Guyana -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Guyana
Most memorable to me were the long walks which Colonel Roosevelt and I
took on the Kaburi Trail, that narrow path which is the only entrance by
land to all the great hinterland lying between the Essequibo and
Mazaruni Rivers. Majestically the massive trees rose on either side, so
that while our contracted aisle was as lofty as the nave of a cathedral,
yet it was densely shaded by the interlocking foliage high overhead.
Our progress was thus through a glorified tunnel; we traveled molewise
with only here and there a glimpse of the sky. Every walk was filled to
the brim for me with that infinitely satisfying joy, derived from frank,
sympathetic communion with an enthusiastic, true friend. I know of no
earthly pleasure more to be desired. Perhaps this is because friends are
so rare with whom one can be wholly natural, with one's guard completely
down, unafraid of any misunderstanding--an omnimental communion.
It was with dismay, at the end of one long walk, that I realized we had
forgotten to search for the tropical creatures for which we had
presumably set out. We had kept the jungle birds and animals well at
distance by a constant flow of human speech--argumentative, eulogistic,
condemnatory--of literary and field and museum doings of the scientific
world.
But we did not wholly neglect the life around us and one of the last
problems which we solved that day was that of a small voice, one of
those apparently unattached sounds which come from no definite place,
nor are referable to any certain source. It might have been a cicada or
other insect, it could well have come from the throat of a bird. Were we
in the heart of a city we should unhesitatingly have pronounced it a
jewsharp played very badly. We set out in search, we stalked it through
the thin underbrush, we scanned every branch with our glasses, and when
we found it was bird and not insect we shamelessly played upon its
feelings and squeaked after the manner of a stricken nestling. We saw
that it was a small flycatcher, green with waistcoat of lemon-yellow.
Finally after we had learned its fashion of flight, the stratum of
jungle it inhabited and its notes, I secured it. Not until then did we
perceive that concealed on its head it wore a glorious crown of orange
and gold. When my reference books arrive, and we learn the technical
name of this little golden-crowned flycatcher or cotinga, I do not think
that this title will persist as vividly as the "jewsharp bird of Kaburi
trail."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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