Phil Robinson

“ But if once we fall from the strict paths of possibility, our facts become improbable, and there will be an inrush of creatures trampling across, flying over, and swimming through every rule of natural history, every law of creation. If once the key is turned to let in these disturbing dualities, a mob of indeterminate things — gryphons and sphinxes, basilisks and dragons, wolf-men and vampires, unicorns and cockatrices — will crowd into the orderly courts of knowledge, and, breaking down all the bulwarks of our rational beliefs, will seat themselves triumphantly among the ruins of science! ”

“ But soon the voices of the camp had died away behind me, and there had grown up between me and it the wall of mist that in this sunless forest region makes every mile as secret from the next as if you were in the highest ether — surely the most secret of all places — or in the lowest sea. And over the soft, rich vegetable mould the ass’s feet went noiseless as an owl’s wing upon the air; and, except for the rhythmical jingling of his ass’s harness, Shumari’s presence might never have been suspected. ”

“ It looks like a shabby dog, and howls like an unhappy one. There is no fierce tiger-eloquence of eye, no ravening hyena-clamor in its voice, no lion-majesty of form. It seems a poor thing for any one, even a child, to be afraid of, for it appears half-fed and weak-limbed. As it trots backwards and forwards it is hard to believe that these pattering feet are really the same as those that can swing along the countryside in an untiring gallop, defy the horse and laugh the greyhound to scorn; or that the thin neck, craning out of the kennel there, could ever bear a dead child’s weight. ”

“ But in America, even though many successive days of unbroken travel may have run into one, or its many variations—from populous states to desert ones, from timber states to pasture ones, from corn states to mineral ones, from mountain to valley, river to lake, canyoned hills to herd-supporting prairies, from pine forest to oak forest, from sodden marsh to arid cactus-land—may have got blurred together, there grows at the end of it all upon the mind a befitting sense of vastness which neither linear measurement in miles nor variety in the panorama fully explain. ”

“ The tyrant eats what he wants, and then strolls back into the jungle indolently and, so to speak, in good humor with all the world. We can then imagine him stalking a company of sambhur in fun, and afterwards see him standing up alone in the open space, laughing grimly, shaking his sides at the joke, as the antlered creatures fly terrified before his form revealed; or we may watch him insolently stretching himself in the full moonlight upon the ground near the favorite drinking pool, and daring all the beasts of the jungle to slake their thirst there so long as he remains. ”

“ The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green. ”

“ And so homewards, up through the meadow, hummocked with hay-cocks, and rough to the feet with short grass-stubble, from which the sleepy skylarks spring at every step: up to the elms that shade the garden, and on to the lawn. The bats wheel overhead, their soft wings crumpling as they turn their somersaults, but never a voice in the air, save sharp needle-points of sound, as flittermouse calls to flittermouse. Only from among the wheat, now here, now there, comes up the cry of the rail, Crake-crake. ”

“ But in the cities the heat of noon is worse. There is wanting even the relief of herbage and running water. The white sunlight lies upon the roads, so palpable a heat that it might be peeled off; the bare, blinding walls, surcharged with heat, refuse to soak in more, and reject upon the air the fervor beating down upon them. In the dusty hollows of the roadside the pariah dogs lie sweltering in dry heat; beneath the trees sit the crows, their beaks agape; the buffaloes are wallowing in the shrunken mud-holes, — but not a human being is abroad of his own will. ”

“ Aroma is in fact, the essence of the soul, and every flavor emitted by the body represents a corresponding emotion of the soul. Happiness finds expression in a mirthful perfume, sorrow in a doleful one. Does not a hungry man on smelling a joint of meat at once rejoice? I myself have been so overcome by the scent of a favorite fruit that, under an uncontrollable impulse, I have fallen upon and devoured the whole plateful! so powerful is the sense of smell. ”

“ And yet the whole forest was instinct with life. If you set yourself to listen, there came to your ears, all day and night, a great monotone of sound humming through the misty shade, the aggregate voices of millions of insect things that had their being among the foliage or in the daylight that reigned in the outer world above those green clouds which made perpetual twilight for us who were passing underneath. ”

“ Their own stout hearts refuse to believe that they are a failure; but failure is written in large capital letters on the whole hamlet, and in italics upon every face within it. The wind-swept sand-drifts in which the settlement stands, the wretchedness of the tenements and their surroundings, the haphazard composition of their food, their black beans and their buffalo berries, the whistling of the wind as it drives the sand through the boards of the houses, the howling of the coyotes round the stock-yard—everything from first to last was in accord to emphasize the desperate desolation. ”

“ The lion when on the lookout for a meal is as stealthy as a cat when compassing the ruin of the garden sparrow. It crawls along on its stomach, taking advantage of every tuft of cover and inequality of the ground, and maintaining a perfect silence. More often still it lies in ambush for its victim; and those who have watched a lion under a tamarisk, waiting for the antelope to come browsing by, say there is no difference whatever between its tactics and those of Grimalkin when she lurks under a gooseberry bush for the casual robin. Another fact is that the lion is only bold in the dark. ”

“ This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humors all vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its boughs; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its great waxen flowers ”

“ The blackbird is quite as familiar by sight and by song, but many who know what the mavis’ eggs and nests are like, would perhaps be puzzled to describe the merle’s. The home of the hedge-sparrow, again, is well known, and, after a fashion, its appearance; but how many who hear it singing know who the small musician is? So, taken all round, the thrush is the bird we are most intimate with. And how welcome it always is on the lawn, with its charming plumage, and its pretty, half-timid way of coming out into public! ”

“ But the punkah-coolie is left outside. His lines have been cast to him on the wrong side of the tattie. The hot wind, whose curses the sweet kiss of the kus-kus turns to blessings, whose oven-breath passes into our houses with a borrowed fragrance, finds the punkah-coolie standing undefended in the verandah, and blows upon him; the sun sees him and, as long as he can, stares at him; until the punkah-coolie, in the stifling heat of May-day, almost longs for the flooded miseries of Michaelmas. ”

“ And all the time we eat our dinner (at the Bowie station) the cicadas go on shrilling, on the hot and dusty ground, till the air is fairly thrilling, with the waves of barren sound. That sounds like rhyme,—and I do not wonder at it,—for even the cicadas themselves manage to drift into a kind of metre in their arid aimless clamour, and the high noon, as we sit on our cars again, looking out on the pink-flowered cactus and the mezcal with its shafts of white blossoms, seems to throb with a regular pulsation of strident sound. ”

“ Using all the craft of his kind , the great cat steals upon his victims with consummate patience, and in such silence that even the deer have no suspicion how swiftly that stealthy death is approaching. It is like being killed by a shadow or a ghost, for not a sound of moving leaf or breaking twig has given them warning; and yet, all on a sudden, right in their midst it may be, there is an instant’s swaying of the grass, and lo! the tiger. ”

“ How silently and swiftly the birds of prey come wheeling round the curve of the cliff, and, skimming the ground, pick up and carry off one of a covey before even its companions can collect their wits to raise an alarm. So in India I have seen the laggar falcon take up a quail and pass on like some shadow, without disturbing the rest, as silent, literally, as the wind, and with an incredible speed. Yet to watch an eagle beating round the base of a hill there seems too much leisureliness for speed. ”

“ We soon find ourselves out upon a vast plain of grassland, upon which the sullen, egotistical cactus will not grow. "You common vegetables may grow there if you like," it says. "Any fool of a plant can grow where there is good soil; but it shows genius to grow on no soil at all." So it will not stir a step on to the grass-land, but stands there out on the barren sun-smitten sand, throwing up its columns of juicy green flesh and bursting out all over into flowers of vivid splendour, just to show perhaps that "Todgers's can do it when it likes." ”