Jungle days

One day I found a hammock-form of roots, a maze of gentle curves which gave and braced, and, taking paper, looked to see if a mangrove had anything of interest to offer. At the end of three hours I slid painfully down into the rising tide, my unpenciled sheet fluttered off, and I went away with my mind in a whirl.

I rejoiced in Barnum’s Circus long before I learned to write, but, if the first time thereafter, my mother had given me pencil and notebook with instructions to describe everything that took place in all three rings and on the stage, as well as the freaks, side shows and menagerie, my ideas would have been of equal clarity and inclusiveness as at my first mangrove séance. Above, around, beneath were interlacing trapezes, flying rings and rope ladders, liana nets and gaily painted poles, waving banners of emerald strung along the rafters, and high over all the canvas of the sky. And everywhere the performers—acrobats and leapers—worked mighty feats of balance and of strength; whiffs arose of strange and unknown creatures; thrilling, tuning-up squeaks and umpahs came from hidden orchestras which surely soon must burst forth in full fanfare of breath-shortening music. Now and then a being would creep slowly past, (doubtless on his weary way to a long parade about some invisible arena), of such sight and form, that if raised to man’s height would be a side show in himself.

But even at the first confusing survey, the mangrove stood out vivid and clear-cut. It had the aspect of a god, an Atlas, with feet firm planted upon earth, regardless whether currents of water or winds of air swirled about its knees, and with wide arms out—upward spread to the sky, upon which thousands of weaker beings found sanctuary. Some alighted for temporary rest of weary wings, others for longer periods, day boarders who came for meals or season residents who built their houses and reared their families upon the vibrant roots. And finally were those who knew no other world or scene, but, born or hatched upon the mangroves, clung to them until loosed by death. By their little body dropping to the water, they paid their final debt to Gravitation, returning to his implacable coffers this small meed of elevation-energy, which by grip of tendrils or of fingers they had possessed throughout their lives.

These were all kindly, or at most indifferent folk, who if they gave nothing of value, did no harm. In a circus, the smiling faces of two acrobats who catch one another in midair may mask bitter hatred, a desire to swing short, or grip loosely; the story writers are fond of showing us the tragic sorrow obverse of the clown’s grinning visage. In the sunshine and warmth of the mangrove tangle, behind the swaying leaves and bee-beckoning blossoms’ fragrance is terrible strife and slow death. The splendid plant gives shelter and support upon its sturdy uplifted arms, not only to the fairy homes of humming-birds, but to parasites whose gratitude is never to cease strangling with inflexible coils, or, more insidiously, gently to insert living threads of death into the very heart of their supporter. Out of all this, how futile it seems to try to give any real idea of the marvel of mangrove life. At most we can hope only to arouse a worthy discontent, a disquieting desire also to go and see. For here are living tales, complete but as yet unworded, worthy to fill volumes of Carroll or Dunsany or Barrie or Blackwood; here are scenes needing only paper tracing to equal the best of Rackham or Sime, to touch the emotional gamut of Böcklin and Heath Robinson.

About ten thousand years before I filled this fountain pen, some ancestor of yours and mine—our “touch of nature”—discovered that by building a house of piles out in a lake, he could thwart the wild animals which ever threatened him, and lessen the danger of a surprise attack from equally-to-be-dreaded envious or hasty-tempered neighbors. Few carnivores care to swim after their prey, and war canoes had hardly been invented. Such sanctuaries gave to families and to small tribes time to think, to invent new weapons, to seize new opportunities and to take better care of their babies.

Today, while pushing a canoe through the roots of the mangrove jungle, I thought enthusiastically of my pile-dwelling ancestors as I noted many exciting similes, and then paddled hastily back to the laboratory to see what botanists had thought about it. I found much of interest, but my mind was sobered, my imagination quieted. There was nothing of Swiss lake dwellings, but a very definite title of Rhizophora Mangle, and a casual remark of branches being supported by simple, vertical roots; it was put down that the petals were lacerate-woolly on the margin, exceeded by the calyx limb; but their delicate odor was passed by without comment; the living shifts of greens on the foliage, with the veins carrying shafts of parrot color over the background of pale chrysolite—this was ignored; to the botanist the leaves were leathery, quite entire, obovate-lanceolate and blunt—a statement unquestionably to the point. Finally I learned that the astringent bark is employed for tanning, and I returned to my living mangroves, alias R. Mangle, wondering if too constant pondering upon astringent, unadulterated facts is not often efficacious in a sort of mental tanning. Our mangrove might yield a new harvest to us if we could choose a different contact of thought, clothing the fruit with the vital interest hidden in “one-seeded by abortion,” and yet avoiding sentimental pleonasms.

However we decide to think of this plant, it is sure to be with admiration, for it stands out as a pioneer. Among earthly vegetation the mangrove is an aristocrat, a true dicotyledon, but it has dared to seek again the watery habitat of the lowlier growths, indeed of the very green algæ from which land plants originally developed. Like the penguin which has relinquished the ærial wing for an aquatic fin, or the seal which has encased its five fingers and five toes in flipper mittens, so the mangrove, while retaining all its badges of aristocracy, has returned to the haunts of the ancestors of all plants, from whence it can look calmly shoreward at the terrible struggle for life a few feet away, where every inch of soil is battled for, where the vigorous monopolize air and sunlight.

Such a radical change cannot be achieved without far-reaching adaptations and readjustments; the banker does not become a farmer merely by moving to the country, and every part of a mangrove shows delicate modes of meeting the strange new conditions as cunningly as the shift of muscles of a jiu-jitsu wrestler encountering an unknown opponent.

In the month of February, Kartabo mangroves are covered with flowers—and yet to a passing glance reveal no trace of inflorescence. Small and yellowish white, in irregular clusters of six to a dozen, they make no kind of visual showing, but their nectaries call to small trigonid bees in no uncertain way, and through the hours of sunlight the branches of the mangrove are busy marts of trade. Each cluster of blossoms becomes a corner grocery where the customers come for their buckets of nectars and packages of pollen and rush away without paying, or so they may think. But there are leaks in the pollen bags, and when they enter another blossom, the little stream of sifting yellow dust drifts across the entrance, a few grains or even a single one, falls upon the waiting pistil, and the bee has repaid for his bread and honey many fold and with compound interest. Its destiny fulfilled, the flower falls apart, the petal, lacerate-woolly margins and all, drifting off on the first tide. The ovary swells, two seeds form, and now comes the first adjustment, and we realize that in the botanist’s dry remark “one-seeded by abortion” may be concealed tragic doom and a wealth of subtle meaning. No spear can be thrown straight which has twin heads and shafts, and so one seed shrivels and dies, and the other thrives and grows. What decides the fate of life or death we do not know. Some delicate balance, some subtle test of worth or lack takes place in every one of the thousands upon thousands of fertilized mangrove blossoms, and there is no appeal. The reason, as we shall see, is too vital, the target too difficult and treacherous for a thought to be given to unborn plants.

The problem of the next generation of mangroves is a serious one. The seeds are formed over an everchanging surface; soft, sticky mud giving place to strong currents, flowing first in one, then in the opposite direction; rough waves plough up the mud and splash against the stilt-like roots. No sticky secretion, no mere weight, no hooks or ærial wings will suffice for these seeds. From their natal branch high above the tidal area, some sure method of anchorage must be found to enable them to avoid being smothered in the mud, stranded on the shore, rolled into deep water or washed out to sea.

The method is the arrow or loaded dart, and the force is the energy of gravitation stored in particle after particle by the mother plant, as she drew up salts and water and elements, raising them sapfully from mud and tide, and condensing them into a solid, slender, pointed weapon capable of coping with all the difficulties of the new environment. But no seed alone can thus function, and in solving this problem the mangrove reveals itself as one of the most remarkable plants in the world. The lower forms of vegetation form their seeds and thrust them forth naked upon the world; the more advanced plants ensheath their offspring in swaddling clothes of protection against heat and cold, moisture and aridity. These are comparable to egg-laying creatures, with yolk and shell to shield the embryo from dangers. But the mangrove is truly viviparous, and the embryo seed remains attached for months, nourished by the sap of the parent branch. Out of the pear-shaped head a root-like structure grows downward, often to a length of twenty inches and a width of one. Like an airplane bomb, or the deadly throwing assagai of the Zulus, the mangrove seedling is thickest three-fourths of the way down, and then tapers rapidly. With a weight of as much as three ounces and driving force generated by a height of twenty feet, the umbilical cord of sap may safely dry, the connecting sheath shrivel, and one day there is a dull little spatter of mud, or a splash of water, and the unconscious work of the bees, the months of slow invigorating by the parent plant are fulfilled. The seed sticks upright in the mud, propelled through even two feet of water to its goal, and immediately rootlets sprout and consolidate the anchorage.

I once blazed two dozen seedlings which seemed ready to drop, and three of these were loosed at low water, so that they fell unhindered directly into the mud. The others I missed and I can only surmise whether this is the rule; whether some subtle influence of moon or tide is not sufficient to cause the final separation. Such a stimulus would be of great value to the young plant and is no more improbable than the marvellous effect of the moon’s rays upon the palolo worms of the sea bottom.

Let us for awhile forget the mangrove circus medley,—crab clowns, strong men of the ants, hairy wild tarantulas, prestidigitator opossums producing ten infant opossums from a single fold of skin, white elephant membracid larvæ, living statue lianas, frog barkers and lightning change lizards. Let us think of birds, or of a single bird.

I have seen more than a hundred kinds of birds among the mangroves of Kartabo, but a mere enumeration of these would be of little value and of no interest. And instead of selecting the rarest, most bizarre of tropical forms, let us choose the commonest, the most blatant, apparently the most ordinary bird, with average habits and usual traits; which is another way of saying that we have observed it casually, watched it with unintelligent inattention, and wholly failed to interpret its activities in the terms of their desperate significance.

A kiskadee flew to a root before me and called loudly. For a moment it was only a kiskadee, and hardly registered color or sound, so common a feature of the day was it. It was threatened with the oblivion of the abundant, the neglect of the familiar. In New York City on a day of slush and humid chill, with rush and worry and congested life, to hear the loud, certain call kis-ka-dee! from a cage in the Zoological Park was to thrill in every fibre, and to remember peace, and calm thoughts and vast quiet spaces. As the steamer moved up to the Georgetown telling, kis-ka-dee! from a corrugated iron roof signalized the approach of another season of wonderful jungle existence. But from that first moment on, the kiskadees were ungratefully allowed to sink into the subconscious, while jaded, conscious senses strained after new forms and novel sounds.

Today, however, looking up from my canoe among the mangroves, I saw the bird as first I saw it many years ago—it became more than one among hundreds, it assumed a miraculous rejuvenation.

Its very presence among the mangroves was significant. To the eyes of all immigrants through the ages the mangrove and the kiskadee must have come first—the tourist on the last ocean steamer, dark-haired men of quaint Spanish galleons, Carib Indians in their dugouts paddling from islands of the sea, and the man whose stone ax I found the other day, squatting on a couple of vine-tied logs, drifting from God knows where.

Here on the very apex, the outermost root, marking the junction of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni Rivers—here a kiskadee perched and here it had built its nest. It was exciting thus to be able to fix a locality with almost planetary, or at least continental accuracy. I have felt the same thing when circling in a plane over the very tip of Long Island, or standing on the spray-drenched, southernmost boulder of Ceylon, or squatting on a Buddhist cairn on the verge of Tibet. Now I knew that even a small map of South America would show this very spot of mangroves and the exact perch of my kiskadee,—and the bird grew in importance.

To Northern appraisement, our kingbird is nearest to this tropical tyrant, except that the latter is even more wonted to man’s presence. The kiskadee has nothing of delicacy or dainty grace. It is beautiful in rufous wings and brilliant yellow under plumage, it is regal with a crown of black, white and orange. But in life and caste it is decidedly middle class. It is the harbinger of the dawn, but so is an alarm-clock, and in regularity and blatancy of announcement there is much in common between the two.

The husky call crashes upon the ear soon after the bird is sighted, and from early times has caught the attention and been translated into human speech. I know not what the stone-ax man dubbed it, he may only have grunted and hurled his weapon at it, hoping for a morsel of food. The Arrowaks and the few remaining Caribs know it as Heet-gee-gee, and the Spaniards, prompted perhaps by the Jesuit Fathers, interpreted it Christus fui; to Dutch ears it became characteristically tangled up with g’s and i’s, Griet-je-bie, the French more cleverly phrased it with the onomatopoetic Qu-est-ce-qu’il-dit? or Qui? Oui, Louis! while the negroes laugh it into Kiss, Kiss, me deh’.

I leaned back in the canoe and watched my kiskadee through a lattice of curved roots. Within five minutes it gave me a hint of the living chains of life with which the mangroves abound. The bird left its perch and with a wild outpouring of screams and shrill cries flew with unwonted directness, straight out and up over the river. Its mark was a caracara hawk—a menial, degenerate, vegetable-feeding Accipiter, who, when eggs or nestlings offer, loves to be tempted and loves to fall! Swiftly after the kiskadee swept the next link in the chain, two humming-birds whirring past, catching up at once and buzzing about the tyrant’s head, well knowing that this sturdy eight inches of feathers, alias flycatcher, so quick to cry “wolf” at every passing hawk, was far from being wholly guiltless in the matter of certain nestlings.

But this is only an occasional failing and we pass to admiration of other, more worthy attributes. The kiskadee, like most strong characters has a number of doubles and imitators; one has drawn a grey veil over the yellow breast, another has a wider bill, two are almost replicas in miniature, but they are all conventional in haunt and food. They all live in the compound of the bungalow and search the air diligently for winged insects as their names say they should. But kiskadee has overthrown the traditions of his family. A kindred spirit to the mangrove, his quick eye has caught the advantages of aquatic isolation and so we often find him nesting among the outer growths. And having accepted the sanctuary of this strange amphibious tree, he has altered his habits in other ways. A grey-throated kingbird or a lesser kiskadee will often choose a perch over the water from which it gracefully swoops for flying ants and termites. But watch the kiskadee!

As a returning crusader flaunts the infidel’s scimiter, and keeps silence upon certain ways and means and happenings, so kiskadee returned to perch, wiping from its bill the sordid taint of tweaked hawk’s feather, and ready to explain the lost feather from its own crown as worthy mark of battle. Its next movement was significant of much of earthly progress and evolution—indeed an accumulation of similar achievements would be quite enough to explain my sitting in a canoe, watching the kiskadee with high power glasses, and endeavoring to philosophize upon what I saw, instead of still pushing my body into pseudopodia with my erstwhile amœbic confrères in the mud below. This thought came when the bird fell from its root, plopped into the water, and with effort, and a bit bedraggled as to plumage, rose with a small fish in its beak.

The eternal restlessness of two of our pet monkeys, “Sadie” and “Holy Ghost,” suggested to one of us the excellent definition of a monkey:—“An animal which never wants to be where it is,” and this applied to habits and traits emphasizes the importance of the kiskadee diving after a fish instead of merely swooping after a passing insect: the wide beak, the fringe of guiding bristles, soft plumage, the examples of its relatives and the instinctive dictates of hundreds of past generations, all point flycatcherward, yet it chooses otherwise and taps a more nourishing source of food supply closed to its superficial imitators, nearer to its new home, and less dependent on sun and season.

In this, as in all similar cases, the vital interest lies not in the fact of the actual change of habit, but how it came to arise. It were easy in the comfort of one’s study with eyes fixed on pencil and paper to devise the method of origin, clothing it with facile words. There come to memory the shrill chatter, the swift short flights, the trim, stream line forms of midget mangrove kingfishers, tiny Isaak Waltons whose plunge, strike and return embody the perfection of piscatory art. How easy for the intelligent eye of the kiskadee to observe the mode of life of these little neighbors of the roots, to essay, to practice and to succeed! Or if this strains our credulity, let us take another sheet of paper and again logically explain the origin of the habit; a pursued insect falls into the water, the kiskadee swoops at it at the same moment when a minnow arises; the fish is unintentionally seized instead of the flying ant, the foundation of cause and effect is laid; and so, “dearly beloved,” that is the way the kiskadee learned to fish!

For my part, I have not the faintest idea of how it began, in fact the little I have been able to ascertain, tends more to complicate than to clarify the problem, but there is one very significant thing about this flycatcher fishing. The Kiskadee Tyrant (Pitangus sulphuratus) in some of its several forms ranges from Texas to the Argentine, and from Guiana to Peru.

Many years ago in western Mexico I observed the Northern form of Pitangus plunging for minnows in an arroyo pool, later, in the Orinoco delta and in Trinidad the subspecies trinitatis fished for me in both places; during five separate visits to Guiana I have seen many individual kiskadees catching fish in widely separated localities, and I have heard of a similar habit in birds of Brazil and Argentina.

Now while some unusually adaptable or quick-sighted bird may learn a new habit, or a new variation of an old habit, it is quite another thing to imagine a similar spreading of it wholesale among the individuals of the species ranging over mountains, plains and islands throughout a continent and a half. Such an achievement is as absurdly improbable as the theory of a kingfisher tutor. We do not know how it has come about, but when it is made clear I believe that many other equally mysterious phenomena will be understood; why so many groups of hoofed animals quite distantly related, all began in past time to develop horns more or less simultaneously; why in hundreds of tropical lakes which never know spring, untold hosts of ducks and geese are, as one bird, stirred by something beyond themselves—as inexplicable and invariable as the magnetic needle; why a flock of birds in flight has no individual will, but is swerved and turned, carried aloft or settled to rest by some inclusive spirit of flock or species. All this is not recognized by any taxonomist, it is not explained by psychologists, it is hardly ever thought of by naturalists, but some day it will demand of our philosophy an explanation. When that time comes, I will understand the fishing of my mangrove kiskadee as now I understand only how much I want to know.

A strange city or shore or jungle, a new friend, or house or garden should always first be seen at night; should be glanced at, not scrutinized, listened to, not examined, wondered at, not studied. The glamour rightly born of dusk will then forever mitigate defects apparent in the glare of day, ash-cans, thorns, thick wrists, oilcloth tiles or blight. But no studied plan led my feet to the mangroves on a May midnight of the wettest moon at full. Raindrops from distant Venezuelan storms, and others which had spattered upon the mysterious heights of Roraima had filled the rivers up to their brims. And now the pull of the moon had slackened, and gently let the liquid mass sink down. There was not a ripple, only an occasional heave and settling, more effective, more potent of cosmic energy than any crashing waves or surging bore. And I did not wonder that ancient man failed to connect the tides and moon, for here high overhead hung the great satellite, while before me the gravity pull of yesternight’s moon was just relaxing.

The light was somewhat grayed with clouds, but quite bright enough for type, if I had not forgotten that there was such a thing; the mangrove world was oxidized, the leaves lost all their semblance to foliage,—the branches merely dripped dark, oblong sheets of tissue. The slowly sinking mirror stretched the completed curves of roots,—slits widening to ellipses, ellipses to circles, until suddenly the earthly halves were shattered upon the dull glisten of exposing mud.

I was perched upon the buttress of a small mora which had ventured far out beyond its jungle brethren, or had been long since isolated by encroaching waters. Behind me was a black palm swamp and the narrow trail between. Optically both were invisible, aurally they were clearly outlined. From the swamp came the cheery little voices of the black and scarlet leaf walkers, the cubee frogs of the Indians, snapping out their brief but vital message, and from end to end the white-collared nighthawks patrolled the trail, with short, silent flights, thistle-down alightings, and never-ending queries of Who-are-you? as distinct as though worded by human lips. I remembered my Brazilian frog who pursued my researches with his eternal Why? I looked at the moon and the water and the mangroves, I thought of my imperfect self and I knew that never in this world would I form a satisfactory answer to either bird or batrachian.

Beyond the outermost roots came the low thrumming of a catfish singing in the shallows, forced perhaps by the lowering tide from some moonlit feeding ground hidden from my sight. It ceased abruptly and like an aerial antiphony came a deep rumbling throb from a root at my right,—the call of the greatest of all tree frogs, a well-named Hyla maxima. Here night after night I had heard him and had tried to approach. But always he detected my lightest step and became silent. His is the resonant bass violin in the orchestra of a jungle night. At this moment from two miles away, a chorus of these great frogs rang clear from a distant swamp. For about three-fourths of the time the calls were perfectly synchronized, coming in great successive waves; wahrrook! wahrrook! wahrrook! Wahruk, by the way, is their Akawai Indian name. Then some batrachian with a poor sense of rhythm got out of tempo, and this threw all the rest into confusion.

Now that I had remained quiet for many minutes, the fears of the giant tree frog were allayed and he called, almost within reach. I examined every branch near me and at last saw the outline of his great goggle eyes, standing high above his inconspicuous head. I even distinguished a huge webbed hand, looking like a bit of splayed out moss, resting flabbily against a bit of bark. In five minutes he rumbled forty-two times, grouping his emotional reiterations in series of eight, with long rests between. Steadily I watched him, until without warning, in the midst of a deep-throated wahrrook! he leaped into mid air. Only it was not my supposed frog with the outstretched hand which sprang, but a shapeless bit of dangling lichen a foot away, my image reverting into moss and bark; a lifetime of carefully trained eyesight availed nothing, even in this brilliant tropical moonlight, when pitted against the dissolving power of a giant tree-frog. He splashed into the water, reaching another mangrove root in two kicks, and vanished again. This was not maxima’s usual habit of a creeping walk from leaf to leaf, now and then leaping to a higher part of the foliage,—and I waited, and wondered.

In front of me were several twigfuls of leaves, and just below two curved roots, one complete from trunk to water, the second lacking a few inches of crossing the arc of the other. The air was motionless, the water like glass, when I distinctly saw three of the leaves move to and fro. Then two more farther on, followed by quiet, then all waved simultaneously, as with memory of the breeze of the past rising tide, or anticipations of the breaths which would usher in the coming dawn. No other leaf in sight even trembled,—only these rocked and swung. Another vegetable miracle followed,—the shortened root began to grow before my eyes! I had recently measured and marvelled at a bamboo shoot which pushed steadily upward almost ten inches a day, but here was a mere root which had added six inches to its length in half as many minutes! Finally my dull eyes cleared, and as the detective stories say, there was solved the mystery of the frog’s leap, the shaking leaves and the sprouting root; a snake flowed slowly along through the leafy twigs, over the arched root to its tip, and then, with its suspended body, spanned the gap between it and the next root. Long before I had even seen the moving leaves, the frog had sensed the danger and fled.

As I watched the root apparently grow thicker, then diminish, and finally again become a shortened segment, my memory pared down the moon, cleared the sky of clouds, held fast to the mangroves, but raised the flat lines of bordering jungle into rounded hills. The palms and dark water and cool tropic air were the same, but instead of the roar of distant howlers there came to the ear the joyous whoops of gibbons,—the wa-was of the deep Bornean jungle.

All this leaped vividly to mind because it framed the last time I saw a snake among mangroves. That time the snake was smaller, but its effect was of infinitely greater moment. I was hunting Argus pheasants, but had unwillingly allowed my interest to be temporarily distracted by two great apes, orang-utans, which I saw now and then, and which were remarkably tame. One of these, a small animal about half grown, invariably retreated toward the river-bank, and then vanished. No matter how carefully I trailed the strange little being, every trace of him disappeared when I reached the mangrove fringe. One moonlight night I sat upon a mangrove root, compass in hand, trying to locate a distant calling Argus pheasant, as the correct lining-up of the bird would be sure to bisect its dancing ground. After I had sat quietly for a long time, something drew my eyes upward and there, high overhead, peering down at me, was the orang, chin on hand, leaning on the edge of his nest of branches. There was no fear in his glance,—he looked like a meditative, aged man, who would have been more in place leaning on a cane in a chimney corner, than on a frail platform of broken boughs in a mangrove tree. I gradually focussed my electric flash on his face and he blinked at the strange light. He mumbled with his lips as if talking to himself, saying strange tree-top things about huge fireflies which burned too brightly. Once he swept a huge hand across his face, then sucked a great, crooked forefinger and without moving his head, rolled his eyes upward at a passing bat.

I shut off my light and we gazed at one another in the moonlight, with interest, but without malice or suspicion, until suddenly his twitching lips drew together, and I saw his whole body rise and stiffen. I followed his glance as best I could, somewhere beyond me, and before long I saw a small snake climbing out of the water up one of the roots. I knew it for a harmless species and after watching it draw out its whole length of three feet, I looked upward again. Not a sound, neither snap of twigs nor rustle of leaves had come to me, but the monkey’s nest was empty. I could see the branches more or less clearly on all sides for thirty feet, yet there was no hint of the great ape. The harmless little snake had sent him off in violent but silent haste into the jungle, whereas my presence had given him no apparent disquietude. He was absent the following night, but the second night was back and actually snoring before I came close enough to disturb him. I never saw him again.