Part 10 (1/2)

Speaking of the forests round Para, Bates says:--”In these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its fellows, struggling upwards towards light and air--branch and leaf and stem--regardless of its neighbours. Parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own advancement. Live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in these wildernesses. There is one kind of parasitic tree very common near Para which exhibits this feature in a very prominent manner. It is called the ”Sipo Matador,”

or Murderer Liana. It belongs to the fig order, and has been described and figured by Von Martius as the Atlas to Spix and Martius' Travels.

I observed many specimens. _The base of its stem would be unable to bear the weight of the upper growth_; it is obliged therefore to support itself on a tree of _another species_. In this it is not essentially different from other climbing trees and plants, but the way the Matador sets about it is peculiar and produces certainly a disagreeable impression. It springs up close to the tree on which it intends to fix itself, and the wood of its stem grows by spreading itself like a plastic mould over one side of the trunk of its supporter. It then puts forth, from each side, an armlike branch, which grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of sap were flowing and hardening as it went. This adheres closely to the trunk of the victim, and the two arms meet at the opposite side and blend together.

These arms are put forth at somewhat regular intervals in mounting upwards, and the victim, when its strangler is full grown, becomes tightly clasped by a number of inflexible rings. These rings gradually grow larger as the Murderer flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with that of its neighbour, and in course of time they kill it, by stopping the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle now remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own growth. Its ends have been served--it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and disseminated its kind; and _now when the dead trunk moulders away its own end approaches; its support is gone and itself also falls_.”

The a.n.a.logy is almost the most perfect in literature, and if we would not see it made perfect in history we must get rid of the parasite grip before we are quite strangled. If we would not share the coming darkness we must shake off the murderer's hold, before murderer and victim fall together. That fall is close at hand. A brave hand may yet cut the ”Sipo Matador,” and the slayer be slain before he has quite stifled his victim.

If that hand be not a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the forest are on the wing.

Regions Caesar never knew, including Hibernia, have come under the eagles, nay the vultures, of imperial Britain. But the lion's maw is full.

At length the overgorged beast of prey, with all the diseases in his veins that over-eating brings, finds that his claws are not so sharp as they were, that his belly is much heavier when he tries to leap and that it is now chiefly by his voice he still scares his enemies.

The Empire of England dates from Tudor times. Henry VIII was the first John Bull. When the conquered Irish and the wealth derived from their rich country England set out to lay low every free people that had a country worth invading and who, by reasons of their non-imperial instinct were not prepared to meet her on equal terms. India she overran by the same methods as had given her Ireland.

Wholesale plunder, treachery and deceit met at her council board under a succession of Governors and Viceroys, whose policy was that of Captain Kidd, and whose ante-room of state led every native prince to the slippery plank. The thing became the most colossal success upon earth. No people were found able to withstand such a combination. How could peoples still nursed in the belief of some diviner will ruling men's minds resist such an attack?

For one brief s.p.a.ce Napoleon reared his head; and had he cast his vision to. Ireland instead of to Egypt he would have found out the secret of the pirate's stronghold. But the fates willed otherwise; the time was not yet. He sailed for Alexandria, lured by a dream, instead of for Cork; and the older Imperialists beat the new Imperialists and secured a fresh century of unprecedented triumph. The Pyramids looked down on Waterloo; but the headlands of Bantry Bay concealed the mastery, and the mystery, of the seas.

With 1811 was born the era of Charles Peace, no less than of John Bull--on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel said on his convict hulk: ”On English felony the sun never sets.” May it set in 1915.

From Napoleon's downfall to the battle of Colenso, the Empire founded by Henry VIII has swelled to monstrous size. Innumerable free peoples have bit the dust and died with plaintive cries to heaven. The wealth of London has increased a thousand fold, and the giant hotels and caravanserais have grown, at the millionaire's touch, to rival the palaces of the Caesars.

”All's well with G.o.d's world”--and poet and plagiarist, courtier and courtesan, Kipling and cant--these now dally by the banks of the Thames and dine off the peoples of the earth, just as once the degenerate populace of imperial Rome fed upon the peoples of the Pyramids. But the thing is near the end. The ”secret of Empire” is no longer the sole possession of England. Other peoples are learning to think imperially. The Goths and the Visigoths of modern civilisation are upon the horizon. Action must soon follow thought. London, like Rome, will have strange guests. They will not pay their hotel bills.

Their day is not yet but it is at hand. ”Home Rule” a.s.semblies and Indian ”Legislative Councils” may prolong the darkness; but the dawn is in die sky. And in the downfall of the Tudor Empire, both Ireland and India shall escape from the destruction and join again the free civilizations of the earth.

The birds of the forest are on the wing.

It is an Empire in these straights that turns to America, through Ireland, to save it. And the price it offers is--war with Germany.

France may serve for a time, but France like Germany, is in Europe, and in the end it is all Europe and not only Germany England a.s.sails.