THE VILLAGE
IN THE JUNGLE
BY
L. S. WOOLF
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1913
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
To V. W.
I've given you all the little, that I've to give;
You've given me all, that for me is all there is;
So now I just give back what you have given—
If there is anything to give in this.
CHAPTER I
The village was called Beddagama, which means the village in the jungle.It lay in the low country or plains, midway between the sea and thegreat mountains which seem, far away to the north, to rise like a longwall straight up from the sea of trees. It was in, and of, the jungle;the air and smell of the jungle lay heavy upon it—the smell of hot air,of dust, and of dry and powdered leaves and sticks. Its beginning andits end was in the jungle, which stretched away from it on all sidesunbroken, north and south and east and west, to the blue line of thehills and to the sea. The jungle surrounded it, overhung it, continuallypressed in upon it. It stood at the door of the houses, always ready topress in upon the compounds and open spaces, to break through the mudhuts, and to choke up the tracks and paths. It was only by yearlyclearing with axe and katty that it could be kept out. It was a livingwall about the village, a wall which, if the axe were spared, wouldcreep in and smother and blot out the village itself.
There are people who will tell you that they have no fear of the jungle,that they know it as well as the streets of Maha Nuwara or their owncompounds. Such people are either liars and boasters, or they are fools,without understanding or feeling for things as they really are. I knewsuch a man once, a hunter and tracker of game, a little man withhunched-up shoulders and peering, cunning little eyes, and a small darkface all pinched and lined, for he spent his life crouching, slinking,and peering through the undergrowth and the trees. He was more silentthan the leopard and more cunning than the jackal: he knew the tracksbetter than the doe who leads the herd. He would boast that he could seea buck down wind before it could scent him, and a leopard through thethick undergrowth before it could see him. 'Why should I fear thejungle?' he would say. 'I know it better than my own compound. A fewtrees and bushes and leaves, and some foolish beasts. There is nothingto fear there.' One day he took his axe in his hand, and the sandals ofdeer-hide to wear in thorny places, and he went out to search for theshed horns of deer, which he used to sell to traders from the towns. Henever returned to the village again, and months afterwards in thickjungle I found his bones scattered upon the ground, beneath somethorn-bush