Guyana -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Guyana
Twice, deeper in the jungle we squatted and listened, and twice the
silence remained unbroken and the air unmoved. Happening to look up
through a lofty, narrow canyon of dark foliage, I was startled as by
some sudden sound by seeing a pure white cloud, moonlit, low down, pass
rapidly across. It was first astounding, then unreal: a bit of
exceedingly poor work on the part of the property man, who had mixed the
hurricane scenery with that of the dog-days. Even the elements seemed to
have been laved with magic. The zone of high wind with its swift flying
clouds must have been flowing like a river just above the motionless
foliage of the tree-tops.
This piece of ultra-unnaturalism seemed to break part of the spell and
the magic silence was lifted. Two frogs boomed again, close at hand, and
now all the hound similitude was gone, and in its place another, still
more strange, when we think of the goggle-eyed author far up in the
trees. The sound now was identical with the short cough or growl of a
hungry lion, and though I have heard the frogs many times since that
night, this resemblance never changed or weakened. It seemed as if the
volume, the roaring outburst, could come only from the throat of some
large, full-lunged mammal.
A sudden tearing rush from the trail-side, and ripping of vines and
shrubs, was mingled with deep, hoarse snorts, and we knew that we had
disturbed one of the big red deer--big only in comparison with the
common tiny brown brockets. A few yards farther the leaves rustled high
overhead, although no breath of wind had as yet touched the jungle. I
began a slow, careful search with my flashlight, and, mingled with the
splotches and specks of moonlight high overhead, I seemed to see scores
of little eyes peering down. But at last my faint electric beam found
its mark and evolved the first bit of real color which the jungle had
shown--always excepting the ruby tail-light. Two tiny red globes gleamed
down at us, and as they gleamed, moved without a sound, apparently
unattached, slowly through the foliage. Then came a voice, as wandering,
as impersonal as the eyes--a sharp, incisive _wheeeeeat!_ with a
cat-like timbre; and from the eyes and voice I reconstructed a night
monkey--a kinkajou.
Then another notch was slipped and the jungle for a time showed
something of the exuberance of its life. A paca leaped from its meal of
nuts and bounced away with quick, repeated pats; a beetle with wings
tuned to the bass clef droned by; some giant tree-cricket tore the
remaining intervals of silence to shreds with unmuted wing-fiddles,
_cricks_ so shrill and high that they well-nigh passed beyond the upper
register of my ear out again into silence. The roar of another frog was
comforting to my eardrums.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account