CHAPTER I.

THE VIRGIN FORESTS.

"The noonday sun Now shone upon the Forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade.... Like restless serpents, clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes. With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs Uniting their close union; the woven leaves Make net-work of the dark blue light of day, And the night's noontide clearness, mutable As shapes in the weird clouds." SHELLEY.

In all parts of the world some regions exist where, owing to a concourse of favourable circumstances, the productive forces of Nature have been able to manifest themselves with an exceptional energy--where vegetable life, in particular, has acquired an extraordinary development. The rich soil is covered, over more or less extensive areas, with vivacious plants, robust and of great stature, which closely rooted, one against another, with intertwining and overarching boughs, sustaining by their bulk and shading with their foliage other and weaker plants, have formed in the course of innumerable ages those masses of umbrageous gloom called Forests.

These, undoubtedly, are one of the grandest and most impressive monuments of the Creative Power; one, I may add, of the most eloquent, for there is nothing in all Nature whose study better repays the student, or which more largely abounds in important lessons.

The virgin forest, moreover, is one of the sanctuaries of Nature, where her mysteries are seldom profaned by man. There life reveals itself, and moves at liberty, under an infinite variety of forms. It is the asylum of a multitude of animals of all classes, which find therein, united, the two essential conditions of existence--shelter and nourishment. Without the difficult approaches, the obscurity and the profound depth of the forests, says a naturalist, what would become of the species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, against which man wages incessant war? Nature, then, seems to have provided these immense reservoirs to prevent their species from being totally annihilated. Independently of the trees which constitute the forests, a host of other plants make them their exclusive _habitat_; thence the specific and eminently characteristic names--such as _Sylvestris_, _Sylvaticus_, _Nemorosus_--imposed upon a great number among them. Such plants are distinguished from their congeners by the great dimensions of their stems; but, on the other hand, they do not possess the brilliantly-coloured flowers which adorn the plants of the mountains and the plains always exposed to the action of the solar light.

The forests, moreover, offer for the botanist this remarkable and singularly precious circumstance, that they form natural collections of trees of the same species, or of several species of the same genus, or at least of the same family; so that their limits circumscribe the _habitat_ of these grand vegetables, and permit us to determine with ease their geographical distribution.

The forests fill an important function in the general economy of the globe, by the influence which they exercise upon the mean temperature and the other meteorological conditions of the regions they shelter. All other things being equal, the temperature of well-wooded countries is perceptibly less elevated and more uniform than that of dry and open districts. The amount of humidity which is retained on the surface of the soil by wide-spread woods is considerable; it results from the lesser evaporation of the waters, the abundant transpiration of the leaves, and the heavy rains which inundate the forests during the tropical summer. Forests, like mountains, seem to attract the clouds. So the plains which lie on their borders are ever better watered and fertile than those whose horizon no obstacle encumbers.

Thus, then, in the forests, in this bright and beautiful world of vegetation, most of the pleasures which man can derive from external nature are garnered up, and most of the lessons he requires are written. All kinds of precious grace and teaching, says Mr. Ruskin,[145] are united in this link between the Earth and the Stars: wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of life. "First, a carpet to make it soft for him; then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough handle, according to his temper); useless it had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm--and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility and force, softness and strength, in all degrees of aspects; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage for tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with variegated, everlasting fibres, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity."

Considered in their physiological aspect, it is evident that the forests have played, from the remotest ages of our planet, a pre-eminently useful part, by absorbing the carbonic acid with which the atmosphere was surcharged, fixing the carbon, and restoring to the air a quantity of oxygen sufficient for the support of animal life, impossible or rudimentary previous to their creation. And they still serve to maintain the chemical equilibrium of the atmosphere, by incessantly refeeding it with the oxygen which the respiration of animals and the phenomena of combustion have transformed into carbonic acid.

* * * * *

Forests formerly abounded in Europe. In Gallia, Germania, Illyria, Sarmatia, whole provinces were covered with immense woods of ancient and patriarchal trees. Civilization has destroyed them in great part, and often without discernment. At the present day few forests in Europe remain untouched. They are rare in Western Asia, in Central Asia, and in Northern Asia; rarer still in the Chinese empire, where the population is denser than in any other country of the world, and where it is the great object of the policy of the State that not a rood of land shall be lost for the culture of plants valuable as food or for industrial purposes. It is only to the south of the Himalaya Mountains, in the still savage and scantily peopled regions of India and Indo-China, that one sees the great vegetables of the Tropical Zone agglomerated in compact masses of considerable extent.

In Africa, forests of any size or density only exist in the mountainous countries and towards the western littoral; as, notably, in the Soudan, the Senegal, in Guinea, at the Gaboon, and on the coasts of Angola and Benguela. In North America, civilization has accomplished, in less than three centuries, the work which in Europe occupied a much longer period. The magnificent forests which spread their awful shades--their vast luxuriance of gloom--over the surface of this continent have fallen before the axe of the pioneer. Only at a few points is realized the fine picture of the poet; only in a few untrodden recesses still flourishes the primeval forest, where--

"The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms."[146]

When Captain Palliser's expedition attempted to reach the head waters of the North Thompson from the sources of the North Saskatchewan River, the leader encountered a forest-growth so dense, and so encumbered with fallen timber, that it proved an insurmountable obstacle. Viscount Milton and Mr. Cheadle, in their adventurous journey across the Rocky Mountains to British Columbia, were involved in one of these wildernesses, and with difficulty effected a passage. "No one," they remark,[147] "who has not seen a primeval forest, where trees of gigantic size have grown and fallen undisturbed for ages, can form any idea of the collection of timber, or the impenetrable character of such a region. There were pines and thujas of every size--the patriarch of 300 feet in height standing alone, or thickly-clustering groups of young ones struggling for the vacant place of some prostrate giant. The fallen trees lay piled around, forming barriers often six or eight feet high on every side: trunks of huge cedars, moss-grown and decayed, lay half-buried in the ground on which others as mighty had recently fallen; trees still green and living, recently blown down, blocking the view with the walls of earth held in their matted roots; living trunks, dead trunks, rotten trunks; dry, barkless trunks, and trunks moist and green with moss; bare trunks, and trunks with branches--prostrate, reclining, horizontal, propped up at different angles; timber of every size, in every stage of growth and decay, in every possible position, entangled in every possible combination. The swampy ground was densely covered with American dog-wood, and elsewhere with thickets of the aralea, a tough-stemmed trailer, with leaves as large as those of the rhubarb-plant, and growing in many places as high as a man's shoulders. Both stem and leaves are covered with sharp spines, which pierce your clothes as you force your way through the tangled growth, and make the legs and hands of the pioneers scarlet from the inflammation of myriads of punctures."

Far grander the scene, however--far richer in form and colour--which meets our gaze in the stupendous forest growth still covering the basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco. As a companion to the foregoing picture, we borrow one of this brighter and more wonderful region as painted with equal truth and vigour by Mr. Bates:--[148]

"The ground was thickly carpeted with Lycopodiums,[149] but it was also encumbered with masses of vegetable _débris_ and a thick coating of dead leaves. Fruits of many kinds were scattered about, amongst which were numerous species of beans, some of the pods a foot long, flat and leathery in texture, others hard as stone. In one place might be seen a quantity of large empty wooden vessels; such they appeared to be, but in reality they had fallen from the Sapucaya tree. They are called _Monkey's Drinking-cups_ (Cuyas de Macaco), and are the capsules of the nuts sold under this appellation in Covent Garden Market. The top of the vessel is pierced with a circular hole, in which a natural lid fits easily. When the nuts ripen this lid becomes loosened, and down falls the heavy shell with a crash, scattering the nuts over the ground. The tree[150] which bears this extraordinary burthen is of immense height. It is closely allied to the Brazil-nut tree,[151] whose seeds are likewise enclosed in large wooden vessels, but these are without lids, and fall entire to the ground. It is at least 120 feet high, and rises to the noble stature of 100 feet before it throws off any branches. From twelve to twenty of these sweet edible nuts lie in a pod. The monkeys are very partial to them, and will patiently sit for hours hammering at a capsule with a stone, in order to open it; and as soon as they have succeeded, the on-lookers rush to the spot, to purloin as many as they can. The natives assail the quarreling party with stones, a proceeding which incites the monkeys to revenge themselves by a discharge of nuts. By this means the Indians load their boats without trouble, and the monkeys are left to make a fresh foray."

In his forest wanderings, Mr. Bates was especially attracted by the colossal trees. He says that, on the whole, they had not remarkably thick stems; the great and uniform height to which they grow without throwing off a branch is a much more noticeable feature than their thickness; but at intervals he paused before a veritable giant. Only one of these huge patriarchs of the woods can flourish within a given space; it monopolizes the domain, and none but humble individuals can nestle within its shadow. The cylindrical trunks of these larger trees were generally about twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference. Von Martius, another Brazilian traveller, mentions having measured trees in the Pará district, belonging to various species (Symphonia coccinea, Lecythis spirula, and Cratæva Tapia), which were fifty to sixty feet in girth at the point where they become cylindrical! The height of the vast column-like stems could not be less than 100 feet from the ground to their lowest branch. The total height of the Pao d'Ano[152] and the Massaranduba, stem and crown together, may be computed at from 180 to 200 feet. Where one of them stands, the vast canopy of leafiness rises above the other forest trees like a domed cathedral above the minor buildings of a city.

A very curious feature in these trees is the growth of buttress-shaped projections around the lower part of their stems. The spaces between these buttresses, which may be compared to thin walls of wood, form spacious chambers, like stalls in a stable; some of them large enough to hold half-a-dozen persons. "The purpose of these structures," says Mr. Bates, "is as obvious at the first glance, as that of the similar props of brickwork which support a high wall. They are not peculiar to one species, but are common to most of the larger forest trees. Their nature and manner of growth are explained when a series of young trees of different ages is examined. It is then seen that they are the roots, which have raised themselves ridge-like out of the earth; growing gradually upwards as the increasing height of the tree required augmented support. Thus they are plainly intended to sustain the massive crown and trunk in these crowded forests, where lateral growth of the roots in the earth is rendered difficult by the number of competitors."

Among other remarkable inhabitants of the Brazilian wilderness, we may name the lofty Moira-tingu,[153] the Samaüma,[154] and the Massaranduba or Cow tree.[155] The Eriodendron Samaüma, or Silk-cotton tree, holds in the New World the same position as the Bombax in the Old. It rises to an enormous stature without branches, and then spreads out a glorious mass of foliage. The bark is light in colour; and the capsule pod contains a large quantity of down, of a brown tint, and exquisite silky softness. The Massaranduba is also called the Palo de Vacca, the Arbor de Lacte, the Galactodendron utile, or the Cow tree. Its bark furnishes an abundant supply of milk as pleasant to drink as that of the cow. If exposed to the air it thickens into a glue, which is excessively tenacious, and often employed to cement broken crockery. The tree has a wild, strange appearance, owing to its deeply scored, reddish, and rugged bark, a decoction of which is used as a red dye for cloth.

Did our readers ever hear of the Pashiúba, or bulging-stemmed palm?[156] It is not one of the tallest kinds, for its height, when full grown, seldom exceeds forty feet; the leaves are somewhat less drooping, and the leaflets broader, than in other species; but if less beautiful, it is, perhaps, far more remarkable. Its roots grow above ground, radiating from the trunk at an elevation of ten or twelve feet, so that the tree seems to be supported on stilts; and when it is old, a person can stand upright amongst the roots with the perpendicular stem wholly above his head! About midway, this stem bulges out in a circular swelling, which gives it its distinctive name. The roots closely resemble straight rods, but they are studded with stout thorns, whilst the trunk of the Pashiúba is perfectly smooth.

It is in the vast primeval forests of Central and Southern America, and in the leafy wildernesses of the great East Indian islands--Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Madagascar--that man may still contemplate in all its savage majesty the prodigious Flora of the Tropics. These, too, are the haunts of many remarkable animals--mammals, and birds, and reptiles--which are there comparatively safe from the pitiless persecution of the hunter and the trapper.

To obtain an idea--which, however, can only be very vague and imperfect--of the strange and imposing spectacle and the unexpected scenes which at every step astonish the traveller in the great Tropical woodlands, we must study the descriptions of those few but richly endowed adventurers who, after exploring them with the enlightened curiosity of science, have been able to embody the results in language worthy of the subject.

In the foremost rank of those who have possessed the twofold qualification of scientific knowledge and descriptive power, we must place the illustrious Humboldt. His works are a rich storehouse from which later writers have freely borrowed the materials of their essays. In reference to the phrases " Virgin Forest," "Primeval Forest," he has some judicious observations:--Ought we to call, he says, by either of these appellations every kind of wild thick wood, encumbered with vigorous trees, upon which man has never laid his destructive hand? In that case they would be appropriate in a number of very different countries, under the Temperate, ay, and even under the Frigid Zone. But if we intend them to designate the impenetrability of an almost boundless forest, the impossibility of clearing a path with the pioneer's axe between serried ranks of trees, not one of which is less than from eight to ten feet in diameter, such virgin forests belong exclusively to tropical regions. We must not believe, however, according to the ordinary story in Europe, in the creeping parasitical lianas which, by the interlacement and entanglement of their branches, render the equatorial forests impenetrable. The lianas form but a comparatively insignificant portion of the underwood. The principal obstacle is found in the arborescent plants, which leave not a space uncovered, and this, too, in a country where all vegetables spreading over the soil become ligneous. If a traveller, as soon as he arrives in a tropical clime, whether in the continent or the islands, believes, even before he has penetrated inland, that he is transported to the heart of the virgin forests, his error simply originates in his impatience to realize a long-cherished desire. All Tropical forests are not virgin forests.

The true virgin forests, notwithstanding the recent explorations of Wallace, Bates, and Agassiz, are very imperfectly known; because it is, in truth, perfectly impossible to survey them in every direction, on account of their vast extent and astonishing impenetrability. When we are told by the traveller that he opened for himself a path with his trusty hatchet, we readily understand that he achieved his boasted victory in places where the obstacles were reduced to feeble lianas and brushwood of no great density, and that he turned aside from the massive barriers formed by the closely-planted trunks of colossal trees. Than these mighty vegetable Anakim, nothing, says a naturalist, is more imperfectly known in botany. The stems of most being bare and branchless up to a considerable height, their fructification is frequently beyond the reach of man. In vain would he level them by their base: their summits remain suspended by the inter-tanglement of the neighbouring summits, and like so many Tantaluses, our travellers see themselves shunned by the fruits which their eyes devour. The rivers, those "tracks which march" through the leafy, woody depths, and the tortuous paths trodden down by generations of wild beasts in their quest after new pastures, after fresh hunting-grounds, or fountains to slake their thirst, are the only roads which can be pursued by the explorer.

As far as concerns their botanical composition, the virgin forests of the Tropics are distinguished from those of cold and temperate regions by general characters which it will, perhaps, be useful to indicate. If, for example, we adopt as our standard of comparison the European forest, we there remark, in the first place, the complete absence of trees belonging to the important groups of Acotyledons and Monocotyledons, and, in consequence, of the superb palms and elegant arboreal ferns of tropical countries. Or, considering only the Dicotyledonous plants, we see again that, in lands bordering on the Equator, there is scarcely a family of this class which does not furnish its contingent of woody plants, offering most frequently, with forms of infinite variety, clearly displayed and brilliant flowers, remarkable either for their beauty or their fragrance,--

"Sweet as Sabæan odours from the shores Of Araby the Blest;"

while our trees are comprised in a small number of natural groups, and present in general very opposite features; as, for instance, an almost uniform character or aspect, and flowers scarcely visible and of little elegance.

It suffices to name the families of the Coniferæ and the Amentaceæ, which compose the greater portion of the Flora of our forests. Moreover, as Humboldt observes, in the Temperate Zone, particularly in Europe and the north of Asia, certain species of trees (_plantæ sociales_) grow together, and form of themselves forests which we may designate by their specific name. In the forests of oaks, firs, and birches which cover the countries of the North, in the forests of limes of the East, one unique species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ, or Tiliaceæ generally prevails. This uniform society is foreign to the Tropical forests. The infinite variety of flowers which expand in these _Hylææ_ do not permit us to ask of what the virgin forests are composed. An innumerable quantity of different families stand side by side; even in the most confined spaces it is rare to see trees of the same nature re-united. Every day, as the traveller advances, he discovers new forms; oftentimes the outline of the leaf and the ramification of a tree attract his attention, without his being able to distinguish the flowers.

There is yet another feature, more striking still, and more general than those previously mentioned, which broadly distinguishes the arborescent vegetation of the Tropics from that of northern climates. Here the plants, exposed annually to an often intense degree of cold which lasts for several months, experience a kind of suspension of their vital activity, cease to flower and to fructify, and entirely shed their foliage; the resinous species are the only exceptions to this rule. In the neighbourhood of the Equator, on the contrary, it is during the hottest, driest season that vegetation suffers; then the herbaceous plants and bushes of the plains die down; but the great trees of the virgin forests are hardly affected; their foliage incessantly renews itself; their branches are at all times loaded with fruits and flowers, and to the wayfarer's eyes they present the glorious spectacle of an eternal freshness, of a life which never wanes.

Compared with these great points of difference, common to all the virgin forests of the Tropics, the peculiar features resulting from the botanical constitution which distinguishes more or less exactly one region from another, have, as the reader will understand, but a secondary importance.

With the exception of a few countries which possess a Flora _sui generis_--such, for example, as Madagascar and Australia--the same aspects, the same general forms are almost everywhere reproduced.

More distinctive differences may be remarked, at the first glance, in the animal life which peoples the forests of the different quarters of the world; but yet these animals everywhere display the same habits. The great majority of the insects and the birds, the apes, the squirrels, and, in general, all the arboreal animals, awake and put themselves in motion at the first glimpse of day, and animate the forest with their murmurs, their songs, their utterances, their lively sports and frolicsome gambols.

I borrow from the entertaining pages of an English traveller the following description of the diurnal cycle of phenomena which revolves in the depths of a virgin forest.[157]

In the early dawn the sky is invariably cloudless; the heavy dew or the previous night's rain, which lay on the moist foliage, becoming quickly dissipated by the glowing sun, which, rising straight out of the east, mounts rapidly towards the zenith. All nature is fresh, new leaves and flower-buds expanding rapidly. Some mornings a single tree will appear in flower amidst what was the preceding evening a uniform green mass of forest--a dome of blossom suddenly created as if by magic. The birds are all active; from the wild fruit trees, not far off, we hear the shrill yelping of the Tucano (_Ramphastos vitellinus_). Small flocks of parrots flow over on most mornings at a great height, appearing in distinct relief against the blue sky, always two by two chattering to each other, the pairs being separated by regular intervals. Their bright colours, however, are not discernible at such a height.

Towards two o'clock the heat rapidly increases, and every voice of bird or mammal grows hushed; only in the trees sounds at intervals the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, so moist and fresh in early morning, now become lax and drooping; the flowers shed their petals. On most days in June or July a heavy shower will fall some time in the afternoon, producing a most welcome coolness. The approach of the rain clouds takes place after a uniform fashion very interesting to observe. First, the cool sea-breeze, which commenced to blow about ten o'clock, and which increases in force with the increasing power of the sun, flags, and finally dies away. The heat and electric tension of the atmosphere then grows almost insupportable. Languor and uneasiness seize on every one; even the denizens of the forest betraying it by their motions. White clouds rising in the east gather into cumuli, with an increasing blackness along their lower portions. The whole eastern horizon becomes almost suddenly black, and this darkness spreads upwards, obscuring the "orb of day."

Then through the forest hurtles a mighty wind, swaying the lofty tree-tops; a vivid flash of lightning bursts forth, then breaks a crash of thunder, and down streams the deluging rain. Such storms soon cease, leaving bluish-black motionless clouds in the sky until night. Meantime all nature is refreshed; but heaps of flower-leaves and fallen petals lie under the trees. Towards evening life revives again, and the ringing uproar is resumed from bush and tree. The following morning the sun again rises in a cloudless sky, and so the cycle is completed; spring, summer, and autumn, as it were, in one tropical day. The days are more or less like this throughout the year in this country. A little difference exists between the dry and wet seasons; but generally the dry season, which lasts from July to December, is varied with showers; and the wet, from January to June, with sunny days.

"It results from this," says Mr. Bates, "that the periodical phenomena of plants and animals do not take place at about the same time in all species, or in the individuals of any given species, as they do in temperate countries. Of course there is no hybernation, nor, as the dry season is not excessive, is there any summer torpidity as in some tropical countries. Plants do not flower or shed their leaves, nor do birds moult, pair, or breed simultaneously. In Europe, a woodland scene has its spring, its summer, its autumnal, and its winter aspects. In the equatorial forests the aspect is the same, or nearly so, every day in the year--budding, flowering, fruiting, and leaf-shedding are always going on in one species or other. The activity of birds and insects proceeds without interruption, each species having its own separate times. The colonies of wasps, for instance, do not die off annually, leaving only the queens, as in cold climates; but the succession of generations and colonies goes on incessantly. It is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is a combination of all three. With the day and night always of equal length, the atmospheric disturbances of each day neutralizing themselves before each succeeding morn; with the sun in its course proceeding mid-way across the sky, and the daily temperature the same within two or three degrees throughout the year, how grand in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the march of Nature under the equator!"

Now night comes on, not, as in temperate climes, with a hush and a silence that are almost breathless, but with a thousand strange and formidable sounds. In Asia, in Africa, in America, as well as in the great islands of the Pacific Ocean, the forests and the savannahs re-echo all night with discordant cries. The branches are torn down with a crash as the beasts of prey sweep past, and earth resounds beneath their headlong steps. It is no longer the gay, fresh movement of happy life which in the golden noon of day converts the forest into a veritable Eden; it is the rush to and fro of scattered animals, pressed by hunger and thirst, either in flight or pursuit; it is the roar of rage or the wail of agony; it is, in a word, the mêlée of sharpened appetites; it is the "Witches' Sabbath" of the savage world, at which no European, however hardened by the perils of an adventurous career, can be present for the first time without experiencing a deep emotion of melancholy and apprehension.