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A TROPIC GARDEN
Take an automobile and into it pile a superman, a great evolutionist, an artist, an ornithologist, a poet, a botanist, a photographer, a musician, an author, adorable youngsters of fifteen, and a tired business man, and within half an hour I shall have drawn from them superlatives of appreciation, each after his own method of emotional expression—whether a flood of exclamations, or silence. This is no light boast, for at one time or another, I have done all this, but in only one place—the Botanical Gardens of Georgetown, British Guiana. As I hold it sacrilege to think of dying without again seeing the Taj Mahal, or the Hills from Darjeeling, so something of ethics seems involved in my soul's necessity of again watching the homing of the herons in these tropic gardens at evening.
In the busy, unlovely streets of the waterfront of Georgetown, one is often jostled; in the markets, it is often difficult at times to make one's way; but in the gardens a solitary laborer grubs among the roots, a coolie woman swings by with a bundle of grass on her head, or, in the late afternoon, an occasional motor whirrs past. Mankind seems almost an interloper, rather than architect and owner of these wonder-gardens. His presence is due far more often to business, his transit marked by speed, than the slow walking or loitering which real appreciation demands.
A guide-book will doubtless give the exact acreage, tell the mileage of excellent roads, record the date of establishment, and the number of species of palms and orchids. But it will have nothing to say of the marvels of the slow decay of a Victoria Regia leaf, or of the spiral descent of a white egret, or of the feelings which Roosevelt and I shared one evening, when four manatees rose beneath us. It was from a little curved Japanese bridge, and the next morning we were to start up-country to my jungle laboratory. There was not a ripple on the water, but here I chose to stand still and wait. After ten minutes of silence, I put a question and Roosevelt said, "I would willingly stand for two days to catch a good glimpse of a wild manatee." And St. Francis heard, and, one after another, four great backs slowly heaved up; then an ill-formed head and an impossible mouth, with the unbelievable harelip, and before our eyes the sea-cows snorted and gamboled.
Again, four years later, I put my whole soul into a prayer for manatees, and again with success. During a few moments' interval of a tropical downpour, I stood on the same little bridge with Henry Fairfield Osborn. We had only half an hour left in the tropics; the steamer was on the point of sailing; what, in ten minutes, could be seen of tropical life! I stood helpless, waiting, hoping for anything which might show itself in this magic garden, where to-day the foliage was glistening malachite and the clouds a great flat bowl of oxidized silver.
The air brightened, and a tree leaning far across the water came into view. On its under side was a long silhouetted line of one and twenty little fish-eating bats, tiny spots of fur and skinny web, all so much alike that they might well have been one bat and twenty shadows.
A small crocodile broke water into air which for him held no moisture, looked at the bats, then at us, and slipped back into the world of crocodiles. A cackle arose, so shrill and sudden, that it seemed to have been the cause of the shower of drops from the palm-fronds; and then, on the great leaves of the Regia, which defy simile, we perceived the first feathered folk of this single tropical glimpse—spur-winged jacanas, whose rich rufus and cool lemon-yellow no dampness could deaden. With them were gallinules and small green herons, and across the pink mist of lotos blossoms just beyond, three egrets drew three lines of purest white—and vanished. It was not at all real, this onrush of bird and blossom revealed by the temporary erasing of the driven lines of gray rain.
Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning game, I still watched eagerly and ungratefully for manatees. Kiskadees splashed rather than flew through the drenched air, an invisible black witch bubbled somewhere to herself, and a wren sang three notes and a trill which died out in a liquid gurgle. Then came another crocodile, and finally the manatees. Not only did they rise and splash and roll and indolently flick themselves with their great flippers, but they stood upright on their tails, like Alice's carpenter's companion, and one fondled its young as a water-mamma should. Then the largest stretched up as far as any manatee can ever leave the water, and caught and munched a drooping sprig of bamboo. Watching the great puffing lips, we again thought of walruses; but only a caterpillar could emulate that sideways mumbling—the strangest mouth of any mammal. But from behind, the rounded head, the shapely neck, the little baby manatee held carefully in the curve of a flipper, made legends of mermaids seem very reasonable; and if I had been an early voyageur, I should assuredly have had stories to tell of mer-kiddies as well. As we watched, the young one played about, slowly and deliberately, without frisk or gambol, but determinedly, intently, as if realizing its duty to an abstract conception of youth and warm-blooded mammalness.
The earth holds few breathing beings stranger than these manatees. Their life is a slow progression through muddy water from one bed of lilies or reeds to another. Every few minutes, day and night, year after year, they come to the surface for a lungful of the air which they must have, but in which they cannot live. In place of hands they have flippers, which paddle them leisurely along, which also serve to hold the infant manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves when leeches irritate. The courtship of sea-cows, the qualities which appeal most to their dull minds, the way they protect the callow youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or where they sleep—of all this we are ignorant. We belong to the same class, but the line between water and air is a no man's land which neither of us can pass for more than a few seconds.