Confessions of a Beachcomber, Edmund James Banfield [easy readers txt] 📗

the lawyer cane or vine (CALAMUS). It is a vegetable of tortuous ambitions, that defies you, that embarrasses with attention, arrests your progress, occasionally envelops you in a net work of bewildering, slender, and cruelly-armed tentacles, that everywhere bristles with points, that curves back on itself, and makes loops and wriggles; that springs from a thin, sprawling and helpless beginning, and develops into almost miraculous lengths, and ramifies and twists and turns in "verdurous glooms," ascends and descends, grovels in the moist earth and among mouldy leaves, clasps with aerial rootlets every possible support, and eventually clambers and climbs above the tallest tree, twirling its armed tentacles round airy nothings. It blossoms inconspicuously, and its fruit is as hard, tough and dry as an argument on torts. Ordinary mortals call it a vine. Botanists describe it as a prickly climbing palm, and no jungle is complete without it. There are several varieties of this interesting plant, all more or less of a grasping, clinging character, and each of vital importance in the republic of vegetation.

Sometimes when it is severed with a sharp knife there flows from the cane a fluid bright and limpid as a judge's summing up; occasionally it is all as dry as dust and as sneezy, and its prickly leaf sheathes the abode of that vexing insect which causes the scrub itch.

This plant produces lengths of cane similar in every respect to the schoolmaster's weapon--familiar but immortal--varying in diameter from a quarter of an inch to an inch and a half, and in length, as some assert, to no less than 500 and 600 feet. Certainly 300 feet is not uncommon, and one can readily concede an additional 100 feet, knowing the extravagance of the remarkable palm under ordinary circumstances. And the cane weaves and entangles the jungle, binds and links mighty trees together, and with the co-operation of other clinging, and creeping, and trailing plants--some massive as ship's cables, and some thin and fine as fishing-lines--forms compact masses of vegetation to penetrate which tracks must be cut yard by yard. When this disorderly conglomeration of trees and saplings, vines, creepers, trailers and crawlers, complicated and confused, has to be cleared, as civilisation demands the use of the soil, sometimes a considerable area will remain upright, although every connection with Mother Earth is severed, so interlaced and interwoven and anchored are the vines with those clinging to trees yet uncut. Then, in a moment, as some leading strand gives way, the whole mass falls--smothered, bruised, and crushed--to be left for a month and more before the fires destroy the faded relics of the erstwhile gloriously rampant jungle. In all this the lawyer cane is the most aggressive and hostile. Not only are there prickles on the 10-feet thongs, but the leaves and leaf-sheaths are thickly beset. In one species the 6-feet-long leaves bear upon the margins and upper surface long, thin, needle-like points, black and glossy, and attaining a length Of 3 inches; the main rib bears stout re-curved prickles, while the sheaths which envelop the cane are densely covered with dark brown or black points 1 inch and more long.

One cannot cut jungle and escape bloodshed, for the long tentacles of the lawyer catch you unawares sooner or later, and then, for all are set with double rows of re-curved points, do not endeavour to escape by strife and resistance--it is no use pulling against those pricks--but by subtlety and diplomacy. The more you pull, the worse for your skin and clothes; but with tact you may become free, with naught but neat scratches and regular rows of splinters. The points of the hooks to which you have been attached anchor themselves deep in the skin, and tear their way out and rip and rend your clothes, and your condition of mind, body and estate, is all for the worse.

But the uses of the lawyer cane are many and various. Blacks employ it as ropes, as stays for canoes, and, split into narrow threads and woven, for baskets and fish-traps; and white men find it handy for all sorts of purposes, from boat-painters and fenders to stock-whip and maul-handles. Suppose a tree that a black wishes to climb presents difficulties low down, he will procure a length of lawyer cane, partly biting and partly breaking it off, if he lacks a cutting implement. Then he will make a loop, so bruising and chewing the end that it becomes flexible and ties almost as readily and quite as securely as rope. Ascending a neighbouring tree, he will manoeuvre one end over a limb of that which he wishes to climb, and slip it through the loop, and run it up until it is fast. A cane 50 feet long, no thicker than one's little finger, fastened to the upper branch of a tree, has on trial borne the weight of three fairly-sized men. Thus tested, the black has no hesitation or difficulty in rapidly ascending, and in lowering down young birds, or eggs (wrapped in leaves), or whatsoever his quest.

Another cane-producing plant (FLAGELLARIA), though innocent of the means of grappling, succeeds in overtopping tall trees and smothering them with a mass of interwoven leafage. Each of its narrow leaves ends in a spiral tendril, sensitive but tough, which entwines itself about other leaves and twigs. Feeling their respective ways, the tender tips of leaves of the one family touch and twist, and the grasp is for life. Though not of such extravagant character as the lawyer vine, the FLAGELLARIA seems to be endowed with perceptive faculty almost amounting to instinct in selecting the shortest way toward the support necessary for its plan of existence, which is to climb not to grovel. It spurns the ground. New shoots spring from old rhizomes in the clearings, and turn towards the nearest tree as though aware of its presence, as the tendrils of a grape vine instinctively grope for the artificial support provided for it. Progress along the ground is slow, but once within reach, the shoot rears its head, stretches out a delicate finger-tip, and clings with the grasp of desperation. A vigorous impulse thrills the whole plant. It has found its purpose in life. With the concentration of its energies, its development is rapid and merciless. Its host is rapidly enveloped in entangling embraces, smothered with innumerable clinging kisses.



MAUVE, GREEN AND GREY

An attempt to do justice by description to the rich and varied vegetation of Dunk Island in these unlearned pages would bespeak an idle, almost profane vanity. Yet the pleasure of revealing one or two of the more conspicuous features cannot be forgone. In the term conspicuous is included plants that attract general attention. Possibly the skilled botanist might disregard obvious and pleasing effects, and find classic joy in species and varieties unobtrusive if not obscure.

About 600 feet above sea-level, looking across the Family Group to the great bulk of Hinchinbrook, there is an irregular precipice, half concealed by the trees and plants that decorate its seams and crevices and spring up about its cool and ever gloomy base.

During the greater part of the year water trickles down the grey face of the rock in narrow gleaming bands, and wheresoever are the faintest footholds there is a flower--mauve in its modesty. It is not common enough to possess a familiar name, but botanists have called it BAEA HYGROSCOPICA, for it is always found near water, invariably pure, cool, fern-filtered mountain water. From the damp rock the roots of the plant, matted and interwoven, may be peeled off in a thin layer, for the plant is epiphytical, depending as much upon heat, moisture and light as on any constituents of the soil for sustenance. When the season is exceptionally dry, the thick, soft wrinkled leaves become parched and shrivelled; but a shower restores their vigour and lovely, tender green, and fresh flowers slightly resembling the violet, but borne on scapes 6 or 8 inches long, bloom within a few hours of the revivification of the plant. In moist seasons the plant, true to its hygrometic character, continuously blooms, and while it braves the hottest sun on the bare places of the burning rock as long as its roots find moist spots, it will also be found in the shade below, where the flowers are richer in colour, more of purple than mauve, and, rarely, pure white. Generally the plant depends upon others or cracks or crevices in rock for foothold. It shares the grasp the spongy moss may take on the slippery surface, or when the root, thin as whipcord, of a certain fig-tree has crept across the face of the grey rock forming a ridge or barricade against which decayed vegetation accumulates, there the BAEA flourishes, displaying an indeterminate line of mauve flowers above oval, crimpled leaves. Mauve, green and grey--the mauve of the Victorian age, the green of the cowslip, the grey of glistering, weathering granite.

The whole of the rock face is a study. Grasping with greedy white talons a piece of decaying wood is one of the prettiest of the more common orchids, DENDROBIUM SMILIAE which produces short spikes of waxy flowers, pink tipped with green; the creeping, sweet-scented, BULBOPHYLLUM BAILEYI, with greenish-yellow flowers spotted with purple, and the commonest of the dendrobiums (UNDULATUM) revel here.

The edge of the precipice looks over a tangle of jungle down upon the top of a giant milkwood tree (ALSTONIA SCHOLARIS), taken possession of by a colony of metallic starlings, whose hundreds of brown nests hang in clusters from the topmost branches. By the perpetual shrieks and calls of these most lively of birds a straight course may be steered through the gloomy jungle to the tree, and thence to the beach, as a ship gains her haven through a fog by the sound of unseen warning horns and bell-surmounted rocks. On the trunk of this great tree may still be seen the marks of stone tomahawks of the primitive inhabitants of the island. There is none now to disturb and plunder the hasty birds.



STEALTHY MURDERERS

The fig-tree which aids the BAEA in its object of beautifying the precipice is one of a very numerously represented species, which assumes great variety of form, and produces fruit of varying quality. This particular variety (FICUS CUNNINGHAMII) begins life as a parasite. A thin slender shoot, tremulously weak, leans lightly on the base of some tall tree, and finding agreeable conditions, clings and grows. A harmless, tender, thong-like shoot it is--a helpless plant, that could not stand alone or exist but for the hospitality of another of strength and substance. Soon a second shoot, slight and frail, emerges near the root, but at a different angle from its aspiring brother, and others as delicate as the first follow, until the trunk of the host is sprawled over by naked running shoots, grey-green in colour, crafty and insidious. As they increase in age the shoots flatten on the under surface and cross and recross. Wheresoever they touch they coalesce. The trunk becomes enveloped in living lace--in a network, rather, living, ever growing and irregular--the meshes of which gradually decrease in dimension. All the while squeezing and causing decay, the meshes close up. The trunk of the host is completely enclosed; it is the dying core of a living cylinder, for the first shoots have long since crept up among the branches, have expanded their leaves, and are busy sapping the life-blood of the tree at all points. A greedy intractable, implacable foe, it gives no quarter, but flourishes upon its dead or dying friend, upon which in its youth it leaned delicately for support. Finally it weaves its slender shoots among the topmost leaves of its victim, and having outgrown its growth, flourishes on its decay.

This vegetable usurper produces immense