Part 4

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One of the most ruinous steps in the descent of this new species, which gradually deteriorated until it became Man and produced the Darwin, was the living in what they call huts or houses, which, as you all know, are a kind of small, movable cave, very hot and dry, and shut up against the air. This, men like the Darwin say, became necessary to protect them against the inclemency of the weather. There was no such necessity. On the contrary, it is the use of this contrivance which has made the new creature weak, unable to live naturally like his ancestor, the gorilla, and obliged him to go on year after year, and generation after generation, adding impediment to impediment, and incumbrance to incumbrance, that he may supply artificial wants which grow upon him year by year, till at last—the poor besotted creature! he deems that one of his species happiest who has most possessions, that is, most occasion of care and trouble. His hut he has at last deprived of the only good quality it once possessed, its movableness (for it would be a nice thing to be able to take your cave around with you when food becomes scarce, instead of being obliged to go after the food and then return to the cave); and, in his self-delusion, he now builds it of some heavy, immovable material, and fills it so full of all kinds of gim-cracks that his highest praise of one of these immovable caves is that it is filled with all the modern inconveniences; and, to keep these in disorder, he has a rapacious multitude of his own species whom he calls carpenters, and masons, and painters, and plumbers. These sorts of man seem to have come into his family through some operation of the law of sexual selection with the bird family; for they are all dreaded because of their bills; and of them all, I am told the plumber’s bill is at once the most dreadful, and the most inscrutable in its origin.

As I have told you, the hut or house was not first used for protection against cold and wet. It came in this wise. Many generations after the first migration a female of the new family was born much lighter in color than the original rich black tint of the species; and when she grew up, she preserved this unpleasant peculiarity. But, strange to say, she was liked by one of the largest and strongest of her species, who took her for his third wife, and made much of her. She, observing that things turned black in the sun, took a notion that unless she could be protected against his rays she also would become black, and lose the peculiar charm to which she owed her marriage to so desirable a husband, and his very marked admiration and attention; and yet she could not bear a cave; it was altogether too damp and gloomy, and, indeed, very unbecoming to the complexion. She therefore insisted with much pouting and sulkiness, including some secret slaps and pinches of the other wives’ children, and alternate fits of temper and sickness that turned the family topsy-turvy (the good old gorilla family discipline, ladies, which permitted the use of a stick not larger than the husband’s hind thumb having sadly deteriorated among these degenerate creatures), that if her husband really loved her and cared anything to preserve the beauty he professed so much to admire, he would make something that would protect her skin against the sun.

After long cogitation he produced a wonderful structure. He took three dry saplings, about one-half again taller than himself, and putting one end of each in the ground, about his own length apart, he joined their tops, and upon the outside of these he piled dried twigs and broad leaves, leaving an opening in the front. To this he led his now radiant beauty, and she took possession with great glee and greater pride. At first she stayed in it all the time, night and day. She allowed no one else but her husband to enter. The other wives affected great scorn of her and her rubbish-hole, as they called it, which they would not go near or seem to notice; but if their children came to peep in, she drove them away with blows and sticks and stones. It was her delight to sit just within the doorway, and nod with condescending affability to the other females who came to see the great curiosity; and they came from miles around.

Her pride, and the airs she took upon herself, set the whole female community agog. She was a wife for whom the wonderful hut had been built to preserve her complexion. She held up her nose in the air, as if the earth and the other females on it were too mean for her to look upon. In the course of a few days the first wife began to make things very uncomfortable. [“Very proper of her,” screamed one of the matrons—an exclamation which was followed by a hum of approval.] She spanked her three children, of whom she had been very fond, on various pretexts; but in her heart, the boys, because they were boys and looked like their father, and the girl, because she was his favorite and looked like herself. She took no notice of her husband, but passed him in glum silence [“Served him right,” screamed another matron]; in this (mildly continued the lecturer) showing the proverbial tact and wisdom of her sex; for the only consequence was that he passed more time than ever at the hut. At last, one evening, when he had brought her some very fine fruit, she flung it down untasted, and went into a kind of convulsion. She screamed, she chattered, she clenched her hands, and gnashed her teeth, and flung herself upon the ground, kicking and tossing her arms about. At first he was inclined to administer to her the remedy which she had applied to the children; but, as he really loved her, he was weak, and asked what was the matter. At first, there was no answer, only more screams, more kicking, more flinging of the arms about. At last, however, it came: “The matter? Her complexion was the matter!” (She was as black as a crocodile’s back.) “How could he expect her not to have fits, unprotected as she was from the sun? But what did _her_ complexion matter? What did he care about that? Why did he not go to his other wife? She could have a hut built for her, where she could sit and sneer at every one else.” The consequence, ladies, you all know. She also had her hut, in the door of which she sat with her nose in the air. And of this the consequence was that the second wife’s complexion also needed protection; and soon she too had her hut, and sat with her nose in the air. Whereupon there was great commotion in the whole community. Was it to be endured that that fellow’s wives should sit in huts and sniff? Would a husband of any spirit, not to say a husband who cared anything for his wives, endure that? There was an outbreak of complexion fever among all the females. Such a thing as a complexion was never before heard of; but now every female had one; and nothing would preserve it, or save her from convulsions, but a hut for its protection. And it was remarkable that the blacker the female the more sensitive she became on this subject, and the more imperatively necessary it was that she should be provided with shelter. And so, ere long, it came to pass that a hut ceased to be any distinction whatever, and that, when all the females got what they wanted, the chief value it was to have had in their eyes was entirely gone, and it would only have been a mark of destitution to be without one. The thing having become a necessity, and a matter of course, the males, to save trouble, made huts large enough for all their females; and as time went on they plastered the twigs and leaves with clay. The males passed more and more time with their females in these she contrivances, and became themselves, of course, more and more effeminate. And thus it was that this new branch of our family became more and more a house-dwelling species.

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It is well known to you that some members of our kindred, although degenerate family, man, live upon the water, and go about upon it in a kind of cave with wings. Such folly is incomprehensible to a thorough-bred and high-toned gorilla, who is eminently conservative, and likes to stand upon a solid foundation; and how any people who are in the slightest degree connected with us can seek, or endure, a life upon that shifting and cruel element that is the proper habitation of fishes and crocodiles and hippopotamuses, we cannot surmise, or could not, were it not for our newly-acquired knowledge of the working of the principle of sexual selection, that great newly-found key to all the mysteries of life.

The first sailors were not gorillas, or their puny descendants, but squirrels; and it was through the squirrel that the sailor element was transposed into man’s nature. It happened many ages ago, at least as many ages as had passed since the occurrence of the events which I have narrated and explained, that a community of the new species dwelt on the borders of a great lake. In search of food, or for other purposes, they often had need to go from one side of the lake to the other, and they were always obliged to go around, because they could not go across. It was too far to swim, and there was no other way. But one day a female, who had been obliged to carry her youngest child half around the shore and back again two or three times, saw a squirrel shoving a large piece of bark into the water. He had shaped the bark with his teeth, making the sides even, and the ends somewhat pointed. It was about twice the length of his own body, and that was nearly the height of this female; for squirrels were then not the puny things they are in these degenerate days. When he had launched his bark, he got upon it, settled himself well in the middle, and then suddenly raised his tail. The wind blew gently from shore, and wafted him out upon the water, and gradually across it, he acting as mast, sail, rudder, crew, and passenger; and she saw him disappear, a bounding speck upon the opposite side. At first she wished that she, too, had a long, flat, bushy tail; but the traditions of the dreadful tail-period of our common ancestors lingered with her family, and she shrank from the thought. Then she thought that two or three large palm-leaves would do as well as the tail, or better.

The next day she left her children in the hut, and, coming down to the lake, she shaped a piece of bark, and, taking her place upon it, hoisted two palm-leaves. The wind blew more briskly on this day than on the other, and she was delighted at soon finding herself carried well out upon the lake. But as she went on, and the breeze freshened, she was surprised to find that her bark wobbled unpleasantly from side to side, and even from end to end. The shores of the lake seemed alternately to rise up into the heavens and to descend to the centre of the earth. She was pitched forward and pitched backward. Ere long her surprise soon took the form of disgust, and the seat of the disgust soon shifted from her head to her stomach. The sensation was equally novel and awful. She felt herself grow green about the mouth; and, female although she was, she had no concern about this change in her appearance. Each hair on her head seemed to shrink from its neighbor. She broke into a cold sweat. Her limbs relaxed; and the palm-leaves went overboard. She wished that she might die; and suddenly she thought she was dying, for the hearty breakfast that she had eaten, to set her up for her voyage, was cast out into the treacherous waters—an awful catastrophe! She gave herself up for lost, and, without strength or will to cling to her bark, flung herself along it, and hoped that the end would soon come. It did come, but not as she expected that it would. Being no longer able to keep her balance, she leaned too much on one side, just as a large wave struck the bark upon the other, and she was upset into the water. The shock revived her, and, being not yet very far from land, she was just able to swim back to the shore whence she had started. Creeping up on the bank, she sat a while musing in the sun, and then went meekly home.

Thinking over her adventure, she compared her performance with that of the squirrel, and came to the conclusion that her race needed the infusion of some new blood to fit them for the struggle for existence upon the water-side, and—loathsome thought—upon the water. She threw herself in the way of the squirrel, and, being a fascinating female, soon brought him to that state of mind in which he felt that he could not be happy without her, and of course that she could not be happy without him. Indeed, she avowed her admiration for him openly, but told him that his beauty had but one drawback—his tail. She could not endure a gentleman with a tail. This confession cast a gloom upon their intimacy; for his tail was his pride. But she was inexorable, and one day he appeared tailless. After this she had two children, born, like her others, tailless, but, unlike their elders, they showed an early inclination to sail chips in puddles; and when they were well grown she took them down to the lake-side with her husband. They immediately fashioned a piece of bark, boarded it, set up the palm-leaf sails, and flew across the water, untroubled by any of those dreadful symptoms from which she had suffered. The head of the family gazed with wonder, which he loudly expressed, that two of his children should perform such an unprecedented feat; but she sat in silence, musing doubtless upon this new triumph of the great principle of sexual selection, and thinking of herself as the mother of all them that go down to the sea in ships, and do their business upon the great waters. She had never mentioned her intimacy with the squirrel, and soon afterward picked a quarrel with him and cut his acquaintance as short as he had cut his tail.

Denuded of their hair, deprived of their hind thumb, thinking “therefore” and “I am ashamed,” provided with huts for the land, and the ability, in at least one family, to manage a bark on the water, the new species of gorilla now differed so widely from our own that their degeneration became very rapid, and it required but a short period, only a few hundred thousand years more, to make them sink into the depth of manhood.

As time went by, however, there were other applications of the great principle discovered by the Darwin, which have left some traces upon the development of the new species. How otherwise could there be such a multitude of men who have really the habits and traits of other animals? Asses, for instance: how many men are but asses, with the outside which they have inherited from their gorilla ancestors—a kind of mixture of monkey and donkey which, I need not tell you, is never found in our branch of the family. The very ears have not quite disappeared; for the Darwin himself says that some men can move their ears, and that length of the organ has only been diminished somewhat and turned down at the top. Does not man recognize this, and often call his fellow-man an ass? But who ever applied that term to a gorilla? And was one of our race, I ask, ever designated as Old Hoss? But every man knows that some of his fellow-men are geese, and vultures, and sharks, and foxes, and jackals? Are there not pigeons among them? Yes, Darwin, pigeons whom they pluck remorselessly. And is not the plucker frequently a jail-bird? Does not every countryman of the Darwin believe that there is a lion in his breast, the rousing of which would be followed by consequences so dreadful, that of late years he allows him to sleep under the most irritating provocations? And does not all this bear witness to various and numberless applications of the principle of sexual selection during past ages? Frankly, I cannot tell. It may be so, and it may not. The wisest gorilla knows so little that what we call knowledge is often merely the name we give to ignorance. And—

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How much longer the speaker continued in this vein I cannot say. But as the audience began to stir uneasily, and many of those in the back rows went away, and even some of the more distinguished and self-possessed of the females in the front got up, turned their backs on the lecturer, and, followed by their attendant males, pushed their way out through the crowd, I was sure that the lecture was within a sentence or two of its end, and that if these persons had waited but a few minutes they might have avoided slighting the speaker and disturbing their fellow-hearers.

At this stage of the reading, I, too, left the place suddenly, the learned lecturer still speaking; but my motive was of a very different kind. During the lecture I had noticed a large and portly middle-aged gorilla look at me from time to time, and with increasing frequency. Each time, too, the glance was kindlier, and at last was accompanied by a nod, a beck, or a smile. What did this mean? I doubted; but for a moment. I considered the subject of the lecture, so stimulating to the female fancy, the experiences of the sex related in it, so fitted to awaken the instinct of imitation in the female breast; I thought of Darwin’s book, which I had read before I started for Africa, and I remembered the dreadful words: “_et dignoscebat in turba, et advocat voce, gestuque_,” just, too, as this portly old person was doing. It was too plain: this middle-aged dame, entering into the spirit of the lecture, had selected me. And now, being one of those that rose, she approached me as rapidly as possible. The sweat started from every pore, and, with double horror, I felt the hair on my body rise, reminding me, as it did so, of what likeness there was between me and this infatuated female. There was but one thing to do—to flee.

I got out of the throng as quickly as I could, and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw that she was following. I plunged into the forest, goaded by an indefinable terror. The thicket hampered me, but I pushed on; twigs clung to me, thorns seized me; I tore myself away; but, alas! I left my clothes. I was gradually stripped of my artificial covering, and revealed to my pursuer in that state of nature which bore yet further witness to our kindred. I turned my head again; she was gaining on me rapidly. The jungle that impeded and bewildered me, offered little or no restraint to her swift, practised steps. Observing this, I sought an open glade, which I saw ahead of me, and took to that, hoping—as I was now weighted only by my revolver, the leathern belt of which had resisted the laceration which had removed all my other covering—that on its even surface I might be at least the equal of my pursuer. In vain. Glancing backward as I ran, I saw her steadily approaching, and always nodding and beckoning with what seemed to me a loathsome leer. At last she came so near that I heard her panting breath. In a moment she might clasp me in her arms. I took the alternative, and turned to fight. My revolver was a slight weapon against such a creature, but still it was one of the largest bore; and, if it did not kill or disable my pursuer, it would at least enrage, and I might thus hope that instead of being embraced I would be disembowelled. As I faced her, she rose, and laying her hands upon her breast, bellowed out her admiration. I took steady aim across my left arm and fired. She sprang into the air, evidently hit, and as she came down I fired again, with like effect, and she fell to the ground.

I gazed a moment at my prostrate and dying admirer; and seeing that she was incapable of rising or doing me injury, I approached, with a certain feeling of pity and remorse, to look at her closely. And then I found that my terror, although justified, was entirely misplaced. I had mistaken the sex of my pursuer: my enamored female was a male—an enraged male, of course, and I was saved, not from marriage but from death. But no; faint, and dying fast, he turned and held out his hand to me. “Cousin, what made you run? Why did you hurt me so?” he said. I answered with a feeling of shame that I hope never to have again: “Because I thought you were a lady that wanted to marry me.” “Oh, no,” he said, with feeble and interrupted breath, “I only thought you looked something like a friend of ours who was here a few years ago; and I wanted to take you to a place where there are some cocoa-nut trees and a fresh spring, and we’d talk this matter over. And let me tell you something,” he said, drawing my ear down near his lips. “Don’t go on supposing that every female that may look at you pleasantly and seek your society has selected you. Remember me kindly to Du Chaillu. Adieu!”

He died; and I walked slowly on, musing upon my adventure, a more modest, if not a wiser man, and did not quicken my pace until I remembered that I was charged with Livingstone’s message to Murchison.

THE END.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).