XVI. TROPICAL PLANTS USED FOR INDUSTRIAL PURPOSES
Cotton--Its Cultivation in the United States--Caoutchouc and Gutta Percha--Manner in which these resins are collected--Indigo--The British Logwood cutters in Honduras--Brazil Wood--Arnatto.
Under the Plantagenets and the Tudors, wool formed the chief export of England. The pastoral races that inhabited the British Isles, unskilled in weaving, suffered the more industrious Flemings to convert their fleeces into tissues; and the dominions of the Duke of Burgundy, enriched by manufactures and by the stimulus they gave to agriculture, became the most prosperous part of Europe. At length the islanders began to discover the sources of the wealth which rendered Ghent and Bruges, Ypres and Louvain, the marvel and envy of the mediæval world; and gradually learning to keep their wool at home, invited the Flemings to the shores of England.
The bigoted oppression of Spain came in aid of this more enlightened policy: our wool ceased to be sent abroad, and English cloth eventually became the chief of our exports. But, like all human affairs, trade is subject to eternal fluctuation, new wants are constantly created, new markets opened, new articles introduced, and thus, almost within the memory of living man, the wool-manufactory has ceased to be the great staple of our industry; and, thanks to the inventive genius of our Arkwrights and Cromptons, a vegetable fibre furnished by a plant totally unknown to our forefathers, now ranks as the first of all the world-wide importations of England.
There are many different species of the cotton-plant, herbaceous, shrubby, and arboreal. Their original birthplace is the tropical zone, where they are found growing wild in all parts of the world; but the herbaceous species still thrive under a mean temperature of from 60° to 64° F., and are capable of being cultivated with advantage as far as 40° or even 46° N. lat. The five-lobed leaves have a dark green colour, the flowers are yellow with a purple centre, and produce a pod about the size of a walnut, which, when ripe, bursts and exhibits to view the fleecy cotton in which the seeds are securely embedded.
It is almost superfluous to mention that the United States is the first cotton-producing country in the world. The area suitable for cotton south of the thirty-sixth degree of latitude, comprises more than 39,000,000 acres, of which less than one-sixth part is now devoted to the plant. The yield depends in part upon the length of the season. Seven months are required for an average crop, and the average periods in which the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn occur are March 23, and October 26. Cotton is cultivated in large fields, and when the soil is superior, the plant rises to a height of six or eight feet, although in the richest cane-brake soil, exhausted by successive crops, it dwindles down to a height of three or four feet only. The aspect of a cotton field is most pleasing in the autumn, when the dark-coloured foliage and bright yellow flowers, intermingling with the snow-white down of the pods when burst, produce a charming contrast. At that time all hands are at work, for it is important to pluck as much as possible during the first hours of morning, since the heat of the sun injures the colour of the cotton, and the over-ripe capsules shed their contents upon the ground, or allow the wind to carry them away.
The collected produce is immediately carried to the steam-mill to be cleansed of the seeds, and then closely packed in bales, which in the seaports are further reduced by hydraulic presses to half of their previous volume, thus causing a great saving in the freight. Large clippers frequently carry eight or ten thousand of these bales to Liverpool, whence, perhaps on the day of their arrival, they are conveyed by rail to the next manufacturing town, which returns them in a few days to the port, ready to clothe the Australian gold-digger or the labourer on the banks of the Ganges.
India, which still in the last century provided Europe with the finest cambrics and muslins, now yearly receives from England cotton goods to a large amount. Thus the stream of trade may be said to have rolled backwards to its source, for though the wants of the Hindoo are easily satisfied, and cotton grows at his very door, yet his hand-loom is unable to compete with the machinery and the capital of England. Even in the exportation of the raw material he labours under great disadvantage when compared with America, though railroads and a better system of culture have done much to improve the quality and facilitate the transport of Indian cotton.
When we consider the luxuriance of vegetation in the tropical zone, it is not to be wondered at that so many plants of those climes abound with juices of a variety and richness unknown to those of the temperate latitudes. The resins and gums which our indigenous trees produce, either in smaller quantities or fit only for common uses, are there endowed with higher virtues, and ennobled, as it were, by the rays of a more powerful sun. Sometimes they exude spontaneously through the rind and harden in the atmosphere; more frequently a slight incision is required to make the sap gush forth in which they are dissolved, but in every case they require but trifling labour for their collection. Many of them have medicinal qualities, others are esteemed for their aromatic odour, but none ranks higher in a commercial and technical point of view than caoutchouc or India-rubber, which was first brought from South America to Europe as a great curiosity at the beginning of the last century, and is now absolutely indispensable for a thousand different uses. Nothing was known even of its origin until the year 1736, when the French naturalist La Condamine, while exploring the banks of the Amazon, discovered that it was chiefly produced by the Siphonia elastica, a large tree growing wild in the primitive forests along the borders of the rivers in Guiana and North Brazil.
The resin is collected by the Indians in a very simple manner. With a small hatchet they make deep and long incisions in the rind, from which a milky sap abundantly exudes. A small wooden peg is then fixed into each aperture to prevent its closing, and a cup of moist clay fastened underneath, which in about four or five hours is filled with as many table-spoonfuls of the juice. The produce of a number of incisions having been gathered in a large earthen vessel, is then spread in thin coatings upon moulds made of clay, and dried, layer after layer, over a fire, until the whole has acquired a certain thickness. When perfectly dry, the clay form within is broken into small fragments, and the pieces are extracted through an aperture, which is always left for the purpose.
Besides the Siphonia elastica, many other American trees, belonging to the families of the Euphorbiaceæ and Urticeæ, afford excellent kinds of caoutchouc; and since it is become so valuable an article of commerce, the East Indies, and Java likewise, yield considerable quantities, chiefly from the Urceola elastica and the Ficus elastica.
The Icosandra Gutta, which furnishes the gutta percha of commerce, is a native of the Eastern Archipelago and the adjacent lands. A few years since, this substance, now so celebrated and of such wide extended use, was totally unknown in Europe, for though from time immemorial the Malays employed it for making the handles of their hatchets and creeses, it was only in the year 1843 that Mr. Montgomery, an English surgeon, having casually become acquainted with its valuable properties, sent an account of it, with samples, to the Royal Society, for which he was most justly rewarded with its gold medal. The fame of the new article spread rapidly throughout the world; science and speculation seized upon it with equal eagerness; a thousand newspapers promulgated its praises; it was immediately analysed, studied, and tried in every possible way, so that it is now as well known and as extensively used as if it had been in our possession for centuries.
The Icosandra Gutta is a large high tree, with a dense crown of rather small dark green leaves, and a round smooth trunk. The white blossoms change into a sweet fruit, containing an oily substance fit for culinary use. The wood is soft, spongy, and contains longitudinal cavities filled with brown stripes of gutta percha. The original method of the Malays for collecting the resin consisted in felling the tree, which was then placed in a slanting position, so as to enable the exuding fluid to be collected in banana leaves. This barbarous proceeding, which from the enormous demand which suddenly arose for the gutta would soon have brought the rapidly rising trade to a suicidal end, fortunately became known before it was too late, and the resin is now gathered in the same manner as caoutchouc, by making incisions in the bark with a chopping knife, collecting the thin, white, milky fluid which exudes in large vessels, and allowing it to evaporate in the sun or over a fire. The solid residuum, which is the gutta percha of commerce, is finally softened in hot water, and pressed into the form of slabs.
Grutta percha has many properties in common with caoutchouc, being completely insoluble in water, tenacious, but not elastic, and an extremely bad conductor of caloric and electricity. The name of vegetable leather which has been applied to it, gives a good idea both of its appearance and tenacity.
Its uses are manifold. It serves for water-pipes, for vessels fit for the reception of alkaline or acid liquids which would corrode metal or wood, for surgical implements, for boxes, baskets, combs, and a variety of other articles. The wonder of the age, submarine telegraphy, could hardly have been realised without it, as it is only by being cased in so isolating a substance, and one so impermeable by water, that the metallic wire is able to transmit the galvanic stream through the depths of ocean from land to land.
Of all the dyeing substances which the tropical zone produces in such endless variety, none is more important in a commercial point of view than indigo. Various species of plants producing this beautiful cerulean colour are found growing spontaneously in the warmer countries of both hemispheres, but the Indigofera tinctoria is most generally cultivated. The knotty shrubby plant rises about two feet from the ground; the leaves are winged like those of the acacia, smooth and soft to the touch, furrowed above, and of a darker colour on the upper than the under side. The small reddish flowers which grow in ears from the axillæ of the leaves have no smell, and are succeeded by long crooked brown pods, which contain small yellow seeds. The plant requires a smooth rich soil, well tilled, and neither too dry nor too moist. A child of the sun, it cannot be advantageously cultivated anywhere except within the tropics, a higher mean temperature than 60° being absolutely necessary for its vegetation. The seed is sown in furrows a foot apart from each other, and two or three inches in depth. Sufficient moisture causes it to shoot above the surface in three or four days, and it is usually fit for gathering at the end of two months. When it begins to flower it is cut with a sickle a few inches above the roots, and furnishes, after six or eight weeks, a second crop. The cultivation of indigo would thus seem to be extremely profitable, but the sun, which so rapidly improves and invigorates the plant, calls forth at the same time a multitude of insects and caterpillars, that prey upon the valuable leaves, and frequently disappoint the planter’s expectations.
All the intermediate shades of violet and purple may be obtained from the mixture of red and blue, varying according to the different proportions wherein these colours are applied. There are, however, some few vegetable substances which yield a violet or purple dye, without being combined with another colour, and of these logwood is the most important. The stately tree which furnishes this valuable article of commerce is a native of the western world, having been first discovered in the swampy forests of Yucatan, and in the low alluvial grounds that girdle the Bays of Campeachy and Honduras.
About the year 1661, logwood became in great request; and as the indolent Spaniards to whom the country at that time belonged failed to supply the market, several English adventurers, without first asking permission, settled or squatted on the uninhabited coast of Yucatan, and made the woods near Laguna de Terminos ring with the sound of their industrious axe. Many years passed without the Spaniards taking any notice of the intruders; but as these, growing bolder by sufferance, began to penetrate farther into the country, to build houses and form plantations, as if they had been masters of the soil, their jealousy was at length aroused, and in 1680 the English settlers were forcibly ejected. This triumph on the part of their adversaries was, however, but transitory; and a few months after our sturdy countrymen were again cutting their logwood as busily as ever, in spite of the enmity of man and the innumerable hardships of their laborious occupation.
Their mode of life is thus quaintly described by Dampier in his Voyage to the Bay of Campeachy:--‘The logwood-cutters inhabit the creeks of the lagunes in small companies, building their huts by the creeks’ sides for the benefit of the sea-breeze, as near the logwood groves as they can, and often removing to be near their business. Though they build their huts but slightly, yet they take care to thatch them very well with palmetto leaves, to prevent the rains, which are there very violent, from soaking in. For their bedding, they raise a wooden frame, three feet and a half above ground on one side of the house, and stick up four stakes at each corner, to fasten their curtains, out of which there is no sleeping for mosquitoes. Another frame they raise, covered with earth, for a hearth, to dress their victuals; and a third to sit at, when they eat it. During the wet season, the land where the logwood grows is so overflowed that they step from their beds into the water, perhaps two feet deep, and continue standing in the wet all day till they go to bed again; but, nevertheless, account it the best season for doing a good day’s labour in. Some fell the trees, others saw and cut them into convenient logs, and one chips off the bark, and he is commonly the principal man; and when a tree is so thick that after it is logged it remains still too great a burden for one man, it is blown up with gunpowder. The logwood-cutters are generally sturdy strong fellows, and will carry burthens of three or four hundredweight. In some places they go a-hunting wild cattle every Saturday to provide themselves with beef for the week following. When they have killed a beef they cut it into quarters, and taking out the bones, each man makes a hole in the middle of his quarter, just big enough for his head to go through, then puts it on like a frock and trudgeth home; and, if he chanceth to tire, he cuts off some of it and throws it away.’
The entire freedom from all restraint which accompanied this wild and adventurous life had such charms for Dampier’s bold and roving spirit, that he sojourned for about a year among the rude wood-cutters of Campeachy, and left them with the intention of again returning for a longer stay.
Most of the red dye-woods are furnished by the Cæsalpinias, a genus of plants belonging to the widespread family of the Leguminosæ, and indigenous in both hemispheres. The C. crista, which furnishes the best quality, commonly known under the name of Brazil wood, grows profusely in the forests of that vast empire, preferring dry places and a rocky ground. Its trunk is large, crooked, and full of knots; at a short distance from the ground innumerable branches spring forth and extend in every direction in a straggling manner. The branches are armed with short strong upright thorns, the leaves are small, and never appear in luxuriant foliage. The flowers are of a beautiful red colour, and emit a fragrant smell. Both the thick bark and the white pithy part of the trunk are useless, the hard close-grained heart being the only portion impregnated with colouring matter. The wood is sometimes used in turning, and is susceptible of a good polish, but its chief use is as a red dye. By the addition of acids it produces a permanent orange or yellow colour, while the crimson tints which it imparts are very fleeting.
The first Europeans that settled on the banks of the Amazons found that several of the Indian tribes that roamed about in their vicinity painted their bodies with a showy orange-red colour. Their attention was by this means attracted to the Arnatto (Bixa orellana), which attains about the size of our hazel-tree. The heart-shaped leaves are about four inches long, of a lighter green on the upper surface, and divided by fibres of a reddish-brown colour; the rosy flowers are succeeded by bristled pods somewhat resembling those of a chestnut, which, bursting open when ripe, display a splendid crimson farina or pulp, in which are contained thirty or forty seeds, in shape similar to raisin stones. As soon as they have arrived at maturity the pods are gathered, divested of their husks, bruised, immersed in water, and after a few weeks beaten with sticks to promote the separation of the pulp from the seeds. The turbid liquor is then strained, boiled to a consistent paste, and finally formed into cakes, which are left to dry in the sun. In England arnatto is generally used by the dyer to give a deeper shade to the simple yellow. Being perfectly soluble in spirits of wine, it is much used in this state for lacquering and for giving an orange tint to the yellow varnishes. It is likewise employed in large quantities as a colouring ingredient for cheese, to which it gives the required tinge without imparting any unpleasant flavour or unwholesome quality.
XVII. TROPICAL SPICES
The Cinnamon Gardens of Ceylon--Immense profits of the Dutch--Decline of the Trade--Neglected state of the Gardens--Nutmegs and Cloves-- Cruel monopoly of the Dutch--A Spice Fire in Amsterdam--The Clove Tree--Beauty of an Avenue of Clove Trees--The Nutmeg Tree--Mace-- The Pepper Vine--The Pimento Tree.
Although the beautiful laurel whose bark furnishes the most exquisite of all the spices of the East, is indigenous to the forests of Ceylon, yet, as no author previous to the fourteenth century mentions its aromatic rind among the productions of the island, there is every reason to believe that the cinnamon, which in the earlier ages was imported into Europe through Arabia, was obtained first from Africa, and afterwards from India. That the Portuguese, who had been mainly attracted to the East by the fame of its spices, were nearly twenty years in India before they took steps to obtain a footing at Colombo, proves that there can have been nothing very remarkable in the quality of the spice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and that the high reputation of the Ceylon cinnamon is comparatively modern, and attributable to the attention bestowed upon its preparation for market by the Portuguese, and afterwards on its cultivation by the Dutch.
Long after the appearance of Europeans in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found in the forests of the interior, where it was cut and brought away by the Chalias, an emigrant tribe which, in consideration of its location in villages, was bound to go into the woods to cut and deliver, at certain prices, a given quantity of cinnamon properly peeled and ready for exportation.
This system remained unchanged so long as Portugal was master of the country, but the forests in which the spice was found being exposed to constant incursions from the Kandyans, the Dutch were compelled to form enclosed plantations of their own within range of their fortresses. The native chieftains, fearful of losing the profits derived from the labour of the Chalias, who were attached as serfs to their domains, and whose work they let out to the Dutch, were at first extremely opposed to this innovation, and endeavoured to persuade the Hollanders that the cinnamon would degenerate as soon as it was artificially planted. The withering of many of the young trees seemed to justify the assertion, but on a closer examination it was found that boiling water had been poured upon the roots. A law was now passed declaring the wilful injury of a cinnamon plant a crime punishable with death, and by this severity the project was saved.
The extent of the trade during the time of the Dutch may be inferred from the fact, that the five principal cinnamon-gardens around Nejombo, Colombo, Barberyn, Galle, and Maduro were each from fifteen to twenty miles in circumference. Although they were only first planted in the year 1770, yet before 1796, when Colombo was taken by the English, their annual produce amounted to more than 400,000 lbs. of cinnamon, as much as the demands of the market required.
The profits must have been enormous, for cinnamon was then at least ten times dearer than at present, the trade being exclusively in the hands of the Dutch East Indian Company, which, in order to keep up the price, restricted the production to a certain quantity, and watched over its monopoly with the most jealous tyranny. No one was allowed to plant cinnamon or to peel it, and the selling or importing of a single stick was punished as a capital offence. Since that time the cultivation of the cinnamon laurel having been introduced into many other tropical lands, competition has reduced prices, and the spice which was formerly the main product of Ceylon is now of very inferior importance. The cinnamon-gardens, whose beauty and luxuriance has been so often vaunted by travellers, have partly been sold, partly leased to private individuals, and though less than a century has elapsed since they were formed by the Dutch, they are already becoming a wilderness. Those which surround Colombo on the land side exhibit the effects of a quarter of a century of neglect, and produce a feeling of disappointment and melancholy. The beautiful shrubs which furnish this spice have been left to the wild growth of nature, and in some places are entirely supplanted by an undergrowth of jungle, while in others a thick cover of climbing plants and other parasites conceals them under masses of verdure and blossom. It would, however, be erroneous to suppose that the cinnamon-gardens have been universally doomed to the same neglect. Thus Professor Schmarda, who visited Mr. Stewart’s plantation two miles to the south of Colombo, admired the beautiful order in which it was kept. A reddish sandy clay and fine white quartz sand form the soil of the plantation. White sand is considered as the best ground for the cinnamon tree to grow on, but it requires an abundance of rain (which is never wanting in the south-western part of the island), much sun, and many termites. For these otherwise so destructive creatures do not injure the cinnamon trees, but render themselves useful by destroying many other insects. They consequently remain unmolested, and everywhere raise their high conical mounds in the midst of the plantation. The aspect of a well-conditioned cinnamon-garden is rather monotonous, for though the trees when left to their full growth attain a height of forty or fifty feet, yet, as the best spice is furnished by the shoots that spring from the roots after the chief stem has been removed, they are kept as a kind of coppice, and not allowed to rise higher than ten feet.
Nutmegs and cloves, the costly productions of the remotest isles of the Indian Ocean, were known in Europe for centuries before the countries where they grow had ever been heard of. Arabian navigators brought them to Egypt, where they were purchased by the Venetians, and sold at an enormous profit to the nations of the West. But, as is well known, the commercial grandeur of the City of the Lagunes was suddenly eclipsed after Vasco de Grama discovered the new maritime road to the East Indies, round the Cape of Good Hope (1498); and when, a few years later, the countrymen of the great navigator conquered the Moluccas (1511), they for a short time monopolised the whole spice trade much more than their predecessors had ever done before. But here also, as in Ceylon, the Portuguese were soon obliged to yield to a stronger rival; for the Dutch now appeared upon the scene, and by dint of enterprise and courage soon made themselves masters of the Indian Ocean. In 1605 they drove the Portuguese from Amboyna, and before 1621 had elapsed the whole of the Moluccas were in their possession. Five-and-twenty years later, Ceylon also fell into their hands, and thus they became the sole purveyors of Europe with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs. Unfortunately, the scandalous manner in which they misused their power throws a dark shade over their exploits. For the better to secure the monopoly of the spice trade, they declared war against nature itself, allowed the trees to grow only in particular places, and extirpated them everywhere else. Thus the planting of the nutmeg tree was confined to the small islands of Banda, Lonthoir, and Pulo Aij, and that of the clove to Amboyna. Wherever the trees were seen to grow in a wild state they were unsparingly rooted up, and the remainder of the Moluccas were occupied and subjugated for no other reason. The natives were treated with unmerciful cruelty, and blood flowed in torrents to keep up the prices of cloves and nutmegs at an usurious height.
When the spices accumulated in too large a quantity for the market, they were thrown into the sea or destroyed by fire. Thus M. Beaumare, a French traveller, relates that on June 10, 1760, he beheld near the Admiralty at Amsterdam a blazing pile of cinnamons and cloves, valued at four millions of florins, and an equal quantity was to be burnt the next day. The air was perfumed with their delicious fragrance, the essential oils freed from their confinement distilled over, mixing in one spicy stream, which flowed at the feet of the spectators; but no one was suffered to collect any of this, or, on pain of heavy punishment, to rescue the smallest quantity of the spice from the flames.
Fortunately these distressing scenes--for it is painful to see man, under the impulse of an insatiable greed, thus wilfully destroying the gifts of Nature--belong to the history of the past. The reign of monopoly has ceased even in the remote Moluccas, and their ports are now, at length, thrown open to the commerce of all nations; for the spice trees having been transplanted into countries beyond the control of the Dutch, the ancient system could not possibly be maintained any longer.
The clove tree belongs to the far-spread family of the myrtles; the small lanceolate evergreen leaves resemble those of the laurel, the flowers growing in bunches at the extremity of the branches. When they first appear, which is at the beginning of the rainy season, they are in the form of elongated greenish buds, from the extremity of which the corolla is expanded, which is of a delicate peach-blossom colour. The corolla having fallen off, the calyx turns yellow, and then red; when it is beaten from the tree, and dried in the sun. If the fruit be allowed to remain longer on the tree the calyx or clove gradually swells, the embryo seed enlarges, and the pungent properties of the clove are in great part dissipated.
The whole tree is highly aromatic, and the foot-stalks of the leaves have nearly the same pungent quality as the calyx of the flowers. ‘Clove trees,’ says Sir Stamford Raffles, ‘as an avenue to a residence, are perhaps unrivalled--their noble height, the beauty of their form, the luxuriance of their foliage, and, above all, the spicy fragrance with which they perfume the air, produce, on driving through a long line of them, a degree of exquisite pleasure only to be enjoyed in the clear light atmosphere of the Eastern Archipelago.’
In spite of the endeavours of the Dutch to confine the nutmeg tree to the narrow precincts of Banda, it has likewise extended its range not only over Sumatra, Mauritius, Bourbon, and Ceylon, but even over the western hemisphere. It is of a more majestic growth than the clove, as it attains a height of fifty feet, and the leaves of a fine green on the upper surface, and grey beneath, are more handsome in the outline, and broader in proportion to the length. When the trees are about nine years old, they begin to bear. They are diœcious, having male or barren flowers upon one tree, and female or fertile upon another. The flowers of both are small, white, and bell-shaped; the embryo-fruit appearing at the bottom of the female flowers in the form of a little reddish knob. When ripe, it resembles in appearance and size a small peach, and then the outer rind, which is about half an inch thick, bursts at the side, and discloses a shining black nut, which seems the darker from the contrast of the leafy network of a fine red colour with which it is enveloped. The latter forms the Mace of commerce, and having been laid to dry in the shade for a short time, is packed in bags and pressed together very tightly.
The shell of the nut is larger and harder than that of the filbert, and could not, in the state in which it is gathered, be broken without injuring the nut. On that account the nuts are successively dried in the sun and then by fire-heat, till the kernel shrinks so much as to rattle in the shell, which is then easily broken.
Although not so costly as cloves or cinnamon, pepper is of a much greater commercial value, as its consumption is at least a hundred times greater. It grows on a beautiful vine, which, incapable of supporting itself, twines round poles or mango and other trees of straight high stems. As these are stripped of the lower branches, the vine embraces the trunk, covering it with elegant festoons and rich bunches of fruit in the style of the Italian vineyards.
The leaf of the pepper plant is large, resembling that of the ivy, and of a bright green; the blossoms appear in June, soon after the commencement of the rains; they are small, of a greenish white, and are followed by the pungent berries, which hang in large bunches, resembling in shape those of grapes, but the fruit grows distinct on little stalks like currants.
This valuable spice grows chiefly on the Malabar Coast, in Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Singapore; its cultivation has also been introduced in Cayenne and the West Indies. The black and white sorts of pepper are both the produce of the same plant.
The best white peppers are supposed to be the finest berries, which drop from the tree, and, lying under it, become somewhat bleached by exposure to weather; the greater part of the white pepper used as a condiment is, however, the black merely steeped in water, and decorticated, by which means the pungency and real value of the spice are diminished; but having a fairer and more uniform appearance when thus prepared, it fetches a higher price.
Jamaica is the chief seat of the magnificent myrtle (Myrtus pimenta), which furnishes the pimento of commerce. This beautiful tree grows to the height of about thirty feet, with a smooth, brown trunk, and shining green leaves resembling those of the bay. In July and August a profusion of white flowers, filling the air with their delicious odours, forms a very pleasing contrast to the dark foliage of its wide-spreading branches. It grows spontaneously in many parts of the island, particularly on the northern side, in high spots near the coast.
When a new plantation is to be formed, no regular planting or sowing takes place, for, as Edwards (‘History of Jamaica’) observes, ‘the pimento tree is purely a child of Nature, and seems to mock all the labours of man in his endeavours to extend or improve its growth; not one attempt in fifty to propagate the young plants, or to raise them from the seeds in parts of the country where it is not found growing spontaneously, having succeeded. For this reason, a piece of land is chosen, either in the neighbourhood of a plantation already formed, or in a part of the woodland where the pimento-myrtles are scattered in a native state. The land is then cleared of all wood but these trees, which are left standing, and the felled timber is allowed to remain, where it falls to decay, and perishes. In the course of a year, young pimento plants are found springing up on all parts of the land, produced, it is supposed, in consequence of the ripe berries having been scattered there by the birds, while the prostrate trees protect and shade the tender seedlings. At the end of two years the land is thoroughly cleared, and none but the most vigorous plants, which come to maturity in about seven years, are left standing.’
The berries are carefully picked while yet green, since, when suffered to ripen, they lose their pungency. One person on the tree gathers the small branches, and three others, usually women and children, find full employment in picking the berries from them. The produce is then exposed to the sun for about a week, when the berries lose their green hue and become of a reddish brown. When perfectly dry, they are in a fit state for exportation. In favourable seasons, which, however, seldom occur above once in five years, the pimento crop is enormous, a single tree having been known to yield one hundredweight of the dried spice. From its combining the flavour and properties of many of the oriental aromatics, pimento has derived its popular name of allspice, and, from its being cheaper than black pepper, its consumption is very great.
XVIII. TROPICAL INSECTS, SPIDERS, AND SCORPIONS
Gradual increase of Insect Life on advancing towards the Line--The Hercules Beetle--The Goliath--The Inca Beetle--The Walking-leaf, and Walking-stick Insects--The Soothsayer--Luminous Beetles-- Tropical Spiders--Their gaudy colours--Trap-door Spiders--Enemies of the Spiders--Mortal Combat between a Spider and a Cockroach-- Tropical Scorpions--Dreadful effects of their sting.
On advancing from the temperate regions to the line, we find the insects gradually increasing with the multiplicity of plants, and at length attaining the greatest size, brilliancy of colour, and variety of form in those tropical lands where moisture combines with heat in covering the ground with a dense and everlasting vegetation. Our largest insects are indeed mere pygmies when compared with their tropical relatives. We have no tiger-beetle to equal the ferocious Mantichora of South Africa, which, hiding beneath stones from the terrible glare of the sun, darts quickly from its place of concealment upon its ill-fated prey; nor a stag-beetle of the size of the Odontolabris Cuvera of China and Northern India. Our largest dung-feeding Lamellicorns look but small near the African Copris Hamadryas; and our cockchafer, though conspicuous among our native insects, is a dwarf when confronted with the Leucopholis bimaculata of India, which, if it be voracious in proportion to its size, must destroy a vast amount of vegetation in the course of its long larval existence. The Goliath beetles of the coast of Guinea, are truly deserving of their name, and in torrid America the colossal Hercules beetle attains a length of five, or even six inches. Though but little is yet known of its economy, it most likely subsists upon putrescent wood, and evidently leads a tree life, like its relations--the Elephant, the Neptune, the Typhon, the Hector, and the Mars beetles-- whose very names indicate that they are ‘first-rate liners’ in the insect world. All these beetles excavate burrows in the earth, where they conceal themselves during the day, or live in the decomposed trunks of trees, and are generally of a dark rich brown or chestnut colour. On the approach of night they run about the footpaths in woods, or fly around the trees to a great height with a loud humming noise. Resembling the large herbivorous quadrupeds by their comparative size and horn-like processes, they are still further like them in their harmless nature, and thus deserve in more than one respect to be called the elephants among the insect tribes.
Many of the tropical dragon-flies, grasshoppers, butterflies, and moths are of no less colossal dimensions in their several orders than the giants among the beetles. The Libellula lucretia, a South American dragon-fly, measures five inches and a half in length, and the cinnamon-eating Atlas-moth of Ceylon often reaches the dimensions of nearly a foot in the stretch of its superior wings. The names of many other species conspicuous by their size might be added; but these examples suffice to show the enormous proportions attained by insects in the warmer regions of the globe.
In the tropical zone, where the prodigality of life multiplies the enemies which every creature has to encounter, we may naturally expect to find the insects extremely well provided with both passive and active means of defence.
Many so closely resemble in colour the soil or object on which they are generally found, as to escape even the eye of a hungry enemy. The wings of several Brazilian moths appear like withered leaves that have been gnawed round their margins by insects; and when these moths are disturbed, instead of flying away, they fall upon the ground like the leaf which they resemble, so that it is difficult, if not impossible, on such occasions to know what they really are.
The illusion is still more complete when the likeness of form is joined to that of colour, as in the walking-leaf and walking-stick insects. Some, of an enormous length, look so exactly like slender dead twigs covered with bark, that their insect nature can only be discovered by mere accident--upon being handled they feign death, and their legs are often knobbed, like the withered buds of trees; some resemble living twigs, and are green; others such as are decayed, and are therefore coloured brown; the wings of many put on the resemblance of dry and crumpled leaves, while those of others are vivid green-- in exact accordance with the plants they respectively inhabit. This highly remarkable family consists of the herbivorous Phasmas and Phylliums--the former of which have a thin twig-like shape, while the latter have an enlarged body--and of the carniverous Mantides, or soothsayers. As the Mantis is slow and without much muscular energy, and its organisation requires a large supply of food, Nature has disguised it under the form of a plant, the better to deceive its victims. Like a cat approaching a mouse, it moves almost imperceptibly along, and steals towards its prey, fearful of putting it to flight. When sufficiently near, the fore legs are suddenly darted out to their full length, and seize the doomed insect, which vainly endeavours to extricate itself; the formation of the fore leg enabling the tibia to be so closed on the sharp edge of the thigh as to amputate any slender substance brought within its grasp, and to make even an entomologist repent a too hasty seizure of his prize.
The Mantis, by the attitude it assumes when lurking for its prey or advancing upon it--which is done by the support of the four posterior legs only, whilst the head and prothorax are raised perpendicularly from the body, and the anterior legs are folded in front--greatly resembles a person praying. Hence, in France it is called Le Prêcheur, or Le Prie Dieu; the Turk says it points to Mecca; and several African tribes pay it religious observances. In reality, however, its ferocity is great, and the stronger preying on the weaker of their own species, unmercifully cut them to pieces.
Within the space of a week, Professor Burmeister saw a Mantis devour daily some dozens of flies, and occasionally large grasshoppers and young frogs, consuming, now and then, lizards three times its own length, as well as many large fat caterpillars. Hence it may be judged what ravages these strangely-formed creatures must cause among all weaker beings which incautiously approach them, and that, far from being the saints, they are, in reality, the tigers of the insect world. Among the organic marvels of the innocent herbivorous Phylliums, their seed-like eggs must be mentioned; for the wonderful provision of Nature in giving the parents a plant-like form extends even to their progeny, in order to secure them from similar dangers. Though generally tropical, yet Van Diemen’s Land possesses a gigantic walking-stick, or Phasma, the body of which is eight inches long; and the Mantis religiosa is found all over Southern Europe.
The leaf-like form which renders the Phylliums one of the wonders of entomology, appears likewise in other insects. Thus, in the Diactor bilineatus, a native of Brazil, the hind legs have singular leaf-like appendages to their tibial joints; and in the Javanese Mormolyce, a beetle remarkable for its extreme flatness and the elongation of its head, we find the upper wings spreading out in the form of broad leaves.
The long hairs, stiff bristles, sharp spines, and hard tubercular prominences with which many caterpillars are bristled and studded, are a most effectual means of defence, and often prove a grievous annoyance to the entomologist, from their poisonous or stinging properties. Mr. Swainson once finding in Brazil a caterpillar of a beautiful black colour, with yellow radiated spines, and being anxious to secure the prize, incautiously took hold of it with the naked hand; but so instantaneous and so violent was the pain which followed, that he was obliged to return home. Every device that could be thought of to allay the itching produced by the venomous hairs of this creature were in turn resorted to, with little or no effect for several hours, nor had it entirely ceased on the following morning.
Though the great majority of luminous animals are marine, frequently lighting up the breaking wave with millions of moving atoms, or spreading over the beach like a sheet of fire,[20] yet several insects are also endowed with the same wonderful property. The European glow-worms and fire-flies, sparkling on the hedge-rows, or flying in the summer air, afford a charming spectacle; but their brilliancy is far surpassed by that of the phosphorescent beetles of the torrid zone. Thus the Cocujas of South America, which emits its light from two little transparent tubercles on the sides of the thorax, glows with such intensity that a person may with great ease read the smallest print by the phosphorescence of one of these insects, if held between the fingers and gradually moved along the lines with the luminous spots above the letters; but if eight or ten of them are put into a phial the light will be sufficiently good to admit of writing by it.
The Indian Archipelago is equally rich in luminous insects. The Podada tree, the ornament of most of the river banks of Borneo, has a remarkably elegant foliage of a light green colour. Rajah Brooke[21] describes these trees illuminated by the fire-flies in countless numbers as a most enchanting sight, and resembling a fire-work by the constant motion of the light. On the Samarahan he sometimes saw each side of the river lit by a blaze of these beautiful little insects.
In the woods of Sarawak Mr. Adams observed a splendid glow-worm (Lampyris), each segment of the body illuminated with three lines of tiny lamps, the luminous spots on the back being situated at the posterior part of the segmentary rings on the median line, while those along the sides of the animal were placed immediately below the stomates or spiracula, each spiraculum having one bright spot. This very beautiful insect was found shining as the darkness was coming on, crawling on the narrow pathway, and glowing among the dead damp wood and rotten leaves. When placed around the finger, it resembled in beauty and brilliancy a superb diamond ring.
The sparkling effulgence of the tropical Elaters is frequently made use of by the fair sex, as an equally singular and striking ornament. The ladies of the Havana attach them to their clothes on occasions of festivity, and the Indian dancing girls often wear them in their hair.
In Prescott’s ‘Conquest of Mexico’ we are told that, in 1520, when the Spaniards visited that country, the wandering sparks of the Elater, ‘seen in the darkness of the night, were converted by their excited imaginations into an army with matchlocks;’ and on another occasion these phosphorescent insects caused British troops to retreat: for when Sir John Cavendish and Sir Robert Dudley first landed in the West Indies, and saw at night an innumerable quantity of lights moving about, they fancied that the Spaniards were approaching with an overwhelming force, and hastily re-embarked before their imaginary foe.
A creature, half of whose body is generally fixed to the other by a mere thread, whose soft skin is unable to resist the least pressure, and whose limbs are so loosely attached to the body as to be torn off by the slightest degree of force, would seem utterly incapable of protecting its own life and securing that of its progeny. Such, however, is the physical condition of the spiders, who would long since have been extirpated if Nature had not provided them with the power of secreting two liquids, the one a venom ejected by their mandibles, the other of a glutinous nature, transuded by papillæ at the end of their abdomen. These two liquids amply supply the want of all other weapons of attack or defence, and enable them to hold their own against a host of enemies. With the former they instantly paralyse insects much stronger and much more formidable in appearance than themselves; while with the latter they spin those threads which serve them in so many ways--to weave their wonderful webs, to traverse the air, to mount vertically, to drop uninjured, to construct the hard cocoons intended to protect their eggs against their numberless enemies, or to produce the soft down which is to preserve them from the cold.
Preying on other insect tribes, which they attack with the ferocity of the tiger, or await in their snares with the patient artifice of the lynx, the spiders may naturally be expected to be most numerous in the torrid zone, where Nature has provided them with the greatest abundance and variety of food. There also, where so many beetles, flies, and moths attain a size unknown in temperate regions, we find the spiders growing to similar gigantic dimensions, and forming webs proportioned to the bulk of the victims which they are intended to ensnare.
In some parts of Makalolo, Dr. Livingstone saw great numbers of a large beautiful yellow-spotted spider, the webs of which were about a yard in diameter. The lines on which these webs were spun, extended from one tree to another, and were as thick as coarse thread. The fibres radiated from a central point, where the insect waited for its prey. The webs were placed perpendicularly, and a common occurrence in walking was to get the face enveloped in them, as a lady is in a veil.
By means of their monstrous webs many giant-spiders of the tropical zone are enabled to entangle not only the largest butterflies and moths, but even small birds. Some Mexican species extend such strong nets across the pathways, that they strike off the hat of the passer-by; in Senegal spiders spin threads so strong as to be able to bear a weight of several ounces, and in the forests of Java, Sir George Staunton saw spider-webs of so strong a texture that it required a sharp knife to cut one’s way through them; and many other similar examples might be mentioned.
These large spiders so temptingly suspended in mid-air in the forest glades, seem very much exposed to the attacks of birds, but in many cases it has pleased Nature to invest them with large angular spines sticking out of their bodies in every kind of fashion. Some are so protected by these long prickles that their bodies resemble a miniature ‘chevaux de frise,’ and could not by any possibility be swallowed by a bird without producing a very unpleasant sensation in his throat. One very remarkable species (Gasteracantha arcuata) has two enormous recurved conical spines, proceeding upwards from the posterior part of the body, and several times longer than the entire spider.
Other Araneæ, to whom these means of defence have been denied, are enabled by their colour to escape the attacks of many enemies, or to deceive the vigilance of many of their victims. Thus, those that spend their lives among the flowers and foliage of the trees are, in general, delicately and beautifully marked with green, orange, black, and yellow, while those which frequent gloomy places are clothed with a dark-coloured and dingy garb, in accordance with their habits. In the forests about Calderas, in the Philippine Archipelago, Mr. Adams saw handsomely coloured species of Theridia crouching among the foliage of the trees: while numbers of the same genus of a black colour were running actively about among the dry dead leaves that strewed the ground, looking, at a little distance, like odd-shaped ants, and no doubt deceiving many an antagonist by this appearance. One species, which knew it was being watched, placed itself upon a diseased leaf, where it remained quite stationary until after the departure of the naturalist, who, had he not seen the sidelong movement of the cunning little creature in the first instance, would not have been able to distinguish its body from the surface of the leaf. While, in this case, dulness of colour served as a defence, the vividly-coloured spiders that live among the foliage and flowers no doubt attract many flies and insects by reason of their gaudily-tinted bodies.
One of the most remarkable instances of the harmony of colour between the Araneæ and their usual haunts was noticed by Mr. Adams among dense thickets formed by the Abrus precatoria, where he found a spider with a black abdomen marked on each side with scarlet, thus resembling the colours of the seeds of the Abrus, so well known to children under the name of ‘black-a-moor beauties.’
An exception to the general rule is, however, found in those very large and powerful species which, if not rendered somewhat conspicuous to the sight of other insects, might do too much damage to the tribes which they keep in check. Most of these, therefore, have the thorax and abdomen margined with a light colour that contrasts strongly with that of their bodies, and, in many cases, gives timely warning of their approach.
The European spiders have generally a very repulsive appearance, while many of the tropical species are most splendidly ornamented, or rather illuminated, many of them by the vividness of their colours resembling the gaudy missals painted by monks in the Middle Ages. Thus, among the Epeiras of the Philippine Islands, are found white figures on a red ground; red, yellow, and black, in alternate streaks; orange marbled with brown, light green with white occelli, yellow with light brown festoons, or ash-coloured and chestnut bodies with crescents, horse-shoes, Chinese characters, and grotesque hieroglyphics of every description. Unfortunately, these colours, lustrous and metallic as the feathers of the humming-bird, are, unlike the bright colours of the beetle, totally dependent on the life of the insect which they beautify, so that it is impossible to preserve them.
While most spiders obtain their food either by patiently waiting in ambush or by catching it with a bound, the enormous mygales, or trap-door spiders, run about with great speed in and out, behind and around every object, searching for what they may devour, and from their size and rapid motions exciting the horror of every stranger. Their body, which sometimes attains a length of three inches, while their legs embrace a circle of half a foot in diameter, is covered all over with brown, reddish brown, or black hair, which gives them a funereal appearance, while their long fangs armed with sharp hooks proclaim at once what formidable antagonists they must be to every insect that comes within their reach. Though some species are found in Southern Europe, in Chili, or at the Cape, yet they are chiefly inhabitants of the torrid zone, both in the old and the new world. Some of them weave cells between the leaves, in the hollows of trees or rocks, while others dig deep tubular holes in the earth, which they cover over with a lid, or rather with a door formed of particles of earth cemented by silken fibres, and closely resembling the surrounding ground. This door or valve is united by a single hinge to the entrance at its upper side, and is so balanced that, when pushed up, it shuts again by its own weight; nay, what is still more admirable, on the interior side opposite to the hinge a series of little holes may be perceived, into which the mygale introduces its claws to keep it shut, should any enemy endeavour to open it by force. The interior of the nest, which is sometimes nine inches deep, is lined with a double coat of tapestry, the one nearest the wall, which is of a coarser tissue, being covered with a pure white silken substance like paper.
New-comers into the country which the trap-door spider inhabits, are often as surprised as Ali Baba in the ‘Forty Thieves’ by seeing the ground open, a little lid lifted up, and a grim black-haired spider peer about as if to reconnoitre the position before sallying out of its fortress. At the least movement on the part of the spectator, down drops the spider disappearing into its hole, the door closes and the astonished observer, unable to find its traces in the apparently unbroken soil doubts whether his eyes have not deceived him. Nothing short of actual violence will induce the trap-door spider to vacate the premises it has so admirably constructed. It holds on with all its might and will permit the earth to be excavated around its burrow and the whole nest to be removed without deserting its home. But all its energy vanishes as soon as it is removed from the burrow it so pertinaciously defended; it then loses all its activity, remains fixed to the spot as if stupified, or at the best walks languidly about like one who has lost all that made existence valuable.
At Caldera, Mr. Adams observed a dingy little species of spider of the genus Clubiona, concealing itself in very snug retreats formed out of a dead leaf, rolled round in the shape of a cylinder, lined with a soft silken tissue, and closed at one end by means of a strong woven bolt-door. When hunted, it was amusing to see the frightened little creatures run for protection into their tiny castles, where they would doubtless be safe from the attacks of birds, owing to the leaves not being distinguishable from others that strew the ground.
All species of spiders are gifted with an admirable maternal instinct, and resort to various methods for the purpose of securing their cocoons. The Theridion, when a seizure of the precious burden is threatened, tumbles together with it to the ground, and remains motionless, while the Thorinsa covers it with its body, and when robbed of it, wanders about disconsolate. In a forest of the Sooloo Islands, Mr. Adams found the ground literally overrun with a small black agile species of Lycosa, many of which had a white flattened globose cocoon affixed to the end of their abdomen. It was most amusing to watch the care with which these jealous mothers protected the cradles of their little ones, allowing themselves to fall into the hands of the enemy rather than be robbed of the silken nests that contained them.
If the spiders are at war with all other insects, and contribute to keep them within bounds by the destruction they cause among their ranks, they in their turn are sorely persecuted creatures. Monkeys, squirrels, lizards, tortoises, frogs, and toads catch and devour them wherever they can. In Java and Sumatra, we even find a family of sparrows named Arachnotheræ, from their living almost exclusively on spiders. Armed with a prodigiously long recurved and slender beak, these birds know how to pursue them and drag them forth from the most obscure recesses.
It is amongst the insects, however, that the spiders have to fear their most numerous and formidable enemies. Independently of those which they find in their own class, the centipedes seize them beyond the possibility of escape; and several species of wasps, more savage and poisonous than themselves, will rush upon spiders eight times their size and weight, and benumbing them with a sting, bear them off to their nests, to serve as food for their larvæ.
Others attack the spiders in their progeny. The Pimpla Arachnitor pierces with its invisible gimlet the tender skin of the spider’s egg, and, without tearing it, introduces its own eggs into the liquid. The pimpla’s egg soon comes to maturity, and the larva devours the substance of that of the spider, from whence a winged insect bursts forth--a phenomenon which made some naturalists, too hasty to judge from appearances, believe that spiders were able to procreate four winged flies.
Notwithstanding the disgust or horror which they generally inspire, the spiders are, with very rare exceptions, by no means injurious to man. However promptly their venom may act upon insects, even that of the largest species of Northern Europe produces, on coming into contact with our skin, no pain or inflammation equalling in virulence that of the wasp, the bee, the gnat, or other insects of a still smaller size. The giant spiders of a sunnier sky, armed with more formidable weapons, naturally produce a more painful sting; but even here the effects have been much exaggerated.
In the country of the Makalolo, Dr. Livingstone, feeling something running across his forehead as he was falling asleep, put up his hand to wipe it off, and was sharply stung, both on the hand and head; the pain was very acute. On obtaining a light, he found that it had been inflicted by a light-coloured spider about half an inch in length; but one of the negroes having crushed it with his fingers, he had no opportunity of examining whether the pain had been produced by poison from a sting, or from its mandibles. No remedy was applied, and the pain ceased in about two hours.
If thus, among the many species of spiders, hardly a single one may be said to be formidable to man, the indirect services which they render him--by diminishing the number of noxious insects--are far from inconsiderable.
In several countries where insects cause great ravages, the services of the spiders are duly appreciated. Thus in the West Indies, a large and formidable trap-door spider, which would make a European start back with horror, is looked upon with pleasure by the islanders of the torrid zone, who respect it as a sacred animal, by no means to be disturbed or harmed, as it delivers them from the cockroaches, which otherwise would overrun their dwellings. Those who do not possess these spiders take good care to purchase and transport them into their houses, expecting from them similar services to those we derive from a good domestic cat. The spectacle of a trap-door spider bounding on a cockroach, with all the ferocity of a tiger springing on its prey, would no doubt have all the interest of a bull-fight if the diminutive size of the combatants were swelled to more ample proportions. Mr. E. Layard has described one of these encounters which he witnessed near a ruined temple in Ceylon. When about a yard apart, each of the enemies discerned the other and stood still, the spider with his legs slightly bent and his body raised, the cockroach confronting him, and directing his antennæ with a restless undulation towards his enemy. The spider, by stealthy movements, approached to within a few inches, and paused, both parties eyeing each other intently; then suddenly a rush, a scuffle, and both fell to the ground, when the blatta’s wings closed; the spider seized it under the throat with his claws, and when he had dragged it into a corner, the action of his jaws was distinctly audible. Next morning, Mr. Layard found the soft parts of the body had been eaten, nothing but the head, thorax, and elytra remaining.
The scorpions, which even in Europe are reckoned among the most malignant insects, are truly terrific in the torrid zone, where they frequently attain a length of six or seven inches. Closely allied to the spiders, their aspect is still more repulsive. Were one of the largest scorpions menacingly to creep up against you, with extended claws and its long articulated sharply-pointed tail projecting over its head, I think, despite the strength of your nerves, you would start back, justly concluding that a creature of such an aspect must necessarily come with the worst intentions. The poison of the scorpion is discharged like that of the snake. Near the tip of the crooked sting, namely, which terminates the tail, we find two or three very small openings, through which, on pressure, the venom of the gland with which they are connected immediately issues forth. By means of this weapon, even the small European scorpions are able to kill a dog, while the tropical giants of the race inflict wounds that become fatal to man himself. The sting of several South American scorpions produces fever, numbness of the limbs, tumours on the tongue, weakness of the sight, and other nervous symptoms, lasting twenty-four or forty-eight hours; but the African scorpions seem to be still more formidable. Mr. Swainson informs us that the only means of saving the lives of our soldiers who were stung by those of Egypt, was the amputation of the wounded limb; and Professor Ehrenberg, who, while making his researches on the Natural History of the Red Sea, was stung five times by the Androctonus quinquestriatus, and funestus, says he can well believe, from the dreadful pains he suffered, that the poison of these scorpions may become fatal to women and children.
Scorpions, being intolerant of light, creep by day into every hole or corner that can shelter them from the unwelcome sunbeams, and often cause very great annoyance by this custom. No traveller in a scorpion-infested country who has learnt by experience the habits and dangerous character of these creatures will retire to rest before having carefully examined his bed, especially taking up the pillow, to ascertain that no enemy is lurking within the folds of the bedding. Shoes, boots, and gloves are also favourite resorts of the scorpion, a circumstance which has caused many a serious accident.
The burrows of this formidable animal can always be detected by the semilunar form of the entrance, exactly fitting the outline of the animal which digs it. To force them to quit the premises nothing more is required than to pour in some water, when the disturbed inmate rushes furiously out, his pincers snapping wildly at the enemy.
The suicidal propensities of the scorpion, when, inclosed by a fiery circle, it finds escape impossible, have been often mentioned in prose and poetry, and form among others the subject of a beautiful simile in Byron’s ‘Giaour’:--
The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes, Is like the scorpion girt by fire, In circle narrowing as it glows, The flames around their captive close, Till, inly searched by thousand throes, And maddening in her ire, One sad and sole relief she knows, The sting she nourish’d for her foes, Whose venom never yet was vain, Gives but one pang, and cures all pain, And darts into her desperate brain: So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire.
The voluntary death of the animal is doubted by many, who maintain that the position of the sting when turned towards the head, is merely a convulsive movement; but the opinion of those who are inclined to bring in the verdict ‘Felo de se’ is corroborated by Captain Pasley, R.A., who repeatedly tried the experiment of surrounding the scorpion with a ring of fire, and invariably found that it had stung itself to death. The fiery circle was about fifteen inches in diameter and composed of smouldering ashes. In every instance the scorpion ran about for some minutes, trying to escape, and then deliberately bent its tail over its back, inserted the point of its sting between two of the segments of his body and speedily died. The heat given out by the ashes was very trifling and not equal to that which is caused by the noontide sun, a temperature which the scorpion certainly does not like, but which it can endure without suffering much inconvenience. Generally the scorpion was dead in a few minutes after the wound was inflicted.
Of a ferocious cruel disposition, the scorpions are not only the foes of all other animals, but carry on a war of extermination among themselves, and are even said to kill and devour their own progeny, without pity, as soon as they are born; thus rendering good service to the community at large. Maupertuis once inclosed a hundred scorpions-- a select and delightful party--in a box. Immediately a furious battle ensued--one against all, all against one--and in an hour’s time scarcely one of the combatants survived the conflict.
XIX. INSECT PLAGUES AND INSECT SERVICES
The Universal Dominion of Insects--Mosquitoes--Stinging Flies-- Œstrus Hominis--The Chegoe or Jigger--The Filaria Medinensis-- The Bête-Rouge--Blood-sucking Ticks--Garapatas--The Land-leeches in Ceylon--The Tsetsé Fly--The Tsalt-Salya--The Locust--Its dreadful Devastations--Cockroaches--The Drummer--The Cucarachas and Chilicabras--Tropical Ants--The Saüba--The Driver Ants-- Termites--Their wonderful Buildings--The Silkworm--The Cochineal-- The Gumlac Insect--Insects used as Food and Ornaments.
The insect tribes may, without exaggeration, be affirmed to hold a kind of universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants, for nothing that possesses, or has possessed, life is secure from their attacks. They vanquish the cunning of the fox, the bulk of the elephant, the strength of the lion; they plague the reindeer of the northern tundras, and the antelope of the African wilds; and all the weapons with which Nature has furnished the higher orders of animals against their mightier foes prove ineffectual against these puny persecutors, whose very smallness serves to render them invincible. How numerous are the sufferings they entail on man! How manifold the injuries they inflict on his person or his property! To secure himself from their attacks, a perpetual warfare, an ever-wakeful vigilance, is necessary; for, though destroyed by thousands, new legions ever make their appearance, and to repose after a victory is equivalent to a defeat.
In our temperate zone, where a higher cultivation of the ground tends to keep down the number of the lower animals, their persecutions, though frequently annoying, may still be borne with patience; but in many of the tropical regions, where man is either too indolent or not sufficiently numerous to set bounds to their increase, the insects constitute one of the great plagues of life.
Along the low river-banks, near stagnant waters, and everywhere on hot and swampy grounds, the blood-thirsty Mosquitoes appear periodically in countless multitudes, the dread of all who are exposed to their attacks.
Not satisfied with piercing the flesh with their sharp proboscis, which at the same time forms a kind of syphon through which the blood flows, these malignant gnats, of which there are many species, inject a poison into the wound, which causes inflammation, and prolongs the pain.
In Angola, Dr. Livingstone found the banks of the river Seuza infested by legions of the most ferocious mosquitoes he ever met with during the course of his long travels. ‘Not one of our party could get a snatch of sleep. I was taken into the house of a Portuguese, but was soon glad to make my escape, and lie across the path on the lee-side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body. My host wondered at my want of taste, and I at his want of feeling; for, to our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of one’s boot, or the tooth-ache.’
‘He who has never sailed on one of the great rivers of tropical America, the Orinoco, or the Magdalena,’ says Humboldt, ‘can form no idea of the torments inflicted by the mosquitoes. However accustomed the naturalist may be to suffer pain without complaining, however his attention may be riveted by the examination of some interesting object, he is unavoidably disturbed when Mosquitoes, Zancudos, Zejens, and Tempraneros cover his hands and face, pierce his clothes, or creep into his nose and mouth. In the missions of the Orinoco, in these small villages, situated on the river banks and surrounded by interminable woods, this plague affords an inexhaustible subject for conversation. When two people meet in the morning their first questions are--‘How did the Zancudos behave last night?’ ‘How are the mosquitoes to-day?’
At the mouth of the Red River the unfortunate inhabitants lay down at night upon the ground, and cover themselves with three or four inches of sand, so that only the head remains free, over which they spread a protecting cloth. Above the influx of the Rio Arauca into the Orinoco, at the cataracts of Baragnon, the atmosphere up to a height of 15 or 21 feet, is filled with a dense mist of stinging insects. Placing oneself in some dark spot, for instance in one of the deep hollows formed in the cataracts by mounds of granitic blocks and looking towards the opening illumined by the sun, one sees whole clouds of mosquitoes, increasing or diminishing in density as the creatures in their slow and rhythmic motions now draw more closely together, and then again separate. In Esmeralda, at the eastern extremity of the Upper Orinoco, the mosquito clouds are almost as thick as at the cataracts. When the superior of the monastic order to which the mission belongs, wishes to punish a lay brother, he sends him to Esmeralda, or, as the monks facetiously remark, ‘condemns him to the mosquitoes.’
It is a well-known fact that the various species of gnats or flies comprehended under this general name, do not associate, but appear at different times of the day. As often as the scene changes or as ‘other insects mount guard,’ one enjoys a few minutes’ rest; for after the retreat of one host, its successors are not immediately on the spot. From half-past six in the morning till five in the afternoon the air is filled with mosquitoes of the genus Simulium. An hour before sunset, these are replaced by a small species of Culex called the Tempraneros or early-risers, as they also show themselves at sunrise. Their stay in the afternoon scarcely lasts an hour and a half, and then one feels soon after the painful sting of a larger Culex--the Zancudo-- who, plunging his blood-thirsty proboscis into the skin, causes an excruciating pain. The Zancudo, a ‘child of the night,’ disappears at sunrise, and then makes place for the matutinal Tempranero. As all these winged tormentors spend the greater part of their lives in the water, we cannot wonder that their numbers diminish as the distance from the banks of the rivers intersecting the forests increases. Their favourite resorts are the places where their transformation takes place, and where they on their part are soon about to lay their eggs. The mosquito clouds hover only above or near the waters, and it would be a great error to suppose that the vast forests extending between the river valleys are all equally infested with this insect plague.
From time to time the mosquitoes migrate like the social stentor monkeys. Formerly no other Culex was known at Simiti on the Magdalen river but the small species called Zejen. The people slept unmolested, for the Zejen is a diurnal insect. But in 1801 the great blue-winged Zancudo made his appearance in such numbers that the poor inhabitants of Simiti could find no rest at night.
Slight differences of climate or food seem to have an influence on the intensity of the poison which the same species discharges through its serrated proboscis. One cannot refrain from smiling at the disputes of the missionaries about the size and voracity of the mosquitoes in different parts of the same river. In a land so completely severed from the rest of the world, this forms the favourite subject for conversation. ‘How much I pity you,’ said the missionary from the falls as he took leave of his colleague at the Cassiquiare; ‘you are like me, alone in this land of jaguars and monkeys, but as to my mosquitoes I can boast that one of mine is a match for three of yours.’
This unequal voracity of the insects in different places, this various intensity of poison in the same species, are very remarkable, but similar phenomena are met with in the classes of the large animals. In Angostura the crocodile attacks man, while in New Barcelona people bathe in his presence without fear. The jaguars on the isthmus of Panama are cowardly when compared with those of the Upper Orinoco; and the Indians know very well that the monkeys from one part of the country can easily be tamed, while individuals of the same species caught elsewhere will rather die of hunger than submit to captivity.
Whoever has sojourned in a mosquito land knows that there is no radical remedy against them. The Indians who besmear their body with arnatto or turtle fat, slap every moment with their flat hands on their shoulders, back, and legs as often as if they were not painted at all. On the banks of the Amazons the people use cow-dung burnt at their doors, to keep away the praya or plague, as they very justly term the mosquitoes. In the evening every house and cottage has its pan of dung smouldering in the verandah and emitting rather an agreeable odour--but where the insects are very numerous and bloodthirsty this fumigation also is of no avail.
Not content with a passing attack, a South American gadfly (Œstrus hominis) deposits its eggs under the human skin, where the larvæ continue for six months. If disturbed, they penetrate deeper, and produce troublesome ulcers, which sometimes even prove fatal. Thus, in tropical America, we find the same insect tribe which plagues our oxen and horses, and reduces the northern reindeer to desperation, settle on man himself, and render even the lord of creation subject to its power.
The Chegoe, Pique, or Jigger of the West Indies (Pulex penetrans) is another great torment of the hot countries of America.
It looks exactly like a small flea, and a stranger would take it for one. However, in about four and twenty hours he would have several broad hints that he had made a mistake in his ideas of the animal. Without any respect for colour, it attacks different parts of the body, but chiefly the feet, betwixt the toe-nails and the flesh. There it buries itself and causes an itching, which at first is not unpleasant, but after a few days gradually increases to a violent pain. At the same time a small white tumour, about the size of a pea, and with a dark spot in the centre, rises under the skin. The tumour is the rapidly growing nest of the chegoe, the spot the little plague itself. And now it is high time to think of its extirpation, an operation in which the negro women are very expert. Gently removing with a pin the skin from the little round white ball or nest, precisely as we should peel an orange, and pressing the flesh all round, they generally succeed in squeezing it out without breaking, and then fill the cavity with snuff or tobacco, to guard against the possibility of a fresh colony being formed by some of the eggs remaining in the wound. New comers are particularly subject to these creatures. Waterton, who by practice appears to have become very expert in eradicating chegoes’ nests, once took four out of his feet in the course of the day, and a negress extracted no less than eighty-three out of Richard Schomburgk’s toes in one sitting. ‘Every evening,’ says the venerable naturalist of Walton Hall, ‘before sundown, it was part of my toilet to examine my feet and see that they were clear of chegoes. Now and then a nest would escape the scrutiny, and then I had to smart for it a day or two after. A chegoe once lit upon the back of my hand: wishful to see how he worked, I allowed him to take possession. He immediately set to work head foremost, and in about half an hour he had completely buried himself in the skin. I then let him feel the point of my knife, and exterminated him.’
If the prompt extraction of the chegoes’ nests is neglected, the worm-like larvæ creep out, continue the mining operations of their parent, and produce a violent inflammation, which may end in the mortification of a limb. It not unfrequently happens that negroes from sheer idleness or negligence in the first instance have been lamed for life and become loathsome to the sight. In such a state, these miserable objects are incurable, and death only puts an end to their sufferings.
A still more dangerous plague, peculiar to the coast of Guinea and the interior of tropical Africa, to Arabia, and the adjacent countries, is the Filaria medinensis of Linnæus. This dreaded worm comes to the herbage in the morning dew, from whence it pierces the skin, and enters the feet of such as walk without shoes, causing the most painful irritation, succeeded by violent inflammation and fever. The natives extract it with the greatest caution by twisting a piece of silk round one extremity of the body and withdrawing it very gently. When we consider that this insidious worm is frequently twelve feet long, although not thicker than a horse-hair, we can readily imagine the difficulty of the operation. If unfortunately the animal should break, the part remaining under the skin grows with redoubled vigour, and frequently occasions a fatal inflammation.
One of these most unwelcome intruders once entered Dampier’s ankle. ‘I was in great torment,’ says this entertaining traveller, ‘before it came out. My leg and ankle swelled, and looked very angry, and I kept on a plaster to bring it to a head. At last, drawing off my plaster, out came three inches of the worm, and my pain abated. Till that time I was ignorant of my malady, and a gentleman at whose house I was took it for a nerve; but I knew well what it was, and presently rolled it up on a small stick. After this I opened the place every morning and evening, and strained the worm out gently, about two inches at a time--not without some pain--till I had at length got it out.’
Among the plagues of Guiana and the West Indies we must not forget a little insect in the grass and on the shrubs, which the French call bête-rouge. It is of a beautiful scarlet colour, and so minute that you must bring your eye close to it before you can perceive it. It abounds most in the rainy season. Its bite causes an intolerable itching, which, according to Richard Schomburgk, who writes from personal experience, drives by day the perspiration of anguish from every pore, and at night makes one’s hammock resemble the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was roasted. The best way to get rid of the plague is to rub the part affected with lemon-juice or rum. ‘You must be careful not to scratch it,’ says Waterton. ‘If you do so and break the skin, you expose yourself to a sore. The first year I was in Guiana the bête-rouge and my own want of knowledge, and, I may add, the little attention I paid to it, created an ulcer above the ankle which annoyed me for six months, and if I hobbled out into the grass, a number of bête-rouges would settle on the edges of the sore and increase the inflammation.’
The blood-sucking Ticks are also to be classed among the intolerable nuisances of many tropical regions. A large American species called Garapata (Ixodes sanguisuga) fixes on the legs of travellers, and gradually buries its whole head in the skin, which the body, disgustingly distended with blood, is unable to follow. On being violently removed, the former remains in the wound, and often produces painful sores. The Indians returning in the evening from the forest or from their field labour generally bring some of these creatures along with them, swollen to the size of hazel nuts.
Though countless hosts of ticks infest the Ceylonese jungle, though mosquitoes without number swarm over the lower country, yet the land-leeches which beset the traveller in the rising grounds are a still more detested plague. ‘They are not frequent in the plains,’ says Sir E. Tennent, ‘which are too hot and dry for them; but amongst the rank vegetation in the lower ranges of the hill-country, which is kept damp by frequent showers, they are found in tormenting profusion. They are terrestrial, never visiting ponds or streams. In size they are about an inch in length, and as fine as a common knitting needle, but capable of distention till they equal a quill in thickness and attain a length of nearly two inches. Their structure is so flexible that they can insinuate themselves through the meshes of the finest stocking, not only seizing on the feet and ankles, but ascending to the back and throat, and fastening on the tenderest parts of the body. The coffee planters who live amongst these pests are obliged in order to exclude them, to envelope their legs in “leech gaiters,” made of closely woven cloth.
‘In moving, the land-leeches have the power of planting one extremity on the earth and raising the other perpendicularly to watch for their victim. Such is their vigilance and instinct that, on the approach of a passer-by to a spot which they infest, they may be seen amongst the grass and fallen leaves, on the edge of a native path, poised erect, and preparing for their attack on man and horse. On descrying their prey they advance rapidly by semicircular strides, fixing one end firmly and arching the other forwards, till by successive advances they can lay hold of the traveller’s foot, when they disengage themselves from the ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter. In these encounters the individuals in the rear of a party of travellers in the jungle invariably fare worst, as the leeches once warned of their approach congregate with singular celerity. Their size is so insignificant, and the wound they make so skilfully punctured, that the first intimation of their onslaught is the trickling of the blood, or a chill feeling of the leech when it begins to hang heavily on the skin from being distended by its repast. Horses are driven wild by them, and stamp the ground in fury to shake them from their fetlocks, to which they hang in bloody tassels. The bare legs of the palankin-bearers and coolies are a favourite resort, and their hands being too much engaged to be spared to pull them off, the leeches hang like bunches of grapes round their ankles; and I have seen the blood literally flowing over the edge of a European’s shoe from their innumerable bites. In healthy constitutions the wounds, if not irritated, generally heal, occasioning no other inconvenience than a slight inflammation and itching; but in those with a bad state of body, the punctures, if rubbed, are liable to degenerate into ulcers, which may lead to the loss of limb or of life. Both Marshall and Davy mention that, during the march of the troops in the mountains, when the Kandyans were in rebellion, in 1818, the soldiers, and especially the Madras Sepoys, with the pioneers and coolies, suffered so severely from this cause that numbers of them perished.’
Among the many noxious insects destructive to the property of man, there is, perhaps none more remarkable than the South African Tsetsé-fly (Glossīna morsitans), whose peculiar buzz when once heard can never be forgotten by the traveller whose means of locomotion are domestic animals; for it is well known that the bite of this poisonous insect is certain death to the ox, horse, and dog. Fortunately it is limited to particular districts, frequently infesting one bank of a river while the other contains not a single specimen, or else travelling in South Africa would be utterly impossible, and we should now know no more of Lake Ngami or the Zambesi than we did thirty years since. In one journey Dr. Livingstone lost no less than forty-three fine oxen by the bite of the tsetsé. A party of Englishmen once attempted to reach Libebé, but they had only proceeded seven or eight days’ journey to the north of the Ngami, when both horses and cattle were bitten by the fly, and the party were in consequence compelled to make a hasty retreat. One of the number was thus deprived of as many as thirty-six horses, excellent hunters, and all sustained heavy losses in cattle.
A most remarkable feature in the bite of the tsetsé is its perfect harmlessness in man and wild animals, and even calves, so long as they continue to suck the cow. The mule, ass, and goat enjoy likewise the same immunity, and many large tribes on the Zambesi can keep no domestic animals except the latter, in consequence of the scourge existing in their country. Dr. Livingstone’s children were frequently bitten, yet suffered no harm, and he saw around him numbers of zebras, buffaloes, pigs, pallahs and other antelopes, feeding quietly in the very habitat of the tsetsé, yet as undisturbed by its bite as oxen are when they first receive the fatal poison, which acts in the following manner. After a few days the eyes and nose begin to run, the coat stares as if the animal were cold, a swelling appears under the jaw, and, though the animal continues to graze, emaciation commences, accompanied with a peculiar flaccidity of the muscles; and this proceeds unchecked until, perhaps months afterwards, purging comes on, and the animal, no longer able to graze, perishes in a state of extreme exhaustion. Those which are in good condition often perish, soon after the wound is inflicted, with staggering and blindness, as if the brain were affected by it. Sudden changes of temperature, produced by falls of rain, seem to hasten the progress of the complaint, but in general the emaciation goes on uninterruptedly for months; and do what one may, the poor animals perish miserably, as there is no cure yet known for the disease.
Had any one of our indigenous flies similar poisonous qualities we should never have been able to escape from barbarism; if, by any fatal chance, the tsetsè were to settle among us, our prosperity would soon be at an end, and our civilisation imperilled! Reflections such as these are well calculated to humble our pride and check our presumption!
The Abyssinian Tsalt-salya or Zimb, described by Bruce, seems identical with the tsetsè, or produces at least similar symptoms. At the season when this plague makes its appearance, all the inhabitants along the sea-coast, from Melinde to Cape Gardafui, and to the south of the Red Sea, are obliged to retire with their cattle to the sandy plains to preserve them from destruction.
The French traveller, D’Escayrac, tells us of a fly in Soudan which leaves the ox uninjured but destroys the dromedary. On account of this plague the camel is confined to the northern boundary of the Soudan, while the oxen graze in safety throughout the whole country. This fly has caused more migrations among the Arabs of the Soudan than all their wars; and in the dry season it even drives the elephant from Lake Tsad by flying into its ears.
Though the locusts not seldom extend their ravages to the steppes of southern Russia, though they have been known to burst like a cloud of desolation over Transylvania and Hungary, and stray stragglers now and then even find their way to England, yet their chief habitat and birthplace is the torrid zone. They wander forth in countless multitudes, and at very irregular periods; but how it comes that they are multiplied to such an excess in particular years and not in others, has never yet been ascertained, and perhaps never will be. They are armed with two pairs of strong mandibles; their stomach is of extraordinary capacity and power; they make prodigious leaps by means of their muscular and long hind legs; and their wings even carry them far across the sea. On viewing a single locust, one can hardly conceive how they can cause such devastation, but the wonder ceases on hearing of their numbers.
Mahomet--so say his followers--once read upon the wing of a locust: ‘We are the army of God; we lay ninety-nine eggs; and if we laid a hundred, we should devour the whole earth and all that grows upon its surface.’ ‘O Allah!’ exclaimed the terrified prophet, ‘Thou who listenest patiently to the prayers of Thy Servant, destroy their young, kill their chieftains, and stop their mouths, to save the Moslems’ food from their teeth!’ Scarce had he spoken when the angel Gabriel appeared, saying, ‘God grants thee part of thy wishes.’ And, indeed, as all true believers know, this prayer of their prophet, written on a piece of paper, and enclosed in a reed which is stuck in the ground, is sure to preserve a field or an orchard from locust devastation.
As a locust host advances, its columns are sometimes seen rising in compact bodies as if propelled by a strong gust of wind; then, suddenly sinking, they disperse into smaller battalions, not unlike vapours floating about a hill-side at early morn, and when slightly agitated by a breeze; or they resemble huge columns of sand or smoke, changing their shape every minute.
Onward they come--a dark continuous cloud Of congregated myriads, numberless; The rushing of whose wings is as the sound Of a broad river headlong in its course, Plunged from a mountain summit; or the roar Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm, Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks!--SOUTHEY.
During their flight numbers are constantly alighting--an action which has not inaptly been compared to the falling of large snow-flakes. It is, however, not until the approach of night that the locusts encamp. Woe to the spot they select as a resting-place! The sun sets on a landscape green with all the luxuriance of tropical vegetation; it rises in the morning over a region naked as the waste of the Sahara!
The locust is fierce, and strong, and grim, And an armèd man is afraid of him; He comes like a wingèd shape of dread, With his shielded back, and his armèd head; And his double wings for hasty flight, And a keen unwearying appetite.
He comes with famine and fear along; An army a million, million strong. The Goth and the Vandal, and the dwarfish Hun With their swarming people, wild and dun, Brought not the dread that the locust brings, When is heard the rush of their myriad wings.
From the deserts of burning sand they speed, Where the lions roam, and the serpents breed. Far over the sea, away, away! And they darken the sun at noon of day. Like Eden the land before they find, But they leave it a desolate waste behind.
The peasant grows pale when he sees them come, And standeth before them, weak and dumb, For they come like a raging fire in power, And eat up a harvest in half an hour; And the trees are bare, and the land is brown, As if trampled and trod by an army down.
There is terror in every monarch’s eye, When he hears that this terrible foe is nigh; For he knows that the might of an armèd host Cannot drive the spoiler from out his coast: That terror and famine his land await, And from north to south ‘twill be desolate.
Thus the ravening locust is strong and grim, And what were an armèd man to him? Fire turneth him not, nor sea prevents, He is stronger by far than the elements. The broad green earth is his prostrate prey, And he darkens the sun at noon of day.--MARY HOWITT.
The tropical plague of the cockroaches has been introduced into England; but, fortunately, the giant of the family, the Blatta gigantea, a native of many of the warmer parts of Asia, Africa, and South America, is a stranger to our land: and the following truthful description of this disgusting insect gives us every reason to be thankful for its absence:--‘They plunder and erode all kinds of victuals, dressed and undressed, and damage all sorts of clothes, especially such as are touched with powder, pomatum, and similar substances; everything made of leather; books, paper, and various other articles, which if they do not destroy, at least they soil, as they frequently deposit a drop of their excrement where they settle, and, some way or other, by that means damage what they cannot devour. They fly into the flame of candles, and sometimes into the dishes; are very fond of ink and of oil, into which they are apt to fall and perish, in which case they soon turn most offensively putrid--so that a man might as well sit over the cadaverous body of a large animal as write with the ink in which they have died. They often fly into persons’ faces or bosoms, and their legs being armed with sharp spines, the pricking excites a sudden horror not easily described. In old houses they swarm by myriads, making every part filthy beyond description wherever they harbour, which in the daytime is in dark corners, behind clothes--in trunks, boxes, and, in short, every place where they can lie concealed. In old timber and deal houses, when the family is retired at night to sleep, this insect, among other disagreeable properties, has the power of making a noise which very much resembles a pretty smart knocking with the knuckle upon the wainscoting. The Blatta gigantea in the West Indies is therefore frequently known by the name of the drummer. Three or four of these noisy creatures will sometimes be impelled to answer one another, and cause such a drumming noise that none but those who are very good sleepers can rest for them. What is most disagreeable, those who have not gauze curtains are sometimes attacked by them in their sleep; the sick and dying have their extremities attacked; and the ends of the toes and fingers of the dead are frequently stripped both of the skin and flesh.’
According to Tschudi, the cucaracha and chilicabra--two large species of the cockroach--infest Peru in such numbers as almost to reduce the inhabitants to despair. Greedy, bold, cunning, they force their way into every hut, devour the stores, destroy the clothes, intrude into the beds and dishes, and defy every means that is resorted to for their destruction. Fortunately, they are held in check by many formidable enemies, particularly by a small ant, and a pretty little bird (Troglodytes audax) belonging to the wagtail family, which has some difficulty in mastering the larger cockroaches. It first of all bites off their head, and then devours their body, with the exception of their membranaceous wings. After having finished his repast, the bird hops upon the nearest bush, and there begins his song of triumph.
Many other insect plagues might be added to the list, but those I have already enumerated suffice to reconcile us to our misty climate, and to diminish our longing for the palm groves of the torrid zone.
Rivalling the mosquitoes in the art of tormenting man, and perhaps even surpassing them in numbers, the equatorial ants may truly be said to hold a despotic sway over the forest and the savannah, over the thicket and the field. It is hardly possible to penetrate into a tropical wood without being reminded, by their stings and bites, that they consider the visit as an intrusion, while they themselves unceremoniously invade the dwellings of man, and lay ruinous contributions on his stores. The inconceivable number of their species defies the memory of the naturalist, to whom many are even still entirely unknown. From almost microscopical size to an inch in length, of all colours and shades between yellow, red, brown, and black, of the most varied habits and stations, the ants of a single tropical land would furnish study for years to a zealous entomologist. Every family of plants has its peculiar species, and many trees are even the exclusive dwelling-place of some ant nowhere else to be found. In the scathes of leaves, in the corollas of flowers, in buds and blossoms, over and under the earth, in and out of doors, one meets these ubiquitous little creatures, which are undoubtedly one of the great plagues of the torrid zone.
While our indigenous ants cause a disagreeable burning on the skin, by the secretion of a corrosive acid peculiar to the race, the sting or bite of many tropical species causes the most excruciating tortures. ‘I have no words,’ says Schomburgk, ‘to describe the pain inflicted upon me by the mandibles of the Ponera clavata, a large, and, fortunately, not very common ant, whose long black body is beset with single hairs. Like an electric shock the pain instantly shot through my whole body, and soon after acquired the greatest intensity in the breast, and over and under the armpits. After a few minutes I felt almost completely paralysed, so that I could only with the greatest difficulty, and under the most excruciating tortures, totter towards the plantation, which, however, it was impossible for me to reach. I was found senseless on the ground, and the following day a violent wound fever ensued.’
‘Having, while in Angola, accidentally stepped upon a nest of red ants,’ says Livingstone, ‘not an instant seemed to elapse before a simultaneous attack was made on various unprotected parts, up the trousers from below, and on my neck and breast above. The bites of these furies were like sparks of fire, and there was no retreat. I jumped about for a second or two, then in desperation tore off all my clothing, and rubbed and picked them off seriatim as quickly as possible! Fortunately, no one observed this rencontre, or word might have been taken back to the village that I had become mad. It is really astonishing how such small bodies can contain so large an amount of ill nature. They not only bite, but twist themselves round after the mandibles are inserted, to produce laceration and pain more than would be effected by the single wound. Frequently, while sitting on the ox, as he happened to tread near a band, they would rush up his legs to the rider, and soon let him know that he had disturbed their march. They possess no fear, attacking with equal ferocity the largest as well as the smallest animals. When any person has leaped over the band, numbers of them leave the ranks and rush along the path, seemingly anxious for a fight.’
But however formidable the weapons of the ants may be, yet the injuries they inflict upon the property of man, pouring over his plantations like a flood, and sweeping away the fruits of his labours, are of a much more lasting and serious nature than their painful bite or venomous sting.
In the West Indies, the brown-black Viviagua, about one-third of an inch long, and with a prickly thorax, is the greatest enemy of the coffee plantations. In one day it will rob a full-grown tree of all its leaves. It digs deep subterranean passages of considerable dimensions and irregular forms, with a great number of hand-high galleries branching out from the sides, and does even more harm to the coffee-plants by its mining operations than by robbing them of their foliage.
Other species are no less destructive to the sugar plantations, either by settling in the interior of the stalks or by undermining the roots so that the plant becomes sickly and dies.
The Saüba or Coushie (Œcodoma cephalotes), a species of ant distinguished by its large head, is the most formidable enemy of the banana and cassava plantations. Such are its numbers that in a very short time it will strip off the leaves of an entire field. Even where their nest is a mile distant from a plantation, these arch depredators know how to find it, and soon form a highway, about half a foot broad, on which they keep up the most active communications with the object of their attack. In masterly order, side by side, one army is seen to move onwards towards the field, while another is returning to the nest. In this last column each individual carries a round piece of leaf, about the size of a sixpence, which is held by one of its edges. If the distance is too great, a party meets the weary carriers half way, and relieves them of their load. Although innumerable ants may thus be moving along, yet none of them will ever be seen to be in the other’s way; and all goes on with the regularity of clock-work.
A third party is no less actively employed on the scene of destruction, cutting out circular pieces of the leaves, which, as soon as they drop upon the ground, are immediately seized by the attentive and indefatigable carriers. Neither fire nor water can prevent them from proceeding with their work. Though thousands may be killed, yet in less than an hour all the bodies will have been removed. Should the highway be closed by an insurmountable obstacle, another is soon laid out, and after a few hours the operations, momentarily disturbed, resume their former activity.
The use of the leaves is to thatch the curious domelike edifices which these indefatigable builders raise over their burrows, and to prevent the loose earth from falling in. Some of these domes are of gigantic dimensions, measuring two feet in height and forty feet in diameter-- a prodigious size when compared with the puny proportions of the tiny architects that raise them. Division of labour is carried on to a wonderful extent in these buildings, for the labourers who fetch the leaves do not place them, but merely fling them down on the ground, when they are picked up by a relay of workers who lay them in their proper order. As soon as they have been properly arranged they are covered with small pellets of earth, and in a very short time they are quite hidden by their earthy covering. From these domes cylindrical shafts lead down into the mysterious recesses of the burrows, whose subterranean galleries are so vast and complicated that they have never been fully investigated. Some idea of their extent may be formed from the fact that sulphur smoke having been blown into a nest, one of the outlets was detected at a distance of seventy yards.
Not satisfied with devouring his harvests, the tropical ants leave man no rest even within doors, and trespass upon his household comforts in a thousand various ways.
In Mainas, a province on the Upper Amazon, Professor Pöppig counted no less than seven different species of ants among the tormenting inmates of his hut. The diminutive red Amache was particularly fond of sweets. Favoured by its smallness, it penetrates through the imperceptible openings of a cork, and the traveller was often obliged to throw away the syrup which in that humid and sultry country replaces the use of crystallised sugar, from its having been changed into an ant-comfit. This troublesome lover of sweets lives under the corner-posts of the hut, so that it is quite impossible to dislodge him.
The devastations of the house-ants are peculiarly hateful to the naturalist, whose collections, often gathered with so much danger and trouble, they pitilessly destroy. Richard Schomburgk suspended boxes with insects from the ceiling by threads strongly rubbed over with arsenic soap; but when, on the following morning, he wished to examine his treasures, instead of his rare and beautiful specimens he found nothing but a host of villanous red ants, who crawling down the threads, had found means to invade the boxes and utterly to destroy their valuable contents.
In countless multitudes the Driver or Foraging ants break forth from the primeval forest, marching through the country in compact order, like a well-drilled army. Every creature they meet in their way falls a victim to their dreadful onslaught--rats, mice, lizards, and even the huge python, when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding. If a house obstructs their route, they do not turn out of the way, but go quite through it. Though they sting cruelly when molested, the West Indian planter is not sorry to see them in his house, for it is but a passing visit, and their appearance is the death-warrant for every spider, scorpion, cockroach, or reptile that pollutes his dwelling. Unfortunately, this thorough cleansing is but of short duration, as in less than a week tropical life calls forth a new generation of vermin.
The wonderful societies of the ants, their strength and perseverance, their unwearied industry, their astonishing intelligence, are so well known, and have been so often and so admirably described[22], that it would be trespassing on the patience of my readers were I to enter into any lengthened details on the subject. And yet, the observations of naturalists have chiefly been confined to the European species, while the economy of the infinitely more numerous tropical ants, confined to countries or places hardly ever visited, or even unknown to civilised man, remains an inexhaustible field for future inquiry.
The study of their various buildings alone, from the little we know of them, would occupy a zealous entomologist for years. Here we have an American species that forms its globular nest of the size of a large Dutch cheese, of small twigs artistically interlaced; there another, which (Formica bispinosa) uses cotton for its building material, and through the chemical agency of its pungent secretion converts it into a spongy substance.
On the west coast of Borneo, Mr. Adams noticed two kinds of ants’ nests--one species of the size of a man’s hand, adhering to the trunk of trees resembling, when cut through, a section of the lungs; the other was composed of small withered bits of sticks and leaves, heaped up in the axils of branches, somewhat in the form of flattened cylinders and compressed cones. A third species, still more ingenious, constructs its domicile out of a large leaf, bending the two halves by the weight of united millions till the opposite margins meet at the under surface of the mid-rib, where they are secured by a gummy matter. The stores and larvæ are conveyed into the nest so made by regular beaten tracks along the trunk and branches of the tree.
On the large plains near Lake Dilolo, where water stands so long annually as to allow the lotus and other aqueous plants to come to maturity, Dr. Livingstone had occasion to admire the wonderful sagacity of the ants, whom he declares to be wiser than some men, as they learn by experience. When all the land is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little houses, built of black tenacious loam, on stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. This must have been the result of experience, for if they had waited till the water actually invaded their habitations on the ground, they would not have been able to procure materials for their higher quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay. They must have been built in anticipation, ‘and if so,’ says the celebrated traveller, ‘let us humbly hope that the sufferers by the late inundations in France may be possessed of as much common sense as the little black ants of the Dilolo plains.’
Unable or unwilling to work themselves, some species of ants make war upon others for the sole purpose of procuring bondsmen, who literally and truly labour for them, and perform all the domestic duties of the community; but the Mexican honey ants (Myrmecocystus Mexicanus) are, if possible, still more remarkable, for here we see an animal rearing others of the same species for the purpose of food. Some of these ants, namely, are distinguished by an enormous swelling of the abdomen, which is converted into a mass like honey, and being unable, in their unwieldly condition, to seek food themselves, are fed by the labourers, until they are doomed to die for the benefit of the community. Whether this vast distension is the result of an intestinal rupture, caused by an excessive indulgence of the appetite, or whether they are purposely selected, confined, and over-fed, or wounded for the purpose, has not yet been ascertained.
The termites, or white ants, as they are commonly called, though they in reality belong to a totally different order of insects, are spread in countless numbers over all the warmer regions of the earth, emulating on the dry land the bore-worm in the sea; for when they have once penetrated into a building, no timber except ebony and iron-wood, which are too hard, or such as is strongly impregnated with camphor and aromatic oils, which they dislike, is capable of resisting their attacks. Their favourite food is wood, and so great are their multitudes, so admirable their tools, that in a few days they devour the timberwork of a spacious apartment. Outwardly, the beams and rafters may seem untouched, while their core is completely consumed, for these destructive miners work in the dark, and seldom attack the outside until they have previously concealed themselves and their operations by a coat of clay. Scarcely any organic substance remains free from their attacks; and forcing their resistless way into trunks, chests, and wardrobes, they will often devour in one night all the shoes, boots, clothes, and papers they may contain. It is principally owing to their destructions, says Humboldt, that it is so rare to find papers in tropical America of an older date than fifty or sixty years. Smeathman relates, that a party of them once took a fancy to a pipe of fine old Madeira, not for the sake of the wine, almost the whole of which they let out, but of the staves, which, however, may not have proved less tasteful from having imbibed some of the costly liquor. On surveying a room which had been locked up during an absence of a few weeks, Forbes, the author of the ‘Oriental Memoirs,’ observed a number of advanced works in various directions towards some prints and drawings in English frames; the glasses appeared to be uncommonly dull, and the frames covered with dust. On attempting to wipe it off, he was astonished to find the glasses fixed to the wall, not suspended in frames as he left them, but completely surrounded by an incrustation cemented by the white ants, who had actually eaten up the deal frames and backboards and the greater part of the paper, and left the glasses upheld by the incrustation or covered way which they had formed during their depredations.
On the small island of Goree, near Cape Verde, the French naturalist, Adanson, lived in a straw hut, which, though quite new at the time he took up his residence in it, became transparent in many places before the month was out. This might have been endured, but the villanous termites ravaged his trunk, destroyed his books, penetrated into his bed, and at last attacked the naturalist himself. Neither sweet nor salt water, neither vinegar nor corrosive liquids, were able to drive them away, and so Adanson thought it best to abandon the premises, and to look out for another lodging.
The ravages of the termites are, however, perhaps more than compensated by their services in removing decayed vegetable substances from the face of the earth, and thus contributing to the purity of the air and the beauty of the landscape. If the forests of the tropical world, where thousands of gigantic trees succumb to the slow ravages of time, or are suddenly prostrated by the hurricane, still appear in all the verdure of perpetual youth, it is chiefly to the unremitting labours of the termites that they are indebted for their freshness.
Though belonging to a different order of the insect world, the economy of the termites is very similar to that of the real ants. They also form communities, divided into distinct orders; labourers (larvæ), soldiers (neuters), perfect insects--and they also erect buildings, but of a far more astonishing structure. Several of their species (T. atrox, bellicosus Smeathman) erect high dome-like edifices, rising from the plain, so that at first sight they might be mistaken for the hamlets of the negroes; others (T. destructor arborum) build on trees, often at a considerable height above the ground. These sylvan abodes are frequently the size of a hogshead, and are more generally found in the New World.
The clay-built citadels or domes of the Termes bellicosus, a common species on the West Coast of Africa, attain a height of twelve feet, and are constructed with such strength that the traveller often ascends them to have an uninterrupted view of the grassy plain around. Only the under part of the mound is inhabited by the white ants, the upper portion serving principally as a defence from the weather, and to keep up in the lower part the warmth and moisture necessary to the hatching of the eggs and cherishing of the young ones. In the centre, and almost on a level with the ground, is placed the sanctuary of the whole community--the large cell, where the queen resides with her consort, and which she is doomed never to quit again, after having been once enclosed in it, since the portals soon prove too narrow for her rapidly-increasing bulk. Encircling the regal apartment, extends a labyrinth of countless chambers, in which a numerous army of attendants and soldiers is constantly in waiting. The space between these chambers and the external wall of the citadel is filled with other cells, partly destined for the eggs and young larvæ, partly for store-rooms. The subterranean passages which lead from the mound are hardly less remarkable than the building itself. Perfectly cylindrical, and lined with a cement of clay, similar to that of which the hill is formed, they sometimes measure a foot in diameter. They run in a sloping direction, under the bottom of the hill, to a depth of three or four feet, and then ramifying horizontally into numerous branches, ultimately rise near to the surface at a considerable distance. At their entrance into the interior of the hill, they are connected with a great number of smaller galleries, which, gradually winding round the whole building to the top, intersect each other at different heights. The necessity for the vast size of the main galleries underground, evidently arises from the circumstance of their being the great thoroughfares for the inhabitants, by which they fetch their clay, wood, water, or provisions, and their gradual ascent is requisite, as the Termites can only with great difficulty climb perpendicularly.
It may be imagined that such works require an enormous population for their construction; and, indeed, the manner in which an infant colony of termites is formed and grows, until becoming, in its turn, the parent of new migrations, is not the least wonderful part of this wonderful insect’s history.
At the end of the dry season, as soon as the first rains have fallen, the male and female perfect termites, each about the size of two soldiers, or thirty labourers, and furnished with four long narrow wings folded on each other, emerge from their retreats in myriads. After a few hours their fragile wings fall off, and on the following morning they are discovered covering the surface of the earth and waters, where their enemies--birds, reptiles, ants--cause so sweeping a havoc that scarce one pair out of many thousands escapes destruction. If by chance the labourers, who are always busy prolonging their galleries, happen to meet with one of these fortunate couples, they immediately, impelled by their instinct, elect them sovereigns of a new community, and, conveying them to a place of safety, begin to build them a small chamber of clay, their palace and their prison--for beyond its walls they never again emerge.
Soon after the male dies, but, far from pining and wasting over the loss of her consort, the female increases so wonderfully in bulk that she ultimately weighs as much as 30,000 labourers, and attains a length of three inches, with a proportional width. This increase of size naturally requires a corresponding enlargement of the cell, which is constantly widened by the indefatigable workers. Having reached her full size, the queen now begins to lay her eggs, and as their extrusion goes on uninterruptedly, night and day, at the rate of fifty or sixty in a minute, for about two years, their total number may probably amount to more than fifty millions! A wonderful fecundity, which explains how a termite colony, originally few in number, increases in a few years to a population equalling or surpassing that of the British empire.
This incessant extrusion of eggs necessarily calls for the attention of a large number of the workers in the royal chamber, to take them as they come forth, and carry them to the nurseries, in which, when hatched, they are provided with food, and carefully attended till they are able to shift for themselves, and become in their turn useful to the community.
In widening their buildings according to the necessities of their growing population, from the size of small sugar-loaves to that of domes which might be mistaken for the hovels of Indians or negroes, as well as in repairing their damages, the termite workers display an unceasing and wonderful activity, while the soldiers, or neuters, which are in the proportion of about one to every hundred labourers, and are at once distinguished by the enormous size of their heads armed with long and sharp jaws, are no less remarkable for their courage and energy.
When anyone is bold enough to attack their nest and make a breach in its walls, the labourers, who are incapable of fighting, immediately retire, upon which a soldier makes his appearance, obviously for the purpose of reconnoitring, and then also withdraws to give the alarm. Two or three others next appear, scrambling as fast as they can one after the other; to these succeed a large body, who rush forth with as much speed as the breach will permit, their numbers continually increasing during the attack. These little heroes present an astonishing, and at the same time a most amusing spectacle. In their haste they frequently miss their hold, and tumble down the sides of their hill; they soon, however, recover themselves, and being blind, bite everything they run against. If the attack proceeds, the bustle increases to a tenfold degree, and their fury is raised to its highest pitch. Woe to him whose hands or legs come within their reach, for they will make their fanged jaws meet at the very first stroke, drawing their own weight in blood, and never quitting their hold, even though they are pulled limb from limb. The courage of the bulldog is as nothing compared to the fierce obstinacy of the termite-soldier.
So soon as the injury has ceased, and no further interruption is given, the soldiers retire, and then you will see the labourers hastening in various directions towards the breach, each carrying in his mouth a load of tempered mortar half as big as himself, which he lays on the edge of the orifice, and immediately hastens back for more. Not the space of the tenth part of an inch is left without labourers working upon it at the same moment; crowds are constantly hurrying to and fro; yet, amid all this activity, the greatest order reigns--no one impedes the other, but each seems to thread the mazes of the multitude without trouble or inconvenience. By the united labours of such an infinite host the ruined wall soon rises again; and Mr. Smeathman has ascertained that in a single night they will restore a gallery of three or four yards in length.
In numbers and architectural industry the American Termites are not inferior to those of the Old World. In the savannahs of Guiana their sugar-loaf or mushroom-shaped, pyramidal or columnar hills are everywhere to be seen, impenetrable to the rain, and strong enough to resist even a tropical tornado. On the summits of these artificial mounds a neat little falcon (Falco sparverius) often takes his station, darting down, from time to time, like lightning upon some unfortunate lizard, and then again speedily returning to his look-out. The large caracara eagle (Polyborus caracara) likewise chooses these eminences as an observatory from whence he rushes robber-like on his prey; there also an ugly black lizard (Ecchymotes torquatus) loves to sun itself, but disappears immediately in the grass as soon as a traveller approaches.
In many parts of the Brazilian campos or savannahs the termite-hills, which are there generally of a more flattened form, are so numerous that one is almost sure to meet with one of them at the distance of every ten or twenty paces. The great ant-bear digs deep holes into their sides, where afterwards small owls build their nests. Similar termite structures, of a dark-brown colour, and a round form, are attached to the thick branches of the trees, and you will scarcely meet with a single specimen of the tall candelabra-formed cactuses (Cerei), so common on those high grass-plains, that is not loaded with their weight.
In spite of their working in the dark, in spite of their subterranean tunnels, their strongholds, and the fecundity of their queens, the termites, even when their swarms do not expose themselves to the dangers already mentioned, are subject to the attacks of innumerable foes--ant-eaters, birds, and a whole host of insects--that do man no little service by keeping them within bounds.
One of their most ferocious enemies is a species of black ant, which, on the principle of setting one thief to catch another, is used by the negroes of Mauritius for their destruction. When they perceive that the covered ways of the termites are approaching a building, they drop a train of syrup as far as the nearest encampment of the hostile army. Some of the black ants, attracted by the smell and taste of their favourite food, follow its traces and soon find out the termite habitations. Immediately part of them return to announce the welcome intelligence, and after a few hours a black army, in endless columns, is seen to advance against the white-ant stronghold. With irresistible fury (for the poor termites are no match for their poisonous sting and mighty mandibles) they rush into the galleries, and only retreat after the extirpation of the colony. Mr. Baxter (‘Eight Years’ Wanderings in Ceylon’) once saw an army of black ants returning from one of these expeditions. Each little warrior bore a slaughtered termite in his mandibles, rejoicing no doubt in the prospect of a quiet dinner-party at home. Even man is a great consumer of termites, and they are esteemed a delicacy by the natives, both in the old and in the new world.
In some parts of the East Indies the people have an ingenious way of emptying a termite-hill, by making two holes in it, one to the windward and the other to the leeward, placing at the latter opening a pot rubbed with an aromatic herb to receive the insects, when driven out of their nest by the smoke of a fire made at the former breach. In South Africa the general way of catching them is to dig into the ant-hill, and when the builders come forth to repair the damage, to brush them off quickly into the vessel, as the ant-eater does into his mouth. They are then parched in iron pots over a gentle fire, stirring them about as is done in roasting coffee, and eaten by handfuls, without sauce or any other addition, as we do comfits. According to Smeathman, they resemble in taste sugared cream, or sweet almond paste, and are, at the same time, so nutritious that the Hindoos use them as a restorative for debilitated patients.
While most termites live and work entirely under covered galleries, the marching white ant (T. viarum) exposes itself to the day. Smeathman, on one occasion, while passing through a dense forest, suddenly heard a loud hiss like that of a serpent; another followed, and struck him with alarm; but a moment’s reflection led him to conclude that these sounds proceeded from white ants, although he could not see any of their huts around. On following this noise, however, he was struck with surprise and pleasure at perceiving an army of these creatures emerging from a hole in the ground, and marching with the utmost swiftness. Having proceeded about a yard, this immense host divided into two columns, chiefly composed of labourers, about fifteen abreast, following each other in close order, and going straight forward. Here and there was seen a soldier, carrying his vast head with apparent difficulty, at a distance of a foot or two from the columns; many other soldiers were to be seen, standing still or passing about, as if upon the look-out lest some enemy should suddenly surprise their unwarlike comrades. But the most extraordinary and amusing part of the scene was exhibited by some other soldiers, who having mounted some plants, ten or fifteen inches from the ground, hung over the army marching below, and by striking their jaws upon the leaves at certain intervals, produced the noise above mentioned; to this signal the whole army immediately returned a hiss and increased their pace. The soldiers at these signal-stations sat quite still during these intervals of silence, except now and then making a slight turn of the head, and seemed as solicitous to keep their posts as regular sentinels. After marching separately for twelve or fifteen paces, the two columns of this army again united, and then descended into the earth by two or three holes. Mr. Smeathman watched them for more than an hour, without perceiving their numbers to increase or diminish. Both the labourers and soldiers of this species are furnished with eyes.
One of the many unsolved mysteries of termite life is whence they derive the large supplies of moisture with which they not only temper the clay for the construction of their long covered ways above ground, but keep their passages uniformly damp and cool below the surface. Yet their habits in this particular are unvarying, in the seasons of drought as well as after rain; in the most arid positions; in situations inaccessible to drainage from above, and cut off by rocks and impervious strata from springs from below. Struck with this wonderful phenomenon, Dr. Livingstone raises the question whether the termites may not possess the power of combining the oxygen or hydrogen of their vegetable food by vital force, so as to form water; and indeed it is highly probable that they are endowed with some such faculty, which, however wonderful, would still be far less astonishing than the miracles of their architectural instinct.
After having described the miseries which the tropical insects inflict upon man--how they suck his blood, destroy his rest, exterminate his cattle, devour the fruits of his fields and orchards, ransack his chests and wardrobes, feast on his provisions, and plague and worry him wherever they can--it is but justice to mention their services.
Among the insects which are of direct use to us, the silk-worm (Bombyx mori) is by far the most important. Originally a native of tropical or sub-tropical China, where the art of making use of its filaments seems to have been discovered at a very early period, it is now reared in countless numbers far and wide over the western world, so as to form a most important feature in the industrial resources of Europe. Thousands of skilful workmen are employed in spinning and weaving its lustrous threads, and thousands upon thousands, enjoying the fruits of their labours, now clothe themselves, at a moderate price, in silken tissues which but a few centuries back were the exclusive luxury of the richest and noblest of the land.
Besides the silk-worm, we find many other moths in the tropical zone whose cocoons might advantageously be spun, and only require to be better known to become considerable articles of commerce. The tusseh-worm (Bombyx mylitta) of Hindostan, which lives upon the leaves of the Rhamnus jujuba furnishes a dark-coloured, coarse, but durable silk; while the Arandi (B. cynthia), which feeds upon the foliage of the castor-oil plant (Ricinus communis), spins remarkably soft threads, which serve the Hindoos to weave tissues of uncommon strength.
In America, there are also many indigenous moths whose filaments might be rendered serviceable to man, and which seem destined to great future importance, when trade, quitting her usual routine, shall have learnt to pry more closely into the resources of Nature.
While the Cocci, or plant bugs, are in our country deservedly detested as a nuisance, destroying the beauty of many of our garden plants by their blighting presence, two tropical members of the family, as if to make up for the misdeeds of their relations, furnish us--the one with the most splendid of all scarlet dyes, and the other with gumlac, a substance of hardly inferior value.
The English gardener spares no trouble to protect his hot- and greenhouse plants from the invasion of the Coccus hesperidum; but the Mexican haciendero purposely lays out his Nopal plantations that they may be preyed upon by the Coccus cacti, and rejoices when he sees the leaves of his opuntias thickly strewn with this valuable parasite. The female, who from her form and habits might not unaptly be called the tortoise of the insect world, is much larger than the winged male, and of a dark-brown colour, with two light spots on the back, covered with a white powder. She uses her little legs only during her first youth, but soon she sucks herself fast, and henceforward remains immovably attached to the spot she has chosen, while her mate continues to lead a wandering life. While thus fixed like an oyster, she swells or grows to such a size that she looks more like a seed or berry than an insect; and her legs, antennæ, and proboscis, concealed by the expanding body, can hardly be distinguished by the naked eye. Great care is taken to kill the insects before the young escape from the eggs, as they have then the greatest weight, and are most impregnated with colouring matter. They are detached by a blunt knife dipped in boiling water to kill them, and then dried in the sun, when they have the appearance of small, dry, shrivelled berries, of a deep-brown purple or mulberry colour, with a white matter between the wrinkles. The collecting takes place three times a year in the plantations, where the insect, improved by human care, is nearly twice as large as the wild coccus, which in Mexico is gathered six times in the same period. Although the collecting of the cochineal is exceedingly tedious--about 70,000 insects going to a single pound--yet, considering the high price of the article, its rearing would be very lucrative, if both the insect and the plant it feeds upon were not liable to the ravages of many diseases, and the attacks of numerous enemies.
The conquest of Mexico by Cortez first made the Spaniards acquainted with cochineal. They soon learnt to value it as one of the most important products of their new empire, and in order to secure its monopoly, prohibited, under pain of death, the exportation of the insect, and of the equally indigenous Nopal, or Cactus cochinellifer, supposing it not to be able to live upon any other plant. In the year 1677, however, Thierry de Meronville, a Frenchman, made an effort to deprive them of the exclusive possession of the treasure they guarded with such jealous care. Under a thousand dangers, and by means of lavish bribery, he succeeded in transporting some of the plants, along with their costly parasite, to the French colony of San Domingo; but, unfortunately, his perseverance did not lead to any favourable results, and more than a century elapsed after this first ineffectual attempt before the rearing of cochineal extended beyond its original limits.
In the year 1827, M. Berthelot, director of the botanical garden at Orotava, was more fortunate in introducing it into the Canary Islands, where it thrives so well upon the Opuntia Ficus indica, that Teneriffe rivals Mexico in its production. At present Cochineal is not only raised in many other parts of the tropical world, but even in Spain, near Valencia and Malaga.
The Coccus which produces lac, or gumlac, is a native of India, and thrives and multiplies best on several species of the fig-tree. A cheap method having been discovered within the last few years of separating the colouring matter which it contains from the resinous part, it has greatly increased in commercial importance.
In the tropical zone we find that not only many birds and several four-footed animals live chiefly, or even exclusively, on insects, but that they are even consumed in large quantities, or eaten as delicacies, by man himself. The nomade of the Sahara and the South African bushman hail the appearance of locust swarms as a season of plenty and good living, and ants’ eggs eke out the meagre bill of fare of the wild Indians on the banks of the Orinoco.
Several of the large African caterpillars are edible, and considered as a great delicacy by the natives. On the leaves of the Mopané tree, in the Bushman country, the small larvæ of a winged insect, a species of Psylla, appear covered over with a sweet gummy substance, which is collected by the people in great quantities, and used as food. Another species in New Holland, found on the leaves of the Eucalyptus, emits a similar secretion, which, along with its insect originator, is scraped off the leaves and eaten by the aborigines as a saccharine dainty.
The chirping Cicadæ, or frog-hoppers, which Aristotle mentions as delicious food, are still in high repute among the American Indians; and the Chinese, who allow nothing edible to go to waste, after unravelling the cocoon of the silkworm, make a dish of the pupæ, which the Europeans reject with scorn.
The Goliath beetles of the coast of Guinea are roasted and eaten by the natives, who doubtless, like many other savages, not knowing the value of that which they are eating, often make a bonne bouche of what an entomologist would most eagerly desire to preserve.
Several of the more brilliant tropical beetles are made use of as ornaments, not only by the savage tribes, but among nations which are able to command the costliest gems of the East. The golden elytra of the Sternocera chrysis and Sternocera sternicornis serve to enrich the embroidery of the Indian zenana, while the joints of the legs are strung on silken threads, and form bracelets of singular brilliancy.
The ladies in Brazil wear necklaces composed of the azure green and golden wings of lustrous Chrysomelidæ and Curculionidæ, particularly of the Diamond beetle (Entimus nobilis); and in Jamaica, the elytra of the Buprestis gigas are set in ear-rings, whose gold-green brilliancy rivals the rare and costly Chrysopras in beauty.
XX. THE MALAYAN RACE
Physical Conformation of the Malays--Betel Chewing--Their Moral Character--Limited Intelligence of the Malays--Their Maritime Tastes--Piracy--Gambling--Cock-fighting--Running A-muck!-- Fishing--Malayan Superstitions--The Battas--Their Cannibalism-- Eating a Man alive--The Begus--Aërial Huts--Funeral Ceremonies-- The Dyaks--Head-hunting--The Sumpitan--Large Houses.
Unlike the apathetic Indian hunter, whose wishes are bounded by the forest or the savannah, where the chase provides him with a scanty subsistence, or the good-humoured Negro who, fond of agriculture, and attached to the soil on which he was born, never thinks of wandering of his own free will to distant countries, the roving race of the Malays has scattered its colonies far and wide over the Indian Archipelago.
The colour of the various tribes of this remarkable people is a yellowish-brown, and varies but little throughout the numerous islands extending from Sumatra and the peninsula of Malacca to the Moluccas. The hair is black, coarse and straight, the beard scanty. The stature is below the average European size, the breast well developed, the limbs meagre. The face is broad and somewhat flat, with high cheek-bones, a small nose, a large mouth with broad lips, and black eyes with angular orbits. The children and young people of both sexes are often really handsome in face and graceful in figure, but as they advance in age their features become hard, and frequently present a repulsive appearance.
Like most nations in a rude state of society, they are in the habit of permanently disfiguring parts of the body under the idea of ornament. Considering blackness a becoming colour for the teeth--for dogs, they say, have them white--they file the enamel so that the bone may be tinged by the juice of the pungent betel, which, wrapped round the nut of the areca palm, and mixed with lime, they are in the habit of chewing from morning till night. This combination, besides discolouring the teeth, has the disgusting property of dyeing the saliva of so deep a red that the lips and gums appear as if coloured with blood; yet it is in universal use throughout the whole Indian Archipelago, and, as excuses are never failing to justify bad habits, is said to have tonic effects and to promote digestion.
The Malays are not a demonstrative people; their behaviour towards strangers is marked by a reserve, a distrust, or even a timidity which inclines the observer to tax with exaggeration the wild and bloodthirsty character which is generally ascribed to their race. The feelings of astonishment, admiration, and fear are never openly expressed, and their slow and considerate speech shows how careful they are not to give offence.
To indulge in a joke is quite contrary to their natural disposition, and they deeply feel, and are ever ready to resent, a breach of etiquette or a personal affront. The higher classes are extremely polite, and have all the quiet manners and dignity of the best educated Europeans. But this external polish is united with a reckless cruelty and contempt for human life which forms the dark side of their character. Hence it is not to be wondered at that different authors give us such totally contradictory accounts of them.
An old traveller, Nicolo Conti, who wrote in 1430, says that ‘the inhabitants of Java and Sumatra surpass all other people in cruelty,’ while Drake praises their love of truth and justice. Mr. Crawfurd describes the Javanese as a peaceable and industrious people, but Barbosa, who visited Malacca about the year 1660, informs us that they are extremely cunning and great cheats; that they seldom speak the truth, and are ever ready for a villanous deed.
Their intelligence seems to be incapable of any higher flight. They comprehend nothing which goes beyond the simplest combination of ideas, and have little taste and energy to obtain an increase of knowledge. The civilisation they possess shows no traces of original growth, but is entirely confined to those nations or states which have adopted the Mahometan religion, or in still earlier times received their culture from India.
It must, however, be remarked in their favour that the curse both of domestic tyranny and of a foreign yoke weighs heavily upon them, and that the extension of European domination in the Indian Ocean has been as fatal to their race as it has been in America and Africa to the Red-skin and the Negro.
‘The first voyagers from the west,’ says Rajah Brooke, ‘found the natives rich and powerful, with strong established governments, a flourishing literature, and a thriving trade with all parts of the eastern world. The rapacious European has reduced them to their present abject condition. Their governments have been broken up; the old states decomposed by treachery, by bribery, and intrigue; their possessions wrested from them under flimsy pretences, their trade restricted, their vices encouraged, and their virtues repressed.’
‘Among the Malays of the present day,’ says Newbold, ‘we look in vain for that desire of knowledge which excited their ancestors to transplant the flowers of Arabian literature among their own forests. Works of science are now no longer translated from the Arabic, and creations of the imagination have almost ceased to appear. The few children educated among them learn nothing but to mumble in an unknown tongue a few passages from the Koran, entirely neglecting arithmetic and the acquirement of any useful manual art or employment. Painting, sculpture, architecture, mechanics, geography, are totally unknown to the Malays. Their literature declined with the fall of their empire in the Archipelago, nor could it well be expected to flourish under the Upas trees of Portuguese intolerance, Dutch oppression, and British apathy.’
Essentially maritime in their tastes, the Malays have been named the Phœnicians of the East; but not satisfied with the peaceful pursuits of the fisherman or the merchant, many of them infest the Indian Ocean as merciless pirates.
Encouraged by the weakness and distraction of the old-established Malay governments, the facilities offered by natural situation, and the total absence of all restraint from European nations, except now and then the destruction of some mud fort or bamboo-village, which is soon rebuilt, the Illanuns, the Balagnini, and other sea-robbing tribes, issue forth like beasts of prey, enslave or murder the inhabitants on the coasts or at the entrance of rivers, and attack ill-armed or stranded European vessels.
The Illanuns of Mindanao are particularly noted for their daring and long-protracted piratical excursions, which they undertake in large junks with sails, netting, and heavy guns. On one occasion the ‘Rajah Brooke’ met eighteen Illanun boats on neutral ground, and learned from their two chiefs that they had been two years absent from home; and from the Papuan slaves on board it was evident that their cruise had extended from the most eastern islands of the Archipelago to the north-western coast of Borneo.
The Balagnini inhabit a cluster of small islands in the vicinity of Sooloo, where they probably find encouragement and a slave market. They cruise in large prahus, and to each of these a fleet boat or ‘sampan’ is attached, which on occasion can carry from ten to fifteen men. They seldom have large guns like the Illanuns, but, in addition to their other arms, brass pieces, carrying from a one- to a three-pound ball. They use long poles with barbed iron points, with which, during an engagement or flight, they hook their prey. By means of their sampans they are able to capture all small boats; and it is a favourite device with them to disguise one or two men, whilst the rest lie concealed in the bottom of the boat, and thus to surprise prahus at sea, and fishermen or others at the mouths of rivers. Their cruising grounds are very extensive; they frequently make the circuit of Borneo; Gillolo and the Moluccas lie within their range, and it is probable that Papua is occasionally visited by them. The Borneans, from being so harassed by these freebooters, who yearly take a considerable number of this unwarlike people into slavery, call the easterly monsoon ‘the pirate wind.’ Their own native governments are probably without exception participators in or victims to piracy, and in many cases both--purchasing from one set of pirates and enslaved and plundered by another; and whilst their dependencies are abandoned, the unprotected trade goes to ruin. Thus piracy rests like a blighting curse upon lands pre-eminently blessed by Nature, and proves as ruinous to the welfare of the Eastern Archipelago as the black stain of the African slave trade to that of the Negroes.
The Malays are inveterate gamblers, and, perhaps for want of some nobler object on which to expend their mental energies, carry the mania of betting at cock-fights to a ruinous excess. Passionately addicted to this favourite amusement, they will lose all their property on a favourite bird, and having lost that, stake their families, and after the loss of wife and children, their own personal liberty, being prepared to serve as slaves in case of losing. Whole poems are devoted to enthusiastic descriptions of cock-fighting, which is regulated by universally acknowledged laws as minute as those of the Hoyleian Code.
The birds are not trimmed as in England, but fight in full feather, armed with straight or curved artificial spurs, sharp as razors and about two and a half inches long. Large gashes are inflicted by these murderous instruments, and it rarely happens that both cocks survive the battle. One spur only is used, and is generally fastened near the natural spur on the inside of the left leg. Cocks of the same colour are seldom matched. The weight is adjusted by the setters-to, passing them to and from each other’s hands as they sit facing each other in the cock-pit. Should there be any difference, it is brought down to an equality by the spur being fixed so many scales higher on the leg of the heavier cock, or as deemed fair by both parties. In adjusting these preliminaries the professional skill of the setters-to is called into action, and much time is taken up in grave deliberation, which often terminates in wrangling. The birds, after various methods of irritating them have been practised, are then set to. During the continuance of the battle the excitement and interest taken by the gambling spectators in the barbarous exhibition is vividly depicted in their animated looks and gestures.
The Malays who are not slaves go always armed; they would think themselves disgraced if they went abroad without their crees or poniards, which, to render them more formidable, are often steeped in poison. These weapons, which thus afford them the ready means for avenging an affront, are probably the chief cause which renders their outward deportment to each other remarkably punctilious and courteous, but they sometimes become highly dangerous in the hands of a people whose nervous temperament is liable to sudden explosions of frantic rage. Like the old Berserks of the heroic ages of Scandinavia, a Malay is capable of so far working himself into fury, of so far yielding to some spontaneous impulse, or of so far exciting himself by stimulants, as to become totally regardless of what danger he exposes himself to. In this state, which is called ‘running a-muck,’ he rushes forth as an infuriated animal and attacks all who fall in his way, until he is either struck down like a wild beast, or having expended his morbid rage he falls down exhausted.
The Malays are bad agriculturists and artisans but excellent sportsmen. From the small birds which they entangle in their snares to the large animals of the forest, which they shoot or entrap in pit-falls, or destroy by spring-guns, nothing worth catching escapes their attention. Such is their delight in fishing, that even women and children may be seen in numbers during the rains angling in the swampy rice grounds. Spearing excursions against the swordfish are undertaken during the dark of the moon by the light of torches. A good eye, a steady hand are necessary, and a perfect knowledge of the places where the fish are to be found. Each canoe carries a steersman, a man with a long pole to propel the vessel, and a spearsman, who, armed with a long slender javelin having a head composed of the sharpened spikes of the Nibong palm, and holding in his left hand a large blazing torch, takes his station at the stern of the canoe. They thus glide slowly and noiselessly over the still surface of the clear water, till the rays of the flambeau either attract the prey to the surface or discover it lying seemingly asleep at a little depth below. The sudden splash of the swiftly descending spear is heard, and the fish is the next moment seen glittering in the air, either transfixed by the spikes or caught in the interstices as the weapon is withdrawn.
As a natural consequence of their extreme ignorance, the Malays, even the best educated, are inordinately superstitious, and people the invisible world with a host of malignant spirits. The Pamburk roams the forest, like the wild huntsman of the Haruz, with demon dogs, and the storm fiend Hantu Ribut howls in the blast and revels in the whirlwind. Tigers are considered in many instances to be the receptacles of the souls of departed human beings, and they believe that some men have the faculty of transforming themselves at pleasure into tigers, and that others enjoy the privilege of invulnerability. They rely firmly on the efficacy of charms, spells, amulets, talismans, lucky and unlucky moments, magic, and judicial astrology. To pull down or repair a seriously damaged house is considered unlucky, so that whenever a Malay has occasion to build a new house he leaves the old one standing.
While the coasts of Borneo and Sumatra are occupied by the more civilised Mahometan Malays, the interior of these vast islands is inhabited by nations, probably of the same race, who, secluded from the rest of the world, exhibit in their customs a strange and almost incredible mixture of good and evil, of humane tendencies and diabolical barbarism.
Thus the Battas, who next to the Malays are the most numerous people of Sumatra, have the same polite and ceremonious manner, they possess an ancient code of law, they write books, and are fond of music, they build commodious houses, which they ornament with tasteful carvings, they wear handsome tissues and know the art of smelting and amalgamating metals; they are extremely good-natured, and yet they not only eat human flesh, but eat it under circumstances of unexampled atrocity.
According to their own traditions, their ancestors knew nothing of this horrid practice, which was first instigated by the demon of war about the year 1630, and from being originally an act of vengeance or fury, became at length one of their institutions in times of peace, and is now legally sanctioned as a punishment for certain heavy crimes. In some cases the delinquent is first killed and then eaten, in others he is eaten alive, an aggravated punishment which, however, is only reserved for traitors, spies, and enemies seized arms in hand. Before the day appointed for execution, messengers are sent to all friends and allies, and preparations made as for a great festival. The victim, tied to a stake, awaits his horrible fate, while the air resounds with music and the clamour of hundreds of spectators. The rajah of the village steps forward, draws his knife, addresses the assembly, relates the crimes which justify the sentence, and says that now the moment is come for punishing the doomed wretch, whom he describes as a hellish scoundrel, as a Satan in a human form. At these words the actors in the shocking drama about to be performed feel, as they say, an invincible longing to swallow a piece of the villain’s flesh, as they then feel sure that he can do them no further harm, and impatiently brandish their knives.
The rajah or the injured person, such is his privilege, now cuts off the first piece of flesh, which he generally selects from the inner side of the forearm (this being esteemed the most delicate morsel), or from the cheek when sufficiently fat, holds it up triumphantly, and tastes some of the flowing blood, his eyes at the same time sparkling with delight. He then hurries to one of the fires that have been kindled close by to broil his piece of meat before swallowing it, while the whole troop falls upon the miserable wretch, who, hacked to pieces, and bleeding from a hundred wounds, in a few moments expires. The avidity with which they devour his quivering flesh, untouched by his shrieks and supplications, is the more to be wondered at as in other cases they show themselves susceptible of a tender pity for the sufferings of others. As if scenes like these were not sufficiently horrible, it has even been affirmed that the Battas eat their aged parents alive, but we hardly need the authority of Dr. Junghuhn, who, during a residence of two years among the Battas, only heard of three cases of public cannibalism, that this report has no foundation in truth. So much, however, is certain, that this singular people have a great liking for human flesh, and in all cases where a simple execution takes place seize the opportunity of quietly carrying home some favourite joint.
The Battas have no priests, no temples, no idols.[23] They believe in a number of evil spirits, or Begus, who have their seat in the various diseases of the human body, and in a few good spirits, or Sumongot, the immortal souls of great forefathers, who reside on the high mountain tops. The souls only of such persons as die of a violent death ascend into the invisible land of immortality, and this may be some consolation to the poor wretches whom they horribly cut up at their cannibal feasts, while all persons dying of illness are considered as having fallen into the power of the Begus, and as totally annihilated. They have no idea of a Supreme Being, and their only religious ceremony, if such it may be called, is that on festival occasions they scatter rice to the four quarters of the wind, in order to propitiate the Begus.
In consequence of the general state of anarchy in which their unfortunate country is plunged, they live in small fortified villages, surrounded by palisades and deep ditches so as to leave but two gates for a passage.
As in the feudal times, eminences strong by nature are frequently selected for the sites of these settlements, where the Batta, though removed from the more fruitful plains, cultivates his small field of mountain rice in greater security. In some districts, where hostile invasions are less to be feared, he possesses, besides his village residence, a detached hut in a forest clearance near some river navigable by canoes. To be out of the reach of wild animals or inundations, these huts are frequently built on trees whose central branches have been lopped off, while the outer ones have been left standing, so as to afford a grateful shade to the little aërial dwelling.
From this eminence, which the proprietor reaches by a ladder from twenty-five to thirty feet high, he looks down complacently upon his paddy field below, and as he is no sportsman, the undisturbed denizens of the forest afford him many a pastime. Monkeys gambol without fear on the trees around him; long-tailed squirrels leap from bough to bough; elephants bathe in the river; lemurs and fox-bats fly about in the evening; stags feed in the thicket beneath; and the only enemy he seeks to destroy is the Leguan lizard, who, intent on plundering his hen-roost, lies concealed among the reeds on the river’s bank.
The Battas, having frequently suffered by foreign invasions, suspect all strangers of evil intentions, and desire to be as little as possible disturbed by their visits. For this reason, as well as for additional security against hostile incursions, they have no roads nor bridges, and as the villages are generally many miles apart and separated from each other by jungles or woods, this total want of the means of communication presents an almost insuperable obstacle to the traveller. Their distrust of strangers extends even to the members of their own nation, so that Battas of one province cannot enter another without running the risk of being seized as spies and eaten alive.
While two of the great events of human life--birth and marriage-- pass almost unnoticed among the Battas, the third and last act of this ‘strange eventful history’ gives rise to ceremonies which one would hardly expect to meet with among a nation of cannibals. When the rajah of a large village dies, his body is kept so long in the house, until the rice which is sown on the day of his death by his son or his brother comes to maturity. When the rice is about to ripen, a buffalo is killed, and its bones sent round to all friends and relations among the rajahs of the neighbourhood as an invitation to the burial, which is to take place on the tenth day after the reception of these strange missives. Every rajah who accepts the invitation is obliged to bring with him a buffalo. The coffin is placed on a bier before the house, and on the arrival of the guests their buffaloes are tied to strong poles close by. The wives, sons, and other near relations of the deceased, now walk seven times with loud lamentations round the buffaloes, after which the oldest or first wife breaks a pot of boiled rice grown from the seed sown on the dying day on the forehead of one of the buffaloes. This is the signal for a frantic explosion of grief among the mourning women, whose piercing cries are accompanied by the incessant beating of drums and brass kettles in the house. After this lugubrious scene, which soon terminates with the real or feigned exhaustion of the actors, each of the rajahs now in his turn walks seven times round the buffalo which he brought with him, and kills it with a stroke of his lance. The coffin is then removed to the burial-place, and placed on the side of the open grave, amid the profound silence of the assembly. Its lid is opened, and the eldest son of the deceased, stepping forward, looks at the corpse, the face of which is turned towards the sun, and, raising his hand to the sky, says, ‘Now, father, thou seest for the last time the sun, which thou wilt never see again.’ After this short but affecting allocution the lid is closed and the coffin lowered into the grave, upon which the company returns to the village, where meantime the slaughtered buffaloes have been made ready for the funeral feast. Their horns, skulls, and jaw-bones, fastened to stakes, are placed as ornaments round the grave, which has no other monument or inscription. On each of the two following days some food is carried to it, a welcome treat for the dogs, and then it is consigned to the neglect which is the ultimate fate of all.
The mystical sowing of rice, and the touching words spoken at the grave, prove that the Battas, though without any fixed religious worship, have still religious feelings, and may serve to confirm the truth of the remark, that there is no nation, however barbarous, which does not show at least some traces of a belief in the Divinity, and reveal, however obscurely, that man has been born for something higher than a mere animal existence.
Among the Dyaks, a name indiscriminately applied to all the wild people on the island of Borneo, we find no less revolting customs than among the Battas of Sumatra. They are hunters of their kind, not merely for the sake of an unnatural feast, but simply for the sake of collecting heads. Skulls are the commonest ornaments of a Dyak house, and the possession of them is the best token of manly courage. A Dyak youth is despised by all the maidens of his village as long as he has not cut off the head of an enemy or waylaid a stranger; returning from a successful chase with one of these ghastly trophies, he is welcomed as a hero. The head is stuck upon a pole, and old and young dance around it, singing and beating gongs. Murder of the most revolting atrocity, which anywhere else would make its perpetrator be considered the enemy of his kind, is thus by a horrible perversity one of the elements of courtship. The same atrocious custom is found among the Harafuras of Celebes, the Nias Islanders, and some other Malay nations of the Indian Archipelago. When the Harafuras go to war, they first steal some heads, boil them, and drink the broth to render themselves invulnerable.
The Minkokas of Celebes limit the custom of taking heads to funeral or festive occasions, more especially on the death of their rajah or chief. When this occurs they sally forth, with a white band across their forehead to notify their object, and destroy alike their enemies and strangers. From twenty to forty heads, according to the rank of the deceased rajah, being procured, buffaloes are killed, rice boiled, and a solemn funeral feast is held, and, whatever time may elapse, the body is not previously buried. The heads, on being cleaned, are hung up in the houses of the three principal persons of the tribe, and regarded with great veneration and respect.
The national weapon of the Dyaks, though not in use among all their tribes, is the Sumpitan, a blow-pipe about five feet long, with an arrow made of wood, thin, light, sharp-pointed, and dipped in the poison of the upas tree. As this is fugacious, the points are generally dipped afresh when wanted. For about twenty yards the aim is so true that no two arrows shot at the same mark will be above an inch or two apart. On a calm day the utmost range may be a hundred yards. Though impregnated with a poison less deadly than the Wourali of the American Indians, yet the shafts of the sumpitan are formidable weapons from the frequency with which they can be discharged, and the skill of those who use them. The arrows are contained in a bamboo case, hung at the side, and at the bottom of this quiver is the poison of the upas. When they face an enemy the box at the side is open, and, whether advancing or retreating, they fire the poisoned missiles with great precision.
The style of building of the Dyaks is very peculiar; most of their villages consisting of a single house, in which from fifteen to twenty families live together, in separate compartments.
The floor of these long buildings, which are thatched with palm leaves, rests on piles about six or ten feet from the ground, and the simple furniture consists of some mats, baskets, and a few knives, pots, a very primitive loom, and some dried heads by way of ornament.
Though habitual assassins from ignorance and superstitious motives, the Dyaks are said to be of a mild, good-natured, and by no means bloodthirsty character. They are hospitable when well used, grateful for kindness, industrious and honest, and so truthful that the word of one of them might safely be taken before the oath of half-a-dozen civilised Malays.
The celebrated traveller, Mrs. Ida Pfeiffer, who had the courage to wander among the Dyaks, and the good fortune to return with her head on her shoulders, speaks highly of their patriarchal life, the love they have for their children, and the respectful conduct of the children towards their parents.
As to their personal appearance, she affirms that, though some authors describe them as fine men, they are only a little less ugly than the Malays.
XXI. THE TROPICAL OCEAN
Wanderings of an Iceberg--The Tropical Ocean--The Cachalot-- The Frigate Bird--The Tropic Bird--The Esculent Swallow--The Flying-fish--The Bonito--The White Shark--Tropical Fishes-- Crustaceans--Land Crabs--Molluscs--Jelly Fish--Coral Islands.
Day after day the glacier of the north protrudes its mass farther and farther into the sea, until finally, rent by the tides, and with a crash louder than that of the avalanche, the iceberg rolls into the abyss. The frost-bound waters, that have languished so many years in their Greenland prison, are now drifting to the south, on their way to the tropical ocean; but the sun must rise and set for many a day before they bid adieu to the fogs of the north.
See there yon dismal ice-blocked shore, with the jagged mountains in the background, their snowy peaks rising high into the sky. Screeching sea-birds--fulmars, gulls, guillemots, auks--mix their hoarse voices with the melancholy tones of the breakers and the winds, and between them all resounds, from time to time, the bellowing of the walrus or the roar of the polar bear.
The weak rays of the sun, just dipping over the horizon, have called forth these symptoms of life; but as soon as the great luminary disappears, animal creation becomes mute, and the voices of the air and ocean are again the only sounds which break the silence of the arctic night.
The crystal mass floats along, buried in deep darkness; but soon a new and wondrous sight is seen, for the flaming swords of the northern light flit through the heavens, casting a magic gleam, here on the desert shore, there on the dark bosom of the sea.
Advancing farther and farther to the south, the iceberg loses one after another the witnesses of its first migrations, and wasting more and more, at length entirely merges in the tepid Gulf Stream. The enthralled waters are now all liberated, but many on their western passage are again diverted to the north, and the others reach, only after a long circuit, the mighty equatorial stream, which carries them along, through the torrid ocean, from one hemisphere to the other.
The animal life they meet with in these sunny regions is very different from that which witnessed their passage through the higher latitudes.
The large whalebone whale, the rorqual and narwhal of the north, have disappeared, but pods of the mighty sperm whale rapidly traverse the equatorial seas.
The birds also exhibit new types of being. The royal albatross avoids the torrid zone, but the high-soaring frigate-bird hovers over the waters, where it is seen darting upon the flying-fish, and, like the skua gull of the north, attacking the weaker sea-birds in order to make them disgorge their prey.
‘He is almost always a constant attendant upon our fishermen,’ says Dr. Chamberlain,[24] ‘when pursuing their vocation on the sand-banks in Kingston Harbour, or near the Palisados. Over their heads it takes its aërial stand, and watches their motions with a patience and a perseverance the most exemplary. It is upon these occasions that the pelicans, the gulls, and other sea-birds become its associates and companions. These are also found watching with equal eagerness and anxiety the issue of the fishermen’s progress, attracted to the spot by the sea of living objects immediately beneath them. And then it is, when these men are making their last haul, and the finny tribe are fluttering and panting for life, that this voracious bird exhibits his fierce propensities. His hungry companions have scarcely secured their prey by the side of the fishermen’s canoes, when, with the lightning’s dart, they are pounced upon with such violence that, to escape his rapacious assaults they readily, in turn, yield their hard-earned booty to this formidable opponent. The lightness of its trunk, the short torso and vast spread of wing, together with its long slender and forked tail, all conspire to give it a superiority over its tribe, not only in length and rapidity of flight, but also in the power of maintaining itself, on outspread pinions, in the regions of its aërial habitations amidst the clouds; where, at times, so lofty are its soarings, that its figure becomes almost invisible to the spectator in this nether world.’
The beautiful tropic birds, whose name implies the limit of their abode--for they are seldom seen but a few degrees south or north of either tropic--hover at such a distance from the nearest land that it is still an enigma where they pass the night--whether they sleep upon the waters, or whether their extraordinary length of wing bears them to some isolated rock. Nothing can be more graceful than their flight. They glide along, most frequently without any motion of their outstretched pinions, but at times this smooth progression is interrupted by sudden jerks. When they see a ship, they never fail to sail round it, and the mariner bound to the equatorial regions hails them as the harbingers of the tropics. The two long straight narrow feathers of which their tail consists, are employed by the natives of the greater part of the South Sea Islands as ornaments of dress, and serve to distinguish the chieftains from the multitude.
The esculent swallow (Colocalia esculenta)--whose edible nest, formed by a secretion which hardens in the air, is one of the greatest dainties of the Chinese epicure--may almost be considered as a sea-bird, as it chiefly inhabits marine caves in various islands of the Indian Archipelago, and exclusively seeks its food in the teeming waters.
The steep sea-walls along the south coast of Java are clothed to the very brink with luxuriant woods, and screw-pines strike everywhere their roots into their sides or look down from the margin of the rock upon the sea below. The surf of ages has worn deep caves into the chalk cliffs, and here the swallow builds her nest. When the sea is most agitated, whole swarms are seen flying about, and purposely seeking the thickest wave-foam, where no doubt they find their food. From a projecting cape, or looking down upon the play of waters, may be seen the mouth of the cave of Gua Rongkop, sometimes completely hidden under the waves, and then again opening its black recesses, into which the swallows vanish, or from which they dart forth with the rapidity of lightning. While at some distance from the coast the blue ocean sleeps in peace, it never ceases to fret and foam against the foot of these mural rocks, where the most beautiful rainbows glisten in the rising vapour.
Who can explain the instinct which prompts the birds to glue their nests to the high dark vaults of those apparently inaccessible caverns? Did they expect to find them a safe retreat from the persecutions of man? Then surely their hopes were vain, for where is the refuge to which his insatiable cupidity cannot find the way? At the cavern of Gua Gede the brink of the coast lies eighty feet above the level of the sea at ebb-tide. The wall first bends inwards, and then at a height of twenty-five feet from the sea throws out a projecting ledge, which is of great use to the nest-gatherers, serving as a support for a rattan ladder let down from the cliff. The roof of the cavern’s mouth lies only ten feet above the sea, which even at ebb-tide completely covers the floor of the cave, while at flood-tide the opening of the vast grotto is entirely closed by every wave that rolls against it. To penetrate into the interior is thus only possible at low water, and during very tranquil weather, and even then it could not be done if the roof were not perforated and jagged in every direction.
The boldest and strongest of the nest-gatherers wedges himself firmly in the hollows, or clings to the projecting stones while he fastens rattan ropes to them, which then hang four or five feet from the roof. To the lower end of these ropes long rattan cables are attached, so that the whole forms a kind of suspension bridge, throughout the entire length of the cavern, alternately rising and falling with its inequalities. The cave is 100 feet broad and 150 feet long, as far as its deepest recesses. If we justly admire the intrepidity of the St. Kildans, who, let down by a rope from the high level of their rocky birthplace, remain suspended over a boisterous sea, we needs must also pay a tribute of praise to the boldness of the Javanese nest-gatherers, who, before preparing their ladders for the plucking of the birds’ nests, first offer solemn prayers to the goddess of the south coast, and deposit gifts on the tomb where the first discoverer of the caves and their treasures is said to repose.
While traversing the tropical ocean, the mariner often sees whole shoals of flying-fishes (Exocoetus volitans, Pterois volitans) dart out of the water to escape the jaws of the bonito and the coryphæna. But while avoiding the perils of the deep, new dangers await them in the air; for, before they can drop into the sea, the frigate-bird frequently pounces upon them, and draws them head-foremost into his maw.
The bonito and coryphæna in their turn are often transpierced by the lance of the sword-fish, who, like the saw-snouted pristis, is said to engage even the sperm whale, and to put this huge leviathan to flight.
But of all the monsters of the tropical seas, there is none more dreaded by man than the white shark.
Woe to the sailor that falls overboard while one of these tyrants of the ocean is prowling about the ship; but woe also to the shark who, caught by a baited hook, is drawn on board, for a slow and cruel death is sure to be his lot. Mutilated and hacked to pieces, his torments are protracted by his uncommon tenacity of life.
Such, besides herds of playful dolphins, are the members of the finny creation most commonly met with on the high seas, but in general the waters at a greater distance from the land are poor in fishes. The tropical fishes chiefly abound near the coasts, in the sheltered lagoons, and in the channels which wind through numberless reefs or islands.
As the colibris dart from flower to flower in the Brazilian woods, thus the gorgeous balistinæ and glyphodons sport about the submerged coral-gardens, and enhance the brilliancy of their fairy bowers.
While these lustrous fishes belted with azure, red, and gold, defy the imagination of the poet to describe their beauty, others remind one by their deformity of the chimeras engendered by the diseased brain of a delirious patient. Here we see the hideous frog-fish creeping along like a toad upon his hand-like fin, there the sun-fish swimming about like a vast head severed from its trunk. Cased like the armadillo in an inflexible coat of mail, into which every movable part can be withdrawn, the trunk-fish derides the attack of many an enemy; and inflating its spiny body, the diodon, like the hedgehog of the land, bids defiance to his foes.
On examining the crustacean world, we find that it has established its head-quarters in the tropical zone. There a multitude of wondrous types unknown to the colder regions of the globe attract the attention of the naturalist: the transparent phyllosomas, not thicker than the thinnest wafer, and the strange sword-tails, whose body is covered by a double shield, and terminates in a long horny process, used by the Malays to point their arrows. The crabs and lobsters of the tropical waters are not only more numerous than in our colder seas, but they attain a far greater size than those of the temperate regions of the globe.
The decapod crustaceans (cray-fish) which inhabit our rivers and brooks, are long-tailed like the lobster, but in the torrid zone the river species all belong to the order of the short-tailed crabs, the most perfect and highly developed of the class. Some species even entirely forsake the water and spend their days on shore, not only on the beach, but far inland on the hills. When the season for spawning arrives, large numbers of these land-crabs set out from their mountainous abodes, marching in a direct line to the sea-shore, for the purpose of depositing their eggs, which are attached to the lower surface of the abdomen and are washed off by the surf. This done, they recommence their toilsome march towards their upland retreats, setting out after nightfall and steadily advancing until the dawn warns them to seek concealment in the inequalities of the ground or among any kind of rubbish, where they lie, until the stars again invite them to pursue their course. On their seaward journey, which they prosecute so eagerly that they suffer no opposition to deter them from their purpose, they are in full vigour and fine condition, and this is the time when they are caught in great numbers for the table, their flesh being held in high estimation; but on returning from the coast they are exhausted and unfit for use.
Wherever the West Indian Land Crabs make their home, their burrows are as thickly sown as those of a rabbit warren. Concealed during the greater part of the day in these subterranean abodes, they come out at night to feed, but are always ready to scuttle back at the least alarm. Should, however, their retreat be intercepted they show a bold front to the enemy, seizing him with one of their long claws, and then shaking off the limb at its junction with the body. As the claw retains its tension for some little time after this voluntary separation, the effect is the same as if the creature were still actively biting, and while the enemy’s attention is engaged with these troublesome pincers, the crab takes the opportunity to conceal itself in some crevice. As is the case with all crustaceans, a new limb soon sprouts out and repairs the loss of the discarded member.
A singular species of land decapod, called the Fighting Crab from its bellicose propensities, possesses one large and one very little claw, which gives it a very strange and ridiculous appearance, particularly when, running along at full speed, it holds the large claw in the air, and nods it continually, as beckoning to its pursuer.
The molluscs are no less profusely scattered over the tropical seas and coasts than the higher organised crustaceans. There we find those mighty cephalopods, whose long fleshy processes, as thick as a man’s thigh, are able, it is said, to seize the fisherman in his boat and drag him into the sea; and there is the abode of the tridacna, whose colossal valves, measuring five feet across, attain a weight of five hundred pounds, and serve both as receptacles for holy water in Catholic churches and to collect the rain in the South Sea Islands.
The rarest and most beautiful of shells, the royal Spondylus, the Carinaria vitrea, the Scalaria pretiosa, the Cypræa aurora, and a host of Volutes, Harps, Marginelles, Cones, &c., of the most exquisite colouring, are all inhabitants of the warmer waters; and the most costly gift of the sea, the oriental pearl, is the produce of a mollusc which is found scattered over many parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
On descending still lower in the scale of marine life, we find the jelly-fish disporting in the tropical waves in hosts as brilliant as the skies. Some are formed like a mushroom, others assume the shape of a belt or girdle; others are globular, while some are circular, flat, or bell-shaped; and others again resemble a bunch of berries. In colour, perhaps the most delicate is the lovely Velella, with its pellucid crest, its green transparent body and fringe of purple tentacles; but it is surpassed in size and gorgeousness by the Physalia, or ‘Portuguese man-of-war,’ whose large air-sack, with its splendid vertical comb, shines in every shade of purple and azure. The greatest marvels of the tropical ocean are, however, beyond comparison, the wondrous buildings of the Lithophytes, or stone polyps, the reefs and coral islands. Here we see them forming vast barriers which fringe the shores for hundreds and hundreds of miles; there they rise in circular atolls over the blue waves, like bridal rings dropped from the heavens upon the surface of the seas. All is wonderful in these amazing constructions--their puny architects, the lagoons they encircle, the power with which they resist the most furious breakers, the little world of plants drifted over the waters, which ultimately covers them with a verdant crown, and invites man to settle on these gardens of the ocean. There the tall cocoa-palm rocks its feathered crest in the breeze, affording both shade and fruit to the islander, and there the sea-bird finds a resting-place after its wide flight over the deserts of the equatorial sea.
XXII. THE PAPUANS AND POLYNESIANS
The Papuans--Their Physical and Moral Characteristics--Their Artistic Tastes--Their Dwellings--Their Primitive Political Institutions-- Their Weapons and Mode of Fighting--The Polynesians--Their Manners and Customs when first visited by Europeans--Tattooing--The Tapa Cloth--Their Canoes--Swimming Feats--Aristocratic Forms of Government--The Tabu--Religion--Superstitious Observances--Human Sacrifices--Infanticide--Low Condition of the Coral Islanders.
Two races of man, widely differing from each other in character, social condition, and physical conformation--the Papuans and the Polynesians--are spread over the islands of the Pacific and the archipelagoes of the Coral Sea. The Papuans who occupy the area comprising New Guinea, New Ireland, New Britannia, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Group, Loyalty, and many other islands of minor importance, are in stature equal to if not surpassing the average European size. Their legs are long and thin, and their hands and feet greater than those of the Malays. The face is somewhat elongated, the forehead flat, the brows very prominent, the eyes sufficiently large and well formed, not too deeply set, nor with the overhanging brow of the Australians; the nose large, slightly aquiline, and broad at the base; the mouth large with thick and pouting lips. The colour of the skin is commonly of a deep black-brown or black, sometimes approaching the coal-black of the genuine Negro races.
The growth of the hair is very peculiar, and at first sight might be confounded with the wool of the negro. Its distribution is most easily seen on the body and limbs, when it may be observed to grow in small tufts or pencils, separated one from the other, and giving a blotchy or woolly aspect to the skin. The hair of the head doubtless grows in the same way, but here the tufts are close together, and each forms a separate small curl, very stiff, and when suffered to grow long hangs down in a narrow pipe-like ringlet. The fashion of dressing the hair varies in different localities, but generally the greatest care is bestowed upon it. The face of the Papuans has upon the whole a more European expression than that of the Malays, and the prominent nose, the strongly marked eyebrows, and the character of the hair enable one at once to distinguish these two races from each other.
The difference in their moral characteristics is no less remarkable.
The Papuan is impulsive and demonstrative in his language and actions. His passions and emotions express themselves in screaming and laughing, in howling and jumping. The women and children take part in every conversation, and show no fear at the sight of strangers and Europeans. The Malay is timid, cold, quiet; the Papuan bold, impetuous, and noisy. The former is serious, and seldom laughs; the latter is jovial, and loves a joke: the one hides his emotions, the other shows them openly.
It is difficult to form an opinion of the intelligence of the Papuans, but Mr. Wallace is inclined to place it on a somewhat higher level than that of the Malays, although the latter, influenced for centuries by the immigration and intercourse with Hindoos, Chinese, and Arabs, have made some progress in civilisation, while the former, communicating but little with the rest of the world, are still plunged in barbarism. The Papuan has much more vital energy, which certainly would materially aid his intellectual development were he placed in more favourable circumstances. He combines a remarkable taste and skill in the ornamenting of his furniture with an utter disregard of all order and convenience in his household arrangements. He has no chair or bench to sit upon, does not know the use of a brush, and his dress, such as it is, consists of dirty bark or rags. He never takes the trouble to clear the path which he daily treads, of overhanging branches or prickly thorns. In many parts his nourishment consists almost entirely of roots and vegetables; fish and game being only occasional luxuries; and in consequence both of his coarse food and his filthy habits, he is very liable to various cutaneous diseases. The children, particularly, have often a miserable look, and are covered over their whole body with eruptions and sores. If these people are not savages, where are we to look for them? And yet these same savages have a decided taste for the fine arts, and employ their leisure hours in executing ornamental works, the neatness and elegance of which would often do honour to our schools of design.
They cover the outside of their houses with rude but characteristic figures, and their canoes, and other implements and furniture are decorated with elaborate carvings in various patterns; a custom very seldom met with among the Malayan tribes.
But the most striking instance of Papuan industry, and the one which seems most at variance with their utter barbarism in almost every other respect, is shown in the construction of the immense houses in New Guinea which strike the stranger with astonishment. They are upwards of 300 feet long, about 30 feet in width, and 16 or 18 feet high in the centre, from which the roof slopes down on either hand to the floor; their inside looks just like a great tunnel. Down each side are a row of cabins with walls of bamboo and neatly made doors. Inside these cabins are low frames covered with mats, apparently bed-places, and overhead are shelves and pegs for bows and arrows, baskets, stone axes, and other utensils. These immense structures rest on a number of posts, like the ancient lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, so that their floor is raised from the muddy ground about six feet. The roof, formed of an arched framework of bamboo, is covered with a perfectly waterproof thatch of sago-palm leaves. The centre of the house for about a third of its width is kept quite clear, forming a noble covered promenade, though rather dark, as the only light proceeds from the large doors at the end and the little side doors between the cabins.
Most accounts describe the honesty of the Papuans as superior to that of the Polynesian race, and they seem to be less eagerly addicted to pilfering; they are, however, commonly much more hostile and ferocious, sometimes waging open warfare, sometimes having recourse to the grossest treachery. Travellers mention them honourably for the treatment of their women. Mr. Jukes never saw a woman beaten or abused among the Torres Straits Islanders, and in all the harder kinds of work the men appeared to take their fair share of labour. Their care and affection for their children seemed always great. Although wanting in the engaging liveliness and fascinating manners of some of the eastern Polynesian nations, they are of a cheerful disposition, readily engaging in sports and amusements, and their curiosity is easily excited by anything interesting or uncommon. When bartering with Europeans they show their good sense in preferring useful articles to mere ornaments.
The political institutions of the Papuans are extremely primitive. We do not hear of any division into ranks or of any hereditary chieftainship or authority among them. They apparently live in small tribes, hostile the one to the other. They have never attained to any great skill in navigation. Their canoes are commonly small, rudely fashioned, and unfit to encounter the swell of the open sea. Their agriculture is very rude and they seem in no instance to cultivate rice or any other sort of grain. No genuine Papuan nation has been known to have invented or practised the art of making any kind of cloth. Their favourite weapons are the bow and arrow, in the use of which they are very expert, but they appear never to have acquired anything like discipline or skill in warfare, although apparently more constantly engaged in it than the Polynesians.
Of their mode of fighting, the following account of a skirmish witnessed by Mr. Jukes gives us a good idea. ‘The hostile parties approached each other at full speed to within about thirty or forty yards, when they both halted, sheltering themselves behind rocks and large stones; and there was a pretty brisk interchange of arrows. The sharp twanging or smacking of the bows, the rattling of bundles of arrows and the hurtling of arrows through the air, and their glancing from the rocks, was heard above the shouts and cries of the combatants. The fierce gestures, quick and active movements, and the animated attitudes of the black and naked warriors, ornamented, as many of them were, with glittering pearl shells or red flowers and yellow leaves hanging from their hair, and the crouching of the women, known by their petticoats, in the rear or skirts of the battle with fresh stores of ammunition, formed for a short time an interesting and exciting spectacle. After a minute or two’s skirmishing they all rushed together, hand to hand, and formed a confused mob. The shouting and noise was then redoubled, and there was a short clatter of long poles, sticks, or canoe paddles, which we could see waving above their heads, and we thought some of them were using their arrows as spears or daggers. Still no execution seemed to be done, as we saw none of them down, and in a very short time the poles and paddles were all held erect, the women closed up, and the war of deeds seemed to end in one of words. The fight being done, both parties seemed very glad it was over. Several of the combatants were slightly scarred with arrow marks, but in some cases had evidently had a very narrow escape. It seemed as if they had seen the arrow coming and avoided it by twisting the body as the Australians avoid spears.’
As to the future prospects of the Papuan race, there can hardly be a doubt that as soon as they come within the range of European emigration or dominion, their speedy extinction must be the result. Their very qualities will seal their doom, for a warlike and energetic people will never quietly submit to the yoke of a foreign master, and must as surely disappear before the white man as the wolf or the tiger.
With the single and remarkable exception of the Feejee Islanders, who form a kind of intermediate race between the Papuan and Polynesian races, all the archipelagoes and islands of the tropical Pacific, situated on the east and north of the above-mentioned groups, are inhabited by nations distinguished from the Papuan stock by a yellow, olive-coloured, or brown skin; by smooth, generally black, hair; by a finer proportioned body, with well-rounded limbs and swelling muscles. The nations belonging to this yellow or Polynesian race have in general attained a much higher degree of civilisation than the black hordes of the western islands; and though enormous distances intervene between them, the inhabitants of the large groups of the Sandwich, Society, Navigators, and Friendly Islands, are more similar to each other than the various nations crowded together in the comparatively narrow space of our continent. Their features are everywhere the same; they speak dialects of the same language, so nearly resembling each other that the people of Tonga can freely converse with those of Hawaii; and when first visited by European navigators they showed a surprising similarity in their customs, their religious observances, and their political institutions, as well as in the progress they had made in agriculture and the industrial arts.
Not satisfied with the spontaneous bounty of Nature, they forced the willing soil to yield them a variety of productions. The Tahitians, besides multiplying the bread-fruit tree and the cocoa palm, chiefly cultivated the banana, the sweet potato, and the yam; while the roots of the taro formed the principal nourishment of the Sandwich Islanders, who by an admirable system of irrigation extended the plantations of this water-loving plant, even high up the hills, where it grew in artificial ponds. These served likewise as basins for the reception of mullets, which were taken when quite young out of the sea, and placed in reservoirs into which some sweet water was made to flow. They were then gradually accustomed to water less and less salt, and ultimately, after five or six weeks, transferred to the submerged taro plantations, where they grew to a large size, and acquired a delicious flavour.
The food of the common people in all these islands consisted entirely of vegetables: pork, and the flesh of dogs, which was particularly esteemed, being exclusively reserved for the use of the great. This taste seems strange, but as the dogs destined for the table were fed wholly upon bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, and other vegetables, their flesh was but little inferior to English lamb, and might well pass for a delicacy in a country where beef, mutton, and venison were unknown. The general drink was water or the milk of the cocoa-nut, but on festive occasions they prepared an intoxicating beverage called Kava from the root of a species of pepper.
Both men and women were dressed in Tapa, a kind of white cloth, which was not woven, but made like paper, of the macerated fibres of the bark of the Chinese mulberry and bread-fruit trees spread out and beaten together. The lower classes wore but a scanty covering of this material, while the nobles were amply attired in long and flowing garments, stained with various colours.
When even the rude Australian shows some desire to decorate his ugly person by sticking a bone through his nostrils, or by bedaubing his filthy body with paint, we cannot wonder at the taste for ornament displayed by the more polished South Sea Islanders. Elegant chaplets, of gaily-coloured feathers, adorned their raven hair, and flowers in the ears gratified at once the eye by their lively hues, and the smell by their delicious perfume.
The custom of tattooing so frequent among the Malays, and even among the Negroes and American Indians, was nowhere so universally and so elaborately practised as among the South Sea islanders. Each group had its particular patterns, each rank was differently marked. The instrument used for this painful operation was a kind of comb, the teeth of which were struck just through the skin, after which the punctures were rubbed with a kind of paste made of soot and oil which left an indelible stain.
The industrial dexterity of this ingenious people appeared in the manufacture of many other articles besides the Tapa. Rushes, grass, the bark of trees, and fibrous leaves furnished the material for finer mats than any made in Europe. The coarser kind of matting was employed for sleeping on in the night, or sitting on through the day; the finer sort was converted into garments in rainy weather, the Tapa being soon penetrated by wet. They were also very expert in making basket and wicker work; their baskets were of a vast number of different patterns, many of them exceedingly neat, and the making of them was an art practised by everyone, both men and women. Essentially maritime in their tastes, they excelled in the construction of their canoes, which were the more to be admired as an adze made of stone, a chisel or gouge made of bone, a rasp of coral, and the skin of a sting ray as a file and polisher, were the only tools which they possessed. With these rude implements they generally took up several days in felling a tree, which was then split into planks. The boards, having been very dexterously smoothed, were afterwards fitted to the boat with the same exactness that might be expected from an expert joiner.
To fasten them together, holes were bored with a piece of bone fixed into a stick for that purpose, and through these holes a kind of plaited cordage was passed, so as to hold the planks strongly together. The seams were caulked with dry rushes, and the whole outside of the vessel was painted over with a kind of gummy juice which supplied the place of pitch. Considering the inferiority of their tools, the building of one of their large war canoes, which sometimes had the enormous length of 108 feet and could hold forty men, was undoubtedly a piece of workmanship not inferior to the huge vessels constructed in Europe with the assistance of iron. Generally two of these war canoes were lashed together, with two masts set up between them, and a high platform raised above, on which the warriors, armed with spears and slings, were stationed; the rowers sat below, ready to receive the wounded from above and to send reinforcements to take their place. Single boats had an outrigger on one side, and only one mast in the middle; and in these frail constructions, they did not hesitate to sail far beyond the sight of land, shaping their course in the daytime by the sun, at night by the stars, to which they gave their particular names.
A fleet of war canoes with its curved figures, its waving pennants, and its men gracefully clothed in flowing garments, afforded a highly picturesque spectacle, which might give some idea of the vessels in which the Argonauts sailed to Colchis, or the Homeric heroes embarked for the destruction of Troy.
Accustomed to bathe from infancy, the half-amphibious South Sea Islanders are admirable swimmers. Captain Cook was amazed at the natatorial expertness of the Tahitians in a tremendously high surf, in which the best European swimmer would have been drowned, as the shore was covered with pebbles and large stones. Whenever a huge wave broke near them they dived under it and rose again on the other side. The stern of an old canoe added much to their sport. This they took out before them, and swam as far as the outermost breach in the reef, through which the sea came pouring in; when two or three getting into it and turning the square end to the breaking waves, were driven in towards the shore with incredible rapidity, sometimes almost to the beach, but generally the wave broke over them before they got half-way, in which case they dived and rose to the other side with the canoe in their hands and swimming out with it again were again driven back.
On the border of the reef of the island of Huaheini, Ellis frequently saw more than a hundred persons of all ages play like dolphins in the rolling breakers, sometimes riding on the crest of a wave and nearly enveloped with foam, and then again disappearing under the billows, which rolled like mountains above them.
The dwellings of the South Sea Islanders were small huts built under the shade of bread-fruit trees or cocoa palms, and open at the sides, so as to allow a free entrance to the cooling breeze--a great enjoyment in a climate blessed with a perpetual spring. A strong thatch of palm leaves effectually kept out the rain, and the floor was covered with hay, over which they spread mats to sleep on, this being the chief use to which their simple constructions were devoted, for, unless it rained, they ate and performed all their work in the open air.
The form of government in the large Polynesian groups was monarchical and aristocratic. When Captain Wallis first landed on Tahiti, a queen reigned over the beautiful island, and when Cook discovered the Sandwich Archipelago a succession of kings had long ruled over Hawaii. The genealogy of the great nobles was traced back as far as the remotest periods of their legendary history, and in some islands the kings, as in the old times of Greece, derived their origin in a direct line from the gods, so that religion lent its aid to secure their authority by the prestige of birth. Their person was sacred, none of the lower classes was allowed to touch them, and he who should have ventured to cast his shadow over their path would have been punished with death. Whenever the king or queen appeared in public, they were always carried on the shoulders of men, whose honourable office exonerated them from all other labour. In this manner they travelled full speed at the rate of more than five miles an hour. Other carriers, with a considerable retinue, ran alongside for the relief of their tired comrade, and at each relay royalty never placed its foot upon the ground, but vaulted over the head of the exhausted carrier upon the shoulders of his successor, who instantly proceeded on his journey at a sharp trot.
In the Friendly Archipelago the Tui Tonga, a sacred personage descending in a direct line from one of the chief Polynesian gods, enjoyed divine honours, which were paid him not only by his countrymen, but even by part of Samoa and the Feejee Islands. The highest nobles were obliged to sit down when he passed; a mark of reverence which they themselves exacted from the meanest peasant.
An etiquette as severe and circumstantial as that which prescribes the courtly forms existing among the most civilised people of Asia or Europe, served to maintain the wide line of demarcation which separated the lords of the land from the common artisans and cultivators of the soil: and the strange superstition of the Tabu, one of the most effectual instruments of government ever invented by man, still further secured the willing obedience of the people.
In general the Tabu signified a prohibition. It interdicted the visiting of certain spots, the use of certain articles of food, the touching of certain objects, the use of certain words, the performance of certain actions, and he who, for instance, touched the dead body of a chieftain was subjected during several months to a tabu, and was then not allowed to carry his victuals to his mouth with his own hands. When hungry and no one near at hand to feed him, he was obliged to creep on all fours and seize his victuals with his lips.
The Tabu spread its influence over every occurrence of life. It was political or religious, general or individual, of limited duration or perpetual. Sometimes it proceeded from the whim of a chieftain, or the caprice of a priest; sometimes it appeared as a measure of general utility, and then again as a protection for individual property; sometimes it extended over a whole people, and in other cases was limited to a single individual. Its yoke lay particularly heavy on the women, whom it deprived of many enjoyments, and subjected to many irksome restrictions. But, though frequently tyrannical and oppressive, it often performed the salutary part of our laws and police regulations, with this difference, however, in its favour: that whereas many of us are, more or less, inclined to infringe the law, no Polynesian would have ventured to disobey the Tabu, being perfectly convinced that this crime would immediately entail upon him the signal vengeance of his gods. Every chieftain had the right to subject his inferiors to a Tabu, and was in a like manner obliged to submit to the interdictions pronounced by his superior. If by some chance he had infringed a Tabu, he could only be exonerated by a chieftain of higher rank. Thus the Tabu placed an enormous power in the hands of the privileged castes, and secured by the chains of superstition the eternal slavery of the people.
As among the ancient Greeks an invisible world of gods ruled over the visible phenomena of nature, thus also the fertile fancy of the Polynesians peopled earth and heaven, the ocean and the mountains with a mighty host of spirits. They recognized their presence in the rising sun, the mild moonlight, the howling storm, the roaring breaker, and the soft evening breeze. The peak of the mountain, the fleecy vapours hanging on its side, the foaming waterfall, and above all the volcano and the earthquake, were all palpable objects, connected with a presiding divinity. Most of these gods were vindictive, proud, irascible beings, ever ready to do mischief in a material or immaterial form; and even the spirits of deceased relations were feared as malignant demons. Thus, here as elsewhere, superstition added its fantastical terrors to the real evils of existence.
The Polynesian Pantheon, a strange mixture of poetry and absurdity, was as richly peopled as that of the ancient Greeks or Scandinavians. Tangaloa was the creator of their little world, which, according to the Tonga account, he fished up from the sea. Tahiti was the first part that appeared. Just as its rock showed above water, the line broke. However, the rock in which the hook stuck could still be seen on the island of Hoonga, and the family of Tuitonga were in possession of the hook. In Tahiti and Samoa the workman was the same, but the work different. The Tahitian Tangaloa formed the ocean from the sweat of his brow--so hard did he work in making the land.
The Samoan sent down his daughter Toli in the shape of a snipe to survey the world below. As she saw nothing but sea, her father rolled down a stone, which became one island, and another which became a second, and so on. The first growth of such islands was wild vine. They were pulled out of the ground and heaped up to rot, so that worms were produced. Out of these worms grew men and women.
Oro, the god of war, was the mighty protector of Tahiti. His father, Taaroa, was the son of night, for here also, as among the Greeks, all originally proceeded from darkness.
Hiro, the Polynesian Neptune, likewise played a considerable part in legendary lore. Once the monsters of the deep had lulled him with a profound sleep while the god of winds raised a terrible storm to destroy a vessel in which his friends were embarked. Their destruction seemed inevitable, but a good spirit penetrated into the sea-grot where the god was dozing, awoke him from his slumbers, and told him of the danger his followers were in. Instantly he rose to the surface, where his presence scared away the weaker storm-god, and his friends were saved.
In the Sandwich Islands, the chief divinities resided in the burning craters of Mauna Loa, for no phenomenon of nature was equal in terrific grandeur to these explosions of subterranean fire, and the mysterious powers which caused them were necessarily prominent in power. There dwelt Pele the supreme goddess of fire, with a whole train of subordinate deities, such as Kamoho ‘the king of steam,’ Teoahitamatana ‘the fire-spitting son of war,’ Hiatawawahilani ‘the sky-rending cloud-compeller.’ The roar of the volcano was the music to which their deities danced, their delight was to swim in the waves of the fiery sea. Never did these dreadful beings leave their abodes for a beneficial purpose, but only to receive offerings or to wreak vengeance: the quaking of the earth, the outpouring lava stream announced their coming. This religion of dread placed of course an enormous power in the hands of the priests, who profited largely by the terrors of a credulous people.
As in Greece, the divinities of the Polynesian Pantheon were worshipped under the palpable form of idols in large temples, or inclosures; but while Apollo or Jove fashioned by the hand of a Phidias or Scopas still command the admiration of a world which has long since ceased to believe in them, the rude figures which the Tahitian or the Hawaiian adored were models of hideous deformity.
Like the ancient Greeks, the Polynesians had also their Elysium. The higher gods, and the souls of kings, chiefs and councillors, resided in a happy island, more beautiful than any on earth; but the common people were excluded from this abode of felicity, as they have been debarred from all political rights in life. The idea of a retributive justice had no room in the Polynesian mind, and birth claimed its privileges even after death, while merit was ignored.
To judge by their progress in the industrial arts, their elaborate political institutions, and the courtesy of their manners, the South Sea Islander, particularly the Tahitians, might claim a place among civilized nations, but in many respects they were still deeply plunged in barbarism. Their wars were sanguinary and cruel, their morals dissolute. Infanticide was extremely common among them, and the cause of this horrible crime was not the want of food but a culpable laziness. Although the fertility of the soil and the mildness of a delicious climate rendered it easy to provide for a large family, the general indolence was so great that a man with more than three children (a rare case) was looked upon as groaning under an intolerable burden, and thus thousands of infants were immolated to the love of ease of their unnatural parents.
Human sacrifices were frequently offered to propitiate the gods--in war time, on the occasion of some great festival, of the illness or coronation of a king, or at the building of a temple. Each of the pillars which sustained the roof of one of these edifices was planted in the body of a wretch immolated in honour of the cruel divinity to whom the building was consecrated. To the honour of Polynesian humanity it must, however, be added, that the victims--either prisoners of war or persons who had incurred the enmity of some priest or noble--were not made to suffer any additional torment, but suddenly despatched by the unexpected blow of a club.
In all the larger Polynesian groups the state of society briefly described in the foregoing pages has long since disappeared.
In Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga, and Samoa, the ancient religion, the ancient customs, the ancient manufactures have more or less given way to European influences, and now only exist in the more remote or more insignificant islands where the missionary has either not appeared or which are too poor to tempt our avarice.
The difference between the geological structure of the different islands of the Pacific has a marked influence upon the condition of their inhabitants. In the high and more extensive islands, where the structure is primitive and volcanic, the productions of the soil are more abundant and various, and the conditions for social development more favourable, than in the low small islands of a coralline structure, where food is less abundant, the sun more scorching, and generally the complexion of the inhabitants darker.
While the Tahitians, Sandwich Islanders, Samoans, and Fijians cultivate the taro plant or pluck the fruits of the bread-fruit tree, the coral islander is frequently restricted to the nuts of the cocoa palm, or even to those of the screw pine, and adds to his sparing vegetable meal only a few crabs or fishes which he gathers on the reef or catches in the lagoon.
On some of the low Caroline Islands, whose inhabitants undertake long sea voyages, the ideas of the people have naturally a somewhat wider range; but in general the poverty of the language corresponds with the narrow circle of a life confined to so small a space and to so few objects of interest.
The inhabitants of Hau or Bow Island, situated in the centre of the extensive Paumotu group, give us a good idea of the dreary monotony of a coral islander’s life. Captain Beechey, who visited them in 1826, describes them as an ill-favoured, indolent race, above the middle size, with strong bones but flaccid muscles. The ugliness of the men was surpassed by that of the women, who were obliged to work in the hot sun while their lazy lords and masters looked on, reclining in the shade. Having obtained the chief’s permission to fell some wood, he endeavoured to procure the natives’ assistance by liberal offers of tobacco and shirts, but in spite of this tempting salary the chief was the only man among them who could be roused from his lethargy and induced to work, and even he let the axe drop before the first tree was felled.
With the aid of an interpreter, Captain Beechey learned many interesting particulars about these islanders during his four days’ sojourn among them. They had, as they said, given up cannibalism some time ago; but, to judge by the diabolical animation which spread over the chief’s brutal countenance as he described the excellent flavour of human flesh, there is every reason to believe that they were in great danger of a relapse. These savages preferred eating their victuals raw, and were thus in fact but one degree removed from that horrid custom. A canoe full of fish having landed in the neighbourhood of the village, they immediately devoured the whole cargo, leaving nothing but the bones and fins. Their marriage ceremonies were as simple as possible: a man had only to say to a woman ‘Thou shalt be my wife!’ and, provided she was not pre-engaged, no further ceremony was required. The children seemed to be the only objects for which the men showed any affection; the women at least came in for no share of it. While the men stretched their lazy limbs in the shade, these unfortunate creatures were obliged to gather shell-fish on the pointed coral reefs, or to seek for pandanus nuts in the woods. They went to this work at break of day, and on returning from their morning’s labour had no time to rest, but were obliged to serve their hungry masters, who first devoured the best part of the fleshy substance inclosed in the rind of the nuts and then threw the rest to the women as we should throw a bone to a dog. After this, the women cracked the nuts with a heavy stone in order to extract the four or five small kernels about the size of an almond which they contain, and which, were laid aside for the men. As a great number of nuts was necessary to satisfy their voracious appetite, the women were in fact occupied all day long in gathering mussels, sea-urchins, and pandanus nuts, and cracking the latter.
The supremacy of the stronger sex was asserted with the utmost severity, and nowhere did the tyranny of man show itself in a more contemptible light. Once a poor woman, fancying herself unobserved, ventured to eat a few kernels of the nuts she had fetched from a great distance, but unfortunately did not escape the vigilant eye of her brutal husband, who immediately rose and knocked her down. Thus overworked and debased by ill-treatment, we cannot wonder if the females possess none of those qualities and graces which render women in Europe so charming.
Truly, even in the wildest regions of the earth, it would be difficult to find a spot still less adapted to the moral and intellectual improvement of its inhabitants than a coral island, despite its cloudless sky, its waving palm trees, its azure lagoon, and the magnificence of the sea hurling its snow-white breakers against the reef.