The Pools of Silence

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Just as there is eternal war to the death between the beasts of this jungle, so there is war to the death between the trees, the vines, and the weeds. A frightful battle between the vegetable things is going on; we scarcely recognize it, because the processes are so slow, but if five years of the jungle could be photographed week by week, and the whole series be run rapidly off on some huge cinematograph machine, you would see a heaving and rending struggle for existence, vegetation fed by the roaring tropical rains rising like a giant and flinging itself on the vegetation of yesterday; vines lengthening like snakes, tree felling tree, and weed choking weed.

Even in the quietude of a moment, standing and looking before one at the moss-bearded trees and the python-like loops of the lianas, one can see the struggle crystallized, just as in the still marble of the Laocoon one sees the struggle of life with death.

In this place which covers an unthinkable area of the earth, a vast population has dwelt since the beginning of time. Think of it. Shut off from the world which has progressed toward civilization, alone with the beasts and the trees, they have lived here without a guide and without a God. The instinct which teaches the birds to build nests taught them to build huts; the herd-instinct drove them into tribes.

Then, ages ago, before Christ was crucified, before Moses was born, began the terrible and pathetic attempt of a predamned people to raise their heads and walk erect. The first lifting of purblind eyes destined never to see even the face of Art.

Yet there was a germ of civilization amongst them. They had villages and vague laws and art of a sort; the ferocious tribes drew to one side, hunting beasts and warring with each other, and the others, the milder and kindlier tribes, led their own comparatively quiet life; and Mohammed was born somewhere in the unknown North, and they knew nothing of the fact till the Arab slavers raided them, and robbed them of men and women and children, just as boys rob an orchard.

But the birth of Christ and the foundation of Christendom was the event which in far distant years was destined to be this unhappy people’s last undoing.

They had known the beasts of the forests, the storms, the rains, the Arab raiders, but Fate had reserved a new thing for them to know. The Christians. Alas! that one should have to say it, but here the fact is, that white men, Christian men, have taken these people, have drawn under the banner of Christianity and under Christian pay all the warlike tribes, armed them, and set them as task-masters over the humble and meek. And never in the history of the world has such a state of servitude been known as at present exists in the country of this forlorn people.

They had been marching some three hours when, from ahead came a sound as of some huge animal approaching. Berselius half turned to his gun-bearer for his rifle, but Félix reassured him.

“Cassava bearers,” said Félix.

It was, in fact, a crowd of natives; some thirty or forty, bearing loads of Kwanga (cassava cakes) to Yandjali. They were coming along the forest path in single file, their burdens on their heads, and when the leaders saw the white men they stopped dead. A great chattering broke out. One could hear it going back all along the unseen line, a rattlesnake of sound. Then Félix called out to them; the gun-bearers and the white men stood aside, and the cassava bearers, taking heart, advanced.