Jungle People

“ The Gond said nothing, but picked up a trail of the Karela, the vine that bears the bitter wild gourd, and laced it to and fro across the temple door in the face of the staring red Hindu image. Then he pushed with his hand in the open air along the road to Kanhiwara, and went back to his Jungle, and watched the Jungle people drifting through it. He knew that when the Jungle moves only white men can hope to turn it aside. ”

“ It is the dream with some of these jungle people to taste the sweets of civilisation, make money, and then return to his tribe, acquiring many camels and wealth of goats and sheep, and it is very strange that in no time he becomes a jungly person again, casting off the trammels of civilisation with ease after having lived perhaps for two or three years in the service of a white man. ”

“ In these forests teeming with animal life of all kinds man had to hold his own against dangerous and stronger animals, and to supply himself with food in the face of many rivals. He had to be as alert as the sharpest-witted and as cunning as the most crafty, and to have physical fitness and endurance to stand the strain of incessant rivalry. This is what these jungle people have. ”

“ The Jungle People put them out of their mouths and out of their minds. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads. ”

“ Shikaree, horsekeeper, and a village man with the three guns, while I myself bring up the rear. Over a few ploughed fields, and past that large banian-tree, the jungle begins.
What is this black thing? and what are those people doing? That hideous black image is the jungle god, and to him the villagers look for protection for their flocks.
How they stare at the man dressed in his mud-colored clothes, who has come so far, and sacrifices sleep and comfort, to sit and watch at night for the evil genius of their jungles. ”

“ THE SPRING RUNNING Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle! He that was our Brother goes away. Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,— Answer, who shall turn him—who shall stay? Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle: He that was our Brother sorrows sore! Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!) To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more. ”

“ We ran to and fro in circles, capering and crying out and shaking our heads. Then Tha gave an order to the trees that hang low, and to the trailing creepers of the Jungle, that they should mark the killer of the buck so that he should know him again, and he said, ‘Who will now be master of the Jungle People?’ Then up leaped the Grey Ape who lives in the branches, and said, ‘I will now be master of the Jungle.’
At this Tha laughed, and said, ‘So be it,’ and went away very angry. ”

“ Very wonderful is the jungle! In the moonlight of a small clearing I saw the huge bulk of three wild elephants feeding. They vanished like wraiths into the depths. The fireflies were hosting in the air like flitting diamonds. Stealthy life and movement were about me: the jungle, wide-awake and aware, moving on its own occasions.
A few days later I was at Anaradhapura. Once a million people dwelt in the teeming city. Here or near was the site visited by the famous Chinese pilgrim already mentioned, Fa Hien. But it is in ruins; the jasper image is gone. The tower is in the dust. ”

“ The deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry hoarsely; and Chil, the Kite, flew in great circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning.
By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places when once the Water Truce has been declared. The reason of this is that drinking comes before eating. Every one in the Jungle can scramble along somehow when only game is scarce; but water is water, and when there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops while the Jungle People go there for their needs. ”

“ None of the Jungle People like being disturbed, and all are very ready to fly at an intruder. Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers’ Hunting Call, which must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle-People hunts outside his own grounds. ”

“ Surely we must run away, Free People, and beg leave of the peoples of the north for the offal of dead cattle! Ye know the saying: 'North are the vermin; south are the lice. We are the Jungle.' Choose ye, O choose. It is good hunting! For the Pack—for the Full Pack—for the lair and the litter; for the in-kill and the out-kill; for the mate that drives the doe and the little, little cub within the cave ”

“ We are lost in the jungle. Under the tall trees a dense jungle covers the ground; lianas hang gracefully from the limbs and trunks of trees. Many of them are covered with flowers. Now and then, huge blocks of quartz rocks are met with. We go along slowly, for we are tired.
Okendjo says that soon we shall reach the promised land, where goats, fowls, plantain, and palm wine are plentiful. ”

“ They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle People ever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have once used. ”

“ The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the all of the king's council-chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men ”

“ The monkeys chattered; a terrific roar from a gorilla resounded through the forest, mingling with the howls of hyenas. Snakes, no doubt, were crawling about. Immediately after the falling of the great tree near us we heard a novel and tremendous noise in the jungle, coming from a herd of elephants fleeing in dismay, and breaking down every thing in their path.
"Goodness gracious!" I shouted, in English, "what does all this mean? Are we going to be buried alive in the forest?" ”

“ But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the Jungle-People could see them. ”

“ At times we had to pass through dense and very thorny jungles, where briers were as thick as grass on a prairie, and the holes in my clothes left so many bare spots that at every advance my scratched body bore witness of the hard time we had had, and of the difficulties we should encounter if I persisted in advancing into these mountains where there were no paths. ”

“ So they ordered a lot of men to put a large net on their side of the stream, just in front of them, and then to cover the net with twigs and leaves so cleverly that the animals thought the leaves were a part of the jungle, and did not see the people on the other side of the net. ”

“ The same jungle prevails on all sides, excluding all view; and the only signs of man's existence in these wilds lay in the meagre path, which is often lost, and an occasional hut or two, the temporary residence of the sporting Kidi people. ”

“ The houses were small, but the neatest I had met in the jungle. They are built generally in one long street, houses on each side. The streets are kept clean; and this was the first tribe I met where the ground at the back of the houses was also cleared off. In most villages there was, back of the houses, a street where great numbers of plantain-trees and some lime-trees, for they love lemons, were growing. The villages are surrounded by thousands of plantain-trees, and regular footpaths connected one village with another. ”

“ I will go play with them again."
"Listen, man-cub," said the bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the Peoples of the Jungle—except the Monkey Folk who live in the trees. They have no Law. They are outcastes. They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen and peep and wait up above in the branches. ”

“ Looking off to the east and south, the eye caught a glimpse of distant mountain peaks, standing out white and clear against the blue horizon, like a snowy conical cloud, and the intervening stretch of country was broken by hills, ravines, gorges, wood, stream, rocks and prairie, in an interminable jungle, making a country that was the chosen roaming-ground of the fiercest wild animals, the most valuable game, and the wild Indian, and the equally wild hunter and trapper. ”

“ The camp was deep in sleep, when something stirred at the edge of the jungle colonnade. The tangle of lianas parted, and, framed in vines, the flat face of a great ape was turned toward the river. He stood, monstrous, hairy and half human, his black lips lifted, his pointed ears twitching, a master of the jungle surveying the environment of man with a savage and poignant fascination. ”

“ At one time, soon after it begins, the chorus seems the far hubbub, mingled and levelled by distance, of a multitude of people running and disputing in a place where we who are listening know that no people are. The noise comes nearer and louder till it is palpitating around us. It might be the life of the forest, immobile and silent all day, now released and beating upwards in deafening paroxysms. ”

“ And Father Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man. ”

“ Old men point to country where there is now not a copse large enough to hide a sambhur for hundreds of square miles, and tell me that, in their youth, that land was covered with jungle. When civilization pushes back the wilder members of the hill-tribes into the yet unconquered jungle, they commence upon it by felling- and burning virgin forest on the side of the hills. ”

“ As much good ground as I can walk over in two nights from the east to the west, and from the north to the south as much as I can walk over in three nights, the Jungle took. We let in the Jungle upon five villages; and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the soft crop-grounds, there is not one man today who takes his food from the ground. ”

“ But to see a white-draped, lanky Hindu, or a red-cloaked lama of the hills, quietly fold up, no matter where he may be, is to witness the perfection of chairless rest. One can read or write or doze comfortably, swaying slightly with a bird’s unconscious balance, or, as in my case at present, wholly disarm suspicion on the part of the wild creatures by sinking from the height of a man to that of a jungle deer. ”

“ All round us lay miles and miles of unbroken jungle, inhabited only by birds and beasts; all nature seemed silent, mysterious, and void of human sympathies as in the first days of the world, before man came to conquer, and in conquering to destroy the charm. It is impossible quite to realise this awe-inspiring loneliness of the jungle
"Where things that own not man's dominion dwell." ”

“ If he was displeased with any one, or if he wished to disperse a company, he had only to put his head back in that way and presently up and along the branches, down and through covert openings, the Jungle folk would go, or creep, or crawl, or slink, until in a few moments not a soul but himself remained. Then he would gather up the stone he always carried with him and make off through the trees, climbing with the aid of his powerful blue-soled feet and one strong hand, the other holding the stone secure. ”

“ When you grow up, you may sometimes be tempted to doubt that an all-merciful Providence watches over us. Then remember these wonders of the jungle that I have described to you. And remember especially the Water Hole, where all animals are like brothers, where even the tiger and the lamb drink and lie down together in peace. ”

“ Yet it is hardly to be wondered at, that all tribes should hold the birds to be little prophets of the jungle, dashing across man's path, at critical moments, to bless or to ban. In the deep jungle, which at high noon is as silent as "sunless retreats of the ocean," gay-plumaged birds are not sitting on every bough singing plaintive, melodious notes ”

“ Then we are the match for anything that lives. Within a day, we are supreme in our jungleland. Our home is in a tree. Snares are set for food animals, death traps are set for carnivores, and the jungle is cleared for our safety. And, Elanane, from that time on the beasts of the jungle avoid us. ”

“ And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track
⁠Once, twice, and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Wolf-pack yelled
⁠Once, twice, and again!
Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark! ”

“ It was indeed difficult to conceive what could have induced a few families to migrate to such a place in the heart of a jungle swarming with wild beasts, which must have carried off their children and cattle even during the day. ”