My Friends the Savages Part 8

Closed this parenthesis about the plantations, which are now spreading far and wide over the forest (the wood-cutter's hatchet continually clearing new tracts of land for agricultural enterprises), I want you to return with me to the jungle which is still almost untrodden and where Nature reigns supreme over the thick tropical vegetation.

Having already spoken briefly and in a disorderly way of the riches which are here gratuitously offered--not the riches of Midas and Pymalion, because mother Nature does not refuse food to her children even if they are profaners of that wonderful temple of her fecundity--it is right that I should now draw your attention to two great friends of travellers in the forest. One is the bamboo and the other a creeper called the "water vine".

The bamboo, known to us only as one of the plants least considered in a large, well-kept garden, or as a polished walking stick, as the legs of a fancy table of uncertain equilibrium or as a tobacco box ably worked by Chinese or j.a.panese fingers, in the free forest becomes a colossal inhabitant. Its canes, at first tender and supple, grow to such a size, and so strong as to be used for water conduits. It is a vigorous and invasive plant that covers the surrounding ground with new shoots whilst in under its long roots spread out and suck up all the vital nutriment to be found in the earth around.

To one who lives in the forest, the bamboo is as necessary as food itself. It provides light, solid huts; it makes the blowpipe, arrow and quiver; it serves for carrying water and preserving fruit; it forms a safe recipient for poisonous juices; it is bottle and gla.s.s, and finally supplies the native cooks with a saucepan that only they can use because they have the knack of cooking their food without burning the bamboo. I have often tried to do the same but the result has always been that pot and pottage have been burnt together.

The bamboo has also a secret virtue of incalculable value to the thirsty wayfarer, overcome by the heat of a tropical sun: it is a perfect reservoir of water.

By boring a hole just under the joints of each cane more than half a litre of clear water, not very fresh, but wholesome and good, gushes out. It is rather bitter to the taste and serves to restore one's forces as well as to quench one's thirst.

The water-vine also acts as a Samaritan in the jungle. Like all the others of its sort this climbing plant closes some giant king of the forest in its cruel embrace (thus depriving it of its strength) and then falls in rich festoons from its boughs, swaying and rustling with every breath of air.

By making a cut at the extremity of one of the sprays that hang down towards the ground, a fresh, drinkable water flows out.

It is superfluous, perhaps, to add that this grand necessity for the traveller on foot may be obtained from other sources: the streams that are to be found trickling along here and there, and the huge leaves that upon drying up secrete a certain quant.i.ty of rain water within them.

So the jungle gives to eat and to drink, with wonderful abundance and variety, but woe to him who does not know her well, for she also proffers Death in a thousand unsuspected and seductive forms!

How many times in the solemn, languid hour of noontide, when bird and beast were drowsing from the heat, I have stood in the shade and interrogated the forest upon its first violators and their descendants!

But my demands remained unanswered; in its superb grandeur it does not interest itself in the tragic vicissitudes of animal or vegetable lives, it makes no records, on the contrary, it quickly cancels all traces of past events.

I have vainly asked: from whence came those who have found shelter and solitude in the obscure depths of its wooded hills? How many centuries have they dwelt in those lone, wild parts? I have asked if that shy and dispersed tribe was not the remains of a once great and strong people eclipsed by a younger, stronger, and more savage race? Sometimes watching, with admiring eyes, the strange architectural forms taken by the ma.s.sive trunks and graceful vines, fantastic but always majestic, I have asked the forest if it had not arisen upon the ruins of some long ago and lost civilization and if those same forms were not an inexplicable evocation of the gigantic creations of vanished genii of which I seemed in imagination to catch faint glimpses?

But the forest remained mute and kept its impenetrable secret.

Only here and there, groups of trees, lower than the surrounding ones, and between them s.p.a.ces of ground, which had evidently once been clearings and were not yet totally re-covered by jungle growth, gave proof of Sakai nomadism even in other ages. No other sign of the past, and my query, perhaps absurd, repeats itself. Am I before the savage infancy of a people, or the spent senility of a race, lost sight of in the course of centuries? If the latter, would there not be some relic left of its existence; a fragment of stone or concrete substance inscribed with the figures of its period? Is it possible that everything has been buried from the sight of modern man, under the rank luxuriance of gra.s.s and bush? Or is it not I who vainly dream under the impression of the forest's mute grandeur and the thousands of voices that to-day awake its echoes and to-morrow leave none behind?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: In another chapter, wherein I describe the superst.i.tions and beliefs of the Sakais, I have spoken of the custom they have of depositing food, tobacco, etc., on the tombs of their dead for a week after they have been buried. Naturally everything, not devoured by beast or insect, rots upon the spot and the seeds of the fruit find their way into the ground. For this reason many new trees spring up in groups, obtaining their first alimentation from the dissolution of the corpse.]

[Footnote 5: The _sikoi_ grows on high mountains and the women have to take great pains in cleaning it before it is cooked. It is a grain something like our millet and has good nutritive qualities.

The Sakays mix it with water and make a sort of "polenta" cooking it, as usual, in their bamboo saucepans. It is a favourite dish with them when eaten with monkey flesh, rats, pieces of snake, lizards, beetles and various other insects which would be of rare entomological value to any museum that possessed them.

Ignorant of the repugnant compound, that gave such a savoury taste to the _sikoi_, at the beginning of my sojourn with the Sakays, I ate it with relish after seasoning it with a little salt, an article not much used amongst my mountain friends. But when I came to know what ingredients gave it flavour I refused it, as kindly as I could not to offend their susceptibilities, because my stomach rebelled against the mess.]

CHAPTER VII.

The snares of civilized life--Faust's invocation--The dangers of the forest--Serpents--A perilous adventure--Carnivorous and herbivorous animals--The "sladan"--The man of the wood.

The young man who incautiously ventures into the mysterious parts of Drury Lane--where vice and crime have a cla.s.sical reputation--or strolls through the old Latin Quarter of Paris (where some of the streets are anything but safe to pa.s.s through), or who finds himself, for whatsoever reason you will, in one of those questionable labyrinths still existing in the most civilized Italian cities, would certainly not run less risk than in facing the dangers of the forest. The dart, the trap, the attack of beast and reptile may be, with courage and calmness, averted or parried, but the evils which menace man, under the hypocritical euphemisms of Society (ever ready to vaunt its impeachableness) injure not only the body but, what is worse, the spirit.

Those who succ.u.mb to the latter are ofttimes induced to lament that death does not come swift enough to kill their flesh, after their souls and intellects have been long since slain and consumed.

In the thick of the jungle the spirit rises and wanders free; there are no restraints or limits to its flight. It is inebriated by the simple and serene joys of living; it is pervaded by a current of new, potent energy that makes one feel--alone, in Nature's realm--either immensely great or infinitely small; exquisitely good or miserably wicked.

It is not prudent, when travelling in the forest, to let philosophy make us linger long on the way, but there are some moments in which one's inner life is so intense, in which thought and sentiment are so impetuous that that fleeting atom of time is in itself sufficient to mark an indelible epoch in the existence of men. Who knows but what if Mephistopheles had lead Faust into the virgin forest, and there left him free to his speculations, if the famous invocation would ever have escaped from the fevered lips of the doctor?

But... what is this hissing? It is not the spirit that denies; it is a snake I have disturbed along my path and that has not found my philosophizing over pleasant (like you, perhaps, kind reader) and so I will cut short my digression.

The forest abounds in reptiles. There are innumerable varieties of serpents, big and small, venomous and harmless. It may almost be said (especially towards the plain) that every bush and every tree has one of these inhabitants.

The commonest species are the _tigi rilo_, the _tigi paa_ and the _tigi dol_ but the most feared are the _sendok_ and the _bimaa_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cooking in a bamboo saucepan.

_p._ 72.]

As a rule none of these snakes will a.s.sail a person unless they have been molested. They remain either rolled up close to a tree or lazily swinging from one of its branches, keeping hold of it with its powerful tail and so it is necessary to proceed very carefully and to look attentively both up and down in order not to disturb them.

The serpent, when stumbled against, hurls itself as quick as lightning upon the unhappy offender, encircling and suffocating him with its coils and biting him with its sharp fangs even when they are not poisoned.

Like all other animals it becomes ferocious and seeks to kill from fear.

He who disturbs it is a foe to be vanquished.

But if you pa.s.s him without being afraid and without hurrying, with a slow gliding step, taking care not to move your hands or arms, it will let you go on your way and take no notice of you.

And this I can affirm from experiments I have myself made upon the terrible _sendok_.

One day I was able, in this way, to pa.s.s quite close, almost touching one of these most venomous reptiles. He never moved as I crept by but he did not lose sight of me for a single instant. I am quite sure that if my inward fear had betrayed itself by the slightest gesture, I should have been a dead man.

Sometimes I have succeeded, very, very gently, in placing upon it a stick about two metres long. Well, the horrid serpent just lazily unfolded its coils and softly slipped from under it. Very different would have been the result if I had put the stick upon its head roughly!

From this you will see that danger from snakes is much less than one might believe from the thrilling adventures narrated by friends (between a roast chestnut and a sip of wine), as they are snugly gathered round a cosy fireside, adventures which they have read in the fabulous pages written by one of those story-tellers who gull the respectable public with the loveliest or the most terrifying descriptions of places, men and beasts of which they scarcely know the name.

Serpents are always attacked and beaten down with sticks, except the very large ones, that are taken by la.s.soes as I will explain in another chapter. It is a quick and simple means of getting free, in a few minutes, of a venomous enemy which it never fails to do when fear does not make the eye and the hand miss its aim, precision in the blow being all that is needed.

Not very long since I had an adventure with one of these reptiles which threatened to be my last. I was quietly strolling in the forest and had with me neither weapon nor stick. My thoughts were far away but a rustling sound and a loud hiss brought them quickly back and arrested my steps. A large, venomous snake was right in front of me! Erect, with open mouth and protruding tongue, the embodiment of hatred, it was there, prompt for an a.s.sault. My case was desperate and only a miracle of _sang-froid_ could save me. Fixing my eyes steadily upon those of the serpent, very gradually and with the slowest possible movement I bent my knees and crouched down towards the ground, where, in an equally slow and methodical way I groped for some sort of stick with which to strike my adversary. Having found what I wanted, I drew myself up in the same cautious manner and with a sudden, rapid gesture I hit the beast with all my might. Fortunately for me, my blow told and I had an addition to my collection of jungle foes.

The traveller in Malay who is not a thorough alien to timorous feelings would do well to never leave his comfortable post in the railway carriage between one place and another or at least to keep within a safe distance of the forest, for although its perils have been greatly exaggerated there are some, all the same, that require a stout heart and firm nerves.

When there is no big game to put your courage and your pulse to the test there is always a troop of smaller animals that make game of you and prove your force of resistance. A rat bites your heel whilst you are asleep; the leeches suck your blood; all sorts of insects sting you.

These little annoying incidents irritate flesh and spirit and may be the cause of feverishness, but a dose of quinine and a compress over the wound soon have a good effect.

But it is not sufficient to bravely face bodily danger, support physical pain and endure with grace the mortifications inflicted upon one's flesh by the more minute inhabitants of those regions, for the jungle also exacts certain moral virtues which civilization does not always appreciate or admire, nay, on the contrary, that it often laughs at.

The great Sorceress, for whom one feels a strange nostalgia after having once known her magnificence and her horrors, kills the man who is not temperate in his habits.