The jungles of South America were no novelty to Colonel Roosevelt, but to be able to traverse them over smooth, easy trails, in a comfortable temperature and with no annoyance of flies or mosquitoes, was an experience which none of us had enjoyed before. To Mrs. Roosevelt it was all new—the huge, buttressed trunks, the maze of lianas in tangles, loops and spirals, the sudden burst of pink or lavender blossoms in a sunlit spot, and the piercingly sweet, liquid notes of the goldbird, "like the bird of Siegfried," as she aptly said. The coolie workmen in their Eastern garb, the Akawai Indian hunters and their tattooed squaws along the trail, all aroused that enthusiasm which a second meeting can never quite elicit.
Most memorable to me were the long walks which Colonel Roosevelt and I took on the Kaburi Trail, that narrow path which is the only entrance by land to all the great hinterland lying between the Essequibo and Mazaruni Rivers. Majestically the massive trees rose on either side, so that while our contracted aisle was as lofty as the nave of a cathedral, yet it was densely shaded by the interlocking foliage high overhead. Our progress was thus through a glorified tunnel; we traveled molewise with only here and there a glimpse of the sky. Every walk was filled to the brim for me with that infinitely satisfying joy, derived from frank, sympathetic communion with an enthusiastic, true friend. I know of no earthly pleasure more to be desired. Perhaps this is because friends are so rare with whom one can be wholly natural, with one's guard completely down, unafraid of any misunderstanding—an omnimental communion.
It was with dismay, at the end of one long walk, that I realized we had forgotten to search for the tropical creatures for which we had presumably set out. We had kept the jungle birds and animals well at distance by a constant flow of human speech—argumentative, eulogistic, condemnatory—of literary and field and museum doings of the scientific world.
But we did not wholly neglect the life around us and one of the last problems which we solved that day was that of a small voice, one of those apparently unattached sounds which come from no definite place, nor are referable to any certain source. It might have been a cicada or other insect, it could well have come from the throat of a bird. Were we in the heart of a city we should unhesitatingly have pronounced it a jewsharp played very badly. We set out in search, we stalked it through the thin underbrush, we scanned every branch with our glasses, and when we found it was bird and not insect we shamelessly played upon its feelings and squeaked after the manner of a stricken nestling. We saw that it was a small flycatcher, green with waistcoat of lemon-yellow. Finally after we had learned its fashion of flight, the stratum of jungle it inhabited and its notes, I secured it. Not until then did we perceive that concealed on its head it wore a glorious crown of orange and gold. When my reference books arrive, and we learn the technical name of this little golden-crowned flycatcher or cotinga, I do not think that this title will persist as vividly as the "jewsharp bird of Kaburi trail."
Close to where we walked on those first days, we were later to find our best hunting. During the next few months all the more interesting animals of this part of South America were shot or their presence noticed; jaguars, tapirs, deer, peccaries, howling monkeys, vampires, agoutis, jaguarondis, otters, sloths, and armadillos. Hosts of birds, almost half the entire number of species found in the Colony, made their home hereabouts, macaws, bellbirds, curassows, trumpeters, toucans, the great harpy eagle and the tiniest of iridescent hummingbirds.
Within a week our great front room, full thirty by sixty feet, with sixteen large windows, was a laboratory in appearance and odor. Hundreds of jars and vials, vivaria and insectaries, microscopes, guns, and cameras, with all their details and mysterious inner workings, left no table vacant. With book-shelves up, there remained only the walls, which little by little became mosaics of maps, diagrams, sketches, drying skins, Indian weapons, birds' nests and shot-holes. Whiffs of formaline, chloroform, and xylol, together with the odors of occasional mislaid or neglected specimens, left no doubt as to the character of the room. We found that the tradewind came from the front, and also that we had much to discuss after the lamps were put out; so we turned the couches into their rightful functions of cots, and the three of us slept scattered here and there in the great room.
The vampire bats never allowed us to become bored. There were no mosquitoes or flies, so we used no nets; but for months we burned a lantern. Low around our heads swept the soft wings of the little creatures, while the bat enthusiast now and then fired his auxiliary pistol. Later we found that a score of them roosted behind a broken clapboard, and, by spreading a seine below and around this, we were able to capture and examine the entire colony at will. Tarantulas were common, but not in the least offensive, and we learned to know where to look for a big black fellow and a small gray one who kept the room free from cockroaches. One or two scorpions were caught indoors, but the three centipedes which appeared occasionally were those which had been brought in and were always escaping from a defective vivarium. There were no other dangers or inconveniences, if we can apply such terms to these comparatively harmless creatures.
This was the background of our labors, our laboratory as our English visitors called it: cool in the daytime, cold at night, where one could work as well as in the north, and where a morning's tramp usually furnished material sufficient for a week of research. We came to know it as the house of a thousand noises. The partitions, like those of all tropical houses, extended only part way to the ceiling, so, as some one has said, one enjoyed about the privacy of a goldfish. It would have been a terrible place for a victim of insomnia; but when we were kept awake by noises it was because we were interested in them. After a day's hard work in the jungle, it must indeed be a bad conscience or a serious physical ailment which keeps one awake a minute after one rolls up in his blanket. Through all the months of varying tropical seasons we slept as soundly as we should at home. I can do with five or six hours' sleep the year round, and I begrudged even this in the tropical wonderland, where my utmost efforts seemed to result in such slight inroads into our tremendous zoölogical ignorance. At night I spent many wonderful hours, leaning first out of one, then out of another window, or occasionally going down the outside lattice stairway and strolling about the compound.
No two nights were alike, although almost all were peaceful, with hardly a breath of air stirring—just the cool, velvet touch of the tropics, always free from any trace of the heat of the day. Whether dark rich olive under crescent or starlight, or glowing silvery-gray in the flood of the full moon, the forest, so quiet, so motionless all about me, was always mysterious, always alluring. To the north, at the foot of the hill, lay the dark surface of the great river, its waters one amber, homogeneous flood, yet drawn from a thousand tributaries: hidden creeks seeping through mossy jungles far beyond the Spanish border, brown cascades filtering through gravel which gleamed with yellow gold and sparkled with the light from uncut diamonds. And to the south rose the wall of the jungle itself, symbol of all that is wild and untamed in nature.
Yet I am never conscious of the bloody fang, the poison tooth, of the wilderness. The peace of this jungle at night was the same peace as that of the trees in our city parks. I knew that well within my horizon, jaguars and pumas were stalking their prey, while here and there on the forest floor bushmasters lay coiled like mats of death. But quite as vividly could I picture the stray cats pouncing on sleeping sparrows in the shrubbery of Washington Square, or the screech owls working havoc in the glades of Central Park where the glare of the electric lights is less violent. And I have not forgotten the two-score gulls and swans with torn throats—a single night's work of wild mink in the Bronx. Nature is the same everywhere; only here the sparrows are not alien immigrants, and the light is not measured in kilowatts, and the hacka tigers are not so sated that they kill for pleasure.