Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 136.djvu/589

 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

NOVEMBER, 1925

A CONVERSATION IN THE GALAPAGOS

MR. WILLIAM BEEBE AND A MARINE IGUANA

BY EDMUND WILSON

Mr. BeeBe. You are not afraid of me.

THE Icuana. Why should I be? I have seen sea lions before and they have never done me any harm.

MRr. BEeBe. The tropic-birds that come from the mainland to breed on the crater-slopes of Daphne have different ideas from you other inhabitants of the islands. They snap at me with their jagged red beaks when I try to go near their nests. They know that I am not a seal but a man, and they have had to do with men before.

THE Icuana. We iguanas are the masters of life; we are afraid of nothing. . The inferior caste of smaller lizards find the hawks rather troublesome, I be- lieve; they are sometimes caught and eaten and are always getting nasty frights. But we iguanas know that there is nothing in the universe which can interfere with us. Lie down beside

us here on the hot rock and enjoy a

good stupefying doze.

Mr. BeEeBeE. I would rather visit with you a little. I have come a long way to see you. I believe that you animals can help me to understand a mystery to the solution of which I am

YOL. 188 — NO. & ’ Go gle

devoting my life; and as there are no other marine iguanas in the world I have naturally made a point of coming here.

THE IcuaNA. I cannot help you. So far as I am concerned, everything is a mystery.

Mr. BEeBe. You talk as my own race has long talked, but as we talk no longer. When my ancestors interro- gated animals, their questions were merely rhetorical: they never expected them to be answered. ‘Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night. . . In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? . . . What the hammer, what the chain, Knit thy strength and forged thy brain?’ The man who addressed the tiger in this fashion was resigned to the mystery; he became exalted in contemplating it. But I can no longer be content in the contemplation of something which I do not understand, and it is only in the clearing-up of mysteries that I taste my exaltation. I have come to put you a similar question, but I mean to make you answer it.

THE Icuana. Yourtrouble is wasted; I have nothing to say. I can only