Jungle

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nobody who has not spent a year and more in a dreary jungle country, where you are seldom more than a yard or two from the nearest tree, and where the limit of your view is the opposite bank of a stagnant river, can realise the rest, to the mind and to the eye alike, that a wide horizon gives. ”

“ Till then the forest had been but a gloom by day. Behind us was the jungle front. It changed from green to gold, a band of light between the river and the darkling sky. Some greater trees emerged majestically. It was the first time that day we had really seen the features of the jungle. It was but a momentary revelation. The clouds were reflectors, throwing amber lights below. In the hills astern of us ravines hitherto unsuspected caught the transitory glory. The dark heights had many polished facets. ”

“ The alchemy of moonlight turned all the jungle to perfect growth, growth at rest. In the silvery light was no trace of gnawing worm, of ravening ant, or corroding fungus. The jungle was rejuvenated and made a place more wonderful than any fairyland of which I have read or which I have conceived. The jungle by day, as I have said—that, too, is wonderful. We may have two friends, quite unlike in character, whom we love each for his own personality, and yet it would be a hideous, an unthinkable thing to see one transformed into the other. ”

“ The jungle at night! The most eerie thing in the world, with strange short rustlings in the undergrowth, the furtive pad, pad, pad of some soft-footed creature, and ever and again a sound as though some man passed by, laggingly, and dwelling on his steps. ”

“ One had but to look an instant to realize that the jungle was alive with lizards, black, green, and gray, all motionless on limb or root, staring at the explorers with bright beady eyes—to flash into a green streak of movement at the first motion to catch them. ”

“ A dense jungle, of waving horsetail reeds and rushes tall as our poplars, of spreading tree-ferns, of towering trees like tropical palms. Here An Age of Giants and there, an open stretch of gleaming, stagnant water. ”

“ If you walk all day through the jungle along its tangled tracks, you will probably see no living thing. It is so silent and still there that you might well believe that nothing lives in it. You might perhaps in the early morning hear the trumpeting and squealing of a herd of elephants, or the frightened bark of the spotted deer, or the deeper bark of the sambur, or the blaring call of the peacock. ”

“ The jungle is terrible as an army with banners. Sleeping in the little rest-house when the night has fallen, it comes close up to you, creeping, leaning over you, calling, whispering, vibrating with secret life. ”

“ Then there is another day—to the eye nothing whatever has changed—when all the smells are new and delightful, and the whiskers of the Jungle People quiver to their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides in long, draggled locks. Then, perhaps, a little rain falls, and all the trees and the bushes and the bamboos and the mosses and the juicy-leaved plants wake with a noise of growing that you can almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and night, a deep hum. ”

“ The mountains are in the distance, tropical jungle creeping to their very summits, though always hidden during the rainy seasons by clouds. Jungle, jungle, varying only in depth and shade, till we begin to distinguish yet in the far distance some of the bananas and palms which form its densest undergrowth. Then tall palms raise up their graceful heads quite near, swaying them gently in answer to the soft summer breeze. ”

“ Paths that go at noon but a little way into the jungle which overshadows an isolated community of strange but kindly folk, paths that end in a twilight stillness; ardent hues, flowers of vanilla, warm rain, a luscious and generative earth, fireflies in the scented dusk of gardens; and mystery—every outlook disappearing in the dark of the unknown. ”

“ Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back— For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. ”

“ For the rest, the eye was met by jungle—near and far—endless jungle, and the river-reach. Silent and placid the waters, moving along in brown eddies, when, as now, the river was in flood; clear and shallow, disclosing groups of rocks dotted about the bed, in what was called the dry season.
At the time of our visit it was spring, and the jungle, especially in certain parts of the mountainous country, was a truly marvellous sight. The forest had put on its wedding garment, and the new leaves of many, even of most of the trees, were dazzling in the brilliance of their colouring. ”

“ Hundreds of farms remained fallow and soon became covered with jungle. On all sides the jungle grew. The smiling farms, the green pastures and the pleasure gardens of the young men and young women of the villages turned into dense forest. ”

“ The spirit of the jungle is in the village, and in the people who live in it. They are simple, sullen, silent men. In their faces you can see plainly the fear and hardship of their lives. They are very near to the animals which live in the jungle around them. They look at you with the melancholy and patient stupidity of the buffalo in their eyes, or the cunning of the jackal. And there is in them the blind anger of the jungle, the ferocity of the leopard, and the sudden fury of the bear.
In Beddagama there lived a man called Silindu, with his wife Dingihami. ”

“ To realize an equatorial jungle one must see it in all its wonderment of activity and stillness—the heated, steamy stillness through which one fancies that no breeze ever whispers, with its colossal flowering trees, its green twilight, its inextricable involvement, its butterflies and moths, its brilliant but harsh voiced birds, its lizards and flying foxes, its infinite variety of monkeys, sitting, hanging by hands or tails, leaping, grimacing, jabbering, pelting each other with fruits ”

“ The evening was now at hand, and, after the sun-steeped day, the jungle gave out its good smells, beautiful earth-warm smells like a Nature-Goddess, rising from the vast tangle of life in the mysterious depths. You may gather the flowers on their edge and wonder what the inmost flowers are like that you will never see—rich, labyrinthine, beyond all thought to paint. ”

“ The mysterious, danger-breathing jungle surrounding them on every side, the horrible pursuit closing in on them from behind, caused their hair to rise with an awful terror that lent wings to their feet. ”

“ Only now and then could you hear the whisper of leaves.
At a certain point a vast jungle touched the hill. The hill stood at the top; the highway at the bottom; and the jungle in between. A little noise mingled with the murmur of the trees. ”

“ 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 themselves 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. ”

“ These blaze upon you from afar and draw you with a promise of all delights till you stand in their midst bewildered with them. The beauty of the surrounding jungle you must learn little by little, for it does not seek you, rather it withdraws and only subtly tempts. ”

“ Cold, green creepers blister like fire. From vampires which suck your blood as you sleep, to the touch of a vine which paralyzes your entire body, the jungle knows all modes of attack and furnishes the cure for every ill it has created.
What can be taken as the symbol of the jungle? The snake, mysterious, deadly, bound together in savage traditions with lightning, wind, fire-streams of lava, and river-whirlpools, those emblems of serpent treachery? Or butterflies, with their symbolism of life-recurrent?{295} Or the orchid, emblem of wayward unwholesomeness? ”

“ 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 jungle. ”

“ The century before, a plantling had pushed up through the jungle mold and had won success in the terrible competition of the tropics—the helpless, motionless, silent strife of the vegetable folk. Year by year the lichen-sculptured trunk had pushed its way upward toward light and air, miraculously saved from the deadly embraces of the lianas which crawled forever through the jungle. ”

“ 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! ”

“ For no jungle tree, however hardy, can withstand the blasting of violent sun after the veiling of emerald foliage is torn away. As the diver plunges beneath the waves, so, after one glance backward over the silvered landscape, I passed at a single stride into what seemed by contrast inky blackness, relieved by the trail ahead, which showed as does a ray of light through closed eyelids. As the chirruping rails climbed among the roots of the tall cat-tails out yonder, so we now crept far beneath the level of the moonlit foliage. ”

“ I will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines--
I will call in the Jungle to stamp out your lines!
The roofs shall fade before it,
The house-beams shall fall,
And the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall cover it all! ”

“ We were lost for an entire day before we found the blazings of the trail we had made when entering, and the trail itself had become overgrown and tangled again with that marvelous and malignant rapidity which nothing save such a jungle can manifest. It was as if the jungle itself had become a huge enveloping serpent leisurely enfolding us, certain of crushing us in its embrace and leering at our puny, frantic efforts to escape. ”

“ I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns, and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled [Pg 598] rubber banyans, and wild mangoes—which are like trees growing upside down, digging their spreading branches into the ground. ”

“ The white embowered village, the leaping fountains and the rocks, the air in a flutter with the shock of ponderous water collapsing, the surmounting island in mid-stream with its coronet of palms, the half-naked Indians idling among the Bolivian rubber boats hauled up to the foreshore below, the unexplored jungle which closed in and framed the scene, the fierce sun set in the rounded amplitude of the clouds of the rains, made the tropical picture which was the right reward for a great journey. ”

“ I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something—give pain, give death to what, I do not know. ”

“ Many of them leapt up with a loud cry from the long grass where they were skulking, flung away their big shields with the white thongs interlaced, and ran for dear life, black, crouching figures, through the dense, dry jungle. ”

“ Then, as birds settle to sleep and beasts take up their roaming, the jungle becomes profoundly still, and remains so till the dawn, when full-fed brutes begin to grunt or bark as they seek their coverts, and birds call jubilantly from tree to tree as they welcome a new day. ”

“ One wonders whether, throughout the long hours, weeks and months, in darkness which renders 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 beneath, her mate, the cool tap of drops from a passing shower, the volplane to earth, and the obliteration of all save labor. ”

“ 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. ”