From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

As the sun travels to the north, the winter sets in rapidly. Autumn lasts but for a few days. It causes no withering nor gradual death of leaves, no glow of red and gold such as we see at home, but exercises, through its hot winds, such a destructive power that the leaves are dried up like mown grass under the sun’s rays, and either fall to the ground green, or crumble away on the stalk, so that the trees, with few exceptions, assume their winter aspect with extreme suddenness. Over the plains, on which, a few days before, the tall grass still waved in the wind, dust clouds now whirl; in the partially or wholly dried up water-courses and water-basins the ground gapes in deep cracks. Everything that is pleasing vanishes; everything that is unpleasing becomes painfully obtrusive: leaves and flowers, birds and butterflies fade away, or migrate, or die; thorns, spines, and burs are left; snakes, scorpions, and “tarantulas” have their heyday. Indescribable heat by day and enervating sultriness by night make this season almost unbearable, and against neither heat nor sultriness is there any remedy. The torments are inconceivable to those who know nothing of such weather, when the thermometer registers up to 122° Fahr. in the shade;[38] when one is in a constant sweat, yet without being conscious of it, so drying is the heat; when one cloud of dust after another whirls up to heaven, or parching thirst weighs on one like lead. Nor can anyone who has not groaned through these nights, when one tosses on the couch, prevented by the sultriness from resting or sleeping, adequately sympathize with the torments to which men and animals are subjected at this season. Even the sky exchanges its hitherto but rarely clouded blue for a dun colour, for the vapour often hides the sun for half a day at a time, yet without diminishing the oppressive heat; indeed the sultriness seems to increase when the horizon is obscured by such mists. One day follows another without any refreshing of body or soul. No cooling breeze from the north fans the forehead; and the soul is not refreshed by any fragrance of flowers, or song of birds, or enchanting pictures with bright colour and deep shade, such as the flooding light of heaven elsewhere paints in the equatorial regions. Everything living, everything coloured, everything poetical, is gone, sunk into death-like sleep—too dismal to awaken any fancy. Men and beasts seem to wither as the grass and leaves withered; and like them many a man and many a beast sinks down for ever. In vain does manly courage endeavour to bear up under the burden of these days: the most resolute will give way to sighs and moans. Every piece of work fatigues, even the lightest covering is too heavy, every movement is an effort, every wound becomes a virulent sore.

But even this winter must at length yield to spring, yet the incoming of this season also is terrible. For the same wind, which, in the desert, becomes the simoom, raises its wings as herald of the spring. It rages through the fissures in the ground, sweeps out more dust, whirls it aloft in thick masses, and builds it into wall-like clouds, which it drives roaring and howling through the land, and forces through the latticed windows of the comfortable town-houses as well as through the low doorways of the native huts, adding a new plague to the existing torments. At last the wind gains complete mastery and exerts its force without restraint, as though it would annihilate everything that still resisted; but it is this same wind that, farther south, piles up the clouds heavy with rain, and sweeps them towards the scorched land. Soon it seems as if the sultriness began to grow less oppressive as the wind gathered strength; it seems even as if it sometimes blew no longer hotly but refreshingly. And this is no deception; the spring is preparing for its coming, and on the wings of the storm the rain-clouds are borne. In a short time, in the south, they darken the dome of heaven; in a few days quivering flashes lighten the dull cloud-banks; in a few weeks the distant thunder heralds the life-giving rain.

Then all the streams from the south rise and surge and overflow. They are scarcely yet turbid, but they have life now; they continue to rise, and through all the deeper rents and fissures of their muddy banks the life-giving moisture is diffused into the adjacent country. The birds of passage begin to appear, and day by day their numbers increase. To the lands of the Upper Nile the storks return to take possession of their old nests on the conical straw huts of the natives, and with them comes the sacred ibis to perform to-day the duty which has been his for thousands of years,—to be the messenger and herald assuring all that the old Nile-god will again open the fountain of his mercy, and pour forth his horn of blessing on the lands which own his sway.

At length the first thunder-storm draws near. Sultriness more painful than ever oppresses the dead, scorched land. An eerie stillness fills man and beast with uneasiness. Every song, nay, almost every voice of birds is hushed, and they hide themselves amid the thickest foliage of the evergreens. In the camp of the nomad herdsmen, in the village, in the town, all life seems as if under a spell. The dogs, usually so lively, slink quietly away to some safe hiding-place; the other domestic animals become uneasy or else wild, the horses have to be hobbled, and the cattle are driven into the pen. In town, the merchant closes his stall, the artisan his workshop, the officials their divan; everyone takes refuge at home. And yet not a breeze stirs the air; there is not a rustle among the leaves of the few trees which still have foliage. But everyone knows that the storm is gathering and is drawing near.

In the south is built up a great wall of cloud, dark and at the same time lurid, like the fire-cloud over a burning town or over a forest in flames. Fiery red, purple, dark red, and brown, dull yellow, deep blue, and black seem to move in a dance of colour; they mingle and separate; they fade into the darkness and appear again in vivid prominence. The great cloud-bank rests upon the earth and reaches up to the heavens; now it seems to stand still, and now it rushes on like a tempest; from minute to minute it narrows the range of vision; more and more completely it throws an impenetrable shroud over all. A whistling, hissing sound issues from it, but around the observer all is still, quiet, and noiseless.

Then suddenly a brief and violent blast of wind bursts forth. Strong trees bend before it like weak reeds; the slender palms bow down their crowns. With ever-increasing rapidity one blast follows another; the wind becomes a tempest, and the tempest a hurricane, raging with unexampled fury. Its noise is so terrible that the spoken word does not reach the speaker’s ear; every other sound is drowned and lost. It rages and roars, blusters and hisses, pipes and howls, rumbles and rattles, in the air, along the ground, among the tops of the trees, as if all the elements were in battle, as if the heavens were falling, as if the very foundations of the earth itself were being shattered. The irresistible storm dashes against the trees, and tears off half of the leaves, if there are any left; while stems as thick as a man’s waist are snapped like brittle glass. Breaking off the crowns, the hurricane whirls them like light balls over the plain, and buries them head downwards in the loose earth or sand, with the miserable fragment of trunk sticking up, a prey to the destructive termites.[39] Hungrily the wind rushes through the clefts and fissures of the earth, sweeps out dust, sand, and gravel, hurls this even into the clouds, and bears it onwards with such force that it recoils stinging and rattling from hard surfaces. With this dust the tempest hides the heavens and covers the earth, and turns the day into dread night, while the anxious inhabitants in their dust-filled houses light lanterns to gain what encouragement and consolation they may from the sight of living flame.

But even the roaring hurricane may be out-roared. The crashing, rumbling thunder is yet more mighty; it drowns the howling and bellowing of the wind. The clouds of dust are still too thick to allow the lightning flashes to be seen; but soon to the confusion of sounds and noises a hitherto unheard rattling is added, and the unnatural night begins to be relieved by gleams of light. It seems as if heavy hailstones were rattling down, but they are only rain-drops which bear with them in falling the up-whirled dust and sand. Now the flashes are seen. One follows so quickly upon another that we are forced to close our dazzled, well-nigh blinded, eyes, and to follow the storm only by listening to the uninterrupted roll of the thunder. The downpour becomes a cloud-burst; from the hills the water rushes down everywhere in streams; in the hollows it forms lakes; in the valleys there are rivers in flood. For hours the downpour continues, but with the coming of the rain the tempest abates, and a fresh cooling breeze refreshes man and beast and plant. Gradually the flashes become fewer and the peals of thunder less violent, the rain-spout becomes a shower, and this ends in a gentle drizzle; the sky clears, the clouds scatter, and the sun breaks forth in splendour. Mirthfully the brown children, naked as they were born, run out from the houses and huts to bathe in the pools which the spring rain has filled; and not less gladly do the reptiles, amphibians, and fishes rise from their muddy beds. Even the first night after the rain one hears everywhere the clear, loud voice of a little frog, of whom one saw nothing before, for he, like some of the crocodiles, many turtles, and all the fishes, had sought winter-quarters deep in the mud bottom of the periodically dried-up lakes, and had just been awakened by the first spring rain.[40]

Everywhere the newly-awakened life arises in strength. The thirsty earth eagerly sucks in the moisture which has been bestowed upon her; but after a few days the heavens again open their flood-gates and a fresh supply of rain awakens any germs which are still slumbering. A second thunder-storm causes the buds to burst on all the trees which shed their leaves, and liberates the sprouting grasses from the ground. A third downpour of rain calls forth blossoms and flowers, and clothes the whole land in luxuriant green. Magical as spring’s coming is the subsequent rush of life. What with us requires a month here completes its life-cycle in a week; what develops but slowly in temperate zones here unfolds itself in days and hours.

But within a few weeks the spring is once more past; the hardly distinguishable summer follows in the annual pageant; and is as rapidly succeeded by the short autumn; so that, strictly speaking, all three—spring, summer, and autumn—make but one season. Again the destructive winter is at the doors, and prevents that continuous germinating, growing, and flourishing which is possible in other equatorial countries where the water-supply is more abundant. Here, however, the rainfall is at least sufficient to keep the barren desert from gaining the mastery, and to spread a more or less rich carpet of vegetation over the ground—in other words, to produce steppe-land instead of desert.

I use the word steppe to designate those lands peculiar to the interior of Africa which the Arabs call “Chala”, which means “lands bearing fresh green plants”. It is true that the chala is as little like the steppes of South Russia and Central Asia as the prairies of North America, or the pampas or llanos of South America, yet in certain important respects it does resemble the first-named, so that I need scarcely make any excuse for preferring a known to an unknown term. The steppe extends over the whole interior of Africa, from the Sahara to the Karroo,[41] from east coast to west, surrounding all the high mountains and enclosing all the extensive virgin forests which stretch on their slopes, or occupy in greater luxuriance the low grounds where water is plentiful. In fact it includes all the lands in the heart of Africa, beginning a few hundred paces beyond the last house of the towns, and directly behind the last houses of the villages; it includes the fields of the settlers, and supports the flocks of the nomads. Where the desert ends to the south, where the forest ceases, where the mountain flattens, there is steppe-land; where the forest is destroyed by fire, the steppe first gains possession of the clearing; where men abandon a village the steppe encroaches, and in a few years destroys every trace of habitation; where the farmer relinquishes his fields the steppe impresses its character upon them in the space of a year or two.