IV 



THE VIRGIN FOREST 



When we hear the words "the virgin forest" a green wilderness 

 appears before our eyes, that reveals, far from the civilized world, 

 only the still life and movement of majestic Nature. A boy's eyes 

 glitter when he hears of the primeval forest, and a longing seizes 

 him one day to explore this green dusk for himself. 



On European soil, however, only the smallest remnant of the 

 primeval forest is left. All the more, therefore, the imagination plays 

 with the thought of the forests of other lands, of which the travellers 

 bring us their reports. And in truth it is in the virgin forest that 

 the mind avid of discovery will most surely attain the fulfilment of 

 its longings. It is in the very nature of the untouched forest to be 

 the guardian of secrets, and it has from of old been the refuge of 

 those creatures which belong to an earlier period, and can no longer 

 live their former life in a changed world. 



Thus it was in the virgin forest that the okapi, the gorilla, 

 and the pigmy tribes of the Akka found their last refuge. The 

 Indian jungle gives shelter to the tapir, and the jungle of Ceylon 

 to the dwindling race of the Veddahs. The last specimens of the 

 European wild horse, which shortly after the glacial period trod 

 the plains of Europe in countless herds, were killed in the forest 

 of the Vosges, and the bison, which originally roamed the plains, 

 became the forest aurochs. And when the Germans made their 

 way up the Rhine and the Danube, and built their homesteads on 

 the flanks of the hills, they often saw fires burning on the wooded 

 heights above them. These were the fires of the dark-haired abori- 

 gines who had withdrawn before the great migration. Once they 

 too had lived in the plains, and had built their huts on piles driven 

 into the beds of the lakes. For the new masters of the land, however, 

 they were the Albi, the wizards, who lived mysteriously in the dense 

 forest, where in the deep ravines even the scaly dragon had his lair. 



We can guess how the imagination was excited by such tales, and 

 how many a boy would think that there could be nothing finer 

 than to attempt a voyage of discovery into the wild forest. From 

 those old days the sense of the primeval forest has survived in our 

 minds ; and it is this sense which is liberated by the spectacle of the 

 tropical woodland. No one can get out of his own skin; even at the 



63 



