and one of us
seemed to remember that the Knight Gawain was
enamored of green, and so we dubbed him. For
the hours of daylight Gawain preferred the role
of a hunched-up pebble of malachite; or if he
could find a leaf, he drew eighteen purple vacuum
toes beneath him, veiled his eyes with opalescent
lids, and slipped from the mineral to the vege-
table kingdom, flattened by masterly shading
which filled the hollows and leveled the bumps;
and the leaf became more of a leaf than it had
been before Gawain was merged with it.

Night, or hunger, or the merciless tearing of
sleep from his soul wrought magic and trans-
formed him into a glowing, jeweled specter. He
sprouted toes and long legs ; he rose and inflated
his sleek emerald frog-form ; his sides blazed forth
a mother-of-pearl waist-coat — a myriad mosaics
of pink and blue and salmon and mauve; and
from nowhere if not from the very depths of his
throat, there slowly rose twin globes, — great eyes,
— which stood above the flatness of his head, as
mosques above an oriental city. Gone were the
neutralizing lids, and in their place, strange up-
right pupils surrounded with vermilion lines and

THE LURE OF KARTABO 33

curves and dots, like characters of ancient illumi-
nated Persian script. And with these appalling
eyes Gawain looked at us, with these unreal,
crimson-flecked globes staring absurdly from an
expressionless emerald mask, he contemplated
roaches and small grasshoppers, and correctly es-
timated their distance and activity. We never
thought of demanding friendship, or a hint of
his voice, or common froggish activities from
Gawain. We were content to visit him now and
then, to arouse him, and then leave him to disin-
carnate his vertebral outward phase into chloro-
phyll or lifeless stone. To muse upon his court-
ship or emotions was impossible. His life had a
feeling of sphinx-like duration — Gawain as a
tadpole was unthinkable. He seemed ageless,
unreal, wonderfully beautiful, and wholly inex-
plicable.

II

A JUNGLE CLEARING

WITHIN six degrees of the Equator, shut in
by jungle, on a cloudless day in mid- August, I
found a comfortable seat on a slope of sandy soil
sown with grass and weeds in the clearing back
of Kartabo laboratory. I was shaded only by a
few leaves of a low walnut-like sapling, yet there
was not the slightest hint of oppressive heat. It
might have been a warm August day in New
England or Canada, except for the softness of
the air.

In my little cleared glade there was no plant
which would be wholly out of place on a New
England country hillside. With debotanized
vision I saw foliage of sumach, elm, hickory,
peach, and alder, and the weeds all about were
as familiar as those of any New Jersey meadow.
The most abundant flowers were Mazaruni
daisies, cheerful little pale primroses, and close
to me, fairly overhanging the paper as I wrote,
was the spindling button-weed, a wanderer from

34

A JUNGLE CLEARING 35

the States, with its clusters of tiny white blos-
soms bouqueted in the bracts of its leaves.

A few yards down the hillside was a clump of
real friends — the rich green leaves of vervain,
that humble little weed, sacred in turn to the
Druids, the Romans, and the early Christians,
and now brought inadvertently in some long-past
time, in an overseas shipment, and holding its
own in this breathing-space of the jungle. I was
so interested by this discovery of a superficial
northern flora, that I began to watch for other
forms of temperate-appearing life, and for a long
time my ear found nothing out of harmony with
the plants. The low steady hum of abundant
insects was so constant that it required conscious
effort to disentangle it from silence. Every few
seconds there arose the cadence of a passing bee
or fly, the one low and deep, the other shrill and
penetrating. And now, just as I had become
wholly absorbed in this fascinating game, — the
kind of game which may at any moment take a
worth-while scientific turn, — it all dimmed and
the entire picture shifted and changed. I doubt
if any one who has been at a modern battle-front
can long sit with closed eyes in a midsummer
meadow and not have his blood leap as scene after

36 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

scene is brought back to him. Three bees and a
fly winging their way past, with the rise and fall
of their varied hums, were sufficient to renew
vividly for me the blackness of night over the
sticky mud of Souville, and to cloud for a mo-
ment the scent of clover and dying grass, with
that terrible sickly sweet odor of human flesh in
an old shell-hole. In such unexpected ways do
we link peace and war — suspending the greatest
weights of memory, imagination, and visualiza-
tion on the slenderest cobwebs of sound, odor,
and color.

But again my bees became but bees — great,
jolly, busy yellow-and-black fellows, who blun-
dered about and squeezed into blossoms many
sizes too small for them. Cicadas tuned up,
clearing their drum-heads, tightening their keys,
and at last rousing into the full swing of their
ecstatic theme. And my relaxed, uncritical mind
at present recorded no difference between the
sound and that which was vibrated from northern
maples. The tamest bird about me was a big
yellow-breasted white-throated flycatcher, and I
had seen this Melancholy Tyrant, as his technical
name describes him, in such distant lands that he
fitted into the picture without effort.

A JUNGLE CLEARING 37

White butterflies flitted past, then a yellow one,
and finally a real Monarch. In my boy-land,
smudgy specimens of this were pinned, earnestly
but asymetrically, in cigar-boxes, under the title
of Danais archippus. At present no reputable
entomologist would think of calling it other than
Anosia plexippus, nor should I; but the particu-
lar thrill which it gave to-day was that this self-
same species should wander along at this mo-
ment to mosaic into my boreal muse.

After a little time, with only the hum of the
bees and the staccato cicadas, a double deceit was
perpetrated, one which my sentiment of the mo-
ment seized upon and rejoiced in, but at which
my mind had to conceal a smile and turn its con-
sciousness quickly elsewhere, to prevent an obtru-
sive reality from dimming this last addition to
the picture. The gentle, unmistakable, velvet
warble of a bluebird came over the hillside, again
and again ; and so completely absorbed and lulled
was I by the gradual obsession of being in the
midst of a northern scene, that the sound caused
not the slightest excitement, even internally and
mentally. But the sympathetic spirit who was
directing this geographic burlesque overplayed,
and followed the soft curve of audible wistf ulness

38 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

with an actual bluebird which looped across the
open space in front. The spell was broken for a
moment, and my subconscious autocrat thrust
into realization the instantaneous report — appar-
ent blue-bird call is the note of a small flycatcher
and the momentary vision was not even a moun-
tain bluebird but a red-breasted blue chatterer!
So I shut my eyes very quickly and listened to
the soft calls, which alone would have deceived
the closest analyzer of bird songs. And so for a
little while longer I still held my picture intact,
a magic scape, a hundred yards square and an
hour long, set in the heart of the Guiana jungle.
And when at last I had to desert Canada, and
relinquish New Jersey, I slipped only a few hun-
dred miles southward. For another twenty min-
utes I clung to Virginia, for the enforced shift
was due to a great Papilio butterfly which
stopped nearby and which I captured with a
lucky sweep of my net. My first thought was of
the Orange-tree Swallow-tail, nee Papilio ores-
phonies. Then the first lizards appeared, and by
no stretch of my willing imagination could I pre-
tend that they were newts, or fit the little emerald
scales into a New England pasture. And so I
chose for a time to live again among the Virgin*

A JUNGLE CLEARING 39

ian butterflies and mockingbirds, the wild roses
and the jasmine, and the other splendors of mem-
ory which a single butterfly had unloosed.

As I looked about me, I saw the flowers and
detected their fragrance; I heard the hum of bees
and the contented chirp of well-fed birds ; I mar-
veled at great butterflies flapping so slowly that
it seemed as if they must have cheated gravita-
tion in some subtle way to win such lightness and
disregard of earth-pull. I heard no ugly murmur
of long hours and low wages ; the closest scrutiny
revealed no strikes or internal clamorings about
wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed and
breathed more deeply at the thought of this na-
ture world, moving so smoothly, with directness
and simplicity as apparently achieved ideals.

Then I ceased this superficial glance and
looked deeper, and without moralizing or drag-
ging in far-fetched similes or warnings, tried to
comprehend one fundamental reality in wild na-
ture— the universal acceptance of opportunity.
From this angle it is quite unimportant whether
one believes in vitalism (which is vitiating to our
"will to prove"), or in mechanism (whose name
itself is a symbol of ignorance, or deficient vocab-

40 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ulary, or both) . Evolution has left no chink or
crevice unfilled, unoccupied, no probability un-
tried, no possibility unachieved.

The nearest weed suggested this trend of
thought and provided all I could desire of ex-
amples ; but the thrill of discovery and the artistic
delight threatened to disturb for the time my
solemn application of these ponderous truisms.
The weed alongside had had a prosperous life,
and its leaves were fortunate in the unadulterated
sun and rain to which they had access. At the
summit all was focusing for the consummation of
existence: the little blossoms would soon open
and have their one chance. To all the winds of
heaven they would fling out wave upon wave of
delicate odor, besides enlisting a subtle form of
vibration and refusing to absorb the pink light
— thereby enhancing the prospects of insect vis-
itors, on whose coming the very existence of this
race of weeds depended.

Every leaf showed signs of attack: scallops
cut out, holes bored, stains of fungi, wreaths of
moss, and the insidious mazes of leaf-miners.
But, like an old-fashioned ship of the line which
wins to port with the remnants of shot-ridden
sails, the plant had paid toll bravely, although un-

A JUNGLE CLEARING 41

able to defend itself or protect its tissues ; and if
I did not now destroy it, which I should assuredly
not do, this weed would justify its place as a
worthy link in the chain of numberless genera-
tions, past and to come.

More complex, clever, subtle methods of at-
tack transcended those of the mere devourer of
leaf -tissue, as radically as an inventor of most in-
tricate instruments differs from the plodding
tiller of the soil. In the center of one leaf, less
disfigured than some of its fellows, I perceived
four tiny ivory spheres, a dozen of which might
rest comfortably within the length of an inch.
To my eye they looked quite smooth, although a
steady oblique gaze revealed hints of concentric
lines. Before the times of Leeuwenhoek I should
perhaps have been unable to see more than this,
although, as a matter of fact, in those happy-go-
lucky days my ancestors would doubtless have
trounced me soundly for wasting my time on such
useless and ungodly things as butterfly eggs. I
thought of the coming night when I should sit
and strain with all my might, striving, without
the use of my powerful stereos, to separate from
translucent mist of gases the denser nucleus of
the mighty cosmos in Andromeda. And I alter-

42 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

nately bemoaned my human limitation of vision,
and rejoiced that I could focus clearly, both upon
my butterfly eggs a foot away, and upon the
spiral nebula swinging through the ether perhaps
four hundred and fifty light-years from the earth.
I unswung my pocket-lens, — the infant of the
microscope, — and my whole being followed my
eyes ; the trees and sky were eclipsed, and I hov-
ered in mid-air over four glistening Mars-like
planets — seamed with radiating canals, half in
shadow from the slanting sunlight, and sil-
houetted against pure emerald. The sculpturing
was exquisite. Near the north poles which
pointed obliquely in my direction, the lines broke
up into beads, and the edges of these were frilled
and scalloped; and here again my vision failed
and demanded still stronger binoculars. Here
was indeed complexity: a butterfly, one of those
black beauties, splashed with jasper and beryl,
hovering nearby, with taste only for liquid
nectar, yet choosing a little weed devoid of flower
or fruit on which to deposit her quota of eggs.
She neither turned to look at their beauties nor
trusted another batch to this plant. Somehow,
someway, her caterpillar wormhood had carried,
through the mummified chrysalid and the rein-

A JUNGLE CLEARING 43

carnation of her present form, knowledge of an
earlier, infinitely coarser diet.

Together with the pure artistic joy which was
stirred at the sight of these tiny ornate globes,
there was aroused a realization of complexity, of
helpless, ignorant achievement; the butterfly
blindly pausing in her flower-to-flower fluttering
— a pause as momentous to her race as that of the
slow daily and monthly progress of the weed's
struggle to fruition.

I took a final glance at the eggs before return-
ing to my own larger world, and I detected a new
complication, one which left me with feelings too
involved for calm scientific contemplation. As
if a Martian should suddenly become visible to
an astronomer, I found that one of the egg
planets was inhabited. Perched upon the sum-
mit— quite near the north pole — was an insect, a
wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as
I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive
life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two
legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipos-
itor deep into the crystalline surface. As I
watched, an egg was deposited, about the latitude
of New York, and with a tremor the tiny wasp
withdrew its instrument and rested.

44 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

On the same leaf were casually blown specks
of dust, larger than the quartette of eggs. To
the plant the cluster weighed nothing, meant
nothing more than the dust. Yet a moment be-
fore they contained the latent power of great
harm to the future growth of the weed — four
lusty caterpillars would work from leaf to leaf
with a rapidity and destructiveness which might,
even at the last, have sapped the maturing seeds.
Now, on a smaller scale, but still within the realm
of insect life, all was changed — the plant was safe
once more and no caterpillars would emerge.
For the wasp went from sphere to sphere and
inoculated every one with the promise of its kind.
The plant bent slightly in a breath of wind, and
knew nothing; the butterfly was far away to my
left, deep-drinking in a cluster of yellow cassia;
the wasp had already forgotten its achievement,
and I alone — an outsider, an interloper — ob-
served, correlated, realized, appreciated, and — at
the last — remained as completely ignorant as the
actors themselves of the real driving force, of the
certain beginning, of the inevitable end. Only a
momentary cross-section was vouchsafed, and a
wonder and a desire to know fanned a little hot-
ter.

A JUNGLE CLEARING 45

I had far from finished with my weed: for be-
sides the cuts and tears and disfigurements of the
leaves, I saw a score or more of curious berry-like
or acorn-like growths, springing from both leaf
and stem. I knew, of course, that they were in-
sect-galls, but never before had they meant quite
so much, or fitted in so well as a significant
phenomenon in the nexus of entangling relation-
ships between the weed and its environment.
This visitor, also a minute wasp of sorts, neither
bit nor cut the leaves, but quietly slipped a tiny
egg here and there into the leaf -tissue.

And this was only the beginning of complex-
ity. For with the quickening of the larva came
a reaction on the part of the plant, which, in de-
fense, set up a greatly accelerated growth about
the young insect. This might have taken the
form of some distorted or deformed plant organ
— a cluster of leaves, a fruit or berry or tuft of
hairs, wholly unlike the characters of the plant
itself. My weed was studded with what might
well have been normal seed-fruits, were they not
proved nightmares of berries, awful pseudo-
fruits sprouting from horridly impossible places.
And this excess of energy, expressed in tumorous
outgrowths, was all vitally useful to the grub —

46 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

just as the skilful jiu-jitsu wrestler accomplishes
his purpose with the aid of his opponent's
strength. The insect and plant were, however,5
far more intricately related than any two human
competitors: for the grub in turn required the
continued health and strength of the plant for its
.existence; and when I plucked a leaf, I knew I
had doomed all the hidden insects living within
its substance.

The galls at my hand simulated little acorns,
dull greenish in color, matching the leaf -surface
on which they rested, and rising in a sharp point.
I cut one through and, when wearied and fretted
with the responsibilities of independent existence,
I know I shall often recall and envy my grub in
his palatial parasitic home. Outside came a
rather hard, brown protective sheath; then the
main body of the gall, of firm and dense tissue;
and finally, at the heart, like the Queen's cham-
ber in Cheops, the irregular little dwelling-place
of the grub. This was not empty and barren;
but the blackness and silence of this vegetable
chamber, this architecture fashioned by the
strangest of builders for the most remarkable of
tenants, was filled with a nap of long, crystalline
hairs or threads like the spun-glass candy in our

A JUNGLE CLEARING 47

Christmas sweetshops — white at the base and
shading from pale salmon to the deepest of pinks.
.This exquisite tapestry, whose beauties were nor-
mally forever hidden as well from the blind grub
as from the outside world, was the ambrosia all
unwittingly provided by the antagonism of the
plant; the nutrition of resentment, the food of
defiance ; and day by day the grub gradually ate
his way from one end to the other of his suite,
laying a normal, healthful physical foundation
for his future aerial activities.

The natural history of galls is full of romance
and strange unrealities, but to-day it meant to
me only a renewed instance of an opportunity
seized and made the most of; the success of the
indirect, the unreasonable — the long chance
which so few of us humans are willing to take, al-
though the reward is a perpetual enthusiasm for
the happening of the moment, and the honest
gambler's joy for the future. How much more
desirable to acquire merit as a footless grub in
the heart of a home, erected and precariously
nourished by a worthy opponent, with a future
of unnumbered possibilities, than to be a queen-
mother in nest or hive — cared-for, fed, and
cleansed by a host of slaves, but with less pros-

*8 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

pect of change or of adventure than an average
toadstool.

Thus I sat for a long time, lulled by similitudes
of northern plants and bees and birds, and then
gently shifted southward a few hundred miles,
the transition being smooth and unabrupt. With
equal gentleness the dead calm stirred slightly
and exhaled the merest ghost of a breeze; it
seemed as if the air was hardly in motion, but
only restless: the wings of the bees and the fly-
catcher might well have caused it. But, judged
by the sequence of events, it was the almost im-
perceptible signal given by some great Jungle
Spirit, who had tired of playing with my dreams
and pleasant fancies of northern life, and now
called upon her legions to disillusion me. And
the response was immediate. Three great shells
burst at my very feet, — one of sound, one of
color, and the third of both plus numbers, — and
from that time on, tropical life was dominant
whichever way I looked. That is the way with
the wilderness, and especially the tropical wilder-
ness— to surprise one in the very field with which
one is most familiar. While in my own estima-
tion my chief profession is ignorance, yet I sign

A JUNGLE CLEARING 49

my passport applications and my jury evasions
as Ornithologist. And now this playful Spirit
of the Jungle permitted me to meditate cheer-
fully on my ability to compare the faunas of New
York and Guiana, and then proceeded to startle
me with three salvos of birds, first physically and
then emotionally.

From the monotone of under-world sounds a
strange little rasping detached itself, a reiterated,
subdued scraping or picking. It carried my
mind instantly to the throbbing theme of the
Niebelungs, onomatopoetic of the little hammers
forever busy in their underground work. I cir-
cled a small bush at my side, and found that the
sound came from one of the branches near the
top; so with my glasses I began a systematic
search. It was at this propitious moment, when
I was relaxed in every muscle, steeped in the
quiet of this hillside, and keen on discovering the
beetle, that the first shell arrived. If I had been
less absorbed I might have heard some distant
chattering or calling, but this time it was as if a
Spad had shut off its power, volplaned, kept
ahead of its own sound waves, and bombed me.
All that actually happened was that a band of lit-
tle parrakeets flew down and alighted nearby.

50 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

When I discovered this, it seemed a disconcerting
anti-climax, just as one can make the bravest
man who has been under rifle-fire flinch by spin-
ning a match swiftly past his ear.

I have heard this sound of parrakeet's wings,
when the birds were alighting nearby, half a
dozen times ; but after half a hundred I shall duck
just as spontaneously, and for a few seconds
stand just as immobile with astonishment. From
a volcano I expect deep and sinister sounds;
when I watch great breakers I would marvel only
if the accompanying roar were absent; but on a
calm sunny August day I do not expect a noise
which, for suddenness and startling character,
can be compared only with a tremendous flash of
lightning. Imagine a wonderful tapestry of
strong ancient stuff, which had only been woven,
never torn, and think of this suddenly ripped
from top to bottom by some sinister, irresistible
force.

In the instant that the sound began, it ceased ;
there was no echo, no bell-like sustained over-
tones; both ends were buried in silence. As it
came to-day it was a high tearing crash which
shattered silence as a Very light destroys dark-
ness; and at its cessation I looked up and saw

A JUNGLE CLEARING 51

twenty little green figures gazing intently down
at me, from so small a sapling that their addition
almost doubled the foliage. That their small
wings could wring such a sound from the fabric
of the air was unbelievable. At my first move-
ment, the flock leaped forth, and if their wings
made even a rustle, it was wholly drowned in the
chorus of chattering cries which poured forth un-
ceasingly as the little band swept up and around
the sky circle. As an alighting morpho butterfly
dazzles the eyes with a final flash of his blazing
azure before vanishing behind the leaves and
fungi of his lower surface, so parrakeets change
from screaming motes in the heavens to silence,
and then to a hurtling, roaring boomerang, whose
amazing unexpectedness would distract the most
dangerous eyes from the little motionless leaf-fig-
ures in a neighboring tree-top.

When I sat down again, the whole feeling of
the hillside was changed. I was aware that my
weed was a northern weed only in appearance,
and I should not have been surprised to see my
bees change to flies or my lizards to snakes —
tropical beings have a way of doing such things.

The next phenomenon was color, — unreal, liv-
ing pigment, — which seemed to appeal to more

52 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

than one sense, and which satisfied, as a cooling
drink or a rare, delicious fragrance satisfies. A
medium-sized, stocky bird flew with steady wing-
beats over the jungle, in black silhouette against
the sky, and swung up to an outstanding giant
tree which partly overhung the edge of my clear-
ing. The instant it passed the zone of green, it
flashed out brilliant turquoise, and in the same
instant I recognized it and reached for my gun.
Before I retrieved the bird, a second, dull and
dark-feathered, flew from the tree. I had
watched it for some time, but now, as it passed
over, I saw no yellow and knew it too was of real
scientific interest to me; and with the second bar-
rel I secured it. Picking up my first bird, I
found that it was not turquoise, but beryl; and a
few minutes later I was certain that it was aqua-
marine ; on my way home another glance showed
the color of forget-me-nots on its plumage, and
as I looked at it on my table, it was Nile green.
Yet the feathers were painted in flat color, with-
out especial sheen or iridescence, and when I
finally analyzed it, I found it to be a delicate cala-
mine blue. It actually had the appearance of a
too strong color, as when a glistening surface re-
flects the sun. From beak to tail it threw off

A JUNGLE CLEARING 53

this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat,
which were a limpid amaranth purple; and the
effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes
was like the power of great music or some majes-
tic passage in the Bible. You, who think my
similes are overdone, search out in the nearest
museum the dustiest of purple-throated cotingas,
— Cotinga cayana, — and then, instead, berate me
for inadequacy.

Sheer color alone is powerful enough, but when
heightened by contrast, it becomes still more ef-
fective, and I seemed to have secured, with two
barrels, a cotinga and its shadow. The latter was
also a full-grown male cotinga, known to a few
people in this world as the dark-breasted mourner
(Lipaugus simplex). In general shape and
form it was not unlike its cousin, but in color it
was its shadow, its silhouette. Not a feather
upon head or body, wings or tail showed a hint of
warmth, only a dull uniform gray; an ash of a
bird, living in the same warm sunlight, wet by
the same rain, feeding on much the same food,
and claiming relationship with a blazing-feath-
ered turquoise. There is some very exact and
very absorbing reason for all this, and for it I
search with fervor, but with little success. But

54 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

we may be certain that the causes of this and of
the host of other unreasonable realities which
fill the path of the evolutionist with never-
quenched enthusiasm, will extend far beyond the
colors of two tropical birds. They will have
something to do with flowers and with bright but-
terflies, and we shall know why our "favorite
color" is more than a whim, and why the Greeks
may not have been able to distinguish the full
gamut of our spectrum, and why rainbows are
so narrow to our eyes in comparison to what they
might be.

Finally, there was thrown aside all finesse, all
delicacy of presentation, and the last lingering
feeling of temperate life and nature was erased.
From now on there was no confusion of zones,
no concessions, no mental palimpsest of resolv-
ing images. The spatial, the temporal, — the hill-
side, the passing seconds, — the vibrations and
material atoms stimulating my five senses, all
were tropical, quickened with the unbelievable
vitality of equatorial life. A rustling came to
my ears, although the breeze was still little more
than a sensation of coolness. Then a deep whirr
sounded overhead, and another, and another, and
with a rush a dozen great toucan? were all about

A JUNGLE CLEARING 55

me. Monstrous beaks, parodies in pastels of un-
heard-of blues and greens, breasts which glowed
like mirrored suns, — orange overlaid upon blind-
ing yellow, — and at every flick of the tail a tren-
chant flash of intense scarlet. All these colors
set in frames of jet-black plumage, and suddenly
hurled through blue sky and green foliage, made
the hillside a brilliant moving kaleidoscope.

Some flew straight over, with several quick
flaps, then a smooth glide, flaps and glide. A
few banked sharply at sight of me, and wheeled
to right or left. Others alighted and craned their
necks in suspicion; but all sooner or later disap-
peared eastward in the direction of a mighty
jungle tree just bursting into a myriad of ber-
ries. They were sulphur-breasted toucans, and
they were silent, heralded only by the sound of
their wings and the crash of their pigments. I
can think of no other assemblage of jungle crea-
tures more fitted to impress one with the prodi-
gality of tropical nature. Four years before, we
set ourselves to work to discover the first eggs
and young of toucans, and after weeks of heart-
breaking labor and disappointments we suc-
ceeded. Out of the five species of toucans living
in this part of Guiana we found the nests of four,

56 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

and the one which eluded us was the big sulphur-
breasted fellow. I remembered so vividly the
painstaking care with which, week after week, we
and our Indians tramped the jungle for miles, —
through swamps and over rolling hills, — at last
having to admit failure; and now I sat and
watched thirty, forty, fifty of the splendid birds
whirr past. As the last of the fifty-four flew on
to their feast of berries, I recalled with difficulty
my faded visions of northern birds.

And so ended, as in the great finale of a pyro-
technic display, my two hours on a hillside clear-
ing. I can neither enliven it with a startling es-
cape, nor add a thrill of danger, without using as
many "ifs" as would be needed to make a Jersey
meadow untenable. For example, if I had fallen
over backwards and been powerless to rise or
move, I should have been killed within half an
hour, for a stray column of army ants was pass-
ing within a yard of me, and death would await
any helpless being falling across their path. But
by searching out a copperhead and imitating
Cleopatra, or with patience and persistence de-
vouring every toadstool, the same result could
be achieved in our home-town orchard. When on
the march, the army ants are as innocuous at two

A JUNGLE CLEARING 57

inches as at two miles. Had I sat where I was
for days and for nights, my chief danger would
have been demise from sheer chagrin at my in-
ability to grasp the deeper significance of life
and its earthly activities.

m

THE HOME TOWN OF THE ARMY
ANTS

FEOM uniform to civilian clothes is a change
transcending mere alteration of stuffs and but-
tons. It is scarcely less sweeping than the shift
from civilian clothes to bathing-suit, which so
often compels us to concentrate on remembered
mental attributes, to avoid demanding a renewed
introduction to estranged personality. In the
home life of the average soldier, the relaxation
from sustained tension and conscious routine re-
sults in a gentleness and quietness of mood for
which warrior nations are especially remembered.

Army ants have no insignia to lay aside, and
their swords are too firmly hafted in their own
beings to be hung up as post-bellum mural deco-
rations, or — as is done only in poster-land — meta-
morphosed into pruning-hooks and plowshares.

I sat at my laboratory table at Kartabo, and
looked down river to the pink roof of Kalacoon,
and my mind went back to the shambles of Pit

68

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 59

Number Five.1 I was wondering whether I
should ever see the army ants in any guise other
than that of scouting, battling searchers for liv-
ing prey, when a voice of the jungle seemed to
hear my unexpressed wish. The sharp, high
notes of white-fronted antbirds — those white-
crested watchers of the ants — came to my ears,
and I left my table and followed up the sound.
Physically, I merely walked around the bunga-
low and approached the edge of the jungle at a
point where we had erected a small outhouse a
day or two before. But this two hundred feet
might just as well have been a single step through
quicksilver, hand in hand with Alice, for it took
me from a world of hyoids and syrinxes, of vials
and lenses and clean-smelling xylol, to the home
of the army ants.

The antbirds were chirping and hopping about
on the very edge of the jungle, but I did not have
to go that far. As I passed the doorless entrance
of the outhouse I looked up, and there was an im-
mense mass of some strange material suspended
in the upper corner. It looked like stringy,
chocolate-colored tow, studded with hundreds of
tiny ivory buttons. I came closer and looked

iSee Jtwgle Peace, p. 211.

60 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

carefully at this mushroom growth which had ap-
peared in a single night, and it was then that my
eyes began to perceive and my mind to record,
things that my reason besought me to reject.
Such phenomena were all right in a dream, or
one might imagine them and tell them to children
on one's knee, with wind in the eaves — wild tales
to be laughed at and forgotten. But this was
daylight and I was a scientist; my eyes were in
excellent order, and my mind rested after a
dreamless sleep ; so I had to record what I saw in
that little outhouse.

This chocolate-colored mass with its myriad
ivory dots was the home, the nest, the hearth, the
nursery, the bridal suite, the kitchen, the bed and
board of the army ants. It was the focus of all
the lines and files which ravaged the jungle for
food, of the battalions which attacked every liv-
ing creature in their path, of the unnumbered
rank and file which made them known to every
Indian, to every inhabitant of these vast jungles.

Louis Quatorze once said, "L'Etat, c'est moil"
but this figure ,of speech becomes an empty,
meaningless phrase beside what an army ant
could boast, — ffLa maison, c'est moil" Every
rafter, beam, stringer, window-frame and door-

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 61

frame, hall-way, room, ceiling, wall and floor,
foundation, superstructure and roof, all were
ants — living ants, distorted by stress, crowded
into the dense walls, spread out to widest stretch
across tie-spaces. I had thought it marvelous
when I saw them arrange themselves as bridges,
walks, hand-rails, buttresses, and sign-boards
along the columns; but this new absorption of
environment, this usurpation of wood and stone,
this insinuation of themselves into the province
of the inorganic world, was almost too astound-
ing to credit.

All along the upper rim the sustaining struc-
ture was more distinctly visible than elsewhere.
Here was a maze of taut brown threads stretch-
ing in places across a span of six inches, with
here and there a tiny knot. These were actually
tie-strings of living ants, their legs stretched al-
most to the breaking-point, their bodies the in-
conspicuous knots or nodes. Even at rest and
at home, the army ants are always prepared, for
every quiescent individual in the swarm was
standing as erect as possible, with jaws wide-
spread and ready, whether the great curved ma-
hogany scimitars of the soldiers, or the little
black daggers of the smaller workers. And with

62 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

no eyelids to close, and eyes which were them-
selves a mockery, the nerve shriveling and never
reaching the brain, what could sleep mean to
them? Wrapped ever in an impenetrable cloak
of darkness and silence, life was yet one great
activity, directed, ordered, commanded by scent
and odor alone. Hour after hour, as I sat close
to the nest, I was aware of this odor, sometimes
subtle, again wafted in strong successive waves.
It was musty, like something sweet which had
begun to mold; not unpleasant, but very difficult
to describe; and in vain I strove to realize the
importance of this faint essence — taking the
place of sound, of language, of color, of mo-
tion, of form.

I recovered quickly from my firsf rapfc realiza-
tion, for a dozen ants had lost no time in ascend5*
ing my shoes, and, as if at a preconcerted signal,
all simultaneously sank their jaws into my per-
son. Thus strongly recalled to the realities of
life, I realized the opportunity that was offered
and planned for my observation. No living
thing could long remain motionless within the
sphere of influence of these six-legged Boches,
and yet I intended to spend days in close prox-
imity. There was no place to hang a hammock,

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 63

no over-hanging tree from which I might sus-
pend myself spider-wise. So I sent Sam for an
ordinary chair, four tin cans, and a bottle of dis-
infectant. I filled the tins with the tarry fluid,
and in four carefully timed rushes I placed the
tins in a chair-leg square. The fifth time I put
the chair in place beneath the nest, but I had mis-
judged my distances and had to retreat with
only two tins in place. Another effort, with
Spartan-like disregard of the fiery bites, and my
haven was ready. I hung a bag of vials, note-
book, and lens on the chairback, and, with a final
rush, climbed on the seat and curled up as com-
fortably as possible.

All around the tins, swarming to the very edge
of the liquid, were the angry hosts. Close to my
face were the lines ascending and descending,
while just above me were hundreds of thousands,
a bushel-basket of army ants, with only the
strength of their thread-like legs as suspension
cables. It took some time to get used to my en-
vironment, and from first to last I was never
wholly relaxed, or quite unconscious of what
would happen if a chair-leg broke, or a bamboo
fell across the outhouse.

I swiveled round on the chair-seat and counted

64 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

eight lines of army ants on the ground, converg-
ing to the post at my elbow. Each was four or
five ranks wide, and the eight lines occasionally
divided or coalesced, like a nexus of capillaries.
There was a wide expanse of sand and clay, and
no apparent reason why the various lines of for-
agers should not approach the nest in a single
large column. The dividing and redividing
showed well how completely free were the col-
umns from any individual dominance. There
was no control by specific individuals or soldiers,
but, the general route once established, the gov-
erning factor was the odor of contact.

The law to pass where others have passed is
immutable, but freedom of action or individual
desire dies with the malleable, plastic ends of the
foraging columns. Again and again came to
mind the comparison of the entire colony or army
with a single organism; and now the home, the
nesting swarm, the focus of central control,
seemed like the body of this strange amorphous
organism — housing the spirit of the army. One
thinks of a column of foragers as a tendril with
only the tip sensitive and growing and moving,
while the corpuscle-like individual ants are
driven in the current of blind instinct to and fro,

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 65

on their chemical errands. And then this whole
theory, this most vivid simile, is quite upset by
the sights that I watch in the suburbs of this ant
home!

The columns were most excellent barometers,
and their reaction to passing showers was invari-
able. The clay surface held water, and after
each downfall the pools would be higher, and the
contour of the little region altered. At the first
few drops, all the ants would hasten, the throb-
bing corpuscles speeding up. Then, as the rain
came down heavier, the column melted away,
those near each end hurrying to shelter and those
in the center crawling beneath fallen leaves and
bits of clod and sticks. A moment before, hun-
dreds of ants were trudging around a tiny pool,
the water lined with ant handrails, and in shallow
places, veritable formicine pontoons, — large ants
which stood up to their bodies in water, with the
booty-laden host passing over them. Now, all
had vanished, leaving only a bare expanse of
splashing drops and wet clay. The sun broke
through and the residue rain tinkled from the
bamboos.

As gradually as the growth of the rainbow
above the jungle, the lines reformed themselves.

66 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Scouts crept from the jungle-edge at one side,
and from the post at my end, and felt their way,
fan-wise, over the rain-scoured surface; for the
odor, which was both sight and sound to these
ants, had been washed away — a more serious han-
dicap than mere change in contour. Swiftly the
wandering individuals found their bearings
again. There was deep water where dry land
had been, but, as if by long-planned study of the
work of sappers and engineers, new pontoon
bridges were thrown across, washouts filled in,
new cliffs explored, and easy grades established;
and by the time the bamboos ceased their own
private after-shower, the columns were again
running smoothly, battalions of eager light in-
fantry hastening out to battle, and equal hosts
of loot-laden warriors hurrying toward the home
nest. Four minutes was the average time taken
to reform a column across the ten feet of open
clay, with all the road-making and engineering
feats which I have mentioned, on the part of ants
who had never been over this new route before.

Leaning forward within a few inches of the
post, I lost all sense of proportion, forgot my
awkward human size, and with a new perspec-
tive became an equal of the ants, looking on,

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 67

watching every passer-by with interest, straining
with the bearers of the heavy loads, and breath-
ing more easily when the last obstacle was over-
come and home attained. For a period I plucked
out every bit of good-sized booty and found that
almost all were portions of scorpions from far-
distant dead logs in the jungle, creatures whose
strength and poisonous stings availed nothing
against the attacks of these fierce ants. The
loads were adjusted equably, the larger pieces
carried by the big, white-headed workers, while
the smaller ants transported small eggs and lar-
vse. Often, when a great mandibled soldier had
hold of some insect, he would have five or six tiny
workers surrounding him, each grasping any pro-
jecting part of the loot, as if they did not trust
him in this menial capacity, — as an anxious
mother would watch with doubtful confidence a
big policeman wheeling her baby across a
crowded street. These workers were often dimin-
utive Marcelines, hindering rather than aiding
in the progress. But in every phase of activity
of these ants there was not an ounce of inten-
tionally lost power, or a moment of time wilfully
gone to waste. What a commentary on Bol-
shevism!

68 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Now that I had the opportunity of quietly
Watching the long, hurrying columns, I came
hour by hour to feel a greater intimacy, a deeper
enthusiasm for their vigor of existence, their un-
failing life at the highest point of possibility of
achievement. In every direction my former des-
ultory observations were discounted by still
greater accomplishments. Elsewhere I have re-
corded the average speed as two and a half feet
in ten seconds, estimating this as a mile in three
and a half hours. An observant colonel in the
American army has laid bare my congenitally
hopeless mathematical inaccuracy, and corrected
this to five hours and fifty-two seconds. Now,
however, I established a wholly new record for
the straight-away dash for home of the army ants.
With the handicap of gravity pulling them down,
the ants, both laden and unburdened, averaged
ten feet in twenty seconds, as they raced up the
post. I have now called in an artist and an
astronomer to verify my results, these two being
the only living beings within hailing distance as I
write, except a baby red howling monkey curled
up in my lap, and a toucan, sloth, and green boa,
beyond my laboratory table. Our results are
identical, and I can safely announce that the

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 69

amateur record for speed of army ants is equiva-
lent to a mile in two hours and fifty-six seconds ;
and this when handicapped by gravity and bur-
dens of food, but with the incentive of approach-
ing the end of their long journey.

As once before, I accidentally disabled a big
worker that I was robbing of his load, and his
entire abdomen rolled down a slope and disap-
peared. Hours later in the afternoon, I was sum-
moned to view the same soldier, unconcernedly
making his way along an outward-bound column,
guarding it as carefully as if he had not lost the
major part of his anatomy. His mandibles were
ready, and the only difference that I could see
was that he could make better speed than others
lof his caste. That night he joined the general
assemblage of cripples quietly awaiting death,
halfway up to the nest.

I know of no highway in the world which sur-
passes that of a big column of army ants in ex-
citing happenings, although I usually had the
feeling which inspired Kim as he watched the
Great White Road, of understanding so little
of all that was going on. Early in the morn-
ing there were only outgoing hosts; but soon
eddies were seen in the swift current, vortexes

70 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

made by a single ant here and there forcing its
way against the stream. Unlike penguins and
human beings, army ants have no rule of the
road as to right and left, and there is no lessen-
ing of pace or turning aside for a heavily laden
drogher. Their blindness caused them to bump
squarely into every individual, often sending
load and carrier tumbling to the bottom of a
vertical path. Another constant loss of energy
was a large cockroach leg, or scorpion segment,
carried by several ants. Their insistence on try-
ing to carry everything beneath their bodies
caused all sorts of comical mishaps. When such
a large piece of booty appeared, it was too much
of a temptation, and a dozen outgoing ants would
rush up and seize hold for a moment, the con-
sequent pulling in all directions reducing prog-
ress at once to zero.

Until late afternoon few ants returned with-
out carrying their bit. The exceptions were the
cripples, which were numerous and very pitiful.
From such fierce strenuousness, such virile ac-
tivity, as unending as elemental processes, it
seemed a very terrible drop to disability, to the
utilizing of every atom of remaining strength to
return to the temporary home nest — that instinct

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 71

which drives so many creatures to the same hom-
ing, at the approach of death.

Even in their helplessness they were wonder-
ful. To see a big black-headed worker strug-
gling up a post with five short stumps and only
one good hind leg, was a lesson in achieving the
impossible. I have never seen even a suspicion
of aid given to any cripple, no matter how slight
or how complete the disability; but frequently
a strange thing occurred, which I have often
noticed but can never explain. One army ant
would carry another, perhaps of its own size
and caste, just as if it were a bit of dead prov-
ender; and I always wondered if cannibalism
was to be added to their habits. I would cap-
ture both, and the minute they were in the vial,
the dead ant would come to life, and with equal
vigor and fury both would rush about their
prison, seeking to escape, becoming indistinguish-
able in the twinkling of an eye.

Very rarely an ant stopped and attempted to
clean another which had become partly disabled
through an accumulation of gummy sap or other
encumbering substance. But when a leg or other
organ was broken or missing, the odor of the
ant-blood seemed to arouse only suspicion and

72 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to banish sympathy, and after a few casual wav-
ings of antennae, all passed by on the other side.
Not only this, but the unfortunates were act-
ually in danger of attack within the very lines
of traffic of the legionaries. Several times I no-
ticed small rove-beetles accompanying the ants,
who paid little attention to them. Whenever
an ant became suspicious and approached with
a raised-eyebrow gesture of antennas, the beetles
turned their backs quickly and raised threaten-
ing tails. But I did not suspect the vampire
or thug-like character of these guests — tolerated
where any other insect would have -been torn
to pieces at once. A large crippled worker, hob-
bling along, had slipped a little away from the
main line, when I was astonished to see two rove-
beetles rush at him and bite him viciously, a third
coming up at once and joining in. The poor
worker had no possible chance against this com-
bination, and he went down after a short, futile
struggle. Two small army ants now happened
to pass, and after a preliminary whiffing with
waving antennas, rushed joyously into the melee.
The beetles had a cowardly weapon, and raising
their tails, ejected a drop or two of liquid, utterly
confusing the ants, which turned and hastened

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 73

back to the column. For the next few minutes,
until the scent wore off, they aroused suspicion
wherever they went. Meanwhile, the hyena-like
rove-beetles, having hedged themselves within a
barricade of their malodor, proceeded to feast,
quarreling with one another as such cowards are
wont to do.

Thus I thought, having identified myself with
the army ants. From a broader, less biased point
of view, I realized that credit should be given to
the rove-beetles for having established themselves
in a zone of such constant danger, and for being
able to live and thrive in it.

The columns converged at the foot of the post,
and up its surface ran the main artery of the
nest. Halfway up, a flat board projected, and
here the column divided for the last time, half
going on directly into the nest, and the other
half turning aside, skirting the board, ascending
a bit of perpendicular canvas, and entering the
nest from the rear. The entrance was well
guarded by a veritable moat and drawbridge of
living ants. A foot away, a flat mat of ants,
mandibles outward, was spread, over which every
passing individual stepped. Six inches farther,
and the sides of the mat thickened, and in the last

74 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

three inches these sides met overhead, forming
a short tunnel at the end of which the nest began.

And here I noticed an interesting thing. Into
this organic moat or tunnel, this living mouth of
an inferno, passed all the booty-laden foragers,
or those who for some reason had returned
empty-mouthed. But the outgoing host seeped
gradually from the outermost nest-layer — a grad-
ual but fundamental circulation, like that of
ocean currents. Scorpions, eggs, caterpillars,
glass-like wasp pupae, roaches, spiders, crickets,
—all were drawn into the nest by a maelstrom
of hunger, funneling into the narrow tunnel;
while from over all the surface of the swarm
there crept forth layer after layer of invigorated,
implacable seekers after food.

The mass of ants composing the nest appeared
so loosely connected that it seemed as if a touch
would tear a hole, a light wind rend the sup-
ports. It was suspended in the upper corner
of the doorway, rounded on the free sides, and
measured roughly two feet in diameter — an un-
numbered host of ants. Those on the surface
were in very slow but constant motion, with legs
shifting and antenna? waving continually. This
quivering on the surface of the swarm gave it

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 75

the appearance of the fur of some terrible ani-
mal— fur blowing in the wind from some un-
known, deadly desert. Yet so cohesive was the
entire mass, that I sat close beneath it for the
best part of two days and not more than a dozen
ants fell upon me. There was, however, a con-
stant rain of egg-cases and pupa-skins and the
remains of scorpions and grasshoppers, the resi-
due of the booty which was being poured in.
These wrappings and inedible casing were all
brought to the surface and dropped. This was
reasonable, but what I could not comprehend
was a constant falling of small living larvse. How
anything except army ants could emerge alive
from such a sinister swarm was inconceivable.
It took some resolution to stand up under the
nest, with my face only a foot away from this
slowly seething mass of widespread jaws. But
I had to discover where the falling larvae came
from, and after a time I found that they were
immature army ants. Here and there a small
worker would appear, carrying in its mandibles
a young larva; and while most made their way
through the maze of mural legs and bodies and
ultimately disappeared again, once in a while the
burden was dropped and fell to the floor of th«

76 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

outhouse. I can account for this only by pre-
suming that a certain percentage of the nurses
were very young and inexperienced workers and
dropped their burdens inadvertently. There was
certainly no intentional casting out of these off-
spring, as was so obviously the case with the
debris from the food of the colony. The eleven
or twelve ants which fell upon me during my
watch were all smaller workers, no larger ones
losing their grip.

While recording some of these facts, I dropped
my pencil, and it was fully ten minutes before
the black mass of enraged insects cleared away,
and I could pick it up. Leaning far over to
secure it, I was surprised by the cleanliness of
the floor around my chair. My clothes and note-
paper had been covered with loose wings, dry
skeletons of insects and the other debris, while
hundreds of other fragments had sifted down
past me. Yet now that I looked seeingly, the
whole area was perfectly clean. I had to as-
sume a perfect jack-knife pose to get my face
near enough to the floor; but, achieving it, I
found about five hundred ants serving as a street-
cleaning squad. They roamed aimlessly about
over the whole floor, ready at once to attack any-

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 77

thing of mine, or any part of my anatomy which
might come close enough, but otherwise stim-
ulated to activity only when they came across a
bit of rubbish from the nest high overhead. This
was at once seized and carried off to one of two
neat piles in far corners. Before night these
kitchen middens were an inch or two deep and
nearly a foot in length, composed, literally, of
thousands of skins, wings, and insect armor.
There was not a scrap of dirt of any kind which
had not been gathered into one of the two piles.
The nest was nine feet above the floor, a distance
(magnifying ant height to our own) of nearly
a mile, and yet the care lavished on the cleanli-
ness of the earth so far below was as thorough
and well done as the actual provisioning of the
colony.

As I watched the columns and the swarm-nest
hour after hour, several things impressed me; —
the absolute silence in which the ants worked; —
such ceaseless activity without sound one asso-
ciates only with a cinema film; all around me
was tremendous energy, marvelous feats of
achievement, super-human instincts, the ceaseless
movement of tens of thousands of legionaries;
yet no tramp of feet, no shouts, no curses, no

78 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

welcomes, no chanties. It was uncanny to think
of a race of creatures such as these, dreaded by
every living being, wholly dominant in their con-
tinent-wide sphere of action, yet born, living out
their lives, and dying, dumb and blind, with no
possibility of comment on life and its fullness, of
censure or of applause.

The sweeping squad on the floor was interest-
ing because of its limited field of work at such
a distance from the nest; but close to my chair
were a number of other specialized zones of activ-
ity, any one of which would have afforded a fer-
tile field for concentrated study. Beneath the
swarm on the white canvas, I noticed two large
spots of dirt and moisture, where very small flies
were collected. An examination showed that this
was a second, nearer dumping-ground for all the
garbage and refuse of the swarm which could not
be thrown down on the kitchen middens far be-
low. And here were tiny flies and other insects
acting as scavengers, just as the hosts of vultures
gather about the slaughter-house of Georgetown.

The most interesting of all the phases of life
of the ants' home town, were those on the hori-
zontal board which projected from the beam and
stretched for several feet to one side of the

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 79

swarm. This platform was almost on a level
with my eyes, and by leaning slightly forward
on the chair, I was as close as I dared go. Here
many ants came from the incoming columns, and
others were constantly arriving from the nest
itself. It was here that I realized my good for-
tune and the achievement of my desires, when
I first saw an army ant at rest. One of the
first arrivals after I had squatted to my post,
was a hig soldier with a heavy load of roach
meat. Instead of keeping on straight up the
post, he turned abruptly and dropped his load.
It was instantly picked up by two smaller work-
ers and carried on and upward toward the nest.
Two other big fellows arrived in quick succes-
sion, one with a load which he relinquished to a
drogher-in-waiting. Then the three weary war-
riors stretched their legs one after another and
commenced to clean their antennae. This lasted
only for a moment, for three or four tiny ants
rushed at each of the larger ones and began as
thorough a cleaning as masseurs or Turkish-bath
attendants. The three arrivals were at once
hustled away to a distant part of the board and
there cleaned from end to end. I found that
the focal length of my 8-diameter lens was just

80 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

out of reach of the ants, so I focused carefully
on one of the soldiers and watched the entire
process. The small ants scrubbed and scraped
him with their jaws, licking him and removing
every particle of dirt. One even crawled under
him and worked away at his upper leg- joints,
for all the world as a mechanic will creep under
a car. Finally, I was delighted to see him do
what no car ever does, turn completely over and
lie quietly on his back with his legs in air, while
his diminutive helpers overran him and gradually
got him into shape for future battles and forag-
ing expeditions.

On this resting-stage, within well-defined lim-
its, were dozens of groups of two cleaning one
another, and less numerous parties of the tiny
professionals working their hearts out on bat-
tle-worn soldiers. It became more and more ap-
parent that in the creed of the army ants, clean-
liness comes next to military effectiveness.

Here and there I saw independent individuals
cleaning themselves and going through the most
un-ant-like movements. They scraped their jaws
along the board, pushing forward like a dog try-
ing to get rid of his muzzle; then they turned
on one side and passed the opposite legs again

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 81

and again through the mandibles; while the last
performance was to turn over on their backs and
roll from side to side, exactly as a horse or don-
key loves to do.

One ant, I remember, seemed to have some-
thing seriously wrong. It sat up on its bent-
under abdomen in a most comical fashion, and
was the object of solicitude of every passing ant.
Sometimes there were thirty in a dense group,
pushing and jostling; and, like most of our city
crowds, many seemed to stop only long enough
to have a moment's morbid sight, or to ask some
silly question as to the trouble, then to hurry on.
Others remained, and licked and twiddled him
with their antenna? for a long time. He w&s
in this position for at least twenty minutes. My
curiosity was so aroused that I gathered him up
in a vial, whereat he became wildly excited and
promptly regained full use of his legs and facul-
ties. Later, when I examined him under the
lens, I could find nothing whatever wrong.

Off at one side of the general cleaning and
reconstruction areas was a pitiful assemblage of
cripples which had had enough energy to crawl
back, but which did not attempt, or were not
allowed, to enter the nest proper. Some had

82 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

one or two legs gone, others had lost an antenna
or had an injured body. They seemed not to
know what to do — wandering around, now and
then giving one another a half-hearted lick. In
the midst was one which had died, and two others,
each badly injured, were trying to tug the body
along to the edge of the board. This they suc-
ceeded in doing after a long series of efforts,
and down and down fell the dead ant. It was
promptly picked up by several kitchen-midden-
ites and unceremoniously thrown on the pile of
nest-debris. A load of booty had been dumped
among the cripples, and as each wandered close
to it, he seemed to regain strength for a moment,
picked up the load, and then dropped it. The
sight of that which symbolized almost all their
life-activity aroused them to a momentary for-
getfulness of their disabilities. There was no
longer any place for them in the home or in the
columns of the legionaries. They had been court-
martialed under the most implacable, the most
impartial law in the world — the survival of the
fit, the elimination of the unfit.

The time came when we had to get at our
stored supplies, over which the army ants were
such an effective guard. I experimented on a

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 83

Tunning column with a spray of ammonia and
found that it created merely temporary incon-
yenience, the ants running back and forming a
new trail. Formaline was more effective, so I
sprayed the nest-swarm with a fif ty-per-cent solu-
tion, strong enough, one would think, to harden
the very boards. It certainly created a terrible
commotion, and strings of the ants, two feet long,
hung dangling from the nest. The heart of the
colony came into view, with thousands of eggs
and larvae, looking like heaps of white rice-grains.
Every ant seized one or the other and sought
escape by the nearest way, while the soldiers still
defied the world. The gradual disintegration re-
vealed an interior meshed like a wasp's nest,
chambered and honeycombed with living tubes
and walls. Little by little the taut guy-ropes,
lathes, braces, joists, all sagged and melted to-
gether, each cell-wall becoming dynamic, now ex-
panding, now contracting; the ceilings vibrant
with waving legs, the floors a seething mass of
jaws and antennse. By the time it was dark, the
swarm was dropping in sections to the floor.

On the following morning new surprises
awaited me. The great mass of the ants had
moved in the night, vanishing with every egg and

84 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

immature larva ; but there was left in the corner
of the flat board a swarm of about one-quarter
of the entire number, enshrouding a host of older
larvae. The cleaning zones, the cripples' gather-
ing-room, all had given way to new activities, on
the flat board, down near the kitchen middens,
and in every horizontal crack.

The cause of all this strange excitement, this
braving of the terrible dangers of fumes which
had threatened to destroy the entire colony the
night before, suddenly was made plain as I
watched. A critical time was at hand in the lives
of the all-precious larvaa, when they could not
be moved — the period of spinning, of beginning
the transformation from larvae to pupa?. This
evidently was an operation which had to take
place outside the nest and demanded some sort
of light covering. On the flat board were sev-
eral thousand ants and a dozen or more groups
of full-grown larvae. Workers of all sizes were
searching everywhere for some covering for the
tender immature creatures. They had chewed
up all available loose splinters of wood, and near
the rotten, termite-eaten ends, the sound of doz-
ens of jaws gnawing all at once was plainly audi-
ble. This unaccustomed, unmilitary labor pro-

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 85

duced a quantity of fine sawdust, which was
sprinkled over the larvse. I had made a parti-
tion of a bit of a British officer's tent which I had
used in India and China, made of several layers
of colored canvas and cloth. The ants found
a loose end of this, teased it out and unraveled
it, so that all the larvae near by were blanketed
with a gay, parti-colored covering of fuzz.

All this strange work was hurried and car-
ried on under great excitement. The scores of
big soldiers on guard appeared rather ill at ease,
as if they had wandered by mistake into the
wrong department. They sauntered about,
bumped into larva, turned and fled. A constant
stream of workers from the nest brought hun-
dreds more larvse; and no sooner had they been
planted and debris of sorts sifted over them,
than they began spinning. A few had already
swathed themselves in cocoons — exceedingly thin
coverings of pinkish silk. As this took place
out of the nest, — in the jungle they must be cov-
ered with wood and leaves. The vital necessity
for this was not apparent, for none of this debris
was incorporated into the silk of the cocoons,
which were clean and homogeneous. Yet the
hundreds of ants gnawed and tore and labored

86 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to gather this little dust, as if their very lires
depended upon it.

With my hand-lens focused just beyond man-
dible reach of the biggest soldier, I leaned for-
ward from my insulated chair, hovering like a
great astral eye looking down at this marvelously
important business of little lives. Here were
thousands of army ants, not killing, not carrying
booty, nor even suspended quiescent as organic
molecules in the structure of the home, yet in
feverish activity equaled only by battle, making
ready for the great change of their foster off-
spring. I watched the very first thread of silk
drawn between the larva and the outside world,
and in an incredibly short time the cocoon was
outlined in a tissue-thin, transparent aura, within
which the tenant could be seen skilfully weaving
its own shroud.

When first brought from the nest, the larva*
lay quite straight and still; but almost at once
they bent far over in the spinning position. Then
some officious worker would come along, and
the unfortunate larva would be snatched up, car-
ried off, and jammed down in some neighboring
empty space, like a bolt of cloth rearranged upon
a shelf. Then another ant would approach, aD-

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 87

tennae the larva, disapprove, and again shift its
position. It was a real survival of the lucky,
as to who should avoid being exhausted by kind-
ness and over-solicitude. I uttered many a
chuckle at the half-ensilked unfortunates being
toted about like mummies, and occasionally giv-
ing a sturdy, impatient kick which upset their
tormentors and for a moment created a little
swirl of mild excitement.

There was no order of packing. The larva*
were fitted together anyway, and meagerly cov-
ered with dust of wood and shreds of cloth. One
big tissue of wood nearly an inch square was too
great a temptation to be let alone, and during
the course of my observation it covered in turn
almost every group of larva? in sight, ending by
being accidentally shunted over the edge and
killing a worker near the kitchen middens.
There was only a single layer of larvae; in no
case were they piled up, and when the platform
became crowded, a new column was formed and
hundreds taken outside. To the casual eye there
was no difference between these legionaries and
a column bringing in booty of insects, eggs, and
pupa*; yet here all was solicitude, never a bite
too severe, or a blunder of undue force.

88 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

The sights I saw in this second day's acces-
sible nest-swarm would warrant a season's medi-
tation and study, but one thing impressed me
above all others. Sometimes, when I carefully
pried open one section and looked deep within,
I could see large chambers with the larva? in
piles, besides being held in the mandibles of the
components of the walls and ceilings. Now and
then a curious little ghost-like form would flit
across the chamber, coming to rest, gnome-like,
on larva or ant. Again and again I saw these
little springtails skip through the very scimitar
mandibles of a soldier, while the workers paid
no attention to them. I wondered if they were
not quite odorless, intangible to the ants, in-
visible guests which lived close to them, going
where, doing what they willed, yet never per-
ceived by the thousands of inhabitants. They
seemed to live in a kind of fourth dimensional
state, a realm comparable to that which we peo-
ple with ghosts and spirits. It was a most un-
canny, altogether absorbing, intensely interesting
relationship; and sometimes, when I ponder on
some general aspect of the great jungle, — a for-
est of greenheart, a mighty rushing river, a crash-
ing, blasting thunderstorm, — my mind suddenly

THE ARMY ANTS' HOME TOWN 89

reverts by way of contrast to the tiny ghosts
of springtails flitting silently among the terrible
living chambers of the army ants.

On the following morning I expected to
achieve still greater intimacy in the lives of the
mummy soldier embryos ; but at dawn every trace
of nesting swarm, larvae, pupae and soldiers was
gone. A few dead workers were being already
carried off by small ants which never would have
dared approach them in life. A big blue mor-
pho butterfly flapped slowly past out of the jun-
gle, and in its wake came the distant notes —
high and sharp — of the white-fronted antbirds;
and I knew that the legionaries were again
abroad, radiating on their silent, dynamic paths
of life from some new temporary nest deep in
£he jungle.

IV
A JUNGLE BEACH

A JUNGLE moon first showed me my beach.
For a week I had looked at it in blazing sunlight,
talked across it, even sat on it in the intervals
of getting wonted to the new laboratory; yet I
had not perceived it. Colonel Roosevelt once
said to me that he would rather perceive things
from the point of view of a field-mouse, than be
a human being and merely see them. And in my
case it was when I could no longer see the beach
that I began to discern its significance.

This British Guiana beach, just in front of
my Kartabo bungalow, was remarkably diversi-
fied, and in a few steps, or strokes of a paddle,
I could pass from clean sand to mangroves and
muckamucka swamp, thence to out-jutting rocks,
and on to the Edge of the World, all within a dis-
tance of a hundred yards. For a time my beach
walks resulted in inarticulate reaction. After
months in the blindfolded canyons of New York's
streets, a hemicircle of horizon, a hemisphere of

90

A JUNGLE BEACH 91

sky, and a vast expanse of open water lent itself
neither to calm appraisal nor to impromptu cuff-
notes.

It was recalled to my mind that the miracle
of sunrise occurred every morning, and was not
a rather belated alternation of illumination, fol-
lowing the quenching of Broadway's lights. And
the moon I found was as dependable as when I
timed my Himalayan expeditions by her shad-
owings. To these phenomena I soon became re-
accustomed, and could watch a bird or outwit an
insect in the face of a foreglow and silent burst
of flame that shamed all the barrages ever laid
down. But cosmic happenings kept drawing my
attention and paralyzing my activities for long
afterward. With a double rainbow and four
storms in action at once; or a wall of rain like
sawn steel slowly drawing up one river while the
Mazaruni remains in full sunlight ; with Pegasus
galloping toward the zenith at midnight and the
Pleiades just clearing the Penal Settlement, I
could not always keep on dissecting, or record-
ing, or verifying the erroneousness of one of my
recently formed theories.

There was Thuban, gazing steadily upon my
little mahogany bungalow, as, six millenniums

92 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ago, he had shone unfalteringly down the little
stone tube that led his rays into the Queen's
Chamber, in the very heart of great Cheops.
Just clearing a low palm was the present North
Star, while, high above, Vega shone, patiently
waiting to take her place half a million years
hence. When beginning her nightly climb, Vega
drew a thin, trembling thread of argent over the
still water, just as in other years she had laid
for me a slender silver strand of wire across
frozen snow, and on one memorable night traced
the ghost of a reflection over damp sand near
the Nile — pale as the wraiths of the early Pha-
raohs.

Low on the eastern horizon, straight outward
from my beach, was the beginning and *nd of
the great zodiac band — the golden Hamal of
Aries and the paired stars of Pisces ; and behind,
over the black jungle, glowed the Southern
Cross. But night after night, as I watched on
the beach, the sight which moved me most was
the dull speck of emerald mist, a merest smudge
on the slate of the heavens, — the spiral nebula in
Andromeda, — a universe in the making, of a size
unthinkable to human minds.

The power of my jungle beach to attract and

A JUNGLE BEACH 93

hold attention was not only direct and sensory,
— through sight and sound and scent, — but often
indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after
time, on an impulse, I followed some casual line
of thought and action, and found myself at last
on or near the beach, on a lead that eventually
would take me to the verge or into the water.
Once I did what for me was a most unusual
Jhing. I woke in the middle of the night with-
out apparent reason. The moonlight was pour*
ing in a white flood through the bamboos, and
the jungle was breathless and silent. Through
my window I could see Jennie, our pet monkey,
lying aloft, asleep on her little verandah, head
cushioned on both hands, tail curled around her
dangling chain, as a spider guards her web-
strands for hint of disturbing vibrations. I knew
that the slightest touch on that chain would
awaken her, and indeed it seemed as if the very
thought of it had been enough; for she opened
her eyes, sent me the highest of insect-like notes
and turned over, pushing her head within the
shadow of her little house. I wondered if ani-
mals, too, were, like the Malays and so many
savage tribes, afraid of the moonlight — the
"luna-cy" danger in those strange color-strained

94 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

rays, whose power must be greater than we real-
ize. Beyond the monkey roosted Robert, the
great macaw, wide-awake, watching me witli all
that broadside of intensive gaze of which only
a parrot is capable.

The three of us seemed to be the only living
things in the world, and for a long time we—
monkey, macaw, and man — listened. Then all
but the man became uneasy. The monkey raised
herself and listened, uncurled her tail, shifted,
and listened. The macaw drew himself up, feath-
ers close, forgot me, and listened. They, un-
like me, were not merely listening — they were
hearing something. Then there came, very
slowly and deliberately, as if reluctant to break
through the silent moonlight, a sound, low and
constant, impossible to identify, but clearly audi-
ble even to my ears. For just an instant longer
it held, sustained and quivering, then swiftly rose
into a crashing roar — the sound of a great tree
falling. I sat up and heard the whole long de-
scent ; but at the end, after the moment of silence,
there was no deep boom — the sound of the mighty
bole striking and rebounding from the earth it-
self. I wondered about this for a while; then the
monkey and I went to sleep, leaving the macaw

A JUNGLE BEACH 95

alone conscious in the moonlight, watching
through the night with his great round, yellow
orbs, and thinking the thoughts that macaws al-
ways think in the moonlight.

The next day the macaw and the monkey had
forgotten all about the midnight sound, but I
searched and found why there was no final boom.
And my search ended at my beach. A bit of
overhanging bank had given way and a tall tree
had fallen headlong into the water, its roots
sprawling helplessly in mid-air. Like rats de-
serting a sinking ship, a whole Noah's ark of
tree-living creatures was hastening along a single
cable shorewards: tree-crickets; ants laden with
eggs and larvae; mantids gesticulating as they
walked, like old men who mumble to themselves;
woodroaches, some green and leaf-like, others,
facsimiles of trilobites — but fleet of foot and with
one goal.

What was a catastrophe for a tree and a shift
of home for the tenants was good fortune for
me, and I walked easily out along the trunk and
branches and examined the strange parasitic
growths and the homes which were being so rap-
idly deserted. The tide came up and covered the
lower half of the prostrate tree, drowning what

96 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

creatures had not made their escape and quick-
ening the air-plants with a false rain, which in
course of time would rot their very hearts.

But the first few days were only the overture
of changes in this shift of conditions. Tropic
vegetation is so tenacious of life that it struggles
and adapts itself with all the cunning of a Jap-
anese wrestler. We cut saplings and thrust them
into mud or the crevices of rocks at low tide far
from shore, to mark our channel, and before long
we have buoys of foliage banners waving from
the bare poles above water. We erect a tall bam-
boo flagpole on the bank, and before long our
flag is almost hidden by the sprouting leaves, and
the pulley so blocked that we have occasionally
to lower and lop it.

So the fallen tree, still gripping the nutritious
bank with a moiety of roots, turned slowly in
its fibrous stiffness and directed its life and sap
and hopes upward. During the succeeding weeks
I watched trunk and branches swell and bud out
new trunks, new branches, guided, controlled,
by gravity, light, and warmth; and just beyond
the reach of the tides, leaves sprouted, flowers
opened and fruit ripened. Weeks after the last
slow invertebrate plodder had made his escape

A JUNGLE BEACH 97

shorewards, the taut liana strand was again
crowded with a mass of passing life — a maze of
vines and creepers, whose tendrils and suckers
reached and curled and pressed onward, fighting
for gangway to shore, through days and weeks,
as the animal life which preceded them had made
the most of seconds and minutes.

The half -circle of exposed raw hank became
in its turn the center of a myriad activities.
Great green kingfishers began at once to bur-
row; tiny emerald ones chose softer places up
among the wreckage of wrenched roots; wasps
came and chopped out bits for the walls and par-
titions of their cells; spiders hung their cobwebs
between ratlines of rootlets; and hummingbirds
promptly followed and plucked them from their
silken nets, and then took the nets to bind their
own tiny air-castles. Finally, other interests in-
tervened, and like Jennie and Robert, I
gradually forgot the tree that fell without an
echo.

In the jungle no action or organism is sep-
arate, or quite apart, and this thing which came
to the three of us suddenly at midnight led by
devious means to another magic phase of the
shore.

98 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

A little to the south along my beach is the
Edge of the World. At least, it looks very much
as I have always imagined that place must look,
and I have never been beyond it; so that, after
listening to many arguments in courts of law,
and hearing the reasoning of bolsheviki, teetcn
talers, and pacifists, I feel that I am quite rea-
sonable as human beings go. And best of all,
it hurts no one, and annoys only a few of my
scientific friends, who feel that one cannot in-
dulge in such ideas at the wonderful hour of twi-
light, and yet at eight o'clock the following morn-
ing describe with impeccable accuracy the bron-
chial semi-rings, and the intricate mosaic of carti-
lage which characterizes and supports the mem*
branis tympaniformis of AttUa ihamnophiloides;
a dogma which halves life and its interests.

The Edge of the World has always meant a
place where usual things are different; and my
southern stretch of beach was that, because
of roots. Whenever in digging I have come
across a root and seen its living flesh, per-
haps pink or rose or pale green, so far under-
ground, I have desired to know roots better; and
now I found my opportunity. I walked along
the proper trail, through right and usual trees,

A JUNGLE BEACH 99

with reasonable foliage and normal trunks, and
suddenly I stepped down over the Edge. Over-
head and all around there was still the foliage.
It shut out the sun except for greenish, moder-
ated spots and beams. The branches dipped low
in front over the water, shutting out the aky ex-
cept along the tops of the cross-river jungle.
Thus a great green-roofed chamber was formed ;
and here, between jungle and the water-level of
the world, was the Kingdom of the Roots.

Great trees had in their youth fallen far for-
ward, undermined by the water, then slowly
taken a new reach upward and stretched forth
great feet and hands of roots, palms pressing
against the mud, curved backs and thews of shoul-
ders braced against one another and the drag
of the tides. Little by little the old prostrate
trunks were entirely obliterated by this fantastic
network. There were no fine fibers or rootlets
here; only great beams and buttresses, bridges
and up-ended spirals, grown together or spread-
ing wide apart. Root merged with trunk, and
great boles became roots and then boles again in
this unreasonable land. For here, in place of
damp, black mold and soil, water alternated with
dark-shadowed air; and so I was able for a time

100 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to live the life of a root, resting quietly among
them, watching and feeling them, and moving
very slowly, with no thought of time, as roots
must.

I liked to wait until the last ripple had lapped
against the sand beneath, and then slip quietly
in from the margin of the jungle and perch —
like a great tree-frog — on some convenient shelf.
Seumas and Brigid would have enjoyed it, in
spite of the fact that the Leprechauns seemed
to have just gone. I found myself usually in
a little room, walled with high-arched, thin sheets
of living roots, some of which would form solid
planks three feet wide and twelve long, and only
an inch or two in thickness. These were always
on edge, and might be smooth and sheer, or sud-
denly sprout five stubby, mittened fingers, or
pairs of curved and galloping legs — and this
thought gave substance to the simile which had
occurred again and again: these trees reminded
me of centaurs with proud, upright man torsos,
and great curved backs. In one, a root dropped
down and rested on the back, as a centaur who
turns might rest his hand on his withers.

When I chanced upon an easy perch, and a
stray idea came to mind, I squatted or sat or

A JUNGLE BEACH 101

sprawled, and wrote, and strange things often
happened to me. Once, while writing rapidly
qn a small sheet of paper, I found my lines grow-
ing closer and closer together until my fingers
cramped, and the consciousness of the change
overlaid the thoughts that were driving hand and
pen. I then realized that, without thinking, I
had been following a succession of faint lines*
cross-ruled on my white paper, and looking up,
I saw that a leaf -filtered opening had reflected
Strands of a spider-web just above my head, and
I had been adapting my lines to the narrow
spaces, my chirography controlled by cobweb
shadows.

The first unreality of the roots was their rigid-
ity. I stepped from one slender tendon of wood
to the next, expecting a bending which never
occurred. They might have been turned to stone;
and even little twigs resting on the bark often
proved to have grown fast. And this was the
more unexpected because of the grace of curve
and line, fold upon fold, with no sharp angles,
but as full of charm of contour as their grays and
olives were harmonious in color. Photographs
showed a little of this; sketches revealed more;
but the great splendid things themselves, devoid

102 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

of similes and human imagination, were soul-
satisfying in their simplicity.

I seldom sat in one spot more than a few min-
utes, but climbed and shifted, tried new seats,
couches, perches, grips, sprawling out along the
tops of two parallel monsters, or slipping under
their bellies, always finding some easy way to
swing up again. Two openings just permitted
me to squeeze through, and I wondered whether,
in another year, or ten, or fifty, the holes would
have grown smaller. I became imbued with the
quiet joy of these roots, so that I hated to touch
the ground. Once I stepped down on the beach
after something I had dropped, and the soft
yielding of the sand was so unpleasant that I
did not afterwards leave this strange mid-zone
until I had to return. Unlike Antaeus, I seemed
to gain strength and poise by disassociation with
the earth.

Here and there were pockets in the folds of
the sweeping draperies, and each pocket was
worth picking. When one tried to paint the
roots, these pockets seemed made expressly to
take the place of palette cups, except that now
and then a crab resented the infusion of Hooker's
green with his Vandyke brown puddle, and seized

A JUNGLE BEACH 103

the end of the brush. The crabs were worthy
tenants of such strange architecture, with com-
ical eyes twiddling on the end of their stalks,
and their white-mittened fists feinting and threat-
ening as I looked into their little dark rain or
tide-pools.

I found three pockets on one wall, which
seemed as if they must have been "salted" for
my benefit; and in them, as elsewhere on my
beach, the two extremes of life met. The top-
most one, curiously enough, contained a small
crab, together with a large water-beetle at the
farther end. Both seemed rather self-conscious,
and there was no hint of fraternizing. The bee-
tle seemed to be merely existing until darkness,
when he could fly to more water and better com-
pany; and the crab appeared to be waiting for
the beetle to go.

The next pocket was a long, narrow, horizontal
fold, and I hoped to find real excitement among
its aquatic folk; but to my surprise it had no
bottom, but was a deep chute or socket, opening
far below to the sand. However, this was not my
discovery, and I saw dimly a weird little head
looking up at me — a gecko lizard, which called
this crevice home and the crabs neighbors. I

104 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

hailed him as the only other backboned friend
who shared the root-world with me, and then
listened to a high, sweet tone, which came forth
in swinging rhythm. It took some time for my
eyes to become accustomed to the semi-darkness,
and then I saw what the gecko saw — a big yel-
low-bodied fly humming in this cavern, and
swinging in a small orbit as she sang. Now and
then she dashed out past me and hovered in mid-
air, when her note sank to a low, dull hum. Back
again, and the sound rose and fell, and gained
ten times in volume from the echo or reverbera-
tions. Each time she passed, the little lizard
licked his chops and swallowed — a sort of vica-
rious expression of faith or desire; or was he in
a Christian Science frame of mind, saying, "My,
how good that fly tasted 1" each time the dipteron
passed? The fly was just as inexplicable, brav-
ing danger and darkness time after time, to
leave the sunshine and vibrate in the dusk to the
enormously magnified song of its wings.

With eyes that had forgotten the outside light,
I leaned close to the opening and rested my fore-
head against the lichens of the wall of wood.
The fly was frightened away, the gecko slipped
lower, seemingly without effort, and in a hoi-

A JUNGLE BEACH 105

lowed side of the cavernous root I saw a mist,
a quivering, so tenuous and indistinct that at first
it might have been the dancing of motes. I saw
that they were living creatures — the most deli-
cate of tiny crane-flies — at rest looking like long-
legged mosquitoes. Deep within this root,
farther from the light than even the singing fly
had ventured, these tiny beings whirled madly
in mid-air — subterranean dervishes, using up en-
ergy for their own inexplicable ends, of which
one very interested naturalist could make
nothing.

Three weeks afterward I happened to pass
at high tide in the canoe and peered into this
pocket. The gecko was where geckos go in the
space of three weeks, and the fly also had van-
ished, either within or without the gecko. But
the crane-flies were still there: to my roughly
appraising eyes the same flies, doing the same
dance in exactly the same place. Three weeks
later, and again I returned, this time intention-
ally, to see whether the dance still continued;
and it was in full swing. That same night at
midnight I climbed down, flashed a light upon
them, and there they whirled and vibrated,
silently, incredibly rapid, unceasingly.

106 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

After a thousand hours all the surroundings
had changed. New leaves had sprouted, flowers
faded and turned to fruit, the moon had twice
attained her full brightness, our earth and sun
and the whole solar system had swept headlong
a full two-score million miles on the endless swing
toward Vega. Only the roots and the crane-
flies remained. A thousand hours had appar-
ently made no difference to them. The roots
might have been the granite near by, fashioned
by primeval earth-flame, and the flies but vibrat-
ing atoms within the granite, made visible by
some alchemy of elements in this weird Rim of
the World.

And so a new memory is mine; and when one
of these insects comes to my lamp in whatever
part of the world, fluttering weakly, legs break-
ing off at the slightest touch, I shall cease to
worry about the scientific problems that loom too
great for my brain, or about the imperfection
of whatever I am doing, and shall welcome the
crane-fly and strive to free him from this fatal
passion for flame, directing him again into the
night; for he may be looking for a dark pocket
in a root, a pocket on the Edge of the World,
where crane-flies may vibrate with their fellows

A JUNGLE BEACH 107

in an eternal dance. And so, in some ordained
way, he will fulfil his destiny and I acquire merit.

To write of sunrises and moonlight is to com-
mit literary harikiri; but as that terminates life,
so may I end this. And I choose the morning
and the midnight of the sixth of August, for
reasons both greater and less than cosmic. Early
that morning, looking out from the beach over
the Mazacuni, as we called the union of the two
great rivers, there was wind, yet no wind, as the
sun prepared to lift above the horizon. The great
soft-walled jungle was clear and distinct. Every
reed at the landing had its unbroken counter-
part in the still surface. But at the apex of
the waters, the smoke of all the battles in the
world had gathered, and upon this the sun slowly
concentrated his powers, until he tore apart the
cloak of mist, turning the dark surface, first to
oxidized, and then to shining quicksilver. In-
stantaneously the same shaft of light touched the
tips of the highest trees, and as if in response
to a poised baton, there broke forth that wonder
of the world — the Zoroastrian chorus of tens of
thousands of jungle creatures.

Over the quicksilver surface little individual

106 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

breezes wandered here and there. I could clearly
see the beginning and the end of them, and one
that drifted ashore and passed me felt like the
lightest touch of a breath. One saw only the
ripple on the water; one thought of invisible
wings and trailing unseen robes.

With the increasing warmth the water-mist
rose slowly, like a last quiet breath of night;
and as it ascended, — the edges changing from
silvery gray to grayish white,— it gathered close
its shredded margins, grew smaller as it rose
higher, and finally became a cloud. I watched
it and wondered about its fate. Before the day
was past, it might darken in its might, hurl forth
thunders and jagged light, and lose its very sub-
stance in down-poured liquid. Or, after drifting
idly high in air, the still-born cloud might garb
itself in rich purple and gold for the pageant of
the west, and again descend to brood over the
coming marvel of another sunrise.

The tallest of bamboos lean over our low, lazy
spread of bungalow; and late this very night, in
the full moonlight, I leave my cot and walk down
to the beach over a shadow carpet of Japanese
filigree. The air over the white sand is as quiet
and feelingless to my skin as complete, comfort-

A JUNGLE BEACH 109

able clothing. On one side is the dark river; on
the other, the darker jungle full of gentle rus-
tlings, low, velvety breaths of sound; and I slip
into the water and swim out, out, out. Then I
turn over and float along with the almost tangi-
ble moonlight flooding down on face and water.
Suddenly the whole air is broken by the chorus
of big red baboons, which rolls and tumbles to-
ward me in masses of sound along the surface
and goes trembling, echoing on over shore and
jungle, till hurled back by the answering chorus
of another clan. It stirs one to the marrow, for
there is far more in it than the mere roaring of
monkeys; and I turn uneasily, and slowly surge
back toward the sand, overhand now, making
companionable splashes.

And then again I stop, treading water softly,
with face alone between river and sky; for the
monkeys have ceased, and very faint and low,
but blended in wonderful minor harmony, comes
another chorus — from three miles down the river :
the convicts singing hymns in their cells at mid-
night. And I ground gently and sit in the sil-
vered shadows with little bewildered shrimps
flicking against me, and unlanguaged thoughts
come and go — impossible similes, too poignant

110 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

phrases to be stopped and fettered with words,
and I am neither scientist nor man nor naked
organism, but just mind. With the coming of
silence I look around and again consciously take
in the scene. I am very glad to be alive, and
to know that the possible dangers of jungle and
water have not kept me armed and indoors. I
feel, somehow, as if my very daring and gentle
slipping-off of all signs of dominance and pro-
tection on entering into this realm had made
friends of all the rare but possible serpents and
scorpions, sting-rays and perai, vampires and
electric eels. For a while I know the happiness
of Mowgli.

And I think of people who would live more
joyful lives in dense communities, who would be
more tolerant, and more certain of straightfor-
ward friendship, if they could have as a back-
ground a fundamental hour of living such as this,
a leaven for the rest of what, in comparison, seems
mere existence.

At last I go back between the bamboos and
their shadows, from unreal reality into a definite-
ness of cot and pajamas and electric torch. But
wild nature still keeps touch with me; for as I
write these lines, curled up on the edge of the

A JUNGLE BEACH 111

cot, two vampires hawk back and forth so close
that the wind from their wings dries my ink.
And the soundness of my sleep is such that time
does not exist between their last crepuscular
squeak and the first wiry twittering of a blue
tanager, in full sunshine, from a palm overhang-
ing my beach.

A BIT OF USELESSNESS

A MOST admirable servant of mine once risked
his life to reach a magnificent Bornean orchid,
and tried to poison me an hour later when he
thought I was going to take the plant away from
him. This does not mean necessarily that we
should look with suspicion upon all gardeners
and lovers of flowers. It emphasizes, rather, the
fact of the universal and deep-rooted apprecia-
tion of the glories of the vegetable kingdom.
Long before the fatal harvest time, I am certain
tHat Eve must have plucked a spray of apple
blossoms with perfect impunity.

A vast amount of bad poetry and a much less
quantity of excellent verse has been written about
flowers, much of which follows to the letter Mark
Twain's injunction about Truth. It must be ad-
mitted that the relations existing between the
honeysuckle and the bee are basely practical and
wholly selfish. A butterfly's admiration of a

flower is no whit less than the blossom's conscious
112

A BIT OF USELESSNESS 113

appreciation of its own beauties. There are ants
which spend most of their life making gardens,
knowing the uses of fertilizers, mulching, plant-
ing seeds, exercising patience, recognizing the
time of ripeness, and gathering the edible fruit.
But this is underground, and the ants are blind.

There is a bird, however — the bower bird of
Australia — which appears to take real delight in
bright things, especially pebbles and flowers for
their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of
sticks, which has been built in our own Zoologi-
cal Park in New York City, is fronted by a
cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this
it brings its colorful treasures, sometimes a score
of bright star blossoms, which are renewed when
faded and replaced by others. All this has, prob-
ably, something to do with courtship, which
should inspire a sonnet.

From the first pre-Egyptian who crudely
scratched a lotus on his dish of clay, down to
the jolly Feckenham men, the human race has
given to flowers something more than idle curi-
osity, something less than mere earnest of fruit
or berry.

At twelve thousand feet I have seen one of
my Tibetans with nothing but a few shreds of

114 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

straw between his bare feet and the snow, probe
around the south edge of melting drifts until he
found brilliant little primroses to stick behind
his ears. I have been ushered into the little-used,
musty best-parlor of a New England farmhouse,
and seen fresh vases of homely, old-fashioned
flowers — so recently placed for my edification,
that drops of water still glistened like dewdrops
on the dusty plush mat beneath. I have sat in
the seat of honor of a Dyak communal house,
looked up at the circle of all too recent heads,
and seen a gay flower in each hollow eye socket,
placed there for my approval. With a cluster
of colored petals swaying in the breeze, one may
at times bridge centuries or span the earth.

And now as I sit writing these words in my
jungle laboratory, a small dusky hand steals
around an aquarium and deposits a beautiful
spray of orchids on my table. The little face
appears, and I can distinguish the high cheek
bones of Indian blood, the flattened nose and
slight kink of negro, and the faint trace of white
— probably of some long forgotten Dutch sailor,
who came and went to Guiana, while New York
City was still a browsing ground for moose.

So neither race nor age nor melange of blood

A BIT OF USELESSNESS 115

can eradicate the love of flowers. It would be
a wonderful thing to know about the first garden
that ever was, and I wish that "Best Beloved"
had demanded this. I am sure it was long before
the day of dog, or cow, or horse, or even she who
walked alone. The only way we can imagine
it, is to go to some wild part of the earth, where
are fortunate people who have never heard of
seed catalogs or lawn mowers.

Here in British Guiana I can run the whole
gamut of gardens, within a few miles of where
I am writing. A mile above my laboratory up-
river, is the thatched benab of an Akawai Indian
— whose house is a roof, whose rooms are ham-
mocks, whose estate is the jungle. Degas can
speak English, and knows the use of my 28-
gauge double barrel well enough to bring us a
constant supply of delicious bushmeat — peccary,
deer, monkey, bush turkeys and agoutis. But
Grandmother has no language but her native
Akawai. She is a good friend of mine, and we
hold long conversations, neither of us bothering
with the letter, but only the spirit of communi-
cation. She is a tiny person, bowed and wrin-
kled as only an old Indian squaw can be, al-
ways jolly and chuckling to herself, although

116 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Degas tells me that the world is gradually dark-
ening for her. And she vainly begs me to clear
the film which is slowly closing over her eyes.
She labors in a true landscape garden — the small
circle wrested with cutlass and fire from the great
jungle, and kept free only by constant cutting
of the vines and lianas which creep out almost
in a night, like sinister octopus tentacles, to stran-
gle the strange upstarts and re jungle the bit of
sunlit glade.

Although to the eye a mass of tangled vege-
tation, an Indian's garden may be resolved into
several phases — all utterly practical, with color
and flowers as mere by-products. First come the
provisions, for if Degas were not hunting for me,
and eating my rations, he would be out with bow
and blowpipe, or fish-hooks, while the women
worked all day in the cassava field. It is his part
to clear and burn the forest, it is hers to grub up
the rich mold, to plant and to weed. Plots and
beds are unknown, for in every direction are
fallen trees, too large to burn or be chopped up,
and great sprawling roots. Between these,
sprouts of cassava and banana are stuck, and the
yams and melons which form the food of these
primitive people. Cassava is as vital to these

A BIT OF USELESSNESS 117

Indians as the air they breathe. It is their wheat
and corn and rice, their soup and salad and des-
sert, their ice and their wine, for besides being
their staple food, it provides casareep which pre-
serves their meat, and piwarie which, like excel-
len* wine, brightens life for them occasionally, or
dims it if overindulged in — which is equally true
of food, or companionship, or the oxygen in the
air we breathe.

Besides this cultivation, Grandmother has a
small group of plants which are only indirectly
concerned with food. One is kunami, whose
leaves are pounded into pulp, and used for poi-
soning the water of jungle streams, with the sur-
prising result that the fish all leap out on the
bank and can be gathered as one picks up nuts.
When I first visited Grandmother's garden, she
had a few pitiful little cotton plants from whose
stunted bolls she extracted every fiber and made
a most excellent thread. In fact, when she made
some bead aprons for me, she rejected my spool
of cotton and chose her own, twisted between
thumb and finger. I sent for seed of the big
Sea Island cotton, and her face almost un-
wrinkled with delight when she saw the packets
with seed larger than she had ever known.

118 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Far off in one corner I make certain I have
found beauty for beauty's sake, a group of ex-
quisite caladiums and amaryllis, beautiful flow-
ers and rich green leaves with spots and slashes
of white and crimson. But this is the hunter's
garden, and Grandmother has no part in it, per-
haps is not even allowed to approach it. It is
the beena garden — the charms for good luck in
hunting. The similarity of the leaves to the head
or other parts of deer or peccary or red-gilled
fish, decides the most favorable choice, and the
acrid, smarting juice of the tuber rubbed into the
skin, or the hooks and arrows anointed, is con-
sidered sufficient to produce the desired result.
Long ago I discovered that this demand for im-
mediate physical sensation was a necessary corol-
lary of doctoring, so I always give two medicines
— one for its curative properties, and the other,
bitter, sour, acid or anything disagreeable, for
arousing and sustaining faith in my ability.

The Indian's medicine plants, like his true
name, he keeps to himself, and although I feel
certain that Grandmother had somewhere a
toothache bush, or pain leaves — yarbs and sim-
ples for various miseries — I could never discover
them. Half a dozen tall tobacco plants brought

A BIT OF USELESSNESS 119

from the far interior, eked out the occasional
tins of cigarettes in which Degas indulged, and
always the flame-colored little buck-peppers
lightened up the shadows of the benab., as hot
to the palate as their color to the eye.

One day just as I was leaving, Grandmother
led me to a palm nearby, and to one of its an-
cient frond-sheaths was fastened a small brown
branch to which a few blue-green leaves were
attached. I had never seen anything like it. She
mumbled and touched it with her shriveled, bent
fingers. I could understand nothing, and sent
for Degas, who came and explained grudgingly,
"Me no know what for — toko-nook just name —
have got smell when yellow." And so at last I
found the bit of uselessness, which, carried on-
ward and developed in ages to come, as it had
been elsewhere in ages past, was to evolve into
botany, and back-yard gardens, and greenhouses,
and wars of roses, and beautiful paintings, and
music with a soul of its own, and verse more
than human. To Degas the toko-nook was "just
name," "and it was nothing more." But he was
forgiven, for he had all unwittingly sowed the
seeds of religion, through faith in his glowing
caladiums. But Grandmother, though all the

120 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

sunlight seemed dusk, and the dawn but as night,
yet clung to her little plant, whose glory was
that it was of no use whatsoever, but in months
to come would be yellow, and would smell.

Farther down river, in the small hamlets of
the bovianders — the people of mixed blood — the
practical was still necessity, but almost every
thatched and wattled hut had its swinging orchid
branch, and perhaps a hideous painted tub with
picketed rim, in which grew a golden splash of
croton. This ostentatious floweritis might fur-
nish a theme for a wholly new phase of the sub-
ject— for in almost every respect these people
are less worthy human beings — physically, men-
tally and morally — than the Indians. But one
cannot shift literary overalls for philosophical
paragraphs in mid-article, so let us take the lit-
tle river steamer down stream for forty miles
to the coast of British Guiana, and there see what
Nature herself does in the way of gardens. We
drive twenty miles or more before we reach
Georgetown, and the sides of the road are lined
for most of the distance with huts and hovels of
East Indian coolies and native Guiana negroes.
Some are made of boxes, others of bark, more
of thatch or rough-hewn boards and barrel staves,

A BIT OF USELESSNESS 121

and some of split bamboo. But they resemble
one another in several respects — all are ram-
shackle, all lean with the grace of Pisa, all have
shutters and doors, so that at night they may be
hermetically closed, and all are half -hidden in the
folds of a curtain of flowers. The most shiftless,
unlovely hovel, poised ready to return to its orig-
inal chemical elements, is embowered in a mosaic
of color, which in a northern garden would be
worth a king's ransom — or to be strictly modern,
should I not say a labor foreman's or a comrade's
ransom!

The deep trench which extends along the front
of these sad dwellings is sometimes blue with wa-
ter hyacinths ; next the water disappears beneath
a maze of tall stalks, topped with a pink mist of
lotus; then come floating lilies and more hya-
cinths. Wherever there is sufficient clear water,
the wonderful curve of a cocoanut palm is etched
upon it, reflection meeting palm, to form a den-
dritic pattern unequaled in human devising.

Over a hut of rusty oil-cans, bougainvillia
stretches its glowing branches, sometimes cerise,
sometimes purple, or allamanders fill the air with
a golden haze from their glowing search-lights,
either hiding the huts altogether, or softening

122 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

their details into picturesque ruins. I remember
one coolie dwelling which was dirtier and less
habitable than the meanest stable, and all around
it were hundreds upon hundreds of frangipanni
blooms — the white and gold temple flowers of
the East — giving forth of scent and color all that
a flower is capable, to alleviate the miserable blot
of human construction. Now and then a flam-
boyant tree comes into view, and as, at night, the
head-lights of an approaching car eclipse all else,
so this tree of burning scarlet draws eye and
mind from adjacent human-made squalor. In
all the tropics of the world I scarcely remember
to have seen more magnificent color than in these
unattended, wilful-grown gardens.

In tropical cities such as Georgetown, there
are very beautiful private gardens, and the pub-
lic one is second only to that of Java. But for
the most part one is as conscious of the very
dreadful borders of brick, or bottles, or conchs, as
of the flowers themselves. Some one who is a
master gardener will some day write of the pos-
sibilities of a tropical garden, which will hold
the reader as does desire to behold the gardens of
Carcassonne itself.

YI
GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS

AGAIN the CJuiana jungle comes wonderfully
to the eye and mysteriously to the mind; again
my khakis and sneakers are skin-comfortable;
again I am squatted on a pleasant mat of leaves
in a miniature gorge, miles back of my Kartabo
bungalow. Life elsewhere has already become
unthinkable. I recall a place boiling with wor-
ried people, rent with unpleasing sounds, and
beset with unsatisfactory pleasures. In less than
a year I shall long for a sight of these worried
people, my ears will strain to catch the unpleas-
ing sounds, and I shall plunge with joy into the
unsatisfactory pleasures. To-day, however, all
these have passed from mind, and I settle down
another notch, head snuggled on knees, and sway,
elephant-fashion, with sheer joy, as a musky, ex-
citing odor comes drifting, apparently by its
own volition, down through the windless little
gorge.

If I permit a concrete, scientific reaction, I

123

124 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

must acknowledge the source to be a passing bug,
— a giant bug, — related distantly to our malodor-
ous northern squash-bug, but emitting a scent as
different as orchids' breath from grocery garlic.
But I accept this delicate volatility as simply an-
other pastel-soft sense-impression — as an ear-
nest of the worthy, smelly things of old jungles.
There is no breeze, no slightest shift of air-par-
ticles; yet down the gorge comes this cloud, — a
cloud unsensible except to nostrils, — eddying as
if swirling around the edges of leaves, riding on
the air as gently as the low, distant crooning of
great, sleepy jungle doves.

With two senses so perfectly occupied, sight
becomes superfluous and I close my eyes. And
straightway the scent and the murmur usurp my
whole mind with a vivid memory. I am still
squatting, but in a dark, fragrant room ; and the
murmur is still of doves ; but the room is in the
cool, still heart of the Queen's Golden Monastery
in northern Burma, within storm-sound of Tibet,
and the doves are perched among the glitter and
tinkling bells of the pagoda roofs. I am squat-
ting very quietly, for I am tired, after photo-
graphing carved peacocks and junglefowl in the
marvelous fretwork of the outer balconies.

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 125

There are idols all about me — or so it would ap-
pear to a missionary; for my part, I can think
only of the wonderful face of the old Lama who
sits near me, a face peaceful with the something
for which most of us would desert what we are
doing, if by that we could attain it. Near him
are two young priests, sitting as motionless as
the Buddha in front of them.

After a half -hour of the strange thing that we
call time, the Lama speaks, very low and very
softly:

"The surface of the mirror is clouded with a
breath."

Out of a long silence one of the neophytes re-
plies, "The mirror can be wiped clear."

Again the world becomes incense and doves, —
in the silence and peace of that monastery, it
may have been a few minutes or a decade, — and
the second Tibetan whispers, "There is no need
to wipe the mirror."

When I have left behind the world of inhar-
monious colors, of polluted waters, of soot-
stained walls and smoke-tinged air, the green of
jungle comes like a cooling bath of delicate tints
and shades. I think of all the green things I have
loved — of malachite in matrix and table-top; of

126 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

jade, not factory-hewn baubles, but age-mel-
lowed signets, fashioned by lovers of their craft,
and seasoned by the toying yellow fingers of gen-
erations of forgotten Chinese emperors — jade,
as Dunsany would say, of the exact shade of the
right color. I think too, of dainty emerald
scarves that are seen and lost in a flash at a dance ;
of the air-cooled, living green of curling break-
ers ; of a lonely light that gleams to starboard of
an unknown passing vessel, and of the transpar-
ent green of northern lights that flicker and play
on winter nights high over the garish glare of
Broadway.

Now, in late afternoon, when I opened my eyes
in the little gorge, the soft green vibrations
merged insensibly with the longer waves of the
doves' voices and with the dying odor. Soon the
green alone was dominant; and when I had fin-
ished thinking of pleasant, far-off green things,
the wonderful emerald of my great tree-frog of
last year came to mind, — Gawain the mysterious,
— and I wondered if I should ever solve his life.

In front of me was a little jungle rainpool.
At the base of the miniature precipice of
the gorge, this pool was a thing of clay. It
was milky in consistence, from the roiling of

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 127

suspended clay; and when the surface caught a
glint of light and reflected it, only the clay and
mud walls about came to the eye. It was a very
regular pool, a man's height in diameter, and, for
all I knew, from two inches to two miles deep. I
became absorbed in a sort of subaquatic mirage,
in which I seemed to distinguish reflections be-
neath the surface. My eyes refocused with a
jerk, and I realized that something had uncon-
sciously been perceived by my rods and cones,
and short-circuited to my duller brain. Where a
moment before was an unbroken translucent sur-
face, were now thirteen strange beings who had
appeared from the depths, and were mumbling
oxygen with trembling lips.

In days to come, through all the months, I
should again and again be surprised and cheated
and puzzled — all phases of delight in the beings
who share the earth's life with me. This was one
of the first of the year, and I stiffened into one
large eye.

I did not know whether they were fish, fairy
shrimps, or frogs ; I had never seen anything like
them, and they were wholly unexpected. I so
much desired to know what they were, that I sat
quietly — as I enjoy keeping a treasured letter

128 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to the last, or reserving the frosting until the cake
is eaten. It occurred to me that, had it not been
for the Kaiser, I might have been forbidden this
mystery; a chain of occurrences: Kaiser — war —
submarines — glass-shortage for dreadnoughts —
mica port-holes needed — Guiana prospector —
abandoned pits — rainy season — mysterious ten-
ants— me!

When I squatted by the side of the pool, no
sign of life was visible. Far up through the
green foliage of the jungle I could see a solid
ceiling of cloud, while beneath me the liquid clay
of the pool was equally opaque and lifeless. As
a seer watches the surface of his crystal ball, so
I gazed at my six-foot circle of milky water.
My shift forward was like the fall of a tree: it
brought into existence about it a temporary cir-
cle of silence and fear — a circle whose periphery
began at once to contract; and after a few min-
utes the gorge again accepted me as a part of its
harmless self. A huge bee zoomed past, and
just behind my head a hummingbird beat the air
into a froth of sound, as vibrant as the richest
tones of a cello. My concentrated interest
seemed to become known to the life of the sur-
rounding glade, and I was bombarded with sight,

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 129

sound, and odor, as if on purpose to distract my
attention. But I remained unmoved, and indica-
tions of rare and desirable beings passed un-
heeded.

A flotilla of little water-striders came rowing
themselves along, racing for a struggling ant
which had fallen into the milky quicksand.
These were in my line of vision, so I watched
them for a while, letting the corner of my eye
keep guard for the real aristocrats of the milky
sea — whoever they were. My eye was close
enough, my elevation sufficiently low to become
one with the water-striders, and to become ex-
cited over the adventures of these little petrels;
and in my absorption I almost forgot my chief
quest. As soaring birds seem at times to rest
against the very substance of cloud, as if upheld
by some thin lift of air, so these insects glided as
easily and skimmed as swiftly upon the surface
film of water. I did not know even the genus
of this tropical form; but insect taxonomists
have been particularly happy in their given
names — I recalled Hydr abates, Aquarius, and
remigis.

The spur- winged jacanas are very skilful in
their dainty treading of water-lily leaves; but

130 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

here were good-sized insects rowing about on the
water itself. They supported themselves on the
four hinder legs, rowing with the middle pair,
and steering with the hinder ones, while the front
limbs were held aloft ready for the seizing of
prey. I watched three of them approach the
ant, which was struggling to reach the shore, and
the first to reach it hesitated not a moment, but
leaped into the air from a take-off of mere aque-
ous surface film, landed full upon the drowning
unfortunate, grasped it, and at the same instant
gave a mighty sweep with its oars, to escape from
its pursuing, envious companions. Off went the
twelve dimples, marking the aquatic footprints
of the trio of striders; and as the bearer of the
ant dodged one of its own kind, it was suddenly
threatened by a small, jet submarine of a diving
beetle. At the very moment when the pursuit
was hottest, and it seemed anybody's ant, I
looked aside, and the little water-bugs passed
from my sight forever-^for scattered over the
surface were seven strange, mumbling mouths.
Close as I was, their nature still eluded me. At
my slightest movement all vanished, not with the
virile splash of a fish or the healthy roll and dip
of a porpoise, but with a weird, vertical with-

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 131

drawing — the seven dissolving into the milk to
join their six fellows.

This was sufficient to banish further medita-
tive surmising, and I crept swiftly to a point of
vantage, and with sweep-net awaited their reap-
pearance. It was five minutes before faint, dis-
colored spots indicated their rising, and at least
two minutes more before they actually disturbed
the surface. With eight or nine in view, I dipped
quickly and got nothing. Then I sank my net
deeply and waited again. This time ten minutes
passed, and then I swept deep and swiftly, and
drew up the net with four flopping, struggling
super-tadpoles. They struggled for only a mo-
ment, and then lay quietly waiting for what
might be sent by the guardian of the fate of tad-
poles— surely some quaint little god-relation of
Neptune, Pan, and St. Vitus. Gently shunted
into a glass jar, these surprising tads accepted
the new environment with quiet philosophy; and
when I reached the laboratory and transferred
them again, they dignifiedly righted themselves
in the swirling current, and hung in mid-aqua-
rium, waiting — forever waiting.

It was difficult to think of them as tadpoles,
when the word brought to mind hosts of little

132 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

black wrigglers filling puddles and swamps of
our northern country. These were slow-moving,
graceful creatures, partly transparent, partly re-
flecting every hue of the spectrum, with broad,
waving scarlet and hyaline fins, and strange,
fish-like mouths and eyes. Their habits were as
unpollywoglike as their appearance. I visited
their micaceous pool again and again; and if I
could have spent days instead of hours with them,
no moment of ennui would have intervened.

My acquaintanceship with tadpoles in the past
had not aroused me to enthusiasm in the matter
of their mental ability; as, for example, the in-
mates of the next aquarium to that of the Red-
fins, where 1 kept a herd or brood or school of
Short-tailed Blacks — pollywogs of the Giant
Toad (Bufo marimis). At earliest dawn they
swam aimlessly about and mumbled ; at high noon
they mumbled and still swam; at midnight they
refused to be otherwise occupied. It was possible
to alarm them; but even while they fled they
mumbled.

In bodily form my Redfins were fish, but men-
tally they had advanced a little beyond the usual
tadpole train of reactions, reaching forward to-
ward the varied activities of the future amphi-

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 133

bian. One noticeable thing was their segregation,
whether in the mica pools, or in two other smaller
ones near by, in which I found them. Each held
a pure culture of Redfins, and I found that this
was no accident, but aided and enforced by the
tads themselves. Twice, while I watched them,
I saw definite pursuit of an alien pollywog, — the
larva of the Scarlet-thighed Leaf -walker (Phyl-
lobates inguinalis), — which fled headlong. The
second time the attack was so persistent that the
lesser tadpole leaped from the water, wriggled
its way to a damp heap of leaves, and slipped
down between them. For tadpoles to take such
action as this was as reasonable as for an orchid
to push a fellow blossom aside on the approach
of a fertilizing hawk-moth. This momentary co-
operation, and the concerted elimination of the
undesired tadpole, affected me as the thought of
the first consciousness of power of synchronous
rhythm coming to ape men : it seemed a spark of
tadpole genius — an adumbration of possibilities
which now would end in the dull consciousness
of the future frog, but which might, in past ages,
have been a vital link in the development of an
ancestral Ereops.

My Redfins were assuredly no common tad-

134 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

poles, and an intolerant pollywog offers worthy
research for the naturalist. Straining their me-
dium of its opacity, I drew off the clayey liquid
and replaced it with the clearer brown, wallaba-
stained water of the Mazaruni ; and thereafter all
their doings, all their intimacies, were at my
mercy. I felt as must have felt the first aviator
who flew unheralded over an oriental city, with
its patios and house-roofs spread naked beneath
him.

It was on one of the early days of observation
that an astounding thought came to me — before
I had lost perspective in intensive watching, be-
fore familiarity had assuaged some of the mar-
vel of these super-tadpoles. Most of those in my
jar were of a like size, just short of an inch; but
one was much larger, and correspondingly gor-
geous in color and graceful in movement. As
she swept slowly past my line of vision, she turned
and looked, first at me, then up at the limits of
her world, with a slow deliberateness and a hint
of expression which struck deep into my memory.
Green came to mind, — something clad in a smock
of emerald, with a waistcoat of mother-of-pearl,
and great sprawling arms, — and I found myself
thinking of Gawain, our mystery frog of a year

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 135

ago, who came without warning, and withheld
all the secrets of his life. And I glanced again
at this super-tad, — as unlike her ultimate devel-
opment as the grub is unlike the beetle, — and one
of us exclaimed, "It is the same, or nearly, but
more delicate, more beautiful; it must be Guine-
vere." And so, probably for the first time in the
world, there came to be a pet tadpole, one with
an absurd name which will forever be more sig-
nificant to us than the term applied by a forgot-
ten herpetologist many years ago.

And Guinevere became known to all who had
to do with the laboratory. Her health and daily
development and color-change were things to be
inquired after and discussed; one of us watched
her closely and made notes of her life, one painted
every radical development of color and pattern,
another photographed her, and another brought
her delectable scum. She was waited upon as
sedulously as a termite queen. And she re-
warded us by living, which was all we asked.

It is difficult for a diver to express his emo-
tions on paper, and verbal arguments with a den-
tist are usually one-sided. So must the spirit
of a tadpole suffer greatly from handicaps of the
flesh. A mumbling mouth and an uncontrollable,

136 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

flagellating tail, connected by a pinwheel of in-
testine, are scant material wherewith to attempt
new experiments, whereon to nourish aspirations.
Yet the Redfins, as typified by Guinevere, have
done both, and given time enough, they may emu-
late or surpass the achievements of larval axo-
lotls, or the astounding egg-producing maggots
of certain gnats, thus realizing all the possibil-
ities of froghood while yet cribbed within the
lowly casing of a pollywog.

In the first place Guinevere had ceased being
positively thigmotactic, and, writing as a tech-
nical herpetologist, I need add no more. In
fact, all my readers, whether Batrachologists or
Casuals, will agree that this is an unheard-of
achievement. But before I loosen the technical
etymology and become casually more explicit, let
me hold this term in suspense a moment, as I
once did, fascinated by the sheer sound of the syl-
lables, as they first came to my ears years ago in
a university lecture. There is that of possibility
in being positively thigmotactic which makes one
dread the necessity of exposing and limiting its
meaning, of digging down to its mathematically
accurate roots. It could never be called a flower
of speech: it is an over-ripe fruit rather: heavy-

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 137

stoned, thin-fleshed — an essentially practical
term. It is eminently suited to its purpose, and
so widely used that my friend the editor must ac-
cept it ; not looking askance as he did at my defi-
nition of a vampire as a vespertilial anaesthetist,
or breaking into open but wholly ineffectual re-
bellion, at the past tense of the verb to cande-
labra. I admit that the conjugation

I candelabra
You candelabra
He candelabras

arouses a ripple of confusion in the mind ; but it
is far more important to use words than to parse
them, anyway, so I acclaim perfect clarity for
"The fireflies candelabraed the trees!"

Not to know the precise meaning of being
positively thigmotactic is a stimulant to the im-
agination, which opens the way to an entire es-
Say on the disadvantages of education — a thought
once strongly aroused by the glorious red-and-
gold hieroglyphic signs of the Peking merchants
1 — signs which have always thrilled me more than
the utmost efforts of our modern psychological
advertisers.

Having crossed unconsciously by such a slen-

138 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

der etymological bridge from my jungle tadpole
to China, it occurs to me that the Chinese are the
most positively thigmotactic people in the world.
I have walked through block after block of sub-
terranean catacombs, beneath city streets which
were literally packed full of humanity, and I
have seen hot mud pondlets along the Min River
wholly eclipsed by shivering Chinamen packed
sardinewise, twenty or thirty in layers, or radiat-
ing like the spokes of a great wheel which has
fallen into the mud.

From my brood of Short-tailed Blacks, a half-
dozen tadpoles wandered off now and then, each
scum-mumbling by himself. Shortly his positiv-
ism asserted itself and back he wriggled, twisting
in and out of the mass of his fellows, or at the
approach of danger nuzzling into the dead leaves
at the bottom, content only with the feeling of
something pressing against his sides and tail.
His physical make-up, simple as it is, has proved
perfectly adapted to this touch system of life:
flat-bottomed, with rather narrow, paddle-shaped
tail-fins wh«'ch, beginning well back of the body,
interfere in no way with the pcllywog's instincts,
he can thigmotact to his heart's content. His
eyes are also adapted to looking upward, dis-

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 139

cerning dimly dangers from above, and whatever
else catches the attention of a bottom-loving pol-
lywog. His mouth is well below, as best suits
bottom mumbling.

Compared with these polloi pollywogs, Red-
fins were as hummingbirds to quail. Their very
origin was unique; for while the toad tadpoles
wriggled their way free from egg gelatine de-
posited in the water itself, the Redfins were lit-
erally rained down. Within a folded leaf the
parents left the eggs — a leaf carefully chosen as
overhanging a suitable ditch, or pit, or puddle.
If all signs of weather and season failed and a
sudden drought set in, sap would dry, leaf would
shrivel, and the pitiful gamble for life of the little
jungle frogs would be lost; the spoonful of froth
would collapse bubble by bubble, and, finally, a
thin dry film on the brown leaf would in turn
vanish, and Guinevere and her companions would
never have been.

But untold centuries of unconscious necessity
have made these tree-frogs infallible weather
prophets, and the liberating rain soon sifted
through the jungle foliage. In the streaming
drops which funneled from the curled leaf, tad-
pole after tadpole hurtled downward and

140 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

splashed headlong into the water; their parents
and the rain and gravitation had performed their
part, and from now on fate lay with the super-
tads themselves — except when a passing natural-
ist brought new complications, new demands of
Karma, as strange and unpredictable as if from
another planet or universe.

Only close examination showed that these were
tadpoles, not fish, judged by the staring eyes,
and broad fins stained above and below with
orange-scarlet — colors doomed to oblivion in the
native, milky waters, but glowing brilliantly in
my aquarium. Although they were provided
with such an expanse of fin, the only part used
for ordinary progression was the extreme tip, a
mere threadlike streamer, which whipped in
never-ending spirals, lashing forward, backward,
and sideways. So rapid was this motion, and so
short the flagellum, that the tadpole did not even
tremble or vibrate as it moved, but forged stead-
ily onward, without a tremor.

The head was buffy yellow, changing to bit-
tersweet orange back of the eyes and on the gills.
The body was dotted with a host of minute specks
of gold and silver. On the sides and below, this
gave place to a rich bronze, and then to a clear,

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 141

iridescent silvery blue. The eye proper was sil-
very white, but the upper part of the eyeball
fairly glowed with color. In front it was jet
black flecked with gold, merging behind into a
brilliant blue. Yet this patch of jeweled tissue
was visible only rarely as the tadpole turned for-
ward, and in the opaque liquid of the mica pool
must have ever been hidden. And even if plainly
seen, of what use was a shred of rainbow to a
sexless tadpole in the depths of a shady pool!

With high-arched fins, beginning at neck and
throat, body compressed as in a racing yacht,
there could be no bottom life for Guinevere.
Whenever she touched a horizontal surface, —
whether leaf or twig, — she careened; when she
sculled through a narrow passage in the floating
algse, her fins bent and rippled as they were
pressed body wards. So she and her fellow brood
lived in mid-aquarium, or at most rested lightly
against stem or glass, suspended by gentle suc-
tion of the complex mouth. Once, when I in-
serted a long streamer of delicate water-weed, it
remained upright, like some strange tree of car-
boniferous memory. After an hour I found this
the perching-place of fourteen Redfin tads, and
at the very summit was Guinevere. The rest

142 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

were arranged nearly in altitudinal size — two
large tadpoles being close below Guinevere, and
a bevy of six tiny chaps lowest down. All were
lightly poised, swaying in mid-water, at a gently
sloping angle, like some unheard-of, orange-
stained, aquatic autumn foliage.

For two weeks Guinevere remained almost as
I have described her, gaining slightly in size, but
with little alteration of color or pattern. Then
came the time of the great change : we felt it to
be imminent before any outward signs indicated
its approach. And for four more days there was
no hint except the sudden growth of the hind
legs. From tiny dangling appendages with mi-
nute toes and indefinite knees, they enlarged and
bent, and became miniature but perfect frog's
limbs.

She had now reached a length of two inches,
and her delicate colors and waving fins made her
daily more marvelous. The strange thing about
the hind limbs was that, although so large and
perfect, they were quite useless. They could not
even be unflexed ; and other mere pollywogs near
by were wriggling toes, calves, and thighs while
yet these were but imperfect buds. When she
dived suddenly, the toes occasionally moved a

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 143

little; but as a whole, they merely sagged and
drifted like some extraneous things entangled in
the body.

Smoothly and gracefully Guinevere moved
about the aquarium. Her gills lifted and closed
rhythmically — twice as slowly as compared with
the three or four times every second of her
breathless young tadpolehood. Several times on
the fourteenth day, she came quietly to the sur-
face for a gulp of air.

Looking at her from above, two little bulges
were visible on either side of the body — the en-
sheathed elbows pressing outward. Twice, when
she lurched forward in alarm, I saw these front
limbs jerk spasmodically; and when she was rest-
ing quietly, they rubbed and pushed impatiently
against their mittened tissue.

And now began a restless shifting, a slow,
strange dance in mid-water, wholly unlike any
movement of her smaller companions; up and
down, slowly revolving on oblique planes, with
rhythmical turns and sinkings — this continued
for an hour, when I was called for lunch. And
as if to punish me for this material digression
and desertion, when I returned, in half an hour,
the miracle had happened.

144 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Guinevere still danced in stately cadence, with
the other Redfins at a distance going about their
several businesses. She danced alone — a dance
of change, of happenings of tremendous import,
of symbolism as majestic as it was age-old. Here
in this little glass aquarium the tadpole Guine-
vere had just freed her arms — she, with waving
scarlet fins, watching me with lidless white and
staring eyes, still with fish-like, fin-bound body.
She danced upright, with new-born arms folded
across her breast, tail-tip flagellating frenziedly,
stretching long fingers with disks like cym-
bals, reaching out for the land she had never
trod, limbs flexed for leaps she had never
made.

A few days before and Guinevere had been a
fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly,
somewhere between my salad and coffee, she be-
came an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all,
her hands were mobile, her feet useless ; and when
the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly to
the bottom, she came to rest on the very tips of
her two longest fingers; her legs and toes still
drifting high and useless. Just before she
ceased, her arms stretched out right froggily,
her weird eyes rolled about, and she gulped a

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 145

mighty gulp of the strange thin medium that cov-
ered the surface of her liquid home.

At midnight of this same day only three things
existed in the world — on my table I turned from
the Bhagavad-Gita to Drinkwater's Reverie and
back again; then I looked up to the jar of clear
water and watched Guinevere hovering motion-
less. At six the next morning she was crouched
safely on a bit of paper a foot from the aqua-
rium. She had missed the open window, the
four-foot drop to the floor, and a neighboring
aquarium stocked with voracious fish : surely the
gods of pollywogs were kind to me. The great
fins were gone — dissolved into blobs of dull pink;
the tail was a mere stub, the feet drawn close,
and a glance at her head showed that Guinevere
had become a frog almost within an hour. Three
things I hastened to observe: the pupils of her
eyes were vertical, revealing her genus Phyllo-
medusa (making apt our choice of the feminine) ;
by a gentle urging I saw that the first and sec-
ond toes were equal in length; and a glance at
her little humped back showed a scattering of
white calcareous spots, giving the clue to her
specific personality — bicolor: thus were we in-
troduced to Phyllomedusa bicolor, alias Guine-

146 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

vere, and thus was established beyond doubt her
close relationship to Gawain.

During that first day, within three hours, dur-
ing most of which I watched her closely, Guine-
vere's change in color was beyond belief. For
an hour she leaped from time to time; but after
that, and for the rest of her life, she crept in
strange unfroglike fashion, raised high on all
four limbs, with her stubby tail curled upward,
and reaching out one weird limb after another.
If one's hand approached within a foot, she saw
it and stretched forth appealing, skinny fingers.

At two o'clock she was clad in a general cinna-
mon buff; then a shade of glaucous green began
to creep over head and upper eyelids, onward
over her face, finally coloring body and limbs.
Beneath, the little pollyfrog fairly glowed with
bright apricot orange, throat and tail amparo
purple, mouth green, and sides rich pale blue.
To this maze of color we must add a strange,
new expression, born of the prominent eyes, to-
gether with the line of the mouth extending
straight back with a final jeering, upward lift;
in front, the lower lip thick and protruding,
which, with the slanting eyes, gave a leering,
devilish smirk, while her set, stiff, exact posture

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 147

compelled a vivid thought of the sphinx. Never
have I seen such a remarkable combination. It
fascinated us. We looked at Guinevere, and
then at the tadpoles swimming quietly in their
tank, and evolution in its wildest conceptions ap-
peared a tame truism.

This was the acme of Guinevere's change, the
pinnacle of her development. Thereafter her
transformations were rhythmical, alternating
with the day and night. Through the nights of
activity she was garbed in rich, warm brown.
With the coming of dawn, as she climbed slowly
upward, her color shifted through chestnut to
maroon; this maroon then died out on the mid-
back to a delicate, dull violet-blue, which in turn
became obscured in the sunlight by turquoise,
which crept slowly along the sides. Carefully
and laboriously she clambered up, up to the top-
most frond, and there performed her little toilet,
scraping head and face with her hands, passing
the hinder limbs over her back to brush off every
grain of sand- The eyes had meanwhile lost their
black-flecked, golden, nocturnal iridescence, and
had gradually paled to a clear silvery blue, while
the great pupil of darkness narrowed to a slit.

Little by little her limbs and digits were drawn

148 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

in out of sight, and the tiny jeweled being
crouched low, hoping for a day of comfortable
clouds, a little moisture, and a swift passage of
time to the next period of darkness, when it was
fitting and right for Guineveres to seek their
small meed of sustenance, to grow to frog's
full estate, and to fulfil as well as might be what
destiny the jungle offered. To unravel the
meaning of it all is beyond even attempting. The
breath of mist ever clouds the mirror, and only
as regards a tiny segment of the life-history of
Guinevere can I say, "There is no need to wipe
the mirror."

VII
A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION

PTERODACTYL PUPS led me to the wonderful
Attas — the most astounding of the jungle labor-
unions. We were all sitting on the Mazaruni
bank, the night before the full moon, immediately
in front of my British Guiana laboratory. All
the jungle was silent in the white light, with now
and then the splash of a big river fish. On the
end of the bench was the monosyllabic Scot, who
ceased the exquisite painting of mora buttresses
and jungle shadows only for the equal fascina-
tion of searching bats for parasites. Then the
great physician, who had come six thousand
miles to peer into the eyes of birds and lizards in
my dark-room, working with a gentle hypnotic
manner that made the little beings seem to enjoy
the experience. On my right sat an army cap-
tain, who had given more thought to the possible
secrets of French chaffinches than to the ap-
proaching barrage. There was also the artist,
who could draw a lizard's head like a Japanese

149

150 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

print, but preferred to depict impressionistic
Laocoon roots.

These and others sat with me on the long bench
and watched the moonpath. The conversation
had begun with possible former life on the moon,
then shifted to Conan Doyle's The Lost World,
based on the great Roraima plateau, a hundred
and fifty miles west of where we were sitting.
Then we spoke of the amusing world-wide ru-
mor, which had started no one knows how, that
I had recently discovered a pterodactyl. One
delightful result of this had been a letter from
a little English girl, which would have made a
worthy chapter-subject for Dream Days. For
years she and her little sister had peopled a wood
near her home with pterodactyls, but had some-
how never quite seen one ; and would I tell her a
little about them — whether they had scales, or
made nests ; so that those in the wood might be a
little easier to recognize.

When strange things are discussed for a long
time, in the light of a tropical moon, at the edge
of a dark, whispering jungle, the mind becomes
singularly imaginative and receptive; and, as I
looked through powerful binoculars at the great
suspended globe, the dead craters and precipices

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 151

became very vivid and near. Suddenly, without
warning, there flapped into my field, a huge
shapeless creature. It was no bird, and there
was nothing of the bat in its flight — the wings
moved with steady rhythmical beats, and drove
it straight onward. The wings were skinny, the
body large and of a pale ashy hue. For a mo-
ment I was shaken. One of the others had seen
it, and he, too, did not speak, but concentrated
every sense into the end of the little tubes. By
the time I had begun to find words, I realized
that a giant fruit bat had flown from utter dark-
ness across my line of sight; and by close watch-
ing we soon saw others. But for a very few sec-
onds these Pterodactyl Pups, as I nicknamed
them, gave me all the thrill of a sudden glimpse
into the life of past ages. The last time I had
seen fruit bats was in the gardens of Perideniya,
Ceylon. I had forgotten that they occurred in
Guiana, and was wholly unprepared for the sight
of bats a yard across, with a heron's flight, pass-
ing high over the Mazaruni in the moonlight.

The talk ended on the misfortune of the con-
figuration of human anatomy, which makes sky-
searching so uncomfortable a habit. This out-
look was probably developed to a greater extent

152 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

during the war than ever before; and I can re«
member many evenings in Paris and London
when a sinister half -moon kept the faces of mil-
lions turned searchingly upward. But whether
in city or jungle, sky-scanning is a neck-aching
affair.

The following day rny experience with the
Pterodactyl Pups was not forgotten, and as a
direct result of looking out for soaring vultures
and eagles, with hopes of again seeing a white-
plumaged King and the regal Harpy, I caught
sight of a tiny mote high up in mid-sky. I
thought at first it was a martin or swift; but it
descended, slowly spiraling, and became too
small for any bird. With a final, long, descend-
ing curve, it alighted in the compound of our
bungalow laboratory and rested quietly — a great
queen of the leaf -cutting Attas returning from
her marriage flight. After a few minutes she
stirred, walked a few steps, cleaned her antenna?,
and searched nervously about on the sand. A
foot away was a tiny sprig of indigo, the off-
spring of some seed planted two or three cen-
turies ago by a thrifty Dutchman. In the shade
of its three leaves the insect paused, and at once
began scraping at the sand with her jaws. She

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 163

loosened grain after grain, and as they came
free they were moistened, agglutinated, and
pressed back against her fore-legs. When at
last a good-sized ball was formed, she picked it
up, turned around and, after some fussy indeci-
sion, deposited it on the sand behind her. Then
she returned to the very shallow, round depres-
sion, and began to gather a second ball.

I thought of the first handful of sand throwA
out for the base of Cheops, of the first brick
placed in position for the Great Wall, of a fresh-
cut trunk, rough-hewn and squared for a log-
cabin on Manhattan; of the first shovelful of
earth flung out of the line of the Panama Canal.
Yet none seemed worthy of comparison with even
what little I knew of the significance of this ant's
labor, for this was earnest of what would make
trivial the engineering skill of Egyptians, of
Chinese patience, of municipal pride and conti-
nental schism.

Imagine sawing off a barn-door at the top of
a giant sequoia, growing at the bottom of the
Grand Canon, and then, with five or six children
clinging to it, descending the tree, and carrying
it up the canon walls against a subway rush of
rude people, who elbowed and pushed blindly

154 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

against you. This is what hundreds of leaf-cut^
ting ants accomplish daily, when cutting leaves
from a tall bush, at the foot of the bank near the?
laboratory.

There are three dominant labor-unions in the
jungle, all social insects, two of them ants, never
interfering with each other's field of action, and
all supremely illustrative of conditions resulting
from absolute equality, free-and-equalness, com-
munalism, socialism carried to the (forgive me!)
anth power. The Army Ants are carnivorous,
predatory, militant nomads; the Termites are
vegetarian scavengers, sedentary, negative and
provincial; the Attas, or leaf -cutting ants, are
vegetarians, active and dominant, and in many;
ways the most interesting of all.

The casual observer becomes aware of thenl
through their raids upon gardens ; and indeed the;
Attas are a very serious menace to agriculture
in many parts of the tropics, where their nests^
although underground, may be as large as st
house and contain millions of individuals. While*
their choice among wild plants is exceedingly
varied, it seems that there are certain things they
will not touch; but when any human-reared
flower, vegetable, shrub, vine, or tree is planted*

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 155

the Attas rejoice, and straightway desert the na-
tive vegetation to fall upon the newcomers.
Their whims and irregular feeding habits make
it difficult to guard against them. They will
work all round a garden for weeks, perhaps pass
through it en route to some tree that they are de-
foliating, and then suddenly, one night, every
Atta in the world seems possessed with a desire
to work havoc, and at daylight the next morning,
the garden looks like winter stubble — a vast ex-
panse of stems and twigs, without a single re-
maining leaf. Volumes have been written, and
a whole chemist's shop of deadly concoctions de-
yised, for combating these ants, and still they go
Steadily on, gathering leaves which, as we shall
see, they do not even use for food.

Although essentially a tropical family, Attas
have pushed as far north as New Jersey, where
they make a tiny nest, a few inches across, and
bring to it bits of pine needles.

In a jungle Baedeker, we should double-star
these insects, and paragraph them as "Atta,
named by Fabricius in 1804 ; the Kartabo species,
cephalotes; Leaf -cutting or Cushie or Parasol
Ants; very abundant. Atta, a subgenus of Atta,
which is a genus of Attii, which is a tribe of Myr-

156 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

midnce, which is a subfamily of Formicida"
etc.

With a feeling of slightly greater intimacy, of
mental possession, we set out, armed with a name
of one hundred and seventeen years' standing,
and find a hig Atta worker carving away at a
bit of leaf, exactly as his ancestors had done for
probably one hundred and seventeen thousand
years.

We gently lift him from his labor, and a drop
of chloroform banishes from his ganglia all mem-
ory of the hundred thousand years of pruning.
Under the lens his strange personality becomes
manifest, and we wonder whether the old Danish
zoologist had in mind the slender toe-tips which
support him, or in a chuckling mood made him
a namesake of C. Quintius Atta. A close-up
shows a very comic little being, encased in a
prickly, chestnut-colored armor, which should
make him fearless in a den of a hundred anteat-
ers. The front view of his head is a bit mephis-
tophelian, for it is drawn upward into two horny
spines ; but the side view recalls a little girl with
her hair brushed very tightly up and back from
her face.

The connection between Atta and the world

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 157

about him is furnished by this same head: two
huge, flail-shaped attennae arching up like aerial,
detached eyebrows — vehicles, through their
golden pile, of senses which foil our most delicate
tests. Outside of these are two little shoe-button
eyes ; and we are not certain whether they reflect
to the head ganglion two or three hundred bits
of leaf, or one large mosaic leaf. Below all is
swung the pair of great scythes, so edged and
hung that they can function as jaws, rip-saws,
scissors, forceps, and clamps. The thorax, like
the head of a titanothere, bears three pairs of
horns — a great irregular expanse of tumbled,
rock-like skin and thorn, a foundation for three
pairs of long legs, and sheltering somewhere in
its heart a thread of ant-life; finally, two little
pedicels lead to a rounded abdomen, smaller than
the head. This Third-of-an-ineh is a worker
Atta to the physical eye; and if we catch another,
or ten, or ten million, we find that some are small,
others much larger, but that all are cast in the
same mold, all indistinguishable except, perhaps,
jfco the shoe-button eyes.

When a worker has traveled along the Atta
trails, and has followed the temporary mob-in-
stinct and climbed bush or tree, the same irresist-

158 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ible force drives him out upon a leaf. Here, ap-
parently, instinct slightly loosens its hold, and he
seems to become individual for a moment, to look
about, and to decide upon a suitable edge or cor-
ner of green leaf. But even in this he probably
has no choice. At any rate, he secures a good
hold and sinks his jaws into the tissue. Stand-
ing firmly on the leaf, he measures his distance
by cutting across a segment of a circle, with one
of his hind feet as a center. This gives a very
true curve, and provides a leaf-load of suitable
size. He does not scissor his way across, but bit
by bit sinks the tip of one jaw, hook-like, into the
surface, and brings the other up to it, slicing
through the tissue with surprising ease. He
stands upon the leaf, and I always expect to see
him cut himself and his load free, Irishman-wise.
But one or two of his feet have invariably secured
a grip on the plant, sufficient to hold him safely.
Even if one or two of his fellows are at work
farther down the leaf, he has power enough in
his slight grip to suspend all until they have fin-
ished and clambered up over him with their loads.
Holding his bit of leaf edge-wise, he bends his
head down as far as possible, and secures a strong
purchase along the very rim. Then, as he raises

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 159

his head, the leaf rises with it, suspended high
over his back, out of the way. Down the stem
or tree-trunk he trudges, head first, fighting
with gravitation, until he reaches the ground.
After a few feet, or, measured by his stature,
several hundred yards, his infallible instinct
guides him around pebble boulders, mossy or-
chards, and grass jungles to a specially prepared
path.

Thus in words, in sentences, we may describe
the cutting of a single leaf; but only in the im-
agination can we visualize the cell-like or crys-
tal-like duplication of this throughout all the
great forests of Guiana and of South America.
As I write, a million jaws snip through their
stint; as you read, ten million Attas begin on
new bits of leaf. And all in silence and in dim
light, legions passing along the little jungle
roads, unending lines of trembling banners, a
political parade of ultra socialism, a procession
of chlorophyll floats illustrating unreasoning un-
morality, a fairy replica of "Birnam Forest come
to Dunsinane."

In their leaf-cutting, Attas have mastered
mass, but not form. I have never seen one cut
off a piece too heavy to carry, but many a hard-

160 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

sliced bit has had to be deserted because of the
configuration of the upper edge. On almost any
trail, an ant can be found with a two-inch stem
of grass, attempting to pass under a twig an inch
overhead. After five or ten minutes of pushing,
backing, and pulling, he may accidentally march
off to one side, or reach up and climb over; but
usually he drops his burden. His little works
have been wound up, and set at the mark
"home"; and though he has now dropped the
prize for which he walked a dozen ant-miles, yet
any idea of cutting another stem, or of picking
up a slice of leaf from those lying along the trail,
never occurs to him. He sets off homeward, and
if any emotion of sorrow, regret, disappointment,
or secret relief troubles his ganglia, no trace of
it appears in antennae, carriage, or speed. I can
very readily conceive of his trudging sturdily all
the way back to the nest, entering it, and going
to the place where he would have dumped his
load, having fulfilled his duty in the spirit at
least. Then, if there comes a click in his internal
time-clock, he may set out upon another quest —
more cabined, cribbed, and confined than any
member of a Cook's tourist party.

I once watched an ant with a piece of leaf

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 161

which had a regular shepherd's crook at the top,
and if his adventures of fifty feet could have been
caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chap-
lin would have had an arthropod rival. It hooked
on stems and pulled its bearer off his feet, it ca-
reened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at
one place mixing up with half a dozen. A big
thistledown became tangled in it, and well-nigh
blew away with leaf and all ; hardly a foot of his
path was smooth-going. But he persisted, and I
watched him reach the nest, after two hours of
tugging and falling and interference with traffic.

Occasionally an ant will slip in crossing a
twiggy crevasse, and his leaf become tightly
wedged. After sprawling on his back and vainly
clawing at the air for a while, he gets up, brushes
off his antenna?, and sets to work. For fifteen
minutes I have watched an Atta in this predica-
ment, stodgily endeavoring to lift his leaf while
standing on it at the same time. The equation
of push equaling pull is fourth dimensional to
the Attas.

With all this terrible expenditure of energy,
the activities of these ants are functional within
very narrow limits. The blazing sun causes them
to drop their burdens and flee for home ; a heavy

162 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

wind frustrates them, for they cannot reef.
When a gale arises and sweeps an exposed por-
tion of the trail, their only resource is to cut
away all sail and heave it overboard. A sudden
downpour reduces a thousand banners and wav-
ing, bright-colored petals to debris, to be trod-
den under foot. Sometimes, after a ten-minute
storm, the trails will be carpeted with thousands
of bits of green mosaic, which the outgoing hordes
will trample in their search for more leaves. On
a dark night little seems to be done ; but at dawn
and dusk, and in the moonlight or clear star-
light, the greatest activity is manifest.

Attas are such unpalatable creatures that they
are singularly free from dangers. There is a
tacit armistice between them and the other labor-
unions. The army ants occasionally make use
of their trails when they are deserted; but when
the two great races of ants meet, each antennses
the aura of the other, and turns respectfully
aside. When termites wish to traverse an Atta
trail, they burrow beneath it, or build a covered
causeway across, through which they pass and
repass at will, and over which the Attas trudge,
uncaring and unconscious of its significance.

Only creatures with the toughtest of diges-

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 163

tions would dare to include these prickly, strong-
jawed, meatless insects in a bill of fare. Now
and then I have found an ani, or black cuckoo,
with a few in its stomach: but an ani can swal-
low a stinging-haired caterpillar and enjoy it.
The most consistent feeder upon Attas is the
giant marine toad. Two hundred Attas in a
night is not an uncommon meal, the exact num-
ber being verifiable by a count of the undigested
remains of heads and abdomens. Bufo marinus
is the gardener's best friend in this tropic land,
and besides, he is a gentleman and a philoso-
pher, if ever an amphibian was one.

While the cutting of living foliage is the chief
aim in life of these ants, yet they take advan-
tage of the flotsam and jetsam along the shore,
and each low tide finds a column from some near-
by nest salvaging flowerets, leaves, and even tiny
berries. A sudden wash of tide lifts a hundred
ants with their burdens and then sets them down
again, when they start off as if nothing had hap-
pened.

The paths or trails of the Attas represent rery
remarkable feats of engineering, and wind about
through jungle and glade for surprising dis-
tances. I once traced a very old and wide trail

164 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

for well over two hundred yards. Taking little
Third-of-an-inch for a type (although he would
rank as a rather large Atta), and comparing
him with a six-foot man, we reckon this trail,
ant-ratio, as a full twenty-five miles. Belt re-
cords a leaf -cutter's trail half a mile long, which
would mean that every ant that went out, cut
his tiny bit of leaf, and returned, would traverse
a distance of a hundred and sixteen miles. This
was an extreme; but our Atta may take it for
granted, speaking antly, that once on the home
trail, he has, at the least, four or five miles ahead
of him.

The Atta roads are clean swept, as straight
as possible, and very conspicuous in the jungle.
The chief high-roads leading from very large
nests are a good foot across, and the white sand
of their beds is visible a long distance away. I
once knew a family of opossums living in a stump
in the center of a dense thicket. When they left
at evening, they always climbed along as far as
an Atta trail, dropped down to it, and followed
it for twenty or thirty yards. During the rains
I have occasionally found tracks of agoutis and
deer in these roads. So it would be very possi-
ble for the Attas to lay the foundation for an

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 165

animal trail, and this, a la calf -path, for the street
of a future city.

The part that scent plays in the trails is evi-
denced if we scatter an inch or two of fresh sand
across the road. A mass of ants banks against
the strange obstruction on both sides, on the one
hand a solid phalanx of waving green banners,
and on the other a mob of empty- jawed workers
with wildly waving antenna. Scouts from both
sides slowly wander forward, and finally reach
one another and pass across. But not for ten
minutes does anything like regular traffic begin
again.

When carrying a large piece of leaf, and trav-
eling at a fair rate of speed, the ants average
about a foot in ten seconds, although many go
the same distance in five. I tested the speed of
an Atta, and then I saw that its leaf seemed
to have a peculiar-shaped bug upon it, and picked
it up with its bearer. Finding the blemish to be
only a bit of fungus, I replaced it. Half an
hour later I was seated by a trail far away, when
suddenly my ant with the blemished spot ap-
peared. It was unmistakable, for I had noticed
that the spot was exactly that of the Egyptian
symbol of life. I paced the trail, and found jthat

166 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

seventy yards away it joined the spot where I
had first seen my friend. So, with occasional
spurts, he had done two hundred and ten feet
in thirty minutes, and this in spite of the fact
that he had picked up a supercargo.

Two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen,
under the proper stimulus, invariably result in
water; two and two, considered calmly and with-
out passion, combine into four; the workings of
instinct, especially in social insects, is so mechan-
ical that its results can almost be demonstrated
in formula; and yet here was my Atta leaf-
carrier burdened with a minim. The worker At-
tas vary greatly in size, as a glance at a populous
trail will show. They have been christened mac-
rergates, desmergates and micrer gates; or we
may call the largest Maxims, the average middle
class Mediums, and the tiny chaps Minims, and
all have more or less separate functions in the
ecology of the colony. The Minims are replicas
in miniature of the big chaps, except that their
armor is pale cinnamon rather than chestnut.
Although they can bite ferociously, they are too
small to cut through leaves, and they have very
definite duties in the nest; yet they are found

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 167

with every leaf-cutting gang, hastening along
with their larger brethren, but never doing any-
thing, that I could detect, at their journey's end.
I have a suspicion that the little Minims, who
are very numerous, function as light cavalry;
for in case of danger they are as eager at attack
as the great soldiers, and the leaf-cutters, ab-
sorbed in their arduous labor, would benefit
greatly from the immunity ensured by a flying
corps of their little bulldog comrades.

I can readily imagine that these nestling Min-
ims become weary and foot-sore (like bank-
clerks guarding a reservoir), and if instinct al-
lows such abominable individuality, they must
often wish themselves back at the nest, for every
mile of a Medium is three miles to them.

Here is where our mechanical formula breaks
down; for, often, as many as one in every five
leaves that pass bears aloft a Minim or two, cling-
ing desperately to the waving leaf and getting
a free ride at the expense of the already over-
burdened Medium. Ten is the extreme number
seen, but six to eight Minims collected on a sin-
gle leaf is not uncommon. Several times I have
seen one of these little banner-riders shift deftly

168 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

from leaf to leaf, when a swifter carrier passed
by, as a circus bareback rider changes steeds at
full gallop.

Once I saw enacted above ground, and in the
light of day, something which may have had its
roots in an anlage of divine discontent. If I
were describing the episode half a century ago,
I should entitle it, "The Battle of the Giants,
or Emotion Enthroned." A quadruple line of
leaf-carriers was disappearing down a hole in
front of the laboratory, bumped and pushed by
an out-pouring, empty- jawed mass of workers.
As I watched them, I became aware of an area
of great excitement beyond the hole. Getting
down as nearly as possible to ant height, I wit-
nessed a terrible struggle. Two giants — of the
largest soldier Maxim caste — were locked in each
other's jaws, and to my horror, I saw that each
had lost his abdomen. The antenna? and the
abdomen petiole are the only vulnerable portions
of an Atta, and long after he has lost these ap-
parently dispensable portions of his anatomy, he
is able to walk, fight, and continue an active but
erratic life. These mighty- jawed fellows seem
never to come to the surface unless danger
threatens; and my mind went down into the

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 169

black, musty depths, where it is the duty of these
soldiers to walk about and wait for trouble.
What could have raised the ire of such stolid
neuters against one another? Was it sheer lack
of something to do? or was there a cell or two
of the winged caste lying fallow within their bod-
ies, which, stirring at last, inspired a will to bat-
tle, a passing echo of romance, of the activities
of the male Atta?

Their unnatural combat had stirred scores of
smaller workers to the highest pitch of excite-
ment. Now and then, out of the melee, a Me-
dium would emerge, with a tiny Minim in his
jaws. One of these carried his still living bur-
den many feet away, along an unused trail, and
dropped it. I examined the small ant, and found
that it had lost an antenna, and its body was
crushed. When the ball of fighters cleared,
twelve small ants were seen clinging to the legs
and heads of the mutilated giants, and now and
then these would loosen their hold on each other,
turn, and crush one of their small tormenters.
Several times I saw a Medium rush up and tear
a small ant away, apparently quite insane with
excitement.

Occasionally the least exhausted giant would

170 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

stagger to his four and a half remaining legs,
hoist his assailant, together with a mass of the
midgets, high in air, and stagger for a few steps,
before falling beneath the onrush of new attack-
ers. It made me wish to help the great insect,
who, for aught I knew, was doomed because he
was different — because he had dared to be an
individual.

I left them struggling there, and half an hour
later, when I returned, the episode was just com-
ing to a climax. My Atta hero was exerting
his last strength, flinging off the pile that as-
saulted him, fighting all the easier because of the
loss of his heavy body. He lurched forward,
dragging the second giant, now dead, not to-
ward the deserted trail or the world of jungle
around him, but headlong into the lines of stupid
leaf -carriers, scattering green leaves and flower-
petals in all directions. Only when dozens of
ants threw themselves upon him, many of. them
biting each other in their wild confusion, did he
rear up for the last time, and, with the whole
mob, rolled down into the yawning mouth of the
Atta nesting-hole, disappearing from view, and
carrying with him all those hurrying up the steep
sides. It was a great battle. I was breathing

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION 171

fast with sympathy, and whatever his cause, I
was on his side.

The next day both giants were lying on the
old, disused trail; the revolt against absolute
democracy was over ; ten thousand ants passed to
and fro without a dissenting thought, or any
thought, and the Spirit of the Attas was content.

VIII
THE ATTAS AT HOME

CLAMBERING through white, pasty mud which
stuck to our boots by the pound, peering through
bitter cold mist which seemed but a thinner skim
of mud, drenched by flurries of icy drops shaken
from the atmosphere by a passing moan and a
crash, breathing air heavy with a sweet, horrible,
penetrating odor — such was the world as it ex-
isted for an hour one night, while I and the Com-
mandant of Douaumont wandered about com-
pletely lost, on the top of his own fort. We
finally stumbled on the little grated opening
through which the lookout peered unceasingly
over the landscape of mud. The mist lifted and
we rediscovered the cave-like entrance, watched
for a moment the ominous golden dumb-bells
rising from the premier ligne, scraped our boots
on a German helmet and went down again into
the strangest sanctuary in the world.

This was the vision which flashed through my
mind as I began vigil at an enormous nest of

172

THE ATTAS AT HOME 173

Attas — the leaf -cutting ants of the British Gui-
ana jungle. In front of me was a glade, about
thirty feet across, devoid of green growth, and
filled with a great irregular expanse of earth
and mud. Relative to the height of the Attas,
my six feet must seem a good half mile, and
from this height I looked down and saw again
the same inconceivably sticky clay of France.
There were the rain-washed gullies, the half-
roofed entrances to the vast underground for-
tresses, clean-swept, perfect roads, as efficient as
the arteries of Verdun, flapping dead leaves like
the omnipresent, worn-out scare-crows of cam-
ouflage, and over in one corner, to complete the
simile, were a dozen shell-holes, the homes of
voracious ant-lions, which, for passing insects,
were unexploded mines, set at hair trigger.

My Atta city was only two hundred feet away
from the laboratory, in fairly high jungle, with-
in sound of the dinner triangle, and of the lap-
ping waves on the Mazaruni shore. To sit near
by and concentrate solely upon the doings of
these ant people, was as easy as watching a sin-
gle circus ring of performing elephants, while
two more rings, a maze of trapezes, a race track
Und side-shows were in full swing. The jungle

174 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

around me teemed with interesting happenings
and distracting sights and sounds. The very last
time I visited the nest and became absorbed in
a line of incoming ants, I heard the shrill squeak-
ing of an angry hummingbird overhead. I
looked up, and there, ten feet above, was a furry
tamandua anteater slowly climbing a straight
purpleheart trunk, while around and around his
head buzzed and swore the little fury — a pinch
of cinnamon feathers, ablaze with rage. The
curved claws of the unheeding anteater fitted
around the trunk and the strong prehensile tail
flattened against the bark, so that the creature
seemed to put forth no more exertion than if
walking along a fallen log. Now and then it
stopped and daintily picked at a bit of termite
nest.

With such side-shows it was sometimes diffi-
cult to concentrate on the Attas. Yet they of-
fered problems for years of study. The glade
was a little world in itself, with visitors and ten-
ants, comedy and tragedy, sounds and silences.
It was an ant-made glade, with all new growths
either choked by upflung, earthen hillocks, or
leaves bitten off as soon as they appeared. The
casual vistors were the most conspicuous, an oc-

THE ATTAS AT HOME 175

casional trogon swooping across — a glowing,
feathered comet of emerald, azurite and gold;
or, slowly drifting in and out among the vines
and coming to rest with waving wings, a yellow
and red spotted Ithomiid, — or was it a Heli-
coniid or a Danaiid? — with such bewildering
models and marvelous mimics it was impossible
to tell without capture and close examination.
Giant, purple tarantula-hawks hummed past,
scanning the leaves for their prey.

Another class of glade haunters were those
who came strictly on business, — plasterers and
sculptors, who found wet clay ready to their
needs. Great golden and rufous bees blundered
down and gouged out bucketsful of mud; while
slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, after much
fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny
bit of the whitest clay, place it in their snuff-
box holder, clean their feet and antenna?, run
their rapier in and out and delicately take to
wing.

Little black trigonid bees had their special
quarry, a small deep valley in the midst of a
waste of interlacing Bad Lands, on the side of a
precipitous butte. Here they picked and shov-
eled to their hearts' content, plastering their

176 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

thighs until their wings would hardly lift them.
They braced their feet, whirred, lifted unevenly,
and sank back with a jar. Then turning, they
bit off a piece of ballast, and heaving it over the
precipice, swung off on an even keel.

Close examination of some of the craters and
volcanic-like cones revealed many species of ants,
beetles and roaches searching for bits of food- —
the scavengers of this small world. But the most
interesting were the actual parasites, flies of
many colors and sizes, humming past like little
planes and zeppelins over this hidden city, ready
to drop a bomb in the form of an egg deposited
on the refuse heaps or on the ants themselves.
The explosion might come slowly, but it would
be none the less deadly. Once I detected a hint
of the complexity of the glade life — beautiful
metallic green flies walking swiftly about on long
legs, searching nervously, whose eggs would be
deposited near those of other flies, their Iarva3 to
feed upon the others — parasites upon para-
sites.

As 1 had resolutely put the doings of the tree-
tops away from my consciousness, so now I for-
got visitors and parasites, and armed myself for
the excavation of this buried metropolis. I

THE ATTAS AT HOME 177

rubbed vaseline on my high boots, and about
the tops bound a band of teased-out absorbent
cotton. My pick and shovel I treated likewise,
and thus I was comparatively insulated. With-
out precautions no living being could withstand
the slow, implacable attack of disturbed Attas.
At present I walked unmolested across the glade.
The millions beneath my feet were as uncon-
scious of my presence as they were of the breeze
5n the palm fronds overhead.

At the first deep shovel thrust, a slow-moving
Hood of reddish-brown began to pour forth from
the crumbled earth — the outposts of the Atta
Maxims moving upward to the attack. For a
few seconds only workers of various sizes ap-
peared, then an enormous head heaved upward
and there came into the light of day the first Atta
soldier. He was twice as large as a large worker
and heavy in proportion. Instead of being
drawn up into two spines, the top of his head
was rounded, bald and shiny, and only at the back
were the two spines visible, shifted downward.
The front of the head was thickly clothed with
golden hair, which hung down bang-like over
a round, glistening, single, median eye. One by
one, and then shoulder to shoulder, these Cyclo-

178 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

pean Maxims lumbered forth to battle, and soon
my boots were covered in spite of the grease, all
sinking their mandibles deep into the leather.

When I unpacked these boots this year I
found the heads and jaws of two Attas still
firmly attached, relics of some forgotten foray
of the preceding year. This mechanical, vise-
like grip, wholly independent of life or death,
is utilized by the Guiana Indians. In place of
stitching up extensive wounds, a number of these
giant Atta Maxims are collected, and their jaws
applied to the edges of the skin, which are drawn
together. The ants take hold, their bodies are
snipped off, and the row of jaws remains until
the wound is healed.

Over and around the out-pouring soldiers, the
tiny workers ran and bit and chewed away at
whatever they could reach. Dozens of ants made
their way up to the cotton, but found the utmost
difficulty in clambering over the loose fluff. Now
and then, however, a needle-like nip at the back
of my neck, showed that some pioneer of these
shock troops had broken through, when I was
thankful that Attas could only bite and not sting
as well. At such a time as this, the greatest dif-
ference is apparent between these and the Eciton

THE ATTAS AT HOME 179

army ants. The Eciton soldier with his long,
curved scimitars and his swift, nervous move-
ments, was to one of these great insects as a
fighting d'Artagnan would be to an armored
tank. The results were much the same however,
; — perfect efficiency.

I now dug swiftly and crashed with pick down
through three feet of soil. The great entrance
arteries of the nest branched and bifurcated, sep-
arated and anastomosed, while here and there
were chambers varying in size from a cocoanut
to a football. These were filled with what looked
like soft grayish sponge covered with whitish
mold, and these somber affairs were the raison
d'etre for all the leaf -cutting, the trails, the strug-
gles through jungles, the constant battling
against wind and rain and sun.

But the labors of the Attas are only renewed
when a worker disappears down a hole with his
hard-earned bit of leaf. He drops it and goes
on his way. We do not know what this way is,
but my guess is that he turns around and goes
after another leaf. Whatever the nests of At-
tas possess, they are without recreation rooms.
These sluggard-instructors do not know enough
to take a vacation; their faces are fashioned for

180 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

biting, but not for laughing or yawning. I once
dabbed fifteen Mediums with a touch of white
paint as they approached the nest, and within
five minutes thirteen of them had emerged and
started on the back track again.

The leaf is taken in charge by another Me-
dium, hosts of whom are everywhere. Once after
a spadeful, I placed my eye as close as possible
to a small heap of green leaves, and around one
oblong bit were five Mediums, each with a con^
siderable amount of chewed and mumbled tissue
in front of him. This is the only time I have
ever succeeded in finding these ants actually at
this work. The leaves are chewed thoroughly
and built up into the sponge gardens, being used
neither for thatch nor for food, but as fertilizer.
And not for any strange subterranean berry or
kernel or fruit, but for a fungus or mushroom.
The spores sprout and proliferate rapidly, the
gray mycelia covering the garden, and at the
end of each thread is a little knobbed body filled
with liquid. This forms the sole food of the ants
in the nest, but a drop of honey placed by a busy
trail will draw a circle of workers at any time —
both Mediums and Minims, who surround it and
deink their fill.

THE ATTAS AT HOME 1&1

When the fungus garden is in full growth, the
nest labors of the Minims begin, and until the
knobbed bodies are actually ripe, they never
cease to weed and to prune, thus killing off the
multitude of other fungi and foreign organisms,
and by pruning they keep their particular fun-
gus growing, and prevent it from fructifying.
The fungus of the Attas is a particular species
with the resonant, Dunsanyesque name of Roz-
ites gongylophora. It is quite unknown outside
of the nests of these ants, and is as artificial as
a banana.

Only in Calcutta bazaars at night, and in un-
derground streets of Pekin, have I seen stranger
beings than I unearthed in my Atta nest. Now
and then there rolled out of a shovelful of earth,
an unbelievably big and rotund Cicada larva —
which in the course of time, whether in one or
in seventeen years, would emerge as the great
marbled winged Cicada gigasf spreading five
inches from tip to tip. Small tarantulas, with
beautiful wine-colored cephalothorax, made their
home deep in the nest, guarded, perhaps, by their
dense covering of hair; slender scorpions sidled
out from the ruirrs. They were bare, with vul-
nerable joints, but they had the advantage of

182 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

a pair of hands, and long, mobile arms, which
could quickly and skilfully pluck an attacking
ant from any part of their anatomy.

The strangest of all the tenants were the tiny,
amher-colored roaches which clung frantically to
the heads of the great soldier ants, or scurried
over the tumultuous mounds, searching for a
crevice sanctuary. They were funny, fat little
beings, wholly blind, yet supremely conscious of
the danger that threatened, and with only the
single thought of getting below the surface as
quickly as possible. The Attas had very few
insect guests, but this cockroach is one which
had made himself perfectly at home. Through
century upon century he had become more and
more specialized and adapted to Atta life, eyes
slipping until they were no more than faint
specks, legs and antennae changing, gait becom-
ing altered to whatever speed and carriage best
suited little guests in big underground halls and
galleries. He and his race had evolved unseen
and unnoticed even by the Maxim policemen.
But when nineteen hundred humanly historical
years had passed, a man with a keen sense of
fitness named him Little Friend of the Attas;
and so for a few more years, until scientists give

THE ATTAS AT HOME 183

place to the next caste, AttapMla will, all un-
consciously, bear a name.

Attaphilas have staked their whole gamble of
existence on the continued possibility of guest-
ship with the Attas. Although they lived near
the fungus gardens they did not feed upon them,
but gathered secretions from the armored skin
of the giant soldiers, who apparently did not ob-
ject, and showed no hostility to their diminutive
masseurs. A summer boarder may be quite at
home on a farm, and safe from all ordinary dan-
gers, but he must keep out of the way of scythes
and sickles if he chooses to haunt the hay-fields.
And so Attaphila, snug and safe, deep in the
heart of the nest, had to keep on the qui vive
when the ant harvesters came to glean in the
fungus gardens. Snip, snip, snip, on all sides
in the musty darkness, the keen mandibles
sheared the edible heads, and though the little
Attaphilas dodged and ran, yet most of them,
in course of time, lost part of an antenna or even
a whole one.

Thus the Little Friend of the Leaf -cutters
lives easily through his term of weeks or months,
or perhaps even a year, and has nothing to fear
for food or mate, or from enemies. But Atta-

184 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

philas cannot all live in a single nest, and we
realize that there must come a crisis, when they
pass out into a strange world of terrible light
and multitudes of foes. For these pampered,
degenerate roaches to find another Atta nest un-
aided, would be inconceivable. In the big nest
which I excavated I observed them on the back
and heads not only of the large soldiers, but also
of the queens which swarmed in one portion of
the galleries ; and indeed, of twelve queens, seven
had roaches clinging to them. This has been
noted also of a Brazilian species, and we sud-
denly realize what splendid sports these humble
insects are. They resolutely prepare for their
gamble — I'aventure magnifique — the slenderest
fighting chance, and we are almost inclined to
forget the irresponsible implacability of instinct,
and cheer the little fellows for lining up on this
forlorn hope. When the time comes, the queens
leave, and are off up into the unheard-of sky,
as if an earthworm should soar with eagle's feath-
ers ; past the gauntlet of voracious flycatchers and
hawks, to the millionth chance of meeting an
acceptable male of the same species. After the
mating, comes the solitary search for a suitable
site, and only when the pitifully unfair gamble

THE ATTAS AT HOME 185

has been won by a single fortunate queen, does
the Attaphila climb tremblingly down and ac-
cept what fate has sent. His ninety and nine
fellows have met death in almost as many ways.

With the exception of these strange inmates
there are very few tenants or guests in the nests
of the Attas. Unlike the termites and Ecitons,
who harbor a host of weird boarders, the leaf-
cutters are able to keep their nest free from un-
desirables.

Once, far down in the nest, I came upon three
young queens, recently emerged, slow and stupid,
with wings dull and glazed, who crawled with
awkward haste back into darkness. And again
twelve winged females were grouped in one small
chamber, restless and confused. This was the
only glimpse I ever had of Atta royalty at home.

Good fortune was with me, however, on a
memorable fifth of May, when returning from
a monkey hunt in high jungle. As I came out
into the edge of a clearing, a low humming at-
tracted my attention. It was ventriloquial, and
my ear refused to trace it. It sounded exactly
like a great aerodrome far in the distance, with
a scorf* or more of planes tuning up. I chanced
to see a large bee-like insect rising through the

186 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

branches, and following back along its path, I
suddenly perceived the rarest of sights — an Atta
nest entrance boiling with the excitement of a
flight of winged kings and queens. So engrossed
were the ants that they paid no attention to me,
and I was able to creep up close and kneel with-
in two feet of the hole. The main nest was
twenty feet away, and this was a special exit
made for the occasion — a triumphal gateway
erected far away from the humdrum leaf traffic.
The two-inch, arched hole led obliquely down
into darkness, while brilliant sunshine illumined
the earthen take-off and the surrounding mass
of pink Mazaruni primroses. Up this corridor
was coming, slowly, with dignity, as befitted the
occasion, a pageant of royalty. The king males
were more active, as they were smaller in size
than the females, but they were veritable giants
in comparison with the workers. The queens
seemed like beings of another race, with their
great bowed thorax supporting the folded wings,
heads correspondingly large, with less jaw devel-
opment, but greatly increased keenness of vis-
ion. In comparison with the Minims, these
queens were as a human being one hundred feet
in height.

THE ATTAS AT HOME 187

I selected one large queen as she appeared and
Watched her closely. Slowly and with great ef-
fort she climbed the steep ascent into the blazing
Sunlight. Five tiny Minims were clinging to her
body and wings, all scrubbing and cleaning as
hard as they could. She chose a clear space,
Spread her wings, wide and flat, stood high upon
her six legs and waited. I fairly shouted at this
change, for slight though it was, it worked magic,
and the queen Atta was a queen no more, but
a miniature, straddle-legged aeroplane, pushed
into position, and overrun by a crowd of mechan-
ics, putting the finishing touches, tightening the
wires, oiling every pliable crevice. A Medium
came along, tugged at a leg and the obliging
little plane lifted it for inspection. For three
minutes this kept up, and then the plane became
a queen and moved restlessly. Without warn-
ing, as if some irresponsible mechanic had turned
the primed propellers, the four mighty wings
whirred — and four Minims were hurled head over
heels a foot away, snapped from their positions.
The sound of the wings was almost too exact
an imitation of the snarl of a starting plane —
the comparison was absurd in its exactness of
timbre and resonance. It was only a test, how-

188 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ever, and the moment the queen became quiet
the upset mechanics clambered back. They
crawled beneath her, scraped her feet and an-
tenna?, licked her eyes and jaws, and went over
every shred of wing tissue. Then again /she
buzzed, this time sending only a single Minim
sprawling. Again she stopped after lifting her-
self an inch, but immediately started up, and
now rose rather unsteadily, but without pause,
and slowly ascended above the nest and the prim-
roses. Circling once, she passed through green
leaves and glowing balls of fruit, into the blue
sky.

Thus I followed the passing of one queen Atta
into the jungle world, as far as human eyes
would permit, and my mind returned to the mote
which I had detected at an equally great height
—the queen descending after her marriage — as
isolated as she had started.

We have seen how the little blind roaches oc-
casionally cling to an emerging queen and so
are transplanted to a new nest. But the queen
bears something far more valuable. More faith-
fully than ever virgin tended temple fires, each
departing queen fills a little pouch in the lower
part of her mouth with a pellet of the precious

THE ATTAS AT HOME 189

fungus, and here it is carefully guarded until
the time comes for its propagation in the new
nest.

When she has descended to earth and exca-
vated a little chamber, she closes the entrance,
and for forty days and nights labors at the found-
ing of a new colony. She plants the little fun-
gus cutting and tends it with the utmost solici-
tude. The care and feeding in her past life have
stored within her the substance for vast numbers
of eggs. Nine out of ten which she lays she eats
to give her the strength to go on with her labors,
and when the first larva? emerge, they, too, are
fed with surplus eggs. In time they pupate and
at the end of six weeks the first workers — all tiny
Minims — hatch. Small as they are, born in dark-
ness, yet no education is needed. The Spirit of
the Attas infuses them. Play and rest are the
only things incomprehensible to them, and they
take charge at once, of fungus, of excavation,
of the care of the queen and eggs, the feeding
of the larva?, and as soon as the huskier Mediums
appear, they break through into the upper world
and one day the first bit of green leaf is carried
down into the nest.

190 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

The queen rests. Henceforth, as far as we
know, she becomes a mere egg-producing ma-
chine, fed mechanically by mechanical workers,
the food transformed by physiological mechan-
ics into yolk and then deposited. The aeroplane
has become transformed into an incubator.

One wonders whether, throughout the long
hours, weeks and months, in darkness which ren-
der* her eyes a mockery, there ever comes to her
dull ganglion a flash of memory of The Day, of
the rushing wind, the escape from pursuing puff-
birds, the jungle stretching away for miles be-
neath, her mate, the cool tap of drops from a
passing shower, the volplane to earth, and the
obliteration of all save labor. Did she once look
behind her, did she turn aside for a second, just
to feel the cool silk of petals?

As we have seen, an Atta worker is a mem-
ber of the most implacable labor-union in the
world : he believes in a twenty-four hour day, no
pay, no play, no rest — he is a cog in a machine-
driven Good-for-the-greatest-number. After
studying these beings for a week, one longs to
go out and shout for kaisers and tsars, for self-
ishness and crime — anything as a relief from such
terrible unthinking altruism. All Atta workers

THE ATTAS AT HOME 191

are born free and equal — which is well; and they
remain so — which is what a Buddhist priest once
called "gashang" — or so it sounded, and which
he explained as a state where plants and animals
and men were crystal-like in growth and exist-
ence. What a welcome sight it would be to see
a Medium mount a bit of twig, antenna? a crowd
of Minims about him, and start off on a foray
of his own!

We may jeer or condemn the Attas for their
hard-shell existence, but there comes to mind
again and again, the wonder of it all. Are the
hosts of little beings really responsible ; have they
not evolved into a pocket, a mental cul-de-sac, a
swamping of individuality, pooling their person-
alities? And what is it they have gained — what
pledge of success in food, in safety, in propaga-
tion? They are not separate entities, they have
none of the freedom of action, of choice, of in-
dividuality of the solitary wasps. They are the
somatic cells of the body politic, while deep with-
in the nest are the guarded sexual cells — the
winged kings and queens, which from time to
time, exactly as in isolated organisms, are thrown
off to propagate, and to found new nests. They,
no less than the workers, are parts of something

192 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

more subtle than the visible Attas and their ma-
terial nest. Whether I go to the ant as slug-
gard, or myrmocologist, or accidentally, via Pter-
odactyl Pups, a day spent with them invariably
leaves me with my whole being concentrated on
this mysterious Atta Ego. Call it Vibration,
Aura, Spirit of the nest, clothe ignorance in
whatever term seems appropriate, we cannot
deny its existence and power.

As with the Army ants, the flowing lines of
leaf-cutters always brought to mind great arter-
ies, filled with pulsating, tumbling corpuscles.
When an obstruction appeared, as a fallen leaf,
across the great sandy track, a dozen, or twenty
or a hundred workers gathered — like leucocytes
— and removed the interfering object. If I in-
jured a worker who was about to enter the nest,
I inoculated the Atta organism with a pernicious,
foreign body. Even the victim himself was dimly
aware of the law of fitness. Again and again
he yielded to the call of the nest, only to turn
aside at the last moment. From a normal link
in the endless Atta chain, he had become an out-
cast— snapped at by every passing ant, self-ban-
ished, wandering off at nightfall to die some-
where in the wilderness of grass. When well,

THE ATTAS AT HOME 193

an Atta has relations but no friends, when ill,
every jaw is against him.

As I write this seated at my laboratory table,
by turning down my lamp and looking out, I
can see the star dust of Orion's nebula, and with-
out moving from my chair, Rigel, Sirius, Ca-
pella and Betelgeuze — the blue, white, yellow
and red evolution of so-called lifeless cosmic mat-
ter. A few slides from the aquarium at my side
reveal an evolutionary sequence to the heavenly
host — the simplest of earthly organisms playing
fast and loose with the borderland, not only of
plants and animals, but of the one and of the
many-celled. First a swimming lily, Stentor, a sol-
itary animal bloom, twenty-five to the inch; Co-
thurnia, a double lily, and Gonium, with a quar-
tet of cells clinging tremulously together, pro-
gressing unsteadily — materially toward the rim
of my field of vision — in the evolution of earthly
life toward sponges, peripatus, ants and man.

I was interrupted in my microcosmus just as
it occurred to me that Chesterton would heartily
approve of my approximation of Sirius and Sten-
tor, of Capella and Cothurnia — the universe bal-
anced. My attention was drawn from the atom
Gonium — whose brave little spirit was striving to

194 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

keep his foursome one — a primordial struggle
toward unity of self and division of labor; my
consciousness climbed the microscope tube and
came to rest upon a slim glass of amber liquid
on my laboratory table: a servant had brought
a cocktail, for it was New Year's Eve. (Now
the thought came that there were a number of
worthy people who would also approve of this
approximation!) I looked at the small spirit-
uous luxury, and I thought of my friends in
New York, and then of the Attas in front of
the laboratory. With my electric flash I went
out into the starlight, and found the usual hosts
struggling nestward with their chlorophyll bur-
dens, and rushing frantically out into the black
jungle for more and yet more leaves. My mind
swept back over evolution from star-dust to Kar-
tabo compound, from Gonium to man, and to
these leaf-cutting ants. And I wondered
whether the Attas were any the better for be-
ing denied the stimulus of temptation, or
whether I was any the worse for the opportunity
of refusing a second glass. I went back into
the house, and voiced a toast to tolerance, to
temperance, and — to pterodactyls — and drank
my cocktail.

IX
HAMMOCK NIGHTS

THERE is a great gulf between pancakes and
truffles: an eternal, fixed, abysmal canon. It
is like the chasm between beds and hammocks.
It is not to be denied and not to be traversed;
for if pancakes with syrup are a necessary of
life, then truffles with anything must be, by the
very nature of things, a supreme and undisputed
luxury, a regal food for royalty and the chosen
of the earth. There cannot be a shadow of a
doubt that these two are divided; and it is not
alone a mere arbitrary division of poverty and
riches as it would appear on the surface. It is
an alienation brought about by profound and
fundamental differences; for the gulf between
them is that gulf which separates the prosaic,
the ordinary, the commonplace, from all that is
colored and enlivened by romance.

The romance of truffles endows the very word
itself with a halo, an aristocratic halo full of
mystery and suggestion. One remembers the

194

196 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

hunters who must track their quarry through
marshy and treacherous lands, and one cannot
forget their confiding catspaw, that desolated
pig, created only to be betrayed and robbed of
the fungi of his labors. He is one of the pathetic
characters of history, born to secret sorrow, vic-
timized by those superior tastes which do not be-
come his lowly station. Born to labor and to'
suffer, but not to eat. To this day he commands
my sympathy; his ghost — lean, bourgeois, re-
proachful— looks out at me from every market-
place in the world where the truffle proclaims
his faithful service.

But the pancake is a pancake, nothing more.
It is without inherent or artificial glamour; and
this unfortunately, when you come right down
to it, is true of food in general. For food, after
all, is one of the lesser considerations; the con-
noisseur, the gourmet, even the gourmand,
spends no more than four hours out of the day
at his table. From the cycle, he may select four
in which to eat; but whether he will or not, he
must set aside seven of the twenty-four in which
to sleep.

Sleeping, then, as opposed to eating, is of al-
most double importance, since it consumes nearly

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 197

twice as much time — and time, in itself, is the
most valuable thing in the world. Considered
from this angle, it seems incredible that we have
no connoisseurs of sleep. For we have none.
Therefore it is with some temerity that I declare
sleep to be one of the romances of existence, and
not by any chance the simple necessary it is re-
puted to be.

However, this romance, in company with
whatever is worthy, is not to be discovered with-
out the proper labor. Life is not all truffles.
Neither do they grow in modest back-yards to
be picked of mornings by the maid-of-all-work.
A mere bed, notwithstanding its magic cam-
ouflage of coverings, of canopy, of disguised pil-
lows, of shining brass or fluted carven posts, is,
pancake like, never surrounded by this aura of
romance. INTo, it is hammock sleep whicft is the
sweetest of all slumber. Not in the hideous,
dyed affairs of our summer porches, with their
miserable curved sticks to keep the strands apart,
and their maddening creaks which grow in length
and discord the higher one swings — but in a
hammock woven by Carib Indians. An Indian
hammock selected at random will not suffice ; it
must be a Carib and none other. For they, them*

198 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

selves, are part and parcel of the romance, since
they are not alone a quaint and poetic people,
but the direct descendants of those remote Amer-
icans who were the first to see the caravels of
Columbus. Indeed, he paid the initial tribute
to their skill, for in the diary of his first voyage
he writes, —

"A great many Indians in canoes came to
the ship to-day for the purpose of bartering their
cotton, and hamacas or nets in which they sleep."

It is supposed that this name owes its being
to the hamack tree, from the bark of which
they were woven. However that may be, the
modern hammock of these tropical Red Men is
so light and so delicate in texture that during
the day one may wear it as a sash, while at night
it forms an incomparable couch.

But one does not drop off to sleep in this be-
fore a just and proper preparation. This pre-
sents complexities. First, the hammock must
be slung with just the right amount of tautness;
then, the novice must master the knack of wind-
ing himself in his blanket that he may slide gently
into his aerial bed and rest at right angles to the
tied ends, thus permitting the free side-meshes
to curl up naturally over his feet and head. This

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 199

cannot be taught. It is an art; and any art is
one-tenth technique, and nine-tenths natural tal-
ent. However, it is possible to acquire a certain
virtuosity, which, after all is said, is but pure
mechanical skill as opposed to sheer genius. One
might, perhaps, get a hint by watching the living
chrysalid of a potential moon-moth wriggle back
into its cocoon — but little is to be learned from
human teaching. However, if, night after night,
one observes his Indians, a certain instinctive
knowledge will arise to aid and abet him in his
task. Then, after his patient apprenticeship, he
may reap as he has sowed. If it is to be disaster,
it is as immediate as it is ignominious ; but if suc-
cess is to be his portion, then he is destined to
rest, wholly relaxed, upon a couch encushioned
and resilient beyond belief. He finds himself
exalted and supreme above all mundane disturb-
ances, with the treetops and the stars for his can-
opy, and the earth a shadowy floor far beneath.
This gentle aerial support is distributed through-
out hundreds of fine meshes, and the sole con-
tact with the earth is through twin living boles,
pulsing with swift running sap, whose lichened
bark and moonlit foliage excel any tapestry of
man's devising.

200 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Perhaps it is atavistic — this desire to rest and
swing in a hamaca. For these are not unlike
the treetop couches of our arboreal ancestors,
such a one as I have seen an orang-utan weave
in a few minutes in the swaying crotch of a tree.
At any rate, the hammock is not dependent upon
four walls, upon rooms and houses, and it par-
takes altogether of the wilderness. Its move-
ment is eeolian — yielding to every breath of air.
It has even its own weird harmony — for I have
often heard a low, whistling hum as the air rushed
through the cordage mesh. In a sudden tropical
gale every taut strand of my hamaca has seemed
a separate, melodious, orchestral note, while I
was buffeted to and fro, marking time to some
rhythmic and reckless tune of the wind playing
fortissimo on the woven strings about me. The
climax of this musical outburst was not without
a mild element of danger — sufficient to create
that enviable state of mind wherein the sense of
security and the knowledge that a minor catas-
trophe may perhaps be brought about are
weighed one against the other.

Special, unexpected, and interesting minor
dangers are also the province of the hamaca.
Once, in the tropics, a great fruit fell on the

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 201

elastic strands and bounced upon my body.
There was an ominous swish of the air in the
sweeping arc which this missile described, also
a goodly shower of leaves ; and since the fusillade
fc)ok place at midnight, it was, all in all, a some-
what alarming visitation. However, there were
no honorable scars to mark its advent ; and what
is more important, from all my hundreds of ham-
mock nights, I have no other memory of any
actual or threatened danger which was not due
to human carelessness or stupidity. It is true
that once, in another continent, by the light of
a campfire, I saw the long, liana-like body of a
harmless tree-snake wind down from one of my
fronded bed-posts and, like a living woof fol-
lowing its shuttle, weave a passing pattern of
emerald through the pale meshes. But this her-
alded no harm, for the poisonous reptiles of that
region never climb; and so, since I was worn
out by a hard day, I shut my eyes and slept
neither better nor worse because of the transient
confidence of a neighborly serpent.

As a matter of fact, the wilderness provides
but few real perils, and in a hammock one is
safely removed from these. One lies in a stratum
above all damp and chill of the ground, be-

202 EDGE OP THE JUNGLE

yond the reach of crawling tick and looping
leech; and with an enveloping mosquitaro, or
mosquito shirt, as the Venezuelans call it, one
is fortified even in the worst haunts of these most
disturbing of all pests.

Once my ring rope slipped and the hammock
settled, but not enough to wake me up and force
me to set it to rights. I was aware that some-
thing had gone wrong, but, half asleep, I pre-
ferred to leave the matter in the lap of the gods.
Later, as a result, I was awakened several times
by the patting of tiny paws against my body,
as small jungle-folk, standing on their hind-legs,
essayed to solve the mystery of the swaying,
silent, bulging affair directly overhead. I was
unlike any tree or branch or liana which had
come their way before ; I do not doubt that they
thought me some new kind of ant-nest, since
these structures are alike only as their purpose
in life is identical — for they express every pos-
sible variation in shape, size, color, design, and
position. As for their curiosity, I could make
no complaint, for, at best, my visitors could not
be so inquisitive as I, inasmuch as I had crossed
one ocean and two continents with no greater
object than to pry into their personal and civic

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 203'

affairs as well as those of their neighbors. To
say nothing of their environment and other
matters.

That my rope slipped was the direct result
of my own inefficiency. The hammock protects
one from the dangers of the outside world, but
like any man-made structure, it shows evidences
of those imperfections which are part and parcel
of human nature, and serve, no doubt, to make
it interesting. But one may at least strive for
perfection by being careful. Therefore tie the
ropes of your hammock yourself, or examine and
test the job done for you. The master of ham-
mocks makes a knot the name of which I do not
know — I cannot so much as describe it. But
I would like to twist it again — two quick turns,
a push and a pull; then, the greater the strain
put upon it, the greater its resistance.

This trustworthiness commands respect and
admiration, but it is in the morning that one
feels the glow of real gratitude; for, in striking
camp at dawn, one has but to give a single jerk
and the rope is straightened out, without so much
as a second's delay. It is the tying, however,
which must be well done — this I learned from
bitter experience.

204 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

It was one morning, years ago, but the mem-
ory of it is with me still, vivid and painful. One
of the party had left her hammock, which was
tied securely since she was skilful in such mat-
ters, to sit down and rest in another, belonging
to a servant. This was slung at one end of a
high, tropical porch, which was without the rail-
ing that surrounds the more pretentious verandahs
of civilization, so that the hammock swung free,
first over the rough flooring, then a little out
over the yard itself. A rope slipped, the faulty
knot gave way, and she fell backward — a seven-
foot fall with no support of any kind by which
she might save herself. A broken wrist was the
price she had to pay for another's carelessness —
a broken wrist which, in civilization, is perhaps,
one of the lesser tragedies; but this was in the
very heart of the Guiana wilderness. Many
hours from ether and surgical skill, such an acci-
dent assumes alarming proportions. Therefore,
I repeat my warning: tie your knots or examine
them.

It is true, that, when all is said and done, a
dweller in hammocks may bring upon himself any
number of diverse dangers of a character never
described in books or imagined in fiction. A fel-

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 205

low naturalist of *nine never lost an opportunity
to set innumerable traps for the lesser jungle-
folk, such as mice and opossums, all of which
he religiously measured and skinned, so that each,
in its death, should add its mite to human knowl-
edge. As a fisherman runs out set lines, so would
he place his traps in a circle under his hammock,
using a cord to tie each and every one to the
meshes. This done, it was his custom to lie at
ease and wait for the click below which would
usher in a new specimen, — perhaps a new spe-
cies,— to be lifted up, removed, and safely cached
until morning. This strategic method served a
double purpose: it conserved natural energy, and
it protected the catch. For if the traps were
set in the jungle and trustfully confided to its
care until the break of day, the ants would leave
a beautifully cleaned skeleton, intact, all unnec-
essarily entrapped.

Now it happened that once, when he had set
his nocturnal traps, he straightway went to sleep
in the midst of all the small jungle people who
were calling for mates and new life, so that he
did not hear the click which was to warn him
that another little beast of fur had come un-
awares upon his death. But he heard, suddenly,

206 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

a disturbance in the low ferns beneath his ham-
mock. He reached over and caught hold of one
of the cords, finding the attendant trap heavy
with prey. He was on the point of feeling his
way to the trap itself, when instead, by some
subconscious prompting, he reached over and
snapped on his flashlight. And there before him,
hanging in mid-air, striking viciously at his fin-
gers which were just beyond its reach, was a
young fer-de-lance — one of the deadliest of trop-
ical serpents. His nerves gave way, and with
a crash the trap fell to the ground where he
could hear it stirring and thrashing about among
the dead leaves. This ominous rustling did not
encourage sleep; he lay there for a long time
listening, — and every minute is longer in the
darkness, — while his hammock quivered and
trembled with the reaction.

Guided by this, I might enter into a new field
of naturalizing and say to those who might, in
excitement, be tempted to do otherwise, "Look
at your traps before lifting them.'7 But my
audience would be too limited; I will refrain
from so doing.

It is true that this brief experience might fee
looked upon as one illustration of the perils of

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 207

the wilderness, since it is not customary for the
fer-de-lance to frequent the city and the town.
But this would give rise to a footless argument,
leading nowhere. For danger is everywhere — it
lurks in every shadow and is hidden in the bright
sunlight, it is the uninvited guest, the invisible
pedestrian who walks beside you in the crowded
street ceaselessly, without tiring. But even a
fer-de-lance should rather add to the number of
hammock devotees than diminish them; for the
three feet or more of elevation is as good as so
many miles between the two of you. And three
miles from any serpent is sufficient.

It may be that the very word danger is sub-
jected to a different interpretation in each one of
our mental dictionaries. It is elastic, compre-
hensive. To some it may include whatever is
terrible, terrifying; to others it may symbolize
a worthy antagonist, one who throws down the
gauntlet and asks no questions, but who will make
a good and fair fight wherein advantage is
neither taken nor given. I suppose, to be bit-
ten by vampires would be thought a danger by
many who have not graduated from the mattress
of civilization to this cubiculum of the wilderness:
This is due, in part5 to an ignorance, which is

208 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to be condoned; and this ignorance, in turn, is
due to that lack of desire for a knowledge of
new countries and new experiences, which lack
is to be deplored and openly mourned. Many
years ago, in Mexico, when I first entered the
vampire zone, I was apprised of the fact by the
clotted blood on my horse's neck in the early
morning. In actually seeing this evidence, I ex-
perienced the diverse emotions of the discoverer,
although as a matter of fact I had discovered
nothing more than the verification of a scientific
commonplace. It so happened that I had read,
at one time, many conflicting statements of the
workings of this aerial leech; therefore, finding
myself in his native habitat, I went to all sorts
of trouble to become a victim to his sorceries.
The great toe is the favorite and stereotyped
point of attack, we are told; so, in my ham-
mock, my great toes were conscientiously ex-
posed night after night, but not until a decade
later was my curiosity satisfied.

I presume that this was a matter of ill luck,
rather than a personal matter between the vam-
pire and me. Therefore, as a direct result of
this and like experiences, I have learned to make
proper allowances for the whims of the Fates.

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 209

I have learned that it is their pleasure to deluge
me with rainstorms at unpropitious moments,
also to send me, with my hammock, to eminently
desirable countries, which, however, are barren
of trees and scourged of every respectable shrub.
That the showers may not find me unprepared,
I pack with my hamaca an extra length of rope,
to be stretched taut from foot-post to head-post,
that a tarpaulin or canvas may be slung over it.
When a treeless country is presented to me in
prospect, I have two stout stakes prepared, and
I do not move forward without them.

It is a wonderful thing to see an experienced
hammocker take his stakes, first one, then the
other, and plunge them into the ground three or
four times, measuring at one glance the exact
distance and angle, and securing magically that
mysterious "give" so essential to well-being and
comfort. Any one can sink them like fence-
posts, so that they stand deep and rigid, a re-
proach and an accusation; but it requires a par-
ticular skill to judge by the pull whether or not
they will hold through the night and at the same
time yield with gentle and supple swing to the
least movement of the sleeper. A Carib knows,
instantly, worthy and unworthy ground. I have

210 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

seen an Indian sink his hamaca posts into sand
with one swift, concentrated motion, mathemati-
cal in its precision and surety, so that he might
enter at once into a peaceful night of tranquil
and unbroken slumber, while I, a tenderfoot then,
must needs beat my stakes down into the ground
with tremendous energy, only to come to earth
with a resounding thwack the moment I mounted
my couch.

The Red Man made his comment, smiling:
"Yellow earth, much squeeze." Which, being
translated, informed me that the clayey ground
I had chosen, hard though it seemed, was more
like putty in that it would slip and slip with the
prolonged pressure until the post fell inward and
catastrophe crowned my endeavor.

So it follows that the hammock, in company
with an adequate tarpaulin and two trustworthy
stakes, will survive the heaviest downpour as well
as the most arid and uncompromising desert.
But since it is man-made, with finite limitations,
nature is not without means to defeat its purpose.
The hammock cannot cope with the cold — real
cold, that is, not the sudden chill of tropical night
which a blanket resists, but the cold of the north
or of high altitudes. This is the realm of the

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 211

sleeping-bag, the joy of which is another story.
More than once I have had to use a hammock at
high levels, since there was nothing else at hand ;
and the numbness of the Arctic was mine.
Every mesh seemed to invite a separate draught.
The winds of heaven — all four — played unceas-
ingly upon me, and I became in due time a sway-
ing mummy of ice. It was my delusion that I
was a dead Indian cached aloft upon my arbo-
real bier — which is not a normal state of mind
for the sleeping explorer.

Anything rather than this helpless surrender
to the elements. Better the lowlands and that
fantastic shroud, the mosquitaro. For even to
wind one's self into this is an experience of note.
It is ingenious, and called the mosquito shirt be-
cause of its general shape, which is as much like
a shirt as anything else. A large round center
covers the hammock, and two sleeves extend up
the supporting strands and inclose the ends, be-
ing tied to the ring-ropes. If at sundown swarms
of mosquitoes become unbearable, one retires into
his netting funnel, and there disrobes. Clothes
are rolled into a bundle and tied to the hammock,
that one may close one's eyes reasonably confi-
dent that the supply will not be diminished by

212 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

some small marauder. It is then that a miracle
is enacted. For one is at last enabled, under
these propitious circumstances, to achieve the
impossible, to control and manipulate the void
and the invisible, to obey that unforgotten advice
of one's youth, "Oh, g'wan — crawl into a hole
and pull the hole in after you!" At an early age,
this unnatural advice held my mind, so that I
devised innumerable means of verifying it; I
was filled with a despair and longing whenever I
met it anew. But it was an ambition appeased
only in maturity. And this is the miracle of the
tropics: climb up into the hamaca, and, at this
altitude, draw in the hole of the mosquitaro fun-
nel, making it fast with a single knot. It is done.
One is at rest, and lying back, listens to the hum-
ming of all the mosquitos in the world, to be
lulled to sleep by the sad, minor singing of their
myriad wings. But though I have slung my;
hammock in many lands, on all the continents,
I have few memories of netting nights. Usually,
both in tropics and in tempered climes, one may
boldly lie with face uncovered to the night.

And this brings us to the greatest joy of ham-
mock life, admission to the secrets of the wilder-
ness, initiation to new intimacies and subtleties

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 213

of this kingdom, at once welcomed and delicately
ignored as any honored guest should be. For
this one must make unwonted demands upon
one's nocturnal senses. From habit, perhaps, it
is natural to lie with the eyes wide open, but with
all the faculties concentrated on the two senses
which bring impressions from the world of dark-
ness— hearing and smell. In a jungle hut a loud
cry from out of the black treetops now and then
reaches the ear; in a tent the faint noises of the
nighij outside are borne on the wind, and at times
the silhouette of a passing animal moves slowly
across the heavy cloth ; but in a hamaca one is not
thus set apart to be baffled by hidden mysteries
•—one is given the very point of view of the crea-
tures who live and die in the open.

Through the meshes which press gently against
one's face comes every sound which our human
ears can distinguish and set apart from the si-
lence— a silence which in itself is only a mirage
of apparent soundlessness, a testimonial to the
imperfection of our senses. The moaning and
whining of some distant beast of prey is brought
, on the breeze to mingle with the silken swishing
«of the palm fronds overhead and the insistent
chirping of many insects — a chirping so fine and

214 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

shrill that it verges upon the very limits of our
hearing. And these, combined, unified, are no
more than the ground surge beneath the countless
waves of sound. For the voice of the jungle is
the voice of love, of hatred, of hope, of despair —
and in the night-time, when the dominance of
sense-activity shifts from eye to ear, from retina
to nostril, it cries aloud its confidences to all the
world. But the human mind is not equal to a
true understanding of these; for in a tropical
jungle the birds and the frogs, the beasts and the
insects are sending out their messages so swiftly
one upon the other, that the senses fail of their
mission and only chaos and a great confusion are
carried to the brain. The whirring of invisible
wings and the movement of the wind in the low
branches become one and the same : it is an epic,
told in some strange tongue, an epic filled to
overflowing with tragedy, with poetry and mys-
tery. The cloth of this drama is woven from
many-colored threads, for Nature is lavish with
her pigment, reckless with life and death. She
is generous because there is no need for her to be
miserly. And in the darkness, I have heard the
working of her will, translating as best I could.
In the darkness, I have at times heard the

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 215

tramping of many feet ; in a land traversed only
by Indian trails I have listened to an overloaded
freight train toiling up a steep grade; I have
heard the noise of distant battle and the cries of
the victor and the vanquished. Hard by, among
the trees, I have heard a woman seized, have
heard her crying, pleading for mercy, have heard
her choking and sobbing till the end came in a
terrible, gasping sigh; and then, in the sudden
silence, there was a movement and thrashing
about in the topmost branches, and the flutter
and whirr of great wings moving swiftly away
from me into the heart of the jungle — the only
clue to the author of this vocal tragedy. Once,
a Pan of the woods tuned up his pipes — striking
a false note now and then, as if it were his whim
to appear no more than the veriest amateur ; then
suddenly, with the full liquid sweetness of his
reeds, bursting into a strain so wonderful, so
silvery clear, that I lay with mouth open to still
the beating of blood in my ears, hardly breathing,
that I might catch every vibration of his song.
When the last note died away, there was utter
stillness about me for an instant — nothing
stirred, nothing moved ; the wind seemed to have
forsaken the leaves. From a great distance, as

216 EDGE OP THE JUNGLE

if he were going deeper into the woods, I heard
him once more tuning up his pipes; but he did
not play again.

Beside me, I heard the low voice of one of my
natives murmuring, "Muerte ha pasado" My
mind took up this phrase, repeating it, giving it
the rhythm of Pan's song — a rhythm delicate,
sustained, full of color and meaning in itself.
I was ashamed that one of my kind could trans-
late such sweet and poignant music into a super-
stition, could believe that it was the song of
death, — the death that passes, — and not the voice
of life. But it may have been that he was wiser
in such matters than I; superstitions are many
times no more than truth in masquerade. For
I could call it by no name — whether bird or beast,
creature of fur or feather or scale. And not
for one, but for a thousand creatures within my
hearing, any obscure nocturnal sound may have
heralded the end of life. Song and death may
go hand in hand, and such a song may be a beau-
tiful one, unsung, unuttered until this moment
when Nature demands the final payment for
what she has given so lavishly. In the open, the
dominant note is the call to a mate, and with it,
that there may be color and form and contrast,

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 217

there is that note of pure vocal exuberance which
is beauty for beauty and for nothing else ; but in
this harmony there is sometimes the cry of a
creature who has come upon death unawares, a
creature who has perhaps been dumb all the days
of his life, only to cry aloud this once for pity,
for mercy, or for faith, in this hour of his ex-
tremity. Of all, the most terrible is the death-
scream of a horse, — a cry of frightful timbre, —
treasured, according to some secret law, until
this dire instant when for him death indeed
passes.

It was years ago that I heard the pipes of Pan;
but one does not forget these mysteries of the
jungle night: the sounds and scents and the dim,
glimpsed ghosts which flit through the darkness
and the deepest shadow mark a place for them-
selves in one's memory, which is not erased. I
have lain in my hammock looking at a tapestry of
green draped over a half -fallen tree, and then
for a few minutes have turned to watch the bats
flicker across a bit of sky visible through the dark
branches. When I looked back again at the tap-
estry, although the dusk had only a moment be-
fore settled into the deeper blue of twilight, a
score of great lustrous stars were shining there,

218 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

making new patterns in the green drapery; for
in this short time, the spectral blooms of the night
had awakened and flooded my resting-place with
their fragrance.

And these were but the first of the flowers;
for when the brief tropic twilight is quenched,
a new world is born. The leaves and blossoms of
the day are at rest, and the birds and insects
sleep. New blooms open, strange scents pour
forth. Even our dull senses respond to these;
for just as the eye is dimmed, so are the other
senses quickened in the sudden night of the jun-
gle. Nearby, so close that one can reach out and
touch them, the pale Cereus moons expand, ex-
haling their sweetness, subtle breaths of fra-
grance calling for the very life of their race to the
whirring hawkmoths. The tiny miller who,
through the hours of glare has crouched beneath
a leaf, flutters upward, and the trail of her per-
fume summons her mate perhaps half a mile
down wind. The civet cat, stimulated by love or
war, fills the glade with an odor so pungent that
it seems as if the other senses must mark it.

Although there may seem not a breath of air
in motion, yet the . tide of scent is never still.
One's moistened finger may reveal no cool side,

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 219

since there is not the vestige of a breeze; but
faint odors arrive, become stronger, and die
away, or are wholly dissipated by an onrush of
others, so musky or so sweet that one can almost
taste them. These have their secret purposes,
since Nature is not wasteful. If she creates
beautiful things, it is to serve some ultimate end ;
it is her whim to walk in obscure paths, but her
goal is fixed and immutable. However, her de-
signs are hidden and not easy to decipher; at
best, one achieves, not knowledge, but a few iso-
lated facts.

Sport in a hammock might, by the casual
thinker, be considered as limited to dreams of the
hunt and chase. Yet I have found at my dis-
posal a score of amusements. When the dusk
has just settled down, and the little bats fill every
glade in the forest, a box of beetles or grasshop-
pers— or even bits of chopped meat — offers the
possibility of a new and neglected sport, in effect
the inversion of baiting a school of fish. Toss a
grasshopper into the air and he has only time to
spread his wings for a parachute to earth, when
a bat swoops past so quickly that the eyes refuse
to see any single effort — but the grasshopper has
vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn

220 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

like a magnet to the fierce little face. Once I
tried the experiment of a bit of blunted bent wire
on a long piece of thread, and at the very first
cast I entangled a flutter-mouse and pulled him
in. I was aghast when I saw what I had cap-
tured. A body hardly as large as that of a mouse
was topped with the head of a fiend incarnate.
Between his red puffed lips his teeth showed
needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyes were as
evil as a caricature from SimplicissimusJ and set
deep in his head, while his ears and nose were
monstrous with fold upon fold of skinny flaps.
It was not a living face, but a mask of frightful
mobility.

I set him free, deeming anything so ugly well
worthy of life, if such could find sustenance
among his fellows and win a mate for himself
somewhere in this world. But he, for all his
hideousness and unseemly mien, is not the vam-
pire; the blood-sucking bat has won a mantle of
deceit from the hands of Nature — a garb that
gives him a modest and not unpleasing appear-
ance, and makes it a difficult matter to distin-
guish him from his guileless confreres of our
summer evenings.

But in the tropics, — the native land of the

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 221,

hammock, — not only the mysteries of the night,
but the affairs of the day may be legitimately in-
vestigated from this aerial point of view. It is
a fetish of belief in hot countries that every un-
acclimatized white man must, sooner or later,
succumb to that sacred custom, the siesta. In
the cool of the day he may work vigorously, but
this hour of rest is indispensable. To a health-
ful person, living a reasonable life, the siesta is
sheer luxury. However, in camp, when the sun
nears the zenith and the hush which settles over
the jungle proclaims that most of the wild crea-
tures are resting, one may swing one's hammock
in the very heart of this primitive forest and
straightway be admitted into a new province,
where rare and unsuspected experiences are
open to the wayfarer. This is not the province
of sleep or dreams, where all things are possible
and preeminently reasonable; for one does not
go through sundry hardships and all manner of
self-denial, only to be blindfolded on the very
threshold of his ambition. No naturalist of a
temperament which begrudges every unused
hour will, for a moment, think of sleep under
such conditions. It is not true that the rest and
quiet are necessary to cool the Northern blood

222 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

for active work in the afternoon, but the eye and
the brain can combine relaxation with keenest at-
tention.

In the northlands the difference in the tem-
perature of the early dawn and high noon is so
slight that the effect on birds and other crea-
tures, as well as plants of all kinds, is not pro-
found. But in the tropics a change takes place
which is as pronounced as that brought about by
day and night. Above all, the volume of sound
becomes no more than a pianissimo melody; for
the chorus of birds and insects dies away little
by little with the increase of heat. There is
something geometrical about this, something
precise and fine in this working of a natural law
— a law from which no living being is immune,
for at length one unconsciously lies motionless,
overcome by the warmth and this illusion of si-
lence.

The swaying of the hammock sets in motion
a cool breeze, and lying at full length, one is ad-
mitted at high noon to a new domain which has
no other portal but this. At this hour, the
jungle shows few evidences of life, not a chirp
of bird or song of insect, and no rustling of
leaves in the heat which has descended so surely

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 223

and so inevitably. But from hidden places and
cool shadows come broken sounds and whisper-
ings, which cover the gamut from insects to
mammals and unite to make a drowsy and con-
tented murmuring — a musical undertone of
amity and goodwill. For pursuit and killing
are at the lowest ebb, the stifling heat being the
flag of truce in the world-wide struggle for life
and food and mate — a struggle which halts for
naught else, day or night.

Lying quietly, the confidence of every uncon-
ventional and adventurous wanderer will in-
clude your couch, since courage is a natural vir-
tue when the spirit of friendliness is abroad in
the land. I felt that I had acquired merit that
eventful day when a pair of hummingbirds —
thimblefuls of fluff with flaming breastplates and
caps of gold — looked upon me with such favor
that they made the strands of my hamaca their
boudoir. I was not conscious of their designs
upon me until I saw them whirring toward me,
two bright, swiftly moving atoms, glowing like
tiny meteors, humming like a very battalion of
bees. They betook themselves to two chosen
cords and, close together, settled themselves with
no further demands upon existence. A hundred

224 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

of them could have rested upon the pair of
strands; even the dragon-flies which dashed past
had a wider spread of wing; but for these two
there were a myriad glistening featherlets to be
oiled and arranged, two pairs of slender wings
to be whipped clean of every speck of dust, two
delicate, sharp bills to be wiped again and again
and cleared of microscopic drops of nectar.
Then — like the great eagles roosting high over-
head in the clefts of the mountainside — these
mites of birds must needs tuck their heads be-
neath their wings for sleep ; thus we three rested
in the violent heat.

On other days, in Borneo, weaver birds have
brought dried grasses and woven them into the
fabric of my hammock, making me indeed feel
that my couch was a part of the wilderness. At
times, some of the larger birds have crept close
to my glade, to sleep in the shadows of the low
jungle-growth. But these were, one and all,
timid folk, politely incurious, with evident re-
spect for the rights of the individual. But once,
some others of a ruder and more barbaric tem-
perament advanced upon me unawares, and
found me unprepared for their coming. I was
dozing quietly, glad to escape for an instant the

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 225

insistent screaming of a cicada which seemed to
have gone mad in the heat, when a low rustling
caught my ear — a sound of moving leaves with-
out wind; the voice of a breeze in the midst of
breathless heat. There was in it something sin-
ister and foreboding. I leaned over the edge of
my hammock, and saw coming toward me, in a
broad, irregular front, a great army of ants,
battalion after battalion of them flowing like
a sea of living motes over twigs and leaves and
stems. I knew the danger and I half sat up,
prepared to roll out and walk to one side. Then
I gaged my supporting strands ; tested them un-
til they vibrated and hummed, and lay back,
watching, to see what would come about. I
knew that no creature in the world could stay
in the path of this horde and live. To kill an
insect or a great bird would require only a few
minutes, and the death of a jaguar or a tapir
would mean only a few more. Against this at-
tack, claws, teeth, poison-fangs would be idle
weapons.

In the van fled a cloud of terrified insects —
those gifted with flight to wing their way far off ,
while the humbler ones went running headlong,
their legs, four, sjx, or a hundred, making the

226 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

swiftest pace vouchsafed them. There were fool-
ish folk who climbed up low ferns, achieving the
swaying, topmost fronds only to be trailed by
the savage ants and brought down to instant
death.

Even the winged ones were not immune, for
if they hesitated a second, an ant would seize
upon them, and, although carried into the air,
would not loosen his grip, but cling to them, ob-
struct their flight, and perhaps bring them to
earth in the heart of the jungle, where, cut off
from their kind, the single combat would be
waged to the death. From where I watched,
I saw massacres innumerable; terrible battles in
which some creature — a giant beside an ant —
fought for his life, crushing to death scores of
the enemy before giving up.

They were a merciless army and their num-
ber was countless, with host upon host follow-
ing close on each other's heels. A horde of war-
riors found a bird in my game-bag, and left of
it hardly a feather. I wondered whether they
would discover me, and they did, though I think
it was more by accident than by intention.
Nevertheless a half-dozen ants appeared on the
foot-strands, nervously twiddling their antennee

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 227

in my direction. Their appraisal was brief;
with no more than a second's delay they started
toward me. I waited until they were well on
their way, then vigorously twanged the cords
under them harpwise, sending all the scouts into
mid-air and headlong down among their fellows.
So far as I know, this was a revolutionary ma-
neuver in military tactics, comparable only to the
explosion of a set mine. But even so, when the
last of this brigade had gone on their menacing,
pitiless way, and the danger had passed to a new
province, I could not help thinking of the certain,
inexorable fate of a man who, unable to move
from his hammock or to make any defense, should
be thus exposed to their attack. There could
be no help for him if but one of this great host
should scent him out and carry the word back
to the rank and file.

It was after this army had been lost in the
black shadows of the forest floor, that I remem-
bered those others who had come with them —
those attendant birds of prey who profit by the
evil work of this legion. For, hovering over
them, sometimes a little in advance, there had
been a flying squadron of ant-birds and others
which had come to feed, not on the ants, but on

228 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

the insects which had been frightened into flight.
At one time, three of these dropped down to
perch on my hammock, nervous, watchful, and
alert, waiting but a moment before darting after
some ill-fated moth or grasshopper which, in its
great panic, had escaped one danger only to fall
an easy victim to another. For a little while, the
twittering and chirping of these camp-follow-
ers, these feathered profiteers, was brought back
to me on the wind; and when it had died away,
I took up my work again in a glade in which
no voice of insect reached my ears. The hunt-
ing ants had done their work thoroughly.

And so it comes about that by day or by night
the hammock carries with it its own reward to
those who have learned but one thing — that there
is a chasm between pancakes and truffles. It is
an open door to a new land which does not fail
of its promise, a land in which the prosaic, the
ordinary, the everyday have no place, since
they have been shouldered out, dethroned, by a
new and competent perspective. The god of
hammocks is unfailingly kind, just, and gener-
ous to those who have found pancakes wanting
and have discovered by inspiration, or what-not,
that truffles do not grow in back-yards to be

HAMMOCK NIGHTS 229

served at early breakfast by the maid-of-all-
work. Which proves, I believe, that a mere bed
may be a block in the path of philosophy, a com-
monplace, and that truffles and hammocks —
hammocks unquestionably — are twin doors to
the land of romance.

The swayer in hammocks may find amuse-
ment and may enrich science by his record of
observations; his memory will be more vivid,
his caste the worthier, for the intimacy with wild
things achieved when swinging between earth
and sky, unfettered by mattress or roof.

A TROPIC GARDEN

TAKE an automobile and into it pile a super-
man, a great evolutionist, an artist, an ornitholo-
gist, a poet, a botanist, a photographer, a musi-
cian, an author, adorable youngsters of fifteen,
and a tired business man, and within half an hour
I shall have drawn from them superlatives of ap-
preciation, each after his own method of emo-
tional expression — whether a flood of exclama-
tions, or silence. This is no light boast, for at
one time or another, I have done all this, but in
only one place — the Botanical Gardens of
Georgetown, British Guiana. As I hold it sacri-
lege to think of dying without again seeing the
Taj Mahal, or the Hills from Darjeeling, so
something of ethics seems involved in my soul's
necessity of again watching the homing of the
herons in these tropic gardens at evening.

In the busy, unlovely streets of the water-
front of Georgetown, one is often jostled; in

230

A TROPIC GARDEN 231

the markets, it is often difficult at times to make
one's way; but in the gardens a solitary laborer
grubs among the roots, a coolie woman swings
by with a bundle of grass on her head, or, in the
late afternoon, an occasional motor whirrs past.
Mankind seems almost an interloper, rather than
architect and owner of these wonder-gardens.
His presence is due far more often to business,
his transit marked by speed, than the slow walk-
ing or loitering which real appreciation demands.
A guide-book will doubtless give the exact
acreage, tell the mileage of excellent roads, re-
cord the date of establishment, and the number
of species of palms and orchids. But it will have
nothing to say of the marvels of the slow decay
of a Victoria Regia leaf, or of the spiral descent
of a white egret, or of the feelings which Roose-
velt and I shared one evening, when four man-
atees rose beneath us. It was from a little curved
Japanese bridge, and the next morning we were
to start up-country to my jungle laboratory.
There was not a ripple on the water, but here I
chose to stand still and wait. After ten minutes
of silence, I put a question and Roosevelt said,
"I would willingly stand for two days to catch a
good glimpse of a wild manatee." And St.

232 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

Francis heard, and, one after another, four great
backs slowly heaved up ; then an ill-formed head
and an impossible mouth, with the unbelievable
harelip, and before our eyes the sea-cows snorted
and gamboled.

Again, four years later, I put my whole soul
into a prayer for manatees, and again with suc-
cess. During a few moments' interval of a trop-
ical downpour, I stood on the same little bridge
with Henry Fairfield Osborn. We had only
half an hour left in the tropics ; the steamer was
on the point of sailing; what, in ten minutes,
could be seen of tropical life! I stood helpless,
waiting, hoping for anything which might show
itself in this magic garden, where to-day the fo-
liage was glistening malachite and the clouds a
great flat bowl of oxidized silver.

The air brightened, and a tree leaning far
across the water came into view. On its under
side was a long silhouetted line of one and twenty
little fish-eating bats, tiny spots of fur and skinny
web, all so much alike that they might well have
been one bat and twenty shadows.

A small crocodile broke water into air whicK
for him held no moisture, looked at the bats, then
at us, and slipped back into the world of croco*

A TROPIC GARDEN 233

diles. A cackle arose, so shrill and sudden, that
it seemed to have been the cause of the shower of
drops from the palm-fronds; and then, on the
great leaves of the Regia, which defy simile, we
perceived the first feathered folk of this single
tropical glimpse — spur-winged jacanas, whose
rich rufus and cool lemon-yellow no dampness
could deaden. With them were gallinules and
small green herons, and across the pink mist of
lotos blossoms just beyond, three egrets drew
three lines of purest white — and vanished. It
was not at all real, this onrush of bird and blos-
som revealed by the temporary erasing of the
driven lines of gray rain.

Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning
game, I still watched eagerly and ungratefully
for manatees. Kiskadees splashed rather than
flew through the drenched air, an invisible black
witch bubbled somewhere to herself, and a wren
Sang three notes and a trill which died out in a
liquid gurgle. Then came another crocodile, and
finally the manatees. Not only did they rise and
Splash and roll and indolently flick themselves
with their great flippers, but they stood upright
on their tails, like Alice's carpenter's companion,
and one fondled its young as a water-mamma

234. EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

should. Then the largest stretched up as far as
any manatee can ever leave the water, and caught
and munched a drooping sprig of bamboo.
Watching the great puffing lips, we again
thought of walruses ; but only a caterpillar could
emulate that sideways mumbling — the strangest
mouth of any mammal. But from behind, the
rounded head, the shapely neck, the little baby;
manatee held carefully in the curve of a flipper,
made legends of mermaids seem very reason-
able; and if I had been an early voyageur, I
should assuredly have had stories to tell of mer-
kiddies as well. As we watched, the young one
played about, slowly and deliberately, without
frisk or gambol, but determinedly, intently, as
if realizing its duty to an abstract conception of
youth and warm-blooded mammalness.

The earth holds few breathing beings stranger
than these manatees. Their life is a slow pro-
gression through muddy water from one bed of
lilies or reeds to another. Every few minutes,
day and night, year after year, they come to the
surface for a lungful of the air which they must
have, but in which they cannot live. In place of
hands they have flippers, which paddle them lei-
surely along, which also serve to hold the infant

A TROPIC GARDEN 235

manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves
when leeches irritate. The courtship of sea-
cows, the qualities which appeal most to their
dull minds, the way they protect the callow
youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or
where they sleep — of all this we are ignorant.
We belong to the same class, but the line be-
tween water and air is a no man's land which
neither of us can pass for more than a few sec-
onds.

When their big black hulks heaved slowly up-
ward, it brought to my mind the huge glistening
backs of elephants bathing in Indian streams;
and this resemblance is not wholly fantastic.
"Not far from the oldest Egyptian ruins, excava-
tions have brought to light ruins millions of
years more ancient — the fossil bones of great
creatures as strange as any that live in the realm
of fairyland or fiction. Among them was re-
vealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also
that of manatees. Far back in geological times
the tapir-like Moeritherium, which wandered
through Eocene swamps, had within itself the
prophecy of two diverse lines. One would gain
great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and live its
life in distant tropical jungles; and another

236 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

branch was to sink still deeper into the swamp-
water, where its hind-legs would weaken and
vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And
here to-day we watched a quartette of these man-
atees, living contented lives and breeding in the
gardens of Georgetown.

The mist again drifted its skeins around leaf
and branch, gray things became grayer, drops
formed in mid-air and slipped slowly through
other slower forming drops, and a moment later
rain was falling gently. We went away, and to
our mind's eye the manatees behind that gray
curtain still munch bamboos, the spur-wings
stretch their colorful wings cloudward, and the
bubble-eyed crocodiles float intermittently be-
tween two watery zones.

To say that these are beautiful botanical gar-
dens is like the statement that sunsets are admir-
able events. It is better to think of them as a
setting, focusing about the greatest water-lily in
the world, or, as we have seen, the strangest
mammal; or as an exhibit of roots — roots as va-
ried and as exquisite as a hall of famous sculp-
ture; or as a wilderness of tapestry foliage, in
texture from cobweb to burlap; or as a heaven-
roofed, sun-furnaced greenhouse of blossoms,

A TROPIC GARDEN 237'

from the tiniest of dull-green orchids to the fifty-
foot spike of taliput bloom. With this founda-
tion of vegetation recall that the Demerara coast
is a paradise for herons, egrets, bitterns, galli-
nules, jacanas, and hawks, and think of these
trees and foliage, islands and marsh, as a nesting
and roosting focus for hundreds of such birds.
Thus, considering the gardens indirectly, one
comes gradually to the realization of their won-
derful character.

The Victoria Regia has one thing in common
with a volcano — no amount of description or of
colored plates prepares one for the plant itself.
In analysis we recall its dimensions, colors, and
form. Standing by a trench filled with its leaves
and flowers, we discard the records of memory,
and cleansing the senses of pre-impressions, be-
rgin anew. The marvel is for each of us, individ-
ually, an exception to evolution; it is a special
creation, like all the rainbows seen in one's life
• — a thing to be reverently absorbed by sight,
by scent, by touch, absorbed and realized without
precedent or limit. Only ultimately do we find it
necessary to adulterate this fine perception with
definitive words and phrases, and so attempt to
register it for ourselves or others.

238 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

I have seen many wonderful sights from an
automobile, — such as my first Boche barrage and
the tree ferns of Martinique, — but none to com-
pare with the joys of vision from prehistoric
tikka gharries, ancient victorias, and aged hacks.
It was from the low curves of these equine rick-
shaws that I first learned to love Paris and Cal-
cutta and the water-lilies of Georgetown. One
of the first rites which I perform upon returning
to New York is to go to the Lafayette and, after
dinner, brush aside the taxi men and hail a vic-
toria. The last time I did this, my driver was so
old that two fellow drivers, younger than he and
yet grandfatherly, assisted him, one holding the
horse and the other helping him to his seat.
Slowly ascending Fifth Avenue close to the curb
and on through Central Park is like no other ex-
perience. The vehicle is so low and open that
all resemblance to bus or taxi is lost. Every-
thing is seen from a new angle. One learns in-
cidentally that there is a guild of cab-drivers —
proud, restrained, jealous. A hundred cars rush
by without notice. Suddenly we see the whip
brought up in salute to the dingy green top-hat,
and across the avenue we perceive another vic-
toria. And we are thrilled at the discovery, as

A TROPIC GARDEN 239

If we had unearthed a new codex of some ancient
ritual.

And so, initiated by such precedent, I have
found it a worthy thing to spend hours in de-
crepit cabs loitering along side roads in the Bot-
anical Gardens, watching herons and crocodiles,
lilies and manatees, from the rusty leather seats.
At first the driver looked at me in astonishment
as I photographed or watched or wrote; but later
he attended to his horse, whispering strange
things into its ears, and finally deserted me. My
writing was punctuated by graceful flourishes,
resulting from an occasional lurch of the vehicle
as the horse stepped from one to another patch
of luscious grass.

Like Fujiyama, the Victoria Regia changes
from hour to hour, color-shifted, wind-swung*
and the mechanism of the blossoms never ceas-
ing. In northern greenhouses it is nursed by
skilled gardeners, kept in indifferent vitality by
artificial heat and ventilation, with gaged light
and selected water; here it was a rank growth, in
its natural home, and here we knew of its an-
tiquity from birds whose toes had been molded
through scores of centuries to tread its great
leaves.

240 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

In the cool fragrance of early morning, with
the sun low across the water, the leaves appeared
like huge, milky-white platters, with now and
then little dancing silhouettes running over them.
In another slant of light they seemed atolls scat-
tered thickly through a dark, quiet sea, with
new-blown flowers filling the whole air with slow-
drifting perfume. Best of all, in late afternoon,
the true colors came to the eye — six-foot circles
of smooth emerald, with up-turned hem of rich
wine-color. Each had a tell-tale cable lying
along the surface, a score of leaves radiating
from one deep hidden root.

Up through mud and black trench-water
came the leaf, like a tiny fist of wrinkles, and
day by day spread and uncurled, looking like the
unwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and
ribs covering the under-side increased in size and
strength, and finally the great leaf was ironed
out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of
smooth, emerald chlorophyll. Then, for a time,
— no one has ever taken the trouble to find out
how long, — it was at its best, swinging back and
forth at its moorings with deep upright rim, a
notch at one side revealing the almost invisible

A TROPIC GARDEN 241

seam of the great lobes, and serving, also, as
drainage outlet for excess of rain.

A young leaf occasionally came to grief by
reaching the surface amid several large ones
floating close together. Such a leaf expanded,
as usual, but, like a beached boat, was gradually
forced high and dry, hardening into a distorted
shape and sinking only with the decay of the un-
derlying leaves.

The deep crimson of the outside of the rim
was merely a reflection tint, and vanished when
the sun shone directly through; but the masses
of sharp spines were very real, and quite efficient
in repelling boarders. The leaf offered safe
haven to any creature that could leap or fly to its
surface ; but its life would be short indeed if the
casual whim of every baby crocodile or flipper of
a young manatee met with no opposition.

Insects came from water and from air and
called the floating leaf home, and, from now on,
its surface was one of the most interesting and
busy arenas in this tropical landscape.

In late September I spread my observation
chair at the very edge of one of the dark tarns
and watched the life on the leaves. Out at the

242 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

center a fussy jacana was feeding with her two
spindly-legged babies, while, still nearer, three
scarlet-helmeted gallinules lumbered about, now
and then tipping over a silvery and black infant
which seemed puzzled as to which it should call
parent. Here was a clear example, not only of
the abundance of life in the tropics, but of the
keen competition. The jacana invariably lays
four eggs, and the gallinule, at this latitude, six
or eight, yet only a fraction of the young had
survived even to this tender age.

As I looked, a small crocodile rose, splashed,
and sank, sending terror among the gallinules,
but arousing the spur-wing jacana to a high
pitch of anger. It left its young and flew di-
rectly to the widening circles and hovered, cack*
ling loudly. These birds have ample ability to
cope with the dangers which menace from be-
neath; but their fear was from above, and every
passing heron, egret, or harmless hawk was given
a quick scrutiny, with an instinctive crouch and
half-spread wings.

But still the whole scene was peaceful ; and as
the sun grew warmer, young herons and egrets
crawled out of their nests on the island a few
yards away and preened their scanty plumage.

A TROPIC GARDEN 243

Kiskadees splashed and dipped along the margin
of the water. Everywhere this species seems
seized with an aquatic fervor, and in localities
hundreds of miles apart I have seen them gradu-
ally desert their fly-catching for surface feeding,
or often plunging, kingfisher-like, bodily be-
neath, to emerge with a small wriggling fish —
another certain reflection of overpopulation and
competition.

As I sat I heard a rustle behind me, and there,
not eight feet away, narrow snout held high, one
tiny foot lifted, was that furry fiend, Rikki-tikki.
He was too quick for me, and dived into a small
clump of undergrowth and bamboos. But I
wanted a specimen of mongoose, and the artist
,offered to beat one end of the bush. Soon I saw
the gray form undulating along, and as the rus-
tling came nearer, he shot forth, moving in great
bounds. I waited until he had covered half the
distance to the next clump and rolled him over.
Going back to my chair, I found that neither
jacana, nor gallinules, nor herons had been dis-
turbed by my shot.

While the introduction of the mongoose into
Guiana was a very reckless, foolish act, yet he
seems to be having a rather hard time of it, and

244 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

with islands and lily-pads as havens, and water-
ways in every direction, Rikki is reduced chiefly
to grasshoppers and such small game. He has
spread along the entire coast, through the cane-
fields and around the rice-swamps, and it will
not be his fault if he does not eventually get a
foothold in the jungle itself.

No month or day or hour fails to bring vital
changes — tragedies and comedies — to the net-
work of life of these tropical gardens ; but as we
drive along the broad paths of an afternoon, the
quiet vistas show only waving palms, weaving
vultures, and swooping kiskadees, with bursts of
color from bougainvillea, flamboyant, and queen
of the flowers. At certain times, however, the
tide of visible change swelled into a veritable
bore of life, gently and gradually, as quiet wa-
ters become troubled and then pass into the
seething uproar of rapids. In late afternoon,
when the long shadows of palms stretched their
blue-black bars across the terra-cotta roads, the
foliage of the green bamboo islands was dotted
here and there with a scattering of young herons,
white and blue and parti-colored. Idly watch-
ing them through glasses, I saw them sleepily
preening their sprouting feathers, making inef-

A TROPIC GARDEN 245

factual attempts at pecking one another, or else
hunched in silent heron-dream. They were
scarcely more alive than the creeping, hour-hand
tendrils about them, mere double-stemmed, fluffy
petaled blossoms, no more strange than the near-
est vegetable blooms — the cannon-ball mystery,
the sand-box puzzle, sinister orchids, and the
false color-alarms of the white-bracted silver-
leaf. Compared with these, perching herons are
right and seemly fruit.

As I watched them I suddenly stiffened in
sympathy, as I saw all vegetable sloth drop away
and each bird become a detached individual,
plucked by an electric emotion from the appear-
ance of a thing of sap and fiber to a vital being
of tingling nerves. I followed their united
glance, and overhead there vibrated, lightly as a
thistledown, the first incoming adult heron,
swinging in from a day's fishing along the coast.
It went on and vanished among the fronds of a
distant island; but the calm had been broken,
and through all the stems there ran a restless
sense of anticipation, a Zeitgeist of prophetic im-
port. One felt that memory of past things was
dimming, and content with present comfort was
no longer dominant. It was the future to which

24.6 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

both the baby herons and I were looking, and for
them realization came quickly. The sun had
sunk still lower, and great clouds had begun to
spread their robes and choose their tints for the
coming pageant.

And now the vanguard of the homing host ap-
peared,— black dots against blue and white and
salmon, — thin, gaunt forms with slow-moving
wings which cut the air through half the sky.
The little herons and I watched them come — first
a single white egret, which spiralled down, just
as I had many times seen the first returning Spad
eddy downward to a cluster of great hump-
backed hangars ; then a trio of tricolored herons,
and six little blues, and after that I lost count.
It seemed as if these tiny islands were magnets
drawing all the herons in the world.

Parrakeets whirl roostwards with machine-like
synchronism of flight ; geese wheel down in more
or less regular formation; but these herons con-
centrated along straight lines, each describing1
its individual radius from the spot where it
caught its last fish or shrimp to its nest or the
particular branch on which it will spend the
night. With a hemicircle of sufficient size, one
might plot all of the hundreds upon hundreds of

A TROPIC GARDEN 247

these radii, and each would represent a distinct
line, if only a heron's width apart.

At the height of the evening's flight there were
sometimes fifty herons in sight at once, beating
steadily onward until almost overhead, when they
put on brakes and dropped. Some, as the little
egrets, were rather awkward; while the tricolors
were the most skilful, sometimes nose-diving,
with a sudden flattening out just in time to reach
out and grasp a branch. Once or twice, when a
fitful breeze blew at sunset, I had a magnificent
\ exhibition of aeronautics. The birds came up-
wind slowly, beating their way obliquely but
steadily, long legs stretched out far behind the
tail and swinging pendulum-like whenever a shift
of ballast was needed. They apparently did not
realize the unevenness of the wind, for when they
backed air, ready to descend, a sudden gust
would often undercut them and over they would
go, legs, wings, and neck sprawling in mid-air.
After one or two somersaults or a short, swift
dive, they would right themselves, feathers on
end, and frantically grasp at the first leaf or twig
within reach. Panting, they looked helplessly
around, reorientation coming gradually.

At each arrival, a hoarse chorus went up from

348 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

hungry throats, and every youngster within reach
scrambled wildly forward, hopeful of a fish
course. They received but scant courtesy and
usually a vicious peck tumbled them off the
branch. I saw a young bird fall to the water,
and this mishap was from no attack, but due to
his tripping over his own feet, the claws of one
foot gripping those of the other in an insane
clasp, which overbalanced him. He fell through
a thin screen of vines and splashed half onto a
small Regia leaf. With neck and wings he strug-
gled to pull himself up, and had almost suc-
ceeded when heron and leaf sank slowly, and
only the bare stem swung up again. A few bub-
bles led off in a silvery path toward deeper water,
showing where a crocodile swam slowly off with
his prey.

For a time the birds remained still, and then
crept within the tangles, to their mates or nests,
or quieted the clamor of the young with warm-
storage fish. How each one knew its own off-
spring was beyond my ken, but on three separate
evenings scattered through one week, I observed
an individual, marked by a wing-gap of two lost
feathers, come, within a quarter-hour of six
o'clock, and feed a great awkward youngster

A TROPIC GARDEN 24ft

which had lost a single feather from each wing.
So there was no hit-or-miss method — no luck in
the strongest birds taking toll from more than
two of the returning parents.

Observing this vesper migration in different
places, I began to see orderly segregation on a
large scale. All the smaller herons dwelt to-
gether on certain islands in more or less social
tolerance; and on adjoining trees, separated by
only a few yards, scores of hawks concentrated
and roosted, content with their snail diet, and
wholly ignoring their neighbors. On the other
side of the gardens, in aristocratic isolation, was
a colony of stately American egrets, dainty and
graceful. Their circumference of radiation was
almost or quite a circle, for they preferred the
ricefields for their daily hunting. Here the great
birds, snowy white, with flowing aigrettes, and
long, curving necks, settled with dignity, and
here they slept and sat on their rough nests of
sticks.

When the height of homing flight of the host
of herons had passed, I noticed a new element of
restlessness, and here and there among the fo-
iiage appeared dull-brown figures. There oc-
curred the comic explanation of white herons

250 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

who had crept deep among the branches, again
emerging in house coat of drab ! These were not
the same, however, and the first glance through
binoculars showed the thick-set, humped figures
and huge, staring eyes of night herons.

As the last rays of the sun left the summit of
the royal palms, something like the shadow of a
heron flashed out and away, and then the import
of these facts was impressed upon me. The
egret, the night heron, the vampire — here were
three types of organisms, characterizing the ac-
tions and reactions in nature. The islands were
receiving and giving up. Their heart was be-
coming filled with the many day-feeding birds,
and now the night-shift was leaving, and the
very branch on which a night heron might have
been dozing all day was now occupied, perhaps,
by a sleeping egret. With eyes enlarged to
gather together the scanty rays of light, the night
herons were slipping away in the path of the
vampires — both nocturnal, but unlike in all other
ways. And I wondered if, in the very early
morning, infant night herons would greet their
returning parents ; and if their callow young ever
fell into the dark waters, what awful deathly ai«

A TROPIC GARDEN 251

ternates would night reveal; or were the slow-
living crocodiles sleepless, with cruel eyes which
never closed so soundly but that the splash of a
young night heron brought instant response?

XI
THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES

BUTTERFLIES doing strange things in very
beautiful ways were in my mind when I sat
down, but by the time my pen was uncapped
my thoughts had shifted to rocks. The ink was
refractory and a vigorous flick sent a shower of
green drops over the sand on which I was sitting,
and as I watched the ink settle into the absorbent
quartz — the inversions of our grandmothers'
blotters — I thought of what jolly things the lost
ink might have been made to say about butter'
flies and rocks, if it could have flowed out slowly
in curves and angles and dots over paper — for
the things we might have done are always so
much more worthy than those which we actually
accomplish. When at last I began to write, a
song came to my ears and my mind again looped
backward. At least, there came from the very
deeps of the water beyond the mangroves a low,
metallic murmur; and my Stormouth says that
in Icelandic sangra means to murmur. So what

252

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 253

is a murmur in Iceland may very well be a song
in Guiana. At any rate, my pen would have to
do only with words of singing catfish; yet from
butterflies to rock, to fish, all was logical looping
— mental giant-swings which came as relaxation
after hours of observation of unrelated sheer
facts.

The singing cats, so my pen consented to write,
had serenaded me while I crossed the Cuyuni in
a canoe. There arose deep, liquid, vibrating
sounds, such as those I now heard, deep and
penetrating, as if from some submarine gong — a
gong which could not be thought of as wet, for it
had never been dry. As I stopped paddling the
sound became absolute vibration, the canoe itself
seemed to tremble, the , paddle tingled in my
hands. It was wholly detached; it came from
whatever direction the ear sought it. Then, with-
out dying out, it was reinforced by another
sound, rhythmical, abrupt, twanging, filling the
water and air with a slow measure on four notes.
The water swirled beside the canoe, and a face
appeared — a monstrous, complacent face, such
as Bocklin would love — a face inhuman in pos-
sessing the quality of supreme contentment.
Framed in the brown waters, the head of the

254 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

great, grinning catfish rose, and slowly sank,
leaving outlines discernible in ripples and bub-
bles with almost Cheshire persistency. One of
my Indians, passing in his dugout, smiled at my
peering down after the fish, and murmured,
"Boom-boom."

Then came a day when one of these huge, ami-
able, living smiles blundered into our net, a smile
a foot wide and six feet long, and even as he lay
quietly awaiting what fate brought to great cat-
fish, he sang, both theme and accompaniment.
His whole being throbbed with the continuous
deep drumming as the thin, silky walls of his
swim-bladder vibrated in the depths of his body.
The oxygen in the air was slowly killing him,
and yet his swan song was possible because of an
inner atmosphere so rich in this gas that it would
be unbreathable by a creature of the land. Nerve
and muscle, special expanse of circling bones,
swim-bladder and its tenuous gas — all these com-
bined to produce the aquatic harmony. But as
if to load this contented being with largesse of
apparently useless abilities, the two widespread-
ing fin spines — the fins which correspond to
our arms — were swiveled in rough-ridged cups
at what might have been shoulders, and when

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 255

moved back and forth the stridulation troubled
all the water, and the air, too, with the muffled,
twanging, rip, rip, rip, rip. The two spines were
tuned separately, the right being a full tone
lower, and the backward drawing of the bow
gave a higher note than its forward reach. So,
alternately, at a full second tempo, the four tones
rose and fell, carrying out some strange Silurian
theme: a muffled cadence of undertones, which,
thrilled with the mystery of their author and
cause, yet merged smoothly with the cosmic or-
chestra of wind and ripples and distant rain.

So the great, smooth, arching lift of granite
rocks at our bungalow's shore, where the giant
catfish sang, was ever afterward Boom-boom
Point. And now I sat close by on the sand and
strove to think anew of my butterflies, for they
were the reason of my being there that brilliant
October afternoon. But still my pen refused,
hovering about the thing of ultimate interest as
one leaves the most desired book to the last. For
again the ear claimed dominance, and I listened
to a new little refrain over my shoulder. I pic-
tured a tiny sawhorse, and a midget who labored
with might and main to cut through a never-end-
ing stint of twigs. I chose to keep my image to

256 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

the last, and did not move or look around, until
there came the slightest of tugs at my knee, and
into view clambered one of those beings who are
so beautiful and bizarre that one almost thinks
they should not be. My second singer was a
beetle — an awkward, enormous, serious, brilliant
beetle, with six-inch antenna? and great wing
covers, which combined the hues of the royal
robes of Queen Thi, tempered by thousands of
years of silent darkness in the underground
tombs at Sakhara, with the grace of curve and
angle of equally ancient characters on the hill
tombs of Fokien. On a background of olive'
ochre there blazed great splashes and characters
of the red of jasper framed in black. Toward
the front Nature had tried heavy black stippling,
but it clouded the pattern and she had given it up
in order that I might think of Egypt and Cathay.
But the thing which took the beetle quite out
of a world of reasonable things was his forelegs.
They were outrageous, and he seemed to think
so, too, for they got in his way, and caught in
wrong things and pulled him to one side. They
were three times the length of his other limbs,
spreading sideways a full thirteen inches, long,
slender, beautifully sculptured, and forever

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 257

reaching out in front for whatever long-armed
beetles most desire. And his song, as he climbed
over me, was squeaky and sawlike, and as he
walked he doddered, head trembling as an old
man's shakes in final acquiescence in the futility
of life.

But in this great-armed beetle it was a nod-
ding of necessity, a doddering of desire, the
drawing of the bow across the strings in a hymn
of hope which had begun in past time with the
first stridulation of ancient insects. To-day the
fiddling vibrations, the Song of the Beetle,
reached out in all directions. To the majority
of jungle ears it was only another note in the
day's chorus: I saw it attract a flycatcher's at-
tention, hold it a moment, and then lose it. To
me it came as a vitally interesting tone of deep
significance, for whatever emotions it might
arouse in casual ears, its goal was another Great-
armed Beetle, who might or might not come
within its radius. With unquestioning search
the fiddler clambered on and on, over me and
over flowers and rocks, skirting the ripples and
vanishing into a maelstrom of waving grass.
Long after the last awkward lurch, there came
back zizzing squeaks of perfect faith, and I

258 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

hoped, as I passed beyond the periphery of
sound, that instinct and desire might direct their
rolling ball of vibrations toward the one whose
ear, whether in antenna, or thorax or femoral
tympanum had, through untold numbers of past
lives, been attuned to its rhythm.

Two thousand miles north of where I sat, or
ten million, five hundred and sixty thousand feet
(for, like Bunker Bean's book-keeper, I some-
times like to think of things that way), I would
look out of the window one morning in days to
come, and thrill at the sight of falling flakes.
The emotion would very probably be sentiment
— the memory of wonderful northland snow-/
storms, of huge fires, of evenings with Roosevelt,/'
when discussions always led to unknowable '>
fields, when book after book yielded its phrase
or sentence of pure gold thought. On one of the
last of such evenings I found a forgotten joy-of-
battle-speech of Huxley's, which stimulated two
full days and four books re-read — while flakes
swirled and invisible winds came swiftly around
the eaves over the great trophies — poussant des
soupirs, — we longing with our whole souls for an
hour of talk with that splendid old fighting scien-
tist.

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 259s

These are thoughts which come at first-snow,
thoughts humanly narrow and personal com-
pared to the later delights of snow itself — crys-
tals and tracks, the strangeness of freezing and
the mystery of melting. And they recurred now
because for days past I had idly watched scat-
tered flurries of lemon-yellow and of orange but-
terflies drift past Kartabo. Down the two great
Guiana rivers they came, steadily progressing,
yet never hurrying; with zigzag flickering flight
they barely cleared the trees and shrubs, and then
skimmed the surface, vanishing when ripples
caught the light, redoubled by reflection when
the water lay quiet and polished. For month
after month they passed, sometimes absent for
days or weeks, but soon to be counted at earliest
sunup, always arousing renewed curiosity, al-
ways bringing to mind the first flurry of winter.

We watch the autumn passing of birds with
regret, but when the bluebirds warble their way
southward we are cheered with the hope and the
knowledge that some, at least, will return. Here,
vast stretches of country, perhaps all Guiana,
and how much of Brazil and Venezuela no one
knows, poured forth a steady stream of yellow
and orange butterflies. They were very beauti-

260 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ful and they danced and flickered In the sunlight,
but this was no temporary shifting to a pleas-
anter clime or a land of more abundant flowers,
but a migration in the grim old sense which Cicero
loved, non dubitat . . . migrare de vita. No but-
terfly ever turned back, or circled again to the
glade, with its yellow cassia blooms where he
had spent his caterpillarhood. Nor did he fly
toward the north star or the sunset, but between
the two. Twelve years before, as I passed up
the Essequibo and the Cuyuni, I noticed hun-
dreds of yellow butterflies each true to his little
compass variation of NNW.

There are times and places in Guiana where
emigrating butterflies turn to the north or the
south; sometimes for days at a time, but sooner
or later the eddies straighten out, their little flo-
tillas cease tacking, and all swing again NNW.

To-day the last of the migration stragglers of
the year — perhaps the fiftieth great-grandsons o^"
those others — held true to the Catopsilian lode-
stone.

My masculine pronouns are intentional, for of
all the thousands and tens of thousands of mi-
grants, all, as far as I know, were males. Catch
a dozen yellows in a jungle glade and the sexes

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 261

may be equal. But the irresistible maelstrom im^
pels only the males. Whence they come or wby
they go is as utterly unknown to us as why the
females are immune.

Once, from the deck of a steamer, far off the
Guiana coast, I saw hosts of these same great saf-
fron-wings flying well above the water, headed
for the open sea. Behind them were sheltering
fronds, nectar, soft winds, mates ; before were cor-
roding salt, rising waves, lowering clouds, a
storm imminent. Their course was NNW, they
sailed under sealed orders, their port was Death.

Looking out over the great expanse of the Ma-
zaruni, the fluttering insects were usually rather
evenly distributed, each with a few yards of clear
space about it, but very rarely — I have seen it
only twice — a new force became operative. Not
only were the little volant beings siphoned up in
untold numbers from their normal life of sleep-
ing, feeding, dancing about their mates, but they
were blindly poured into an invisible artery,
down which they flowed in close association,
veritables corpuscules de papillons, almost touch-
ing, forming a bending ribbon, winding its way
seaward, with here and there a temporary fray-
ing out of eddying wings. It seemed like a way-

262 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ward cloud still stained with last night's sunset
yellow, which had set out on its own path over
rivers and jungles to join the sea mists beyond
the uttermost trees.

Such a swarm seemed imbued with an ecstasy
of travel which surpassed discomfort. Deep
cloud shadows might settle down, but only
dimmed the painted wings; under raindrops the
ribbon sagged, the insects flying closer to the
water. On the other hand, the scattered hosts
of the more ordinary migrations, while they
turned neither to the north nor to the west, yet
fled at the advent of clouds and rain, seeking
shelter under the nearest foliage. So much
loitering was permitted, but with the coming of
the sun again they must desert the pleasant feel
of velvet leaves, the rain-washed odors of stream-
ing blossoms, and set their antennas unquestion-
ingly upon the strange last turn of their wheel
of life.

What crime of ancestors are they expiating?
In some forgotten caterpillardom was an act
committed, so terrible that it can never be known,
except through the working out of the karma
upon millions of butterflies? Or does there lin-
ger in the innumerable little ganglion minds a

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 263

memory of long-lost Atlantis, so compelling to
masculine Catopsilias that the supreme effort of
their lives is an attempt to envisage it? "Ab-
surd fancies, all," says our conscious entomologi-
cal sense, and we agree and sweep them asid*.
And then quite as readily, more reasonable scien-
tific theories fall asunder, and we are left at last
alone with the butterflies, a vast ignorance, and
a great unfulfilled desire to know what it all
means.

On this October day the migration of the year
had ceased. To my coarse senses the sunlight
was of equal intensity, the braeze unchanged,
the whole aspect the same — and yet something as
intangible as thought, as impelling as gravita-
tion, had ceased to operate. The tension once
slackened, the butterflies took up their more usual
lives. But what could I know of the meaning of
"normal'* in the life of a butterfly — I who
boasted a miserable single pair of eyes and no
greater number of legs, whose shoulders sup-
ported only shoulder blades, and whose youth
was barren of caterpillarian memories!

As I have said, migration was at an end, yet
here I had stumbled upon a Bay of Butterflies.
No matter whether one's interest in life

264. EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

chiefly with ornithology, teetotalism, arrowheads.
politics> botany, or finance, in this bay one's
thoughts would be sure to be concentrated on
butterflies. And no less interesting than the but-
terflies were their immediate surroundings. The
day before, I had sat close by on a low boulder
at the head of the tiny bay, with not a butterfly in
sight. It occurred to me that my ancestor,
Eryops, would have been perfectly at home, for
in front of me were clumps of strange, carbonif-
erous rushes, lacking leaves and grace, and
sedges such as might be fashioned in an attempt
to make plants out of green straw. Here and
there an ancient jointed stem was in blossom, a
pinnacle of white filaments, and hour after hour
there came little brown trigonid visitors, sting-
less bees, whose nests were veritable museums
of flower extracts — tubs of honey, hampers of
pollen, barrels of ambrosia, hoarded in castles
of wax. Scirpus-sedge or orchid, all was the
same to them.

All odor evaded me until I had recourse to
my usual olfactory crutch, placing the flower in
a vial in the sunlight. Delicate indeed was the
fragrance which did not yield itself to a few min-
utes of this distillation. As I removed the cork

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 265

there gently arose the scent of thyme, and of
rose petals long pressed between the leaves of
old, old books — a scent memorable of days an-
cient to us, which in past lives of sedges would
count but a moment. In an instant it passed,
drowned in the following smell of bruised stem.
But I had surprised the odor of this age-old
growth, as evanescent as the faint sound of the
breeze silting through the cluster of leafless
stalks. I felt certain that Eryops, although liv-
ing among horserushes and ancient sedges, never
smelled or listened to them, and a glow of satis-
faction came over me at the thought that per-
haps I represented an advance on this funny old
forebear of mine ; but then I thought of the little
bees, drawn from afar by the scent, and I re-
turned to my usual sense of human futility,
which is always dominant in the presence of in-
sect activities.

I leaned back, crowding into a crevice of rock,
and strove to realize more deeply the kinship of
these fine earth neighbors. Bone of my bone in-
deed they were, but their quiet dignity, their
calmness in storm and sun, their poise, their dis-
regard of all small, petty things, whether of me-
chanics, whether chemical or emotional — these

266 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

were attributes to which I could only aspire, be-
ing the prerogatives of superiors.

These rocks, in particular, seemed of the very
essence of earth. Three elements fought over
them. The sand and soil from which they lifted
their splendid heads sifted down, or was washed
up, in vain effort to cover them. More subtly
dead tree trunks fell upon them, returned to
earth, and strove to encloak them. For six hours
at a time the water claimed them, enveloping
them slowly in a mantle of quicksilver, or surg-
ing over with rough waves. Algal spores took
hold, desmids and diatoms swam in and settled
down, little fish wandered in and out of the crev-
ices, while large ones nosed at the entrances.

Then Mother Earth turned slowly onward;
the moon, reaching down, beckoned with invisible
fingers, and the air again entered this no man's
land. Breezes whispered where a few moments
before ripples had lapped; with the sun as ally,
the last remaining pool vanished and there began
the hours of aerial dominion. The most envied
character of our lesser brethren is their faith.
ISTo matter how many hundreds of thousands of
tides had ebbed and flowed, yet to-day every

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 267

pinch of life which was blown or walked or fell
or flew to the rocks during their brief respite
from the waves, accepted the good dry surface
without question.

Seeds and berries fell, and rolled into hollows
rich in mulcted earth; parachutes, buoyed on
thistle silk, sailed from distant jungle plants;
every swirl of breeze brought spores of lichens
and moss, and even the retreating water unwit-
tingly aided, having transported hither and
dropped a cargo of living things, from tiniest
plant to seeds of mightiest mora. Though in the
few allotted hours these might not sprout, but
only quicken in their heart, yet blue-winged wasps
made their faith more manifest, and worked with
feverish haste to gather pellets of clay and fash-
ion cells. I once saw even the beginning of stor-
age— a green spider, which an hour later was
swallowed by a passing fish instead of nourishing
an infant wasp.

Spiders raised their meshes where shrimps had
skipped, and flies hummed and were caught by
singing jungle vireos, where armored catfish had
passed an hour or two before.

So the elements struggled and the creatures (

268 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

of each strove to fulfil their destiny, and for a
little time the rocks and I wondered at it to-
gether.

In this little arena, floored with sand, dotted
with rushes and balconied with boulders, many
hundreds of butterflies were gathered. There
were five species, all of the genius Catopsilia, but
only three were easily distinguishable in life, the
smaller, lemon yellow statira, and the larger,
orange argente and philea. There was also
eubele, the migrant, keeping rather to itself.

I took some pictures, then crept closer; more
pictures and a nearer approach. Then suddenly
all rose, and I felt as if I had shattered a won-
derful painting. But the sand was a lodestone
and drew them down. I slipped within a yard,
squatted, and mentally became one of them. Si-
lently, by dozens and scores, they flew around me,
and soon they eclipsed the sand. They were so
closely packed that their outstretched legs
touched. There were two large patches, and a
smaller area outlined by no boundary that I
could detect. Yet when these were occupied the
last comers alighted on top of the wings of their
comrades, who resented neither the disturbance
nor the weight. Two layers of butterflies

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 269

crammed into small areas of sand in the midst of
more sand, bounded by walls of empty air — this
was a strange thing.

A little later, when I enthusiastically reported
it to a professional lepidopterist he brushed it
aside. "A common occurrence the world over,
Rhopalocera gathered in damp places to drink."
I, too, had observed apparently similar phenom-
ena along icy streams in Sikhim, and around
muddy buffalo-wallows in steaming Malay jun-
gles. And I can recall many years ago, leaning
far out of a New England buggy to watch clouds
of little sulphurs flutter up from puddles beneath
the creaking wheels.

The very fact that butterflies chose to drink
in company is of intense interest, and to be en-
vied as well by us humans who are temporarily
denied that privilege. But in the Bay of Butter-
flies they were not drinking, nor during the sev-
eral days when I watched them. One of the
chosen patches of sand was close to the tide when
I first saw them, and damp enough to appease
;the thirst of any butterfly. The other two were
upon sand, parched by hours of direct tropical
sun, and here the two layers were massed.

The insects alighted, facing in any direction,

270 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

but veered at once, heading upbreeze. Along
the riverside of markets of tropical cities I have
seen fleets of fishing boats crowded close to-
gether, their gay sails drying, while great ebony
Neptunes brought ashore baskets of angel fish.
This came to mind as I watched my flotillas of
butterflies.

I leaned forward until my face was hardly a
foot from the outliers, and these I learned to
know as individuals. One sulphur had lost a bit
of hind wing, and three times he flew away and
returned to the same spot. Like most cripples,
he was unamiable, and resented a close approach,
pushing at the trespasser with a foreleg in a most
unbutterfly-like way. Although I watched
closely, I did not see a single tongue uncoiled
for drinking. Only when a dense group became
uneasy and pushed one another about were the
tongue springs slightly loosened. Even the nerv-
ous antennse were quiet after the insects had set-
tled. They seemed to have achieved a Rhopa-
loceran Nirvana, content to rest motionless un-
til caught up in the temporary whirlwinds of
restlessness which now and then possessed them.

They came from all directions, swirling over
the rocks, twisting through near-by brambles,

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 271

and settling without a moment's hesitation. It
was as though they had all been here many times
before, a rendezvous which brooked not an in-
stant's delay. From time to time some mass
spirit troubled them, and, as one butterfly, the
whole company took to wing. Close as they were
when resting, they fairly buffeted one another in
midair. Their wings, striking one another and
my camera and face, made a strange little rus-
tling, crisp and crackling whispers of sounds.
As if a pile of Northern autumn leaves, fallen to
earth, suddenly remembered days of greenness
and humming bees, and strove to raise themselves
again to the bare branches overhead.

Down came the butterflies again, brushing
against my clothes and eyes and hands. All that
I captured later were males, and most were fresh
and newly emerged, with a scattering of dimmed
wings, frayed at edges, who flew more slowly,
with less vigor. Finally the lower patch was
washed out by the rising tide, but not until the
water actually reached them did the insects leave.
I could trace with accuracy the exact reach of
the last ripple to roll over the flat sand by the
contour of the remaining outermoct rank of in-
sects.

272 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

On and on came the water, and soon I was
forced to move, and the hundreds of butterflies
in front of me. When the last one had left I
went away, returning two hours later. It was
then that I witnessed the most significant hap-
pening in the Bay of Butterflies — one which
shook to the bottom the theory of my lepidopter-
ist friend, together with my thoughtless use of
the word normal. Over two feet of restless
brown water covered the sand patches and rocked
the scouring rushes. A few feet farther up the
little bay the remaining sand was still exposed.
Here were damp sand, sand dotted with rushes,
and sand dry and white in the sun. About a
hundred butterflies were in sight, sopie continu-
ally leaving, and others arriving. Individuals
still dashed into sight and swooped downward.
But not one attempted to alight on the exposed
sand. There was fine, dry sand, warm to a but-
terfly's feet, or wet sand soaked with draughts
of good Mazaruni water. But they passed this
unheeding, and circled and fluttered in two
swarms, as low as they dared, close to the surface
of the water, exactly over the two patches of
sand which had so drawn and held them or their
brethren two hours before. Whatever the ulti-

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 273

mate satisfaction may have been, the attraction
was something transcending humidity, aridity, or
immediate possibility of attainment. It was a
definite cosmic point, a geographical focus,
which, to my eyes and understanding, was unrea-
sonable, unsuitable, and inexplicable.

As I watched the restless water and the but-
terflies striving to find a way down through it to
the only desired patches of sand in the world,
there arose a fine, thin humming, seeping up
through the very waves, and I knew the singing
catfish were following the tide shoreward. And
as I considered my vast ignorance of what it all
meant, of how little I could ever convey of the
significance of the happenings in the Bay of
Butterflies, I felt that it would have been far bet-
ter for all of my green ink to have trickled down
through the grains of sand.

XII
SEQUELS

TROPICAL midges of sorts live less than a day
— sequoias have felt their sap quicken at the
warmth of fifteen hundred springs. Somewhere
between these extremes, we open our eyes, look
about us for a time and close them again. Mod-
ern political geography and shifts of government
give us Methusalistic feelings — but a glance at
rocks or stars sends us shuddering among the
other motes which glisten for a moment in the
sunlight and then vanish.

We who strive for a little insight into evolu-
tion and the meaning of things as they are, for-
ever long for a glimpse of things as they were.
Here at my laboratory I wonder what the land
was like before the dense mat of vegetation came
to cover every rock and grain of sand, or how
the rivers looked when first their waters trickled
to the sea.

All our stories are of the middles of things, —
without beginning or end; we scientists are

274

SEQUELS 275

plunged suddenly upon a cosmos in the full up-
roar of eons of precedent, unable to look ahead,
while to look backward we must look down.

Exactly a year ago I spent two hours in a
clearing in the jungle back of Kartabo labora-
tory, and let my eyes and ears have full swing.1
Xow in August of the succeeding year I came
again to this clearing, and found it no more a
clearing. Indeed so changed was it, that for
weeks I had passed close by without a thought
of the jungle meadow of the previous year, and
now, what finally turned me aside from my usual
trail, was a sound. Twelve months ago I wrote,
"From the monotone of under-world sounds a
strange little rasping detached itself, a reiter-
ated, subdued scraping or picking. It carried
my mind instantly to the throbbing theme of the
ISTiebelungs, onomatopoetic of the little ham-
mers forever busy in their underground work. I
circled a small bush at my side, and found that
the sound came from one of the branches near
the top; so with my glasses I began a systematic
search." This was as far as I ever got, for a flock
of parrakeets exploded close at hand and blew
the lesser sound out of mind. If I had stopped

i See page 34.

v

276 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

to guess I would probably have considered the
author a longicorn beetle or some fiddling or-
thopter.

Now, a year later, I suddenly stopped twenty
yards away, for at the end of the silvery cadence
of a woodhewer, I heard the low, measured, tone-
less rhythm which instantly revived to mind every
detail of the clearing. I was headed toward a
distant palm frond beneath whose tip was a nest
of Rufous Hermits, for I wished to see the two
atoms of hummingbirds at the moment when they
rolled from their petit pops egg-shells. I gave
this up for the day and turned up the hill, where
fifty feet away was the stump and bush near
which I had sat and watched. Three times I
went past the place before I could be certain,
and even at the last I identified it only by the
relative position of the giant tauroneero tree, in
which I had shot many cotingas. The stump was
there, a bit lower and more worn at the crevices,
leaking sawdust like an overloved doll — but the
low shrub had become a tall sapling, the weeds —
vervain, boneset, velvet-leaf — all had been topped
and killed off by dense-foliaged bushes and
shrubs, which a year before had not raised a leaf
above the meadow level. The old vistas were

SEQUELS 277

gone, the landscape had closed in, the wilderness
was shutting down. Nature herself was "letting
in the jungle." I felt like Rip Van Winkle, or
even more alien, as if the passing of time had
been accelerated and my longed-for leap had
been accomplished, beyond the usual ken of man-
kind's earthly lease of senses.

All these astounding changes had come to pass
through the heat and moisture of a tropical year,
and under deliberate scientific calculation there
was nothing unusual in the alteration. I remem-
bered the remarkable growth of one of the labor-
atory bamboo shoots during the rainy season —
twelve and a half feet in sixteen days, but that
was a single stem like a blade of grass, whereas
here the whole landscape was altered — new birds,
new insects, branches, foliage, flowers, where
twelve short months past, was open sky above
low weeds.

In the hollow root on the beach, my band of
crane-flies had danced for a thousand hours, but
here was a sound which had apparently never
ceased for more than a year — perhaps five thou-
hand hours of daylight. It was a low, penetrat-
ing, abruptly reiterated beat, occurring about
once every second and a half, and distinctly audi-

278 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

ble a hundred feet away. The "low bush" from
which it proceeded last year, was now a respect-
able sapling, and the source far out of reach
overhead. I discovered a roundish mass among
the leaves, and the first stroke of the ax sent the
rhythm up to once a second, but did not alter
the timbre. A few blows and the small trunk
gave way and I fled for my life. But there was
no angry buzzing and I came close. After a ces-
sation of ten or fifteen seconds the sound began
again, weaker but steady. The foliage was alive
with small Azteca ants, but these were tenants
of several small nests near by, and at the catas-
trophe overran everything.

The largest structure was the smooth carton
nest of a wasp, a beautiful species, pale yellow-
ish-red with wine-colored wings. Only once did
an individual make an attempt to sting and even
when my head was within six inches, the wasps
rested quietly on the broken combs. By care-
ful watching, I observed that many of the insects
jerked the abdomen sharply downward, butting
the comb or shell of smooth paper a forceful blow,
and producing a very distinct noise. I could not
at first see the mass of wasps which were giving
forth the major rhythm, as they were hidden

SEQUELS 279

deep in the nest, but the fifty-odd wasps in sight
kept perfect time, or occasionally an individual
skipped one or two beats, coming in regularly
on every alternate or every third beat. Where
they were two or three deep, the uppermost
wasps struck the insects below them with their
abdomens in perfect rhythm with the nest beat.
For half an hour the sound continued, then died
down and was not heard again. The wasps dis-
persed during the night and the nest was de-
serted.

It reminded me of the telegraphing ants which
I have often heard in Borneo, a remarkable
sweeping roll, caused by the host of insects strik-
ing the leaves with their heads, and produced
only when they are disturbed. It appeared to
be of the nature of a warning signal, giving me
opportunity to back away from the stinging le-
gions which filled the thicket against which I
pushed.

The rhythm of these wasps was very different.
They were peaceable, not even resenting the dev-
astation of their home, but always and always
must the inexplicable beat, beat, beat, be kept up,
serving some purpose quite hidden from me.
During succeeding months I found two more

280 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

nests, with similar fetish of sound vibrations,
which led to their discovery. From one small
nest, which fairly shook with the strength of their
beats, I extracted a single wasp and placed him
in a glass-topped, metal box. For three minutes
he kept up the rhythmic beat. Then I began a
more rapid tattoo on the bottom of the box, and
the changed tempo confused him, so that he
stopped at once, and would not tap again.

A few little Mazaruni daisies survived here
and there, blossoming bravely, trying to believe
that the shade was lessening, and not daily be-
coming more dense. But their leaves were losing
heart, and paling in the scant light. Another six
months and dead leaves and moss would have
obliterated them, and the zone of brilliant flowers
and gorgeous butterflies and birds would shift
many feet into the air, with the tops of the trees
as a new level.

As long as I remained by my stump my visi-
tors were of the jungle. A yellow-bellied trogon
came quite close, and sat as trogons do, very
straight and stiff like a poorly mounted bird,
watching passing flycatchers and me and the
glimpses of sky. At first he rolled his little
cuckoo-like notes, and his brown mate swooped

SEQUELS 281

up, saw me, shifted a few feet farther off and
perched full of curiosity, craning her neck and
looking first with one eye, then the other. Now
the male began a content song. With all possible
variations of his few and simple tones, on a low
and very sweet timbre, he belied his unoscine
perch in the tree of bird life, and sang to himself.
Now and then he was drowned out by the shrill-
ing of cicadas, hut it was a delightful serenade,
and he seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. A
few days before, I had made a careful study of
the syrinx of this bird, whom we may call rather
euphoniously Trogonurus curucui, and had been
struck by the simplicity both of muscles and
bones. Now, having summoned his mate in regu-
lar accents, there followed this unexpected whis-
per song. It recalled similar melodies sung by
pheasants and Himalayan partridges, usually
after they had gone to roost.

Once the female swooped after an insect, and
in the midst of one of the sweetest passages of
the male trogon, a green grasshopper shifted his
position. He was only two inches away from the
singer, and all this time had been hidden by his
chlorophyll-hued veil. And now the trogon
fairly fell off the branch, seizing the insect al-

282 EDGE OP THE JUNGLE

most before the tone died away. Swallowing it
with considerable difficulty, the harmony was
taken up again, a bit throaty for a few notes.
Then the pair talked together in the usual tro-
gon fashion, and the sudden shadow of a passing
vulture, drew forth discordant cat calls, as both
birds swooped from sight to avoid the fancied
hawk.

A few minutes later the vocal seal of the jun-
gle was uttered by a quadrille bird. When the
notes of this wren are heard, I can never imagine
open, blazing sunshine, or unobstructed blue sky.
Like the call of the wood pewee, the wren's radi-
ates coolness and shadowy quiet. "No matter
how tropic or breathless the jungle, when the
flute-like notes arise they bring a feeling of fresh-
ness, they arouse a mental breeze, which cools
one's thoughts, and, although there may be no
water for miles, yet we can fairly hear the drip
of cool drops falling from thick moss to pools be-
low. First an octave of two notes of purest sil-
ver, then a varying strain of eight or ten notes,
so sweet and powerful, so individual and mean-
ingful that it might stand for some wonderful
motif in a great opera. I shut my eyes, and I
was deaf to all other sounds while the wren sang.

SEQUELS 28$

And as it dwelt on the last note of its phrase, a
cicada took it up on the exact tone, and blended
the two final notes into a slow vibration, begin-
ning gently and rising with the crescendo of
which only an insect, and especially a cicada, is
master. Here was the eternal, hypnotic tom-tom
rhythm of the East, grafted upon supreme West-
ern opera. For a time my changed clearing be-
came merely a sounding box for the most thrill-
ing of jungle songs. I called the wren as well as
I could, and he came nearer and nearer. The
music rang out only a few yards away. Then
he became suspicious, and after that each phrase
was prefaced by typical wren scolding. He
could not help but voice his emotions, and the
harsh notes told plainly what he thought of my
poor imitation. Then another feeling would
dominate, and out of the maelstrom of harshness,
of tumbled, volcanic vocalization would rise the
pure silver stream of single notes.

The wren slipped away through the masses of
fragrant Davilla blossoms, but his songs re-
mained and are with me to this moment. And
now I leaned back, lost my balance, and grasp-
ing the old stump for support, loosened a big
piece of soft, mealy wood. In the hollow be-

284 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

neath, I saw a rainbow in the heart of the dead
tree.

This rainbow was caused by a bug, and when
we stop to think of it, this shows how little there
is in a name. For when we say bug, or for that
matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the
sound which our very, very forefathers uttered
when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. They
said it bugge or even bwg, but then they were
more afraid of specters in those days than we,
who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Very lights, and
rub fox-fire on our watch faces. At any rate
here was a bug who seemed to ill-deserve his
name, although if the Niblelungs could fashion
the Rheingold, why could not a bug conceive a
rainbow?

Whenever a human, and especially a house-
human thinks of bugs, she thinks unpleasantly
and in superlatives. And it chances that evolu-
tion, or natural selection, or life's mechanism, or
fate or a creator, has wrought them into form
and function also in superlatives. Cicadas are
supreme in longevity and noise. One of our
northern species sucks in silent darkness for sev-
enteen years, and then, for a single summer,
breaks all American long-distance records for in-

SEQUELS 285

sect voices. To another group, known as Ful-
gorlds, gigantic heads and streamers of wax
have been allotted. Those possessing the former
rejoice in the name of Lantern Flies, hut they
are at present unfaithful vestal bugs, though it
is extremely doubtful if their wicks were ever
trimmed or lighted. To see a big wax bug flying
with trailing ribbons slowly from tree to tree in
the jungle is to recall the streaming trains of a
flock of peacocks on the wing.

The membracids must of all deserve the name
of "bugges" for no elf or hobgoblin was ever
more bizarre. Their legs and heads and bodies
are small and aphid-like, but aloft there spring
minarets and handles and towers and thorns and
groups of hairy balls, out of all reason and sense.
Only Stegosaurus and Triceratops bear com-
parison. Another group of five-sided bugs are
the skunks and civet-cats among insects, guard-
ing themselves from danger by an aura of ob-
noxious scent.

Not the least strange of this assemblage is the
author of our rainbow in the stump. My awk-
wardness had broken into a hollow which opened
to the light on the other side of the rotten bole.
A vine had tendriled its way into the crevice

286 EDGE OP THE JUNGLE

where the little weaver of rainbows had found
board and lodging. We may call him toad-
hopper or spittle-bug, or as Fabre says," Con-
tentons-nous de Cicadelle, qui respecte le tym-
pan" Like all of its kindred, the Bubble Bug
finds Nirvana in a sappy green stem. It has
neither strong flight, nor sticky wax, thorny
armature nor gas barrage, so it proceeds to
fashion an armor of bubbles, a cuirass of liquid
film. This, in brief, was the rainbow which
caught my eye when I broke open the stump.
Up to that moment no rainbow had existed, only
a little light sifting through from the vine-clad
side. But now a ray of sun shattered itself on
the pile of bubbles, and sprayed itself out into a
curved glory.

Bubble Bugs blow their froth only when imma-
ture, and their bodies are a distillery or home-
brew of sorts. No matter what the color, or
viscosity or chemical properties of sap, regard-
less of whether it flows in liana, shrub, or vine,
yet the Bug's artesian product is clear, tasteless
and wholly without the possibility of being blown
into bubbles. When a large drop has collected,
the tip of the abdomen encloses a retort of air,
inserts this in the drop and forces it out. In

SEQUELS 287

some way an imponderable amount of oil or dis-
solved wax is extruded and mixed with the drop,
an invisible shellac which toughens the bubble
and gives it an astounding glutinous endurance.
As long as the abdominal air-pump can be ex-
tended into the atmosphere, so long does the pile
of bubbles grow until the insect is deep buried,
and to penetrate this is as unpleasant an achieve-
ment for small marauders as to force a cobweb
entanglement. I have draped a big pile of bub-
bles around the beak of an insect-eating bird, and
watched it shake its head and wipe its beak in
evident disgust at the clinging oily films. In the
north we have the bits of fine white foam which
we characteristically call frog-spittle, but these
tropic relatives have bigger bellows and their
covering is like the interfering mass of films
which emerges from the soap-bubble bowl when
a pipe is thrust beneath the surface and that de-
licious gurgling sound produced.

The most marvelous part of the whole thing
is that the undistilled well which the Bubble Bug
taps would often overwhelm it in an instant,
either by the burning acidity of its composition,
or the rubber coating of death into which it
hardens in the air. Yet with this current of lava

288 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

or vitriol, our Bug does three wonderful things,
it distills sweet water for its present protective
cell of bubbles, it draws purest nourishment for
continual energy to run its bellows and pump,
and simultaneously it fills its blood and tissues
with a pungent flavor, which in the future will
be a safeguard against the attacks of birds and
lizards. Little by little its wings swell to full
spread and strength, muscles are fashioned in its
hind legs, which in time will shoot it through
great distances of space, and pigment of the
most brilliant yellow and black forms on its wing
covers. When at last it shuts down its little still
and creeps forth through the filmy veil, it is im-
mature no longer, but a brilliant frog-hopper,
sitting on the most conspicuous leaves, trusting
by pigmental warning to advertise its inedibility,
and watchful for a mate, so that the future may
hold no dearth of Bubble Bugs.

On my first tramp each season in the tropical
jungle, I see the legionary army ants hastening
on their way to battle, and the leaf-cutters plod-
ding along, with chlorophyll hods over their
shoulders, exactly as they did last year, and the
year preceding, and probably a hundred thou-
sand years before that. The Colony Egos of

SEQUELS 289

army and leaf -cutters may quite reasonably be
classified according to Kingdom. The former,
with carnivorous, voracious, nervous, vitally ac-
tive members, seems an intangible, animal-like
organism; while the stolid, vegetarian, unemo-
tional, weather-swung Attas, resemble the flow-
ing sap of the food on which they subsist — vege-
table.

Yet, whatever the simile, the net of uncon-
scious precedent is too closely drawn, the mesh
of instinct is too fine to hope for any initiative.
This was manifested by the most significant and
spectacular occurrence I have ever observed in
the world of insects. One year and a half ago I
studied and reported upon, a nest of Ecitons or
army ants.1 Now, eighteen months later, appar-
ently the same army appeared and made a simi-
lar nest of their own bodies, in the identical spo£
near the door of the out-house, where I had found
them before. Again we had to break up the tem-
porary colony, and killed about three-quarters
of the colony with various deadly chemicals.

In spite of all the tremendous slaughter, the
Ecitons, in late afternoon, raided a small colony
of ;Wasps-of-the-Painted-Nest. These little

i See page 58.

290 EDGE OP THE JUNGLE

chaps construct a round, sub-leaf carton-home, as
large as a golf ball, which carries out all the re-
quirements of counter shading and of ruptive
markings. The flattened, shadowed under sur-
face was white, and most of the sloping walls
dark brown, down which extended eight white
lines, following the veins of the leaf overhead.
The side close to the stem of the leaf, and conse-
quently always in deep shadow, was pure white.
The eaves catching high lights were black. All
this marvelous merging with leaf tones went for
naught when once an advance Eciton scout lo-
cated the nest.

As the deadly mob approached, the wasplets
themselves seemed to realize the futility of offer-
ing battle, and the entire colony of forty-four
gathered in a forlorn group on a neighboring
leaf, while their little castle was rifled — larva?
and pupas torn from their cells and rushed down
the stems to the chaos which was raging in Eci-
ton's own home. The wasps could guard against
optical discovery, but the blind Ecitons had
senses which transcended vision, if not even scent.

Late that night, our lanterns showed the rem-
nants of the Eciton army wandering aimlessly
about, making near approach impossible, but ap-

SEQUELS 291

parently lacking any definite concerted action.
At six o'clock the following morning I started
out for a swim, when at the foot of the laboratory
steps I saw a swiftly-moving, broad line of army
ants on safari, passing through the compound to
the beach. I traced them back under the ser-
vants' quarters, through two clumps of bamboos
to the out-house. Later I followed along the
column down to the river sand, through a dense
mass of underbrush, through a hollow log, up the
bank, back through light jungle — to the out-
house again, and on a large fallen log, a few feet
beyond the spot where their nest had been, the
ends of the circle actually came together! It
was the most astonishing thing, and I had to
Verify it again and again before I could believe
the evidence of my eyes. It was a strong column,
six lines wide in many places, and the ants fully
believed that they were on their way to a new
home, for most were carrying eggs or larvae, al-
though many had food, including the larvae of
the Painted Nest Wasplets. For an hour at
noon during heavy rain, the column weakened
and almost disappeared, but when the sun re-
turned, the lines rejoined, and the revolution of
the vicious circle continued-

292 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

There were several places which made excel-
lent points of observation, and here we watched
and marveled. Careful measurement of the great
circle showed a circumference of twelve hundred
feet. We timed the laden Ecitons and found
that they averaged two to two and three-quarter
inches a second. So a given individual would
complete the round in about two hours and a
half. Many guests were plodding along with the
ants, mostly staphylinids of which we secured five
species, a brown histerid beetle, a tiny chalcid,
and several Phorid flies, one of which was winged.

The fat Histerid beetle was most amusing, get-
ting out of breath every few feet, and abruptly-
stopping to rest, turning around in its tracks,
standing almost on its head, and allowing the
swarm of ants to run up over it and jump off.
Then on it would go again, keeping up the ter-
rific speed of two and a half inches a second for
another yard. Its color was identical with the
Ecitons' armor, and when it folded up, nothing
could harm it. Once a worker stopped and an-
tennaed it suspiciously, but aside from this, it was
accepted as one of the line of marchers. Along
the same route came the tiny Phorid flies, wing-
less but swift as shadows, rushing from side to

SEQUELS 293

side, over ants, leaves, debris, impatient only at
the slowness of the army.

All the afternoon the insane circle revolved;
at midnight the hosts were still moving, the sec-
ond morning many had weakened and dropped
their burdens, and the general pace had very ap-
preciably slackened. But still the blind grip of
instinct held them. On, on, on they must go!
Always before in their nomadic life there had
been a goal — a sanctuary of hollow tree, snug
heart of bamboos — surely this terrible grind must
end somehow. In this crisis, even the Spirit of
the Army was helpless. Along the normal paths
of Eciton life he could inspire endless enthu-
siasm, illimitable energy, but here his material
units were bound upon the wheel of their perfec-
tion of instinct. Through sun and cloud, day
and night, hour after hour there was found no
Eciton with individual initiative enough to turn
aside an ant's breadth from the circle which he
had traversed perhaps fifteen times: the masters
of the jungle had become their own mental prey.

Fewer and fewer now came along the well
worn path; burdens littered the line of march,
like the arms and accoutrements thrown down by
a retreating army. At last a scanty single line

294 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

struggled past — tired, hopeless, bewildered,
idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then some
half dead Eciton straggled from the circle along
the beach, and threw the line behind him into
confusion. The desperation of total exhaustion
had accomplished what necessity and opportu-
nity and normal life could not. Several others
followed his scent instead of that leading back
toward the out-house, and as an amoeba gradu-
ally flows into one of its own pseudopodia, so the
forlorn hope of the great Eciton army passed
slowly down the beach and on into the jungle.
Would they die singly and in bewildered groups,
or would the remnant draw together, and again
guided by the super-mind of its Mentor lay the
foundation of another army, and again come to
nest in my out-house?

Thus was the ending still unfinished, the finale
buried in the future — and in this we find the
fascination of Nature and of Science. Who can
be bored for a moment in the short existence
vouchsafed us here; with dramatic beginnings
barely hidden in the dust, with the excitement of
every moment of the present, and with all of cos-
mic possibility lying just concealed in the future,
whether of Betelgeuze, of Amoeba or — of our-
selves? Vogue la galere!

APPENDIX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES

Page Line

4 26 Moriche Oriole; Icterus chrysocephalus (Linni)

8 10 Toad; Bufo guttatus Schneid.

18 3 Bat; Furipterus horrens (F. Cuv.)

4 Large Bats; Vampyrus spectrum (Linn£)

6 Vampire Bats; Desmodus rotundus (Geoff.)

22 5 Giant Catfish, Boom-boom; Doras granulosu*

Valen.

23 5 Kiskadee; Pitangus 8, sulphuratus (Linn6)

25 26 Parrakeets; Touit batavica (Bodd.)

26 Great Black Orioles; Ostinops d. decumarw*
(PaU.)

26 5 House Wrens; \Trofflodytea musculus clarut Berl.

and Hart

29 5 Coati-mundi; Nasua n. nasua (Linne)

32 2 Frog; Phyllomedusa sp.

34 18 Mazaruni Daisies; Sipanea pratensis Aubl.

20 Button Weed; Spermacoce sp.

86 23 Melancholy Tyrant ; Tyrannus rwelancholifus

satrapa (Cab. and Hein.)

37 2 Monarch; Anosia plexippus (Linn6)

38 7 Red-breasted Blue Chatterer; Cotinga cotingt*

18 Yellow Papilio; Papilio thoas Linn6
49 26 Parrakeets; Touit batcvica (Bodd.)

52 3 Purple-throated Cotinga < Cotinga cay ana (LinnS)

53 15 Dark-breasted Mourne»; Lipauyus simplex

Licht.

54 26 Toucans; Ramphastus vit*llinus Licht.

59 6 White-fronted Ant-bird; Pithy s albi front

(Linn6)

60 16 Army Ants; Eciton burchelli Westwood

97 10 Great Green Kingfisher; CUoroceryle amazona

(Lath.)
11 Tiny Emerald Kingfisher; Chlo*oceryle americana

(Gmel.)

103 25 Gecko; Thecadactylus rapicaudus (Houtt.)

109 8 Howling Monkeys; Alouatta senicvlus macconnelli

ElUot

291

296 APPENDIX

Page Line

113 7 Bower Bird; Ptilonorhynchus violaceus (VieilL)

116 24 Cassava; Janipha manihot Kth.

126 20 Frog, Gawain; Phyllomedusa sp.

132 17 Marine Toad; Bufo marinus (Linn6)

133 8 Scarlet-thighed Leaf -walker; Phyllobates inguin-

alis.
149 2 Attas, Leaf-cutting Ants; Atta cephalotes (Fab.)

151 12 Fruit Bats; Vampyrus spectrum (Linne)

152 11 King Vulture; Gypagus papa (Linne)
11 Harpy Eagle; Harpia harpy ja (Linne)

163 3 Ani; Crotophaga ani Linn6

7 Marine Toad; Bufo marinus (Linne)

164 19 White- faced Opossum; Metachirus o. opossum

(LinnS)

173 1 Attas, Leaf-cutting Ants; A tta cephalotes (Fab.)
5 Hummingbird; Phoethornis r. ruber (Linn6)

174 7 Tamandua; Tamandua t. tetradactyla (Linn6)

175 1 Trogon; Trogon s. strigilatus (Linne)
9 Tarantula Hawks; Pepsis sp.

181 17 Cicada larvae; Quesada gigas Oliv.

182 5 Roaches; Attaphila sp.

231 26 Manatee; Trichechus manatus Linne

232 24 Crocodile; Caiman sclerops (Schneid.)

233 6 Jacana; Jacana j. jacana (Linne)

8 Gallinule; lonornis martinicus (Linn£)

9 Green Herons; Butorides striata Linn6
10 Egrets; Leucophoyx t. thula (Molina)

233 17 Kiskadees; Pitangus sulphuratus (Linne)

19 Black Witch; Crotophaga ani (Linne)
19 House Wren; Troglodytes musculus clarus Berl.

and Hart
22 Manatee; Trichechus manatus (Linne)

242 1 Jacana; Jacana j. jacana (Linne)

3 Gallinule; lonornis martinicus (Linnd)

243 15 Mongoose; Mungos mungo (Gmel.)

246 11 Little Egret; Leucophoyx t. thula (Molina)

14 Tri-colored Heron; Hydranassa tricolor (P. L. S.

Mull.)

15 Little Blue Heron; Florida c. caerulea (Linne")

249 14 White Egret; Casmerodius egret ta (Gmel.)

250 10 Night Heron; Kyctanassa violacea cayennensis

(Linne)
254 1 Giant Catfish, Boom-boom; Doras granulosus

Valen.
256 6 Long-armed Beetle; Acrocinus longimanut

(Linnd)
276 10 Rufus Hummingbird; Phoethornis r. ruber

(Linnd)

APPENDIX 297

Page JAne

278 16 Tapping Wasp; Synoeca irina Spinola

280 10 Mazaruni Daisy; Sipanea pratensis Aubl.

21 Trogons; Trogonurus c. curucui (Linne)

282 10 Quadrille Bird; Leucolepis musica musica

(Bodd.)

284. 3 Bubble Bugs; Cercopis ruber

289 16 Army Ants; Eciton burchelU Westwood

INDEX

Acroeinus longimenua, 255-258

Allamander, 121

Alouatta seniculus macconnelli,
109

Ani, 163, 233

Anosia plexippus, 37

Antbirds, white-fronted, 59,
227

Antlions, 27, 28

Ants, Army, 58, 60, 154, 282,
289; attack on wasps, 290;
circular marching of, 291-294;
cleaning of, 79-81; cleaning
of ground, 77; crippled, 70,
71, 81, 82; enemies, 72;
foraging lines, 64; guests,
88, 292; labor, division of,
67; larvae, 87; nest, 59-61,
74, 83, 289; nest entrance,
74; observing, methods of,
63; odor, 62, 64; parasites,
292; prey of, 67; rain, re-
action to, 65, 66; refuse
heaps, 77, 78; scavengers of
nest piles, 78; speed of, 68,
69, 292; spinning, 84-86;
vitality, 69

Ants, Azteca, 278

Ants, Borneo telegraph, 279

Ants, Leaf-cutting, 7, 152,
173, 289; at home, 172, 194;
attack, method of guard-
ing against, 177; at-
tack, method of, 177-179;
battle of giant soldiers, 168-
171; castes, 166; enemies,

162-163; flight of kings and
queens, 185-188; fungus, 180,
181; gardens, fungus, 179-
181, 189; instinct, 190-1B2;
leaf-chewing in nest, 180;
leaves, carrying, 158-162;
leaves, method of cutting,
158; name, origin of, 156;
nest, 172; nest, foundation
of, 152, 153, 189, 190; para-
sites, external, 176; paths,
163-165; queen, 152, 153;
queens, young, in nest, 185;
raids on garden, 154-155;
scavengers of nest, 176;
speed of, 165-166; soldier,
description of, 177-178;
trails, 163-165; visitors at
nest, 174-176; worker, de-
scription of, 156, 157

Attaphila, 182-185

Attas. See Ants, Leaf-cutting.

Atta cephalotes, 155, 173

B

Bamboos, 9, 13, 23-25

Bats, 17-19

Bats, fruit, 151

Bats, vampire, 4, 18-21, 111,

208

Beach, Jungle, 90-111
Beena, 118
Bees, 35-37, 175
Beetle, 23

Beetle, Histerid, 292
Beetle, long-armed, 256-258
Beetle, rove, 72-73

300

INDEX

Beetle, Staphylinid, 292
Beetle, water," in roots, 103
Boom-boom, 22, 252-255
Botanical Gardens, 122
Bower Bird, Purple, 113
Bougainvillia, 121
Boviander, flowers of, 120
Bufo guttatus, 8
Bufo marinus, 132, 163
Bugs, bubble, 284-288
Bugs, doodle, 28
Butorides striata, 233
Butterfly, 37, 125
Butterfly, beryl and jasper, 42
Butterfly, migrating, 259-263
Butterfly, Monarch, 37
Butterfly, Morpho, 51
Butterfly, Social gathering of,

268-273

Butterfly, Yellow papilio, 38
Button weed, 34

Coati-mundi, 29

Color, 53, 54

Convicts, 5, 7

Convicts, singing hymns, 109

Cotinga cayana, 62, 63

Cotinga cotinga, 38

Cotinga, Purple-throated, 62,

53

Cotton, Indian, 117
Cotton, Sea Island, 117
Crabs, in roots, 103
Crocodile, 232
Crotophaga an'i, 163, 233
Cuyuni River, 9

D

Daisies, Mazaruni, 34, 280
Devilla blossoms, 283
Doodle-bugs, 28
Doras granulosun, 22, 254

Carman sclerops, 232

Caladium, 118

Casareep, 117

Cashew trees, 4

Casmerodius egretta, 249

Cassava, 116

Cassia, 44

Catfish, Giant. See Boom-
boom, 22, 253, 254, 273

CatopsiKa, species of, 268

Cercopis ruber, 284

Cereus, night blooming, 218

Chanties, 6

Chatterer, Red-breasted Blue,
38

Chloroceryle amazona, 97

Chloroceryle americana, 97

Cicada, 36, 37

Cicada, song of, 283

Cicada, larvae. See Quesada
gigas.

Clearing, Jungle, 34-57, 275

Clearing, after interval of
year, 276

Eagle, Harpy, 152
Eciton. See Army Ants
Eciton burchelli, 60, 289
Eggs, Butterfly, 41-43
Egrets, 233, 246, 249
Ereops, 264, 265

Fer-de-lance, 206
Flamboyant, 122
Flies, Chalcid, 292
Flies, Crane, in roots, 104-106
Flies, Phorid, 292
Flies, as scavengers, 78
Florida c. caerulea, 246
Flowers of boviander, 120
Flycatcher, Kiskadee, 23, 233
Flycatcher, Melancholy Tyrant,

36

Frangipani, 122
Frog, Scarlet-thighed Leaf-
walker, 133
Frog, Tree, 32, 132
Furipteru* horrent, 17, 18

INDEX

301

Gallinule, 233, 242

Galis, 45-47

Garden, Akawai Indian, 115-

119

Garden, Boviander, 120
Garden, Coolie and Negro, 120
Garden, Georgetown Botanical,

122, 230

Garden, Tropic, 230-251
Gawain, 31-33, 126
Gecko, 103, 104
Ghost, Kartabo, 25
God-birds, 26
Guests, Army Ant, 72
Guinevere, 123-148
Gypagm papa, 152

H

Hammocks, 195; accident in,
204; capturing bats from,
218-220; Carib, 197, 198; en-
vironment and dangers, 200,
201; hummingbirds on, 223,
224; slinging of, 198, 199,
203, 209, 210; sounds and
scents, 213-215; trapping
from, 205, 206; watching
army ants from, 225, 228;
weaver-birds nesting on, 224

Harpia harpy ja, 152

Herons, green, 233

Herons, little blue, 246

Herons, night, 250

Herons, rookery, 244-251

Herons, tricolored, 246

Hope, 16

Hummingbirds, 97, 174, 223,
276

Hyacinth, water, 121

Hydranassa tricolor, 246

Icterus chrysocfphalus, 4>
lonornit martinicus, 233, 242

Jacana, 233, 242

Jacana j. Jacana, 233, 242

Jan! pha man! hot, 116

K

Kalacoon, 1

Kartabo, 1

Kartabo, history, 10-12

Kartabo, inmates, 21

Kartabo, morning at, 23

Kib, 29

Kibihee, 29

Kingfisher, Great Green, 97

Kingfisher, Tiny Emerald, 97

Kiskadee, 23, 233, 243

Kunami, 117

Kyk-over-al, 11, 12

Leucolepis m. musica. 282
Leucophoyx t. thula, 233. 246
Lilies, water, 12i
Lipaugus simplex. SB
Lotus, 121

M

Manatee, 231-236
Martins, 4

"Mazacuni" River, 107
Mazaruni River, 9
Metachlrus o. opossum, 164
Monarch Butterfly, 37
Mongoose, 243
Monkeys, 25
Monkeys, Howling, 109
Mosquitoes, 202, 211
Mourner, Dark-breasted, 63
Mwngoa mungo, 243

N

Natua n. *«.?««, 29
Niebelungs, 49

302

INDEX

Opossum, 164
Orchid, Toko-nook, 119
Oriole, Great Black, 25
Oriole, Moriche, 4
Ottinops d. decumanvt, 25

Paddlers, 5

Palm, Cocoanut, 121

Papilio thoas, 38

Parasite, egg, 43, 44

Parrakeets, 25, 49-51

Pepsit, sp., 175

Pets, 28-33

Phoethornis r. ruber, 174, 276

Pkyllomedusa, 32, 126

Phyllomtdusa bicolor, 145

Pkyjlobates inguinalis, 133

Pitangus ». sulphuratus, 23,

233, 243

Ptthys albifron*, 69
Piwari, 117

Pool, Jungle Rain, 126-132
Ptilonorhynchu* violaceus, 118

Quadrille Bird, 282, 283
f, 181

R

Ramphastus vitellinut, 54, 55
Roach, 182
Rocks, tidal, 265, 266
Roots, 98-106, 236
Rozites gongylophora, 181
Rushes, 264

Scorpions, 181

Sedges, Scirpus, 264, 265

Servants, negro, 14, 15
Sipanea pratensis, 34, 280
Snake, tree, in hammock, 201
Spermacoce sp. 34
Springtails, in army ants' nest,

88

Striders, water, 129, 130
Sunrise, 107, 108
Swimming at night, 108-111
Synoeca irina, 278-280

Tadpoles, 127, 130-148
Tadpoles, colors of, 146, 147
Tadpoles, red-fins, 132, 133,

136, 139, 141, 144
Tadpoles, short-tailed blacks,

132, 138
Tamandua, 174

Tamandua t. tetradactyla, 174
Tanager, Blue, 111
Tarantula, 23
Tarantula Hawks, 175
Termites, 154, 162
Thecadactylus rapicauda, 103
Thraupis episcopus, 111
Tidal, area, ecology of, 266-

268

Toad, 7, 8

Toad, Marine, 132, 163
Toko-nook, Orchid, 119
Toucans, 25, 54, 55, 56
Touit batavica, 25, 49
Tree, Fallen, 95
Tree, Prostrate, reactions of,

96, 97

Treetop, Fauna of, 95
Trichechus manatus, 231, 283
Troglodyte* musculus clarut,

26, 233

Trogon, 175, 280-282
Trogan s. strigilatus, 175
Trogonuruf c. curucui, 280
Tyrant, Melancholy, 36
Tyranntu melancholicut sa-

trapa, 3€

INDEX 303

Vampyrus spectrum, 18 Wasps, Ebony, 175

Vervain, 35 Wasps, Painted Nest, 289-291

Victoria regia, 231, 237, 240, Wasps, Tapping, 278-280

241 Wind, Voice of, 21

Vnlture, King, 152 Witch, Black, 233

Wrens, House, 26, 27, 283

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