Post by Heart of Darkness on Feb 22, 2005 5:04:25 GMT -5
[glow=Green,2,300]Ushindi Jungles[/glow]
"The chief says the river is dangerous beyond this point. He says there are hostile tribes,
dangerous waters, great animals, monsters and talunas, white-skinned jungle girls."
"The chief says the river is dangerous beyond this point. He says there are hostile tribes,
dangerous waters, great animals, monsters and talunas, white-skinned jungle girls."
THE JUNGLE CLIMATE
It is not always easy to make a fire in the forest. There are commonly two large rains during the day, one in the late afternoon and the other late in the evening, usually an Ahn or so before midnight, or the twentieth hour. These rains are often accompanied by violent winds, sometimes, I conjecture, ranging between one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty pasangs an Ahn. The forest is drenched. One searches for wood beneath rock overhangs or under fallen trees. One may also, with pangas, hack away the wet wood of fallen trees, until one can obtain the dry wood beneath. Even during the heat of the day it is hard to find suitable fuel.
The jungle, from the heat and rain, steams with humidity. Too, like the roof of a greenhouse, the lush green canopies of the rain forest tend to hold this moisture within. It is the fantastic oxygenation produced by the vegetation, conjoined with the humidity and heat, and the smell of plant life, and rotting vegetable matter and wood, that gives the diurnial jungle its peculiar and unmistakable atmosphere, an encompassing, looming, green, warm ambience which is both beautiful and awesome.
The nocturnal jungle is cooler, sometimes even chilly, and the air, a little thinner, a shade less rich, is different, the sun's energy no longer powering the complex reaction chains of photosynthesis. Yet, at night, perhaps one is even more aware of the presence and vastness of the jungle than during the day. In the daylight hours one's horizons are limited by the encircling greenery. In the night, in the darkness, one senses the almost indefinite extension of the jungle, thousands of pasangs in width and depth, about one.
Explorers, page 309 - 310
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LUSH GREEN CANOPY
Contrary to popular belief the floor of the jungle is not a maze of impenetrable growth, which must be hacked through with machete or pangs. Quite the contrary, it is usually rather open. This is the result of the denseness of the overhead canopies, because of which the ground is much shaded, the factor which tends to Inhibit and limit ground growth. Looking about among the slender, scattered colonnades of trees, exploding far overhead in the lush capitals of the green canopy, one is often exposed to vistas of one to two hundred feet, or more. It is hard not to be reminded of the columns in one of the great, shaded temples of Initiates, as in Turia or Ar. And yet here, in the rain forest, the natural architecture of sun, and shade, and growth, seems a vital celebration of life and its glory, not a consequence of aberrations and the madness of abnegations, not an invention of dismal men who have foresworn women, even slaves, and certain vegetables, and live by parasitically feeding and exploiting the superstitions of the lower castes. There are, of course, impenetrable, or almost impenetrable, areas in the jungle. These are generally "second-growth" patches. Through them one can make ones way only tortuously, cuffing with the machete or panga, stroke by stroke. They normally occur only where men have cleared land, and then, later, abandoned it. That is why they are called "second-growth" patches; they normally occur along rivers and are not characteristic of the botanical structure of the virgin rain forest itself.
Explorers, page 313
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SMALL MEN <br>
Some fifty yards into the jungle I stopped. There, ringing a depression, were more than a dozen small men. They wore loincloths with vine belts. From loops on the belts hung knives and small implements. They carried spears and nets. I do not think any of them were more than five feet in height. I doubt that any of them weighed more than eighty pounds. Their features were negroid but their skins were more coppery than dark brown or black. They did not seem to be one of the black races, which are usually tall, long-limbed and supple, but their racial affinities seemed clearly to be more aligned with one or more of those groups than any others.
Explorers, page 390
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CHIEF OF THE TALUNAS
On my belly, quietly, I entered it. Moonlight filtered in through the thatched roof and between the sticks which formed the sides of the hut. She was sleeping within, in her brief skins. Her weapons were at the side of the hut. She lay on a woven mat, her blond hair loose about her head. I examined her thighs, moving back the skins she wore. They had never been branded. She turned, restlessly. She was the girl who had feigned being chained at the post, to lure us into a trap. She was, I was sure, the leader of the talunas. She had given commands in our pursuit. She did not share her hut with another girl. She threw her arm restlessly over her head. I saw her hips move. I smiled. She was a woman in need. She moaned. I waited until her arms were again at her sides, and she lay upon her back. I saw her lift her haunches in her sleep. She was starved for a man's touch. Such women, in their waking hours, are often tense and restless; it is not unusual, too, for them to be irritable; and many times they are hostile toward men; many times they are not even fully aware of the underlying causes of their uncomfortable conscious states; how horrified they might be if they were told that they were women, and desired a master; yet must they not, on some level, be aware of this; would not their hostility toward the male who does not understand their needs or is too cowardly or weak to satisfy them not be otherwise inexplicable; what other hurt could the uncooperative male be inflicting upon them; the more he tries to please them the more they demand; the more he tries to do what they claim to wish the more he finds himself disparaged and despised; can he not see that what they really want is to be thrown to his feet and subjected, totally, to his will? They wish to be women, that is all. But how can they be women if men will not be men? How cruel a man is to deny to a woman the deepest need of her womanhood. Can they not care for them? Can they not see how beautiful they are, and how marvelous?
But I steeled myself against thoughts of mercy for the blond beauty. She was an enemy.
Her head was then turned to the side. She twisted restlessly in her sleep.
I waited until her head was back, and she lay upon her back, her arms at her side. Her small fists were clenched. She whimpered, needing a man.
She was indeed beautiful. I thought she would look well naked, on a slave block.
Swiftly I knelt across her body, pinning her down, pinning her arms to her sides. Almost instantly, frightened, she wakened. The trapped girl's first impulse is to scream. This may be depended upon. As her mouth opened I, with my thumb, thrust the rolled-cloth wadding deep into it. In a moment I had lashed it in place. I then threw her to her stomach and tied her hands behind her back. I then put her again on her back. Her eyes were wild, terrified, over the gag. With my knife I cut the skins from her. "You will not be needing these," I told her. I regarded her. Such women bring high prices. I took her in my arms. Her eyes were frightened. She shook her head fiercely, negatively. But her body, as though in sudden relief, desperately clasped me. She twisted her head to the side, and then, again, looked at me. She shook her head, negatively. But her body thrust itself against me, asking no quarter, piteously and helplessly soliciting its full impalement. "Very well," I told her. She looked at me in fury. "Your eyes say, 'No,'" I told her "but your body says 'Yes.'" Her hips and thighs then began to move. She put back her head in misery on the mat. Then, in a moment, there were tears in her eyes, and she tried to lift her head and gagged mouth to touch me. When later I crouched over her she sat up, shuddering, and put her cheek to my left shoulder. I felt the lashings of the gag against my shoulder.
I thrust her to her back on the mat. "You are only bait," I told her. I then tied her ankles together and, putting her over my shoulders, her head hanging down over my back, left the hut. I left by way of the stockade gate. I would leave an obvious trail.
Explorers, page 395-397
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