Even the animals seem to shun the dark forest depths; only on the highest trees a few pigeons bathe in the sun, and as they fly heavily over the wood, their call sounds, melancholy as a sad dream, from afar. A lonely butterfly flutters among the trees, a delicate being, unused to this dark world, seeking in vain for a ray of sun and a breath of fresh air. Sometimes we hear the grunt of an invisible pig, the breaking of branches and the rustling of leaves as it runs away. Moisture and lowering gloom brood over the swampy earth; one would not be surprised if suddenly the ground were to move and wriggle like slimy snakes tightly knotted around each other. Thorns catch the limbs, vines catch the feet, and the wanderer, stumbling along, almost fancies he can hear the spiteful laughter of malicious demons. One feels tired, worried, unsafe, as if in an enemy’s country, helplessly following the guide, who walks noiselessly on the soft ground. With a branch he sweeps aside the innumerable spider-webs that droop across the path, to keep them from hanging in our faces. Silently the other men follow behind; once in a while a dry branch snaps or a trunk creaks.
In this dark monotony we go on for hours, without an outlook, and seemingly without purpose or direction, on a hardly visible path, in an endless wilderness. We pass thousands of trees, climb over hundreds of fallen trunks and brush past millions of creepers. Sometimes we enter a clearing, where a giant tree has fallen or a village used to stand. Sometimes great coral rocks lie in the thicket; the pools at their foot are a wallowing-place for pigs.
It is a confusing walk; one feels quite dizzy with the constantly passing stems and branches, and a white man would be lost in this wilderness without the native, whose home it is. He sees everything, every track of beast or bird, and finds signs on every tree and vine, peculiarities of shape or grouping, which he recognizes with unerring certainty. He describes the least suggestion of a trail, a footprint, or a knife-cut, or a torn leaf. As the white man finds his way about a city by means of street signs, so the savage reads his directions in the forest from the trees and the ground. He knows every plant and its uses, the best wood for fires; he knows when he may expect to find water, and which liana makes the strongest rope. Yet even he seems to feel something of the appalling loneliness of the primeval forest.
Our path leads steeply up and down, over loose coral blocks, between ferns and mosses; lianas serve as ropes to help us climb over coral rocks, and with our knives we hew a passage through thorny creepers and thick bush. The road runs in zigzags, sometimes turning back to go round fallen trunks and swampy places, so that we really walk three or four times the distance to Hog Harbour. Our guide uses his bush-knife steadily and to good purpose: he sees where the creepers interlace and which branch is the chief hindrance, and in a few deft cuts the tangle falls.
At last—it seems an eternity since we dived into the forest—we hear from afar, through the green walls, a dull roaring, and as we go on, we distinguish the thunder of the breakers like the beating of a great pulse. Suddenly the thicket lightens, and we stand on the beach, blinded by the splendour of light that pours on us, but breathing freely in the fresh air that blows from the far horizon. We should like to stretch out on the sand and enjoy the free space after the forest gloom; but after a short rest we go on, for this is only half-way to our destination, and we dive once more into the semi-darkness.
Towards evening we reach the plantation of the Messrs. Th. They are Australians of good family, and their place is splendidly kept. I was struck by the cleanliness of the whole establishment, the good quarters of the native labourers, the quiet way in which work was done, the pleasant relations between masters and hands, and last, but not least, the healthy and happy appearance of the latter.
The brothers had just finished the construction of what was quite a village, its white lime walls shining invitingly through the green of the cocoa-nut palms. There was a large kitchen, a storehouse, a tool-shed, a bakery, a dwelling-house and a light, open summer-house, a delightful spot, where we dined in the cool sea-breeze and sipped whisky in the moonlight, while the palm-leaves waved dreamily. Then there was a large poultry yard, pigsty and paddocks, and along the beach were the boat-houses, drying-sheds and storehouses, shaded by old trees. The boys’ quarters were roomy, eight sleeping together in an airy hut, while the married couples had houses of their own. The boys slept on high beds, each with his “bocase” underneath, to hold his possessions, while all sorts of common property hung in the roof—nets, fish-spears, bows, guns, etc.
Such plantations, where the natives lack neither food nor good treatment, can only have a favourable influence on the race, and it is not quite clear why the Presbyterian missionaries do not like their young men to go in for plantation work. Owing to the good treatment of their hands the Messrs. Th. have always had enough labourers, and have been able to develop their plantation wonderfully. It consists almost exclusively of cocoa-nut palms, planted on ground wrested from the forest in a hard fight. When I was there the trees were not yet in full bearing, but the proprietors had every reason to expect a very considerable income in a few years. The cultivation of the cocoa-nut is extremely simple; the only hard work is the first clearing of the ground, and keeping the young trees free from lianas. Once they are grown up, they are able to keep down the bush themselves to a certain extent, and then the work consists in picking up the ripe nuts from the ground, husking and drying them. The net profit from one tree is estimated at one shilling per annum. Besides the cultivation of their plantation the Messrs. Th. plied a flourishing trade in coprah and sandalwood all along the west coast of Santo, which they visited frequently in their cutter. This same cutter was often a great help to me, and, indeed, her owners always befriended me in the most generous way, and many are the pleasant hours I spent in their company.
After dinner that first day we went to the village where the “sing-sing” was to take place. There was no moon, and the night was pitch dark. The boys had made torches of palm-leaves, which they kept burning by means of constant swinging. They flared up in dull, red flames, lighting up the nearest surroundings, and we wound our way upwards through the trunk vines and leaves that nearly shut in the path. It seemed as if we were groping about without a direction, as if looking for a match in a dark room. Soon, however, we heard the dull sound of the drums, and the noise led us to the plateau, till we could see the red glare of a fire and hear the rough voices of men and the shrill singing of women.
