LIFE IN THE EQUATORIAL RAIN FOREST Equatorial Rain Forest.—It seems strange that the finest vegeta tion should be associated with the most backward types of men. Such is the case in equatorial regions, where high temperature is accompanied by abundant moisture at practically all seasons. The• trees are often so huge and leafy that their lofty tops form an almost unbroken canopy through which the sun rarely shines. In these dense equatorial rain-forests the trees are often covered with bright-colored parasitic plants, while long vines, or leaves, hang down like great living ropes. Near the ground there is little vegetation except where the death of an old tree has left an opening. There hosts of young plants grow so fast that they seem to be racing, the prize being life for those that attain dominance, and death for the rest. As shown in Fig. 89 such forests occur in the Amazon basin eastern Central America, west central Africa, the East Indies, nortneastern Australia, and the parts of India on the seaward slope of the main mountain ranges.
Handicaps to Health.—In such regions man is subject to most serious handicaps. He has little energy, because the damp, steady heat never changes and never invigorates. He suffers terribly from malaria and other tropical diseases. When ground was being broken for a railroad in the forest of eastern Guatemala the management dared not keep the West Indian laborers at work more than two or three weeks at a time. A longer stay would almost surely have led to death from malignant malaria.
Along with the trying conditions of climate and disease go a host of insect pests and other little irritations. In Liberia, for example, moths eat up clothing; cockroaches devour bookbindings and swarm in the detached cookhouse which takes the place of a kitchen; rats climb to seemingly inaccessible locations and leave nothing but the fragments of the treasures they have eaten; white ants consume the sills of houses and the rungs of chairs, which collapse most unex pectedly; driver ants sweep through the house, and every other creature from man to lizard must vacate even if it be in the midst of rain and the dead of night; "jiggers" bore under the skin of the foot and lay their eggs; fleas bite; the damp heat produces rash against which the lightest clothing feels like nettles. These things and a hundred others are irritating enough at any time, but through the blur of a "touch of sun" or the haze of a burning fever they assume proportions out of all reason. The odors, the mists, the sights, the
sounds get on the nerves; the heavy, drooping, silent, impenetrable green forest everywhere shuts one in like a smothering grave; the mind grows sick, and the body follows.
Scarcity of Beasts of Burden.—A second great handicap in equa torial rain-forests is the difficulty of keeping domestic animals even in the clearings. Noxious insects plague animals almost as badly as they plague man. For example, in large parts of tropical Africa the bite of the tsetse fly not only causes the deadly sleeping sickness in man, but is fatal to domestic animals, for even the donkey is not immune. Even if animals escape disease, they rarely thrive, for what little grass can grow among the luxuriant trees is usually so rank and coarse that it is not nutritious.
Difficulty of Transportation.—The difficulty of keeping domestic animals emphasizes another great handicap of the equatorial forests, namely, the difficulty of transportation. If the natives attempt to travel through the forest without roads, they encounter swamps, great projecting roots, dense thickets, and other obstructions as bad as anything our ancestors met when they first settled in America. They are also likely to be attacked by wild beasts and snakes, as well as by poisonous insects. Suppose someone has energy enough to clear away the forest for a road. New plants spring up almost overnight, and grow 10 to 20 feet in a year. The map of Quintana Roo, the densely forested and uninhabited southern part of the Yucatan peninsula, for example, shows a number of roads, but when a traveler wishes to follow them he is told that they do not exist. They were kept open a few years when chicle, the sap from which chewing gum is made, was being gathered, but when this work was finished the trails were smothered in vegetation within two or three years. A macadam road or even a railroad may suffer the same fate, although more slowly. On the railroad that runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean across the isthmus of Tehaun tepec, for example, men must be exployed to cut the bushes every few months. Where communication is so difficult, people naturally can profit little by intercourse with others who bring new methods and ideas. Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia suffer greatly because the equatorial forests which begin on the eastern slope of the Andes hamper communication with the Atlantic side of the continent, and so with Europe.