Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/473

Rh the clearing of a plantation, they make no impression on the forest; they form a part of one great whole, every portion of which has accommodated itself to every other. Tropical man does not rule Nature, but is himself a part of her great domain.

The old Dutch sugar planter with his slaves made little more impression on the forest than the savage. True, his clearing was larger and lasted as long as his struggle with Nature was kept up; but when, finding out the superior fertility of the coast lands, he abandoned it and retired, the forest quickly incorporated it with herself. For about a hundred miles up the Berbice and Demerara Rivers the banks were once lined with plantations; now, beyond some ten miles, every one of these has reverted to dense forest, here and there only a few negro huts indicating that man still lives there, like the Indian, without making any real impression.

The stages in the onward march of the forest over a clearing are most interesting. Perhaps two or three hundred acres had been planted with sugar canes, and fifty in plantains, vegetables, and fruit. There would be a fair-sized dwelling house, a water or cattle sugar mill, huts for the negroes, and a wharf on the river bank. The planter decided to give up the place, as he had an offer of a more fertile piece of land on the coast. Taking away everything portable, including the machinery of his mill, he abandoned the rest, carried away his negroes, and left the clearing to Nature.

Let us look upon the plantation a year later. Already a thicket has grown up which is only penetrable by the constant use of a cutlass. After a great deal of labor we reach the borders of the once tidy clearing. What a wonderful sight! Along the line of forest trees a dense wall of creepers rises sixty to a hundred feet high, forming an effective veil to the dark arcades beyond. From these stretch out long ropes, twining vegetable serpents, and giants' fingers, all moving toward what was once the open space. Some are hundreds of yards long, rooting at the joints, whence other branches radiate and form the dense obstruction we have cut through.

The creepers, twiners, and scramblers have not yet reached the house, but Nature is at work there also. Round it was once an orchard of oranges, limes, star apples, and other tropical fruit, with a few flowering shrubs. Most of these are now overrun with the blood-sucking loranths—vegetable leeches—which are continually draining their juices and evidently fattening on the spoil. These exotic bushes and trees have no business here; they are intruders. If man protects them and destroys their enemies they can thrive, but if he abandons them they must perish. Perhaps you are thirsty and look for an orange, but among a dozen trees not a single fruit can be found, and never will be again.