Jungle Days

Part I--Fact

A volcano in eruption and a jungle monkey--nothing can ever quite prepare our minds for the first sight of these. Neither the crude wood-cut of Vesuvius in our old school geography, nor the latest colored moving picture of Kilauea, adumbrates the awe of the silent, ascending line of smoke, or the nocturnal glow of fires, old as earth itself is old. Your canoe slips through the reflection of everhanging jungle, and you suddenly spy a little face peering out from the fronds,--a face wistful, serious, grave as with the weight of planetary responsibilities; and so human that you feel that somewhere in its past it too could tell of an Eden tragedy. If not an apple, it must at least have nibbled a berry of some little vine of self-consciousness. How unlike the immobile features of the deer and rodents and jungle cats is this sober, anxious little ego! And how vividly our orchid climbing days return when we see a family of bandarlog swarming up a liana. These miniatures of ourselves seem to climb as easily against gravitation as we loll down hill with it.

This Guiana jungle is a strange and wonderful place when we think of it from the view-point of its monkey tenants. Their floors are swaying vines and bending branches, their roofs green waving fans and banners. Their nearer neighbors are humming-birds and leaf-winged butterflies, gaudy toucans and screeching parrots. Far up through skylights they catch glimpses of vultures, soaring a mile above earth, and yet with eyes so keen that an accidental headlong fall to earth of any little monkey would bring a score of hungry ghouls. Through the skylight, too, hurtles swift death,--harpy eagles, whose grip is the end.

The jungle sends up enormous trees, one hundred, two hundred feet, among the branches of some of which fifteen hundred generations of monkeys have gambolled. If these stood like oaks in a meadow, isolated and alone, the four-handed ones would perish or have to take to the ground. But lignum vitæ rather than arbor vitæ should be the simian’s password, for the vines which bind together the whole tropical forest are the way of life of the monkey. By means of the untold fathoms of ratlines and suspension bridges, tight ropes and ladders, these jungle people can range for thousands of miles without ever coming to earth, living in the realm of orchids and birds’ nests, of sloths and tree lizards.

Their very name has come to be a byword, although, like their physical bodies in past ages, it is bound to us etymologically by monna and madonna. We laugh at their comic little faces and ways and, if we are incurably fanatic or quite egocentric, or fearful of what comes after death, we indignantly deny all past kinship of a common ancestor. On the other hand, if we love the truth and have a sense of humor, we recognize that these little jungle folk have missed being human by some very little accident, being, but for the grace of some side-tracking, ourselves. And while we swagger upright and think of our brains with complacency, are we sure that all the advantage is on our side?

As with us, the whole of the lives of these monkeys is one long struggle against gravitation. They are born and weaned, they play and fight, they eat and sleep, in midair far from the ground, and only when death comes, do the tiny fingers relax and headlong they slip through fronds and leaves to the earth itself. This same eternal pull of earth holds us completely in thrall at birth, then we roll over, struggle to hands and knees and creep reptile-like for a space. At last we rise upon unsteady soles and from three to seventy we walk or run, swinging our arms to balance us, frequently tumbling to earth again, exhausted after a few hours and sinking upon chair or bed to gather strength against another day of upright struggle.

The joys of climbing, of balance, of swaying limbs, of headlong leaps from self-earned lofty vistas, pass with boyhood for most of us. They are renewed for me sometimes when I mount the ratlines of a ship plunging through heavy seas, or in the first rush of a nose dive from high in air.

We cheat the power of earth with elevators, though to do so we must call upon the lightning or waters for aid. Instead of holding to clean-barked boughs, swaying aloft in the sunlight, we creep beneath the ground and dangle unsteadily from dirty straps. In place of plucking our fruit fresh from its native stem and eating it amid the green glow of its own foliage, we barter for its shrivelled pulp sealed in cans of tin. We gape at and applaud those of our kind who dare, upon tight-rope or trapeze, feats which any self-respecting monkey would smack her child for thus bungling.

The Capuchin, the bourgeois organ-grinder’s friend, in past years now and then climbed our gutter-pipe and at the reminding jerk on his cord, pitifully doffed his little cap and took our pennies. Here in his home we tame him and bind him to us with affection, so that with full liberty he chooses his sleeping box on our laps. He is silent, and gentle and serious like the coolies who work on the coastal rice-plantations.

This is, of course, merely generalization, comparable to the immortal description, “The French are a gay and polite people, fond of dancing and light wines.” Anyone who has been a friend to creatures,--dogs, birds, monkeys or any other of our quaint companions in this curious world,--knows that individuals vary in disposition and temperament only less than what we are pleased to call the highest order, Man.

Some Capuchins are silent; we have known some whose garrulity tried our patience and our hearing. There was once a man who took a cage to the African jungle and so far reversed the usual procedure as to enter it himself, while the gorillas congregated outside,--or so he hoped,--to gaze on the strange sight. His purpose was to study the language of gorillas. One suspects that the vocabulary thus acquired would be chiefly of a scurrilous nature, but who is so lacking in a sense of justice as to grudge the apes a chance to get even at last?

We have acquired some knowledge of monkey talk, especially from our Capuchin pets. It does not seem an extensive tongue but the same sound can, as with us, be given many different meanings by inflection, pantomime, or even facial expression. When one of our small Cebus friends is confronted by some terrifying sight, such as a monstrous iguana, he springs away precipitately, wide-open mouth expelling on a sharp breath a guttural hissing grunt. Engaged with us in a game of tag around the laboratory, he sometimes finds himself cornered; then he emits the same sound, but no one could now take it for an expression of fear. It is much prolonged, without the abrupt tone of real terror, and his white teeth gleam in his open mouth in an unmistakable grin as he capitulates and flings himself confidently into our outstretched hands.

One wistful little chap who was once a member of the laboratory family would sustain his part in serious discussion for minutes at a time. To open the conversation, one had only to approach him closely, look him in the eye, and smack the lips gently and repeatedly. To this he never failed to respond in kind, but much more rapidly than human lips could move, wrinkling his brows mightily the while with the effort of concentration, and occasionally varying his remarks by an emphatic shake of the head and a curious throaty chuckle with a falling cadence, which sounded for all the world as though he demanded briefly, “Whatcher got?”

Monkeys have bad dreams, nightmares that perhaps are shared by us. Often in the evening I have been distracted from some microscopic business in hand by a clamor from the compound, and going out have seen a pitiful monkey face, with frightened drowsy eyes peering anxiously for insubstantial bugbears, and heard small whimpers of allayed distress as nervous little hands clung to my solid and reassuring fingers.

Most Capuchins have in their repertoires some almost bird-like tones of clear twitters and chirrups, and, when they are particularly anxious to be noticed, a sweet call, Coo-coo-coo, whose blandishment it is difficult to resist. This same phrase, loud and prolonged is the call of the clan when widely separated in the jungle. It carries over half a mile.

The Beesa monkey, like the native Indian, is a silent mystery. Neither likes close confinement, and no emotion is shown by their placid, inscrutable faces. The young do not understand the strange new beings who have come into their lives, and soon pine away; as long as they live they are extremely affectionate, but mentally dull and timid.

Continue reading Jungle Days free in the Wunder reader →