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╇ i

Coexistence
ii
╇ iii

Coexistence
The Ecology and Evolution
of Tropical Biodiversity
vwv
Jan Sapp

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Jan Sapp 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–063244–1

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v

For
Camille Limoges
vi
╇ vii

CON T E N T S

Acknowledgmentsâ•…â•…ix
Interviewsâ•…â•…xi

1. The Other Worldâ•…â•… 1

2. Legendsâ•…â•… 11
3. Romancing the Rainforestâ•…â•… 25
4. Regenerationâ•…â•… 40
5. Is Evolution Different in the Tropics?â•…â•… 52
6. Niche Constructionâ•…â•… 62
7. Rhythms of the Forestâ•…â•… 78
8. On the Waterfrontsâ•…â•… 93
9. The New Dealâ•…â•… 104
10. Ecology in Disequilibriumâ•…â•… 114
11. The Central Enigmaâ•…â•… 126
12. Liberated from Fashionable Scienceâ•…â•… 136
13. Territories, Taxonomy, and Timeâ•…â•… 151
14. Nineteen Eighty-╉Nine╅╅ 165
15. Biodiversity in Heatâ•…â•… 174
16. A Continent in the Canopyâ•…â•… 185
17. At the Root of Diversityâ•…â•… 197
18. The Other World Todayâ•…â•… 208

Notesâ•…â•…215
Indexâ•…â•…267

(â•›viiâ•›)
viii
ix

AC K N O W L E D GM E N T S

My interest in this history has its genesis in my book about coral reef environmental
science: What is Natural? Coral Reef Crisis. In 2007, I contacted Ira Rubinoff, then
Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, whom I had first met in
1996 at the Eighth International Coral Reef Symposium, which the institute hosted
in Panama. I told him I was interested in writing another book on the history of
tropical biology as soon as I completed the project I was working on—​the history
of microbial evolutionary biology. He asked me if I’d consider writing the history of
STRI. In the following years, his successor, Biff Bermingham, gave me access to the
facilities, invited me to become a research associate, and facilitated my research and
interactions with Smithsonian biologists.
Many people have collaborated in this project by generously providing their time
for interviews and/​or reading draft chapters, correcting errors, and offering sug-
gestions. George Angehr, Allen Herre, Stephen Hubbell, Jeremy Jackson, Nancy
Knowlton, Eugene Morton, and Ross Robertson read specific draft chapters. Ira
Rubinoff also offered helpful comments. I thank Carole McKinnon for her readings
of the manuscript and support throughout the whole project. I am also thankful to
Egbert Leigh for his support throughout the writing of this book and for his close
and careful reading of the entire manuscript, which was simply invaluable.
I am grateful for the help of Nancy Korber at the Fairchild archives, the help of
Mary LeCroy in the Department of Ornithology of the American Museum of Natural
History, Anthony Walker for the adventure of floating across the rainforest canopy
and among the trees on the Sherman Forest Crane in Panama, Jorge Aleman, and
the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for the use of photos. I am grateful to
the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for their support of this work.
Thomas Barbour Papers, Pusey Library Archives, Harvard University, Boston.
Frank Chapman Papers, Department of Ornithology Archives, American Museum
of Natural History, New York.
Eugene Eisenmann Papers, Department of Ornithology Archives, American
Museum of Natural History, New York.
David Fairchild Papers, Center for Tropical Plant Conservation, Fairchild Tropical
Botanic Garden, Miami, Florida.
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC.
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Archives, New York.

( ix )
x
xi

I N T E RVI E W S

George Angehr Nancy Knowlton

Peter Ashton Egbert Leigh
Lisa Barnett Harris Lessios
Eldredge Bermingham Olga Linares
James Bever Lena Lombardo
Charles Birkeland Scott Mangan
Anthony Coates Eugene Morton
Rachel Collin Leonor Motta
Laurel Collins Jorge Motta
Timothy Collins Aaron O’Dea
James Collins Dolores Piperno
Richard Condit Patricia Rand
Richard Cook Ira Rubinoff
Barbara Davis Roberta Rubinoff
Robert Dressler Ross Robertson
Kerry Dressler William Robertson
Robin Foster Henry Stockwell
Allen Herre William Wcislo
Stephen Hubbell Donald Windsor
Jeremy Jackson Joseph Wright
Gabriel Jacome

( xi )
xii
╇ xiii

Coexistence
xiv
1

CHAPTER 1
w
The Other World

The traveller and the naturalist have combined to praise, and not infrequently to exagger-
ate the charms of tropical life—​its heat and light, its superb vegetable forms, its brilliant
tints of flower and bird and insect … . Each strange and beautiful object has been described
in detail … But so far as I am aware, no one has yet attempted to give a general view of
the phenomena which are essentially tropical, or to determine the causes and conditions of
those phenomena. The local has not been separated from the general, the accidental from the
essential; and, as natural result, many erroneous ideas have become current as to what are
really the characteristics of the tropical as distinguished from the temperate zones.
Alfred Russel Wallace, Tropical Nature 18781

T his book is about how biologists have grappled with the evolution and ecology
of the great species diversity in tropical rainforests and coral reefs. Tropical rain-
forests are home to 50% of all the plant and animal species on earth, though they
cover only about 2% of the planet. Coral reefs hold 25% of the world’s marine diver-
sity, though they represent less than 1 percent of the world’s marine environment.
The increase in species diversity from the poles to the tropics has remained one of
nature’s greatest enigmas for more than two hundred years. Why are there so many
species in the tropics? How can so many species coexist there?
At a time when rainforests and coral reefs are rapidly shrinking, when the earth is
facing what has been called the sixth mass extinction, understanding the evolution-
ary ecology of the tropics is everyone’s business.2 This book is written for anyone who
is interested in the ecology and evolution of life on earth. Readers require little prior
knowledge of the science as we follow the development of some of the major theories
and controversies that have shaped research on the evolution and ecology of tropical
diversity to the present day.
The tropics, which had inspired the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and
Alfred Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century, remained a largely unknown and
unruly world for evolutionary biology and ecology during much of the twentieth cen-
tury. It was not certain if principles that worked for temperate zones would apply to

(1)
2

(2) Coexistence

the tropics. Indeed, leading biologists have long debated whether uniquely “tropical”
principles were required to understand evolutionary and ecological processes. Every
conceivable evolutionary scenario has been posited. Some evolutionary biologists
have suggested that evolution in the tropics is faster, more “progressive,” and more
creative than elsewhere. Yet others have suggested to the contrary that evolution
in the tropical rainforest is in fact probably slower, and that tropical rainforests are
more like museums that merely hold ancient species, many of which evolved else-
where but are now extinct. Some have maintained that Darwinian processes of evolu-
tion based on the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest may not apply to
the evolution of the great diversity of tree species in tropical rainforests; others have
suspected that they would. As we shall see, most of these issues have only begun to
be resolved in recent years.
However, the “mystery of mysteries” for many tropical biologists was not the
origin of species, but the coexistence of species. It was not why there are so many
species in the tropics, but how so many species can coexist. Are there more habi-
tats in the tropics? Does every tropical species in rainforests and coral reefs have
an exclusive niche that enables it to avoid competitive exclusion? Are species more
specialized in the tropics? These were the questions at the interface of ecology and
evolution—​questions of evolutionary ecology. Discerning the unfamiliar patterns
and processes in the chaos of the jungle and the glittering bustle of life on coral reefs
has proved extraordinarily challenging. A variety of hypotheses has been proposed
for species coexistence in the wet tropics and various creative methods devised to
test them.
Two main competing visions have persisted to the present day. One maintains
that tropical rainforests and coral reefs are extraordinarily complex communities
of tightly integrated species that have coevolved and built up niche within niche
and therefore possess a predictable species composition in a stable environment.
The other vision could not be more different. It holds that tropical communities are
not tightly integrated communities maintained by complex species interactions, but
rather are more like chaotic species assemblages, and their composition is largely
the result of chance. Debates over these two paradigms, as we shall see, have been
fierce.
Despite the fundamental importance of the tropics to all of life on earth, tropical
biology has evolved relatively slowly and often with difficulties—​economic, political,
and environmental. The world’s distribution of biologists largely mirrors economic
wealth, not ecological wealth. The richest biotic communities are in the poorest and
often the least stable countries. Tropical rainforests present the perils of heat and
humidity, of malaria, yellow fever, hepatitis, Leishmaniasis, dengue fever, parasitic
worms, ticks, and poisonous snakes for those who explore their rich nature. Little
wonder the wet tropics have been given the contradictory epithets of “El Dorado”
and “Green Hell.”3
The history of tropical biology in this book is situated in the sociopolitical and
natural world of Panama. Panama’s location nine degrees from the equator, its
species-​rich forests, and unique geological history, with coastlines on the Pacific
and Caribbean, have made it a natural laboratory for ecologists and evolutionary
╇ 3

T h e O t h e r W or l d â•… (â•›3â•›)

biologists. It has been ground zero for testing hypotheses and studying problems of
species coexistence in tropical rainforests.
The development of research on tropical biology in Panama is a story of another
remarkable coexistence that existed between biologists aiming to study nature’s
diversity and the Panamanian and American governments. The construction of the
Panama Canal has long been hailed as one of the greatest triumphs in engineering
of the past century. The development of biological research in Panama is a lesser-╉
known aspect of American history, yet it is an extraordinary saga of establishing and
maintaining biological research in the contexts of a politically turbulent and often
dangerous century there.
For American naturalists early in the last century, establishing a research station
in the tropics was, in the first instance, a matter of access. Barro Colorado Island,
located in the middle of the Panama Canal, offered that accessibility. When a research
station on the island first opened in 1924, it consisted only of a modest building
where naturalists could live for a while and work in the surrounding rainforest. There
was nothing like it anywhere. Funded largely out of the pockets of its founding natu-
ralists and their friends, it quickly became one of the most important places in the
world devoted purely to the study of tropical nature.
The Smithsonian Institution administered the station beginning in 1946, but the
station languished somewhat until the early 1960s, when, stimulated by renewed
interest in evolution, ecology, and conservation in the tropics, it was transformed
into a major research institute with its own scientific staff and with hundreds of
visiting researchers annually. It grew rapidly beyond the island and extended to com-
prise marine biological stations on both coasts of the isthmus.
My aim is not to provide an overview of all the research conducted on tropical
biology in Panama. It is rather to understand the way that tropical biology evolved
in context, and the great transitions that punctuate its history. We follow its evo-
lution from naturalists’ descriptions of the diverse species and their habits and
habitats, to the formulation of general theories of biodiversity. We discuss the com-
peting hypotheses in regard to species coexistence in the tropics, the controversies
surrounding them, and diverse ways of testing them. In so doing, we observe the
transition from individual research efforts to the formation of interdisciplinary and
international teams and networks that study some of the most important problems
in evolutionary ecology and most pressing conservation issues of our times. The key-
stone problem is understanding the basis of tropical diversity.

THE WORLD’S GREAT PATTERN

Naturalists for centuries perceived life in the tropics as belonging to an alien “other”
world. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European representations of the trop-
ics were founded on the imaginings of artists, based on the recollections of sailors
and soldiers. The tropics of Brazil were depicted as a strange, unfamiliar world inhab-
ited by chimeric forms with humanlike faces, and gargoyle-╉like heads set on peculiar
bodies, and in which monstrous serpents rose from the depths (see Figures 1.1–╉1.4).4
4

Figure 1.1 Sloth. From André de Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antartique, 1557–​1558.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, USA.

Figure 1.2 Toucan. From André de Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antartique, 1557–​1558.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, USA.
5

T h e O t h e r W or l d (5)

Figure 1.3 “Su,” probably based on a garbled description of an anteater. From André de Thevet,
Les Singularitez de la France Antartique, 1557–​1558. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, USA.

The French Royal Academy of Science sent a scientific expedition to the tropics
in 1735 to measure the circumference of the Earth and to test a conjecture of Isaac
Newton’s that the Earth was not a perfect sphere, but rather bulged around the equa-
tor and flattened at the poles.5 They arrived in Quito, Ecuador, the next year, and
after completing their measurements in 1743, Charles Marie de la Condamine and
his colleagues returned to France by the longer and more dangerous route up the
Amazon River, conducting the first scientific exploration there.6
Specimens of wonderful forms of often economically important plants were
brought back to European imperial powers from expeditions in the eighteen and
nineteenth centuries.7 Joseph Banks’s voyages to the South Pacific and Brazil with
Captain James Cook, and those he sent around the globe, made the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, perhaps the preeminent gardens of their kind in the world.8 But the
tropics signified much more than a collection of more or less economically valuable
plants when naturalists turned to study nature’s processes.
The greatest pattern in natural history on earth, the species diversity gradient—​
the increase in species richness from the poles to the tropics—​was apparent to
eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century explorers. Alexander von Humboldt, who trav-
elled extensively in Latin America—​Mexico, the Andes, and the Orinoco Basin of
Venezuela—​between 1799 and 1805, attributed the rich species diversity of the
6

(6) Coexistence

Figure 1.4 Sir Walter Raleigh witnesses a crocodile, depicted as a sea serpent, devour a crew
member on the Orinoco River, 1595. From Theodor de Bry, Américas, 1625. Courtesy of the
Library of Congress, USA.

tropics to the lack of a freezing winter. “Thus, the nearer we approach the tropics
the greater the increase in the variety of structure, grace of form, and mixture of
colors, as also in perpetual youth and vigour of organic life. This increase may read-
ily be doubted by those who have never quitted our own hemisphere, or who have
neglected the study of physical geography.”9
Humboldt’s writings brought the complexity, beauty, and wonder of the tropics to
the attention of European naturalists. His accounts of his travels to the New World
inspired Charles Darwin, then a student in Edinburgh, to plan his own expedition
to the tropics. His voyage on the HMS Beagle—​from 1832 to 1836 circumnavigating
the globe—​is legendary. In his Journal of Researches on that voyage, he compared the
primeval tropical rainforest of Bahia Brazil to another planet:

Epithet after epithet is found too weak to convey to those, who have not visited the
intertropical regions, the sensations of delight which the mind experiences … The
land is one great wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse … How great would be the desire
in every admirer of nature to behold, if such were possible, another planet; yet to
every one in Europe, it may be truly said, that a distance of a few degrees from his
native soil, the glories of another world are open to him.10
7

T h e O t h e r W or l d (7)

Two years after his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin developed his theory of evolu-
tion by natural selection, that is, the “survival of the fittest.” But he did not publish
it until twenty years later, when, in 1858, he received a letter from Alfred Russel
Wallace from the Malay Archipelago containing a manuscript describing essentially
the same theory.11 Inspired by the chronicles of Humboldt and Darwin, Wallace
had spent twelve years living in the tropics; eight of them (1854−1862) were in the
Malay Archipelago (Malaysia, Singapore, the islands of Indonesia, and New Guinea),
where he developed his theory of evolution by natural selection independently of
Darwin. Wallace also posed some of the central questions that came to define tropi-
cal biology.
“The luxuriance and beauty of Tropical Nature is a well-​worn theme,” Wallace
wrote in his book Tropical Nature in 1878. Therein he not only described the insects,
reptiles, mammals, and birds, and the lush plant life, he also aimed to understand
what was unique to tropics, what general phenomena were essentially tropical, and to
determine the cause and conditions of these phenomena. Animal life and plant life
were generally more abundant and varied within the tropics than in any other part
of the globe, Wallace observed. “Endless eccentricities of form, and extreme richness
of colour are its most prominent features.”12 The cause of these “essentially tropical
features,” he said, were not to be found in the simple influence of solar light and heat,
but rather in their constancy, not only throughout the year, but over eons, not having
been much affected by successive glacial periods that destroyed many life forms in
temperate zones. The “equatorial lands,” he surmised, “must always have remained
thronged with life.” They were “a more ancient world.”
Wallace suspected that evolution in tropical zones was different from that in tem-
perate and frigid zones. In the latter, the kinds of characteristics that could evolve were
constrained by a constant struggle for existence against the vicissitudes and severi-
ties of climate. This was not so in the tropics: “The struggle for existence as against
the forces of nature was there always less severe,—​food was there more abundant
and more regularly supplied,—​shelter and concealment were at all times more easily
obtained.”13 Evolution in the tropics was largely a matter of “those complex influences
of organism upon organism” and the uninterrupted nature of evolution over eons.
These were “the main agents in developing the greatest variety of forms and filling up
every vacant place in nature.” Wallace put his tropical conceptions in a nutshell:

The equatorial zone, in short, exhibits to us the result of a comparatively continuous

and unchecked development of organic forms; while in the temperate regions, there
have been a series of periodical checks and extinctions of a more or less disastrous
nature, necessitating the commencement of the work of development in certain
lines over and over again. The equatorial regions are then, as regards their past and
present life history, a more ancient world than that represented by the temperate
zones, a world in which the laws which have governed the progressive development
of life have operated with comparatively little check for countless ages, and have
resulted in those infinitely varied and beautiful forms—​those wonderful eccentrici-
ties of structure, function, and of instinct—​that rich variety of colour, and that
nicely balanced harmony of relations—​which delight and astonish us.14
8

(â•›8â•›)â•… Coexistence

All of this was wholly guesswork, to be sure, but tropical biologists over the next
century discussed and addressed all of these ideas in an effort to understand the
greater richness in tropical biodiversity compared to that of temperate and cold
lands. It was far from certain how tropical environments affected the evolutionary
potentiality of life there. Belief that the species richness of the tropics was the result
of continuous uninterrupted evolution, a world that was little affected by the cli-
matic disturbances of the temperate zone, was widespread. So too was the idea that
other different processes of evolution might operate there.

PANAMA

American naturalists, like their European counterparts, also set out on expedi-
tions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, making collections of specimens,
which they brought back to be classified and curated at the US National Herbarium
in Washington, DC, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, the Peabody
Museum at Yale, or at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.15 By
the turn of the twentieth century, the United States had acquired a dispersed tropi-
cal empire as Spain relinquished control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and
Guam to the United States following the Spanish-╉American War.
But it was Panama that became the center of interest for American science in the
tropics. The building of the canal brought engineers and geologists to Panama as
well as biologists, especially entomologists from the US Department of Agriculture
(USDA) who studied mosquito vectors of diseases.16 Control over infectious disease
was critical to the success in the building of the canal. The earlier attempt by the
French, who had acquired the rights to build the canal across the isthmus of what was
then the Republic of Colombia in 1878, was disastrous. Digging began in 1881 and
ended in tragedy eight years later, by which time more than twenty-╉two thousand
workers had died, mostly from yellow fever and malaria.17
The US Congress authorized President Theodore Roosevelt to buy out the French
interests. It aimed for a treaty that would pay Colombia a percentage of the tolls and
give itself a six-╉mile-╉wide zone along the canal. When the Colombian Senate voted
down the offer in 1903, Roosevelt supported a Panamanian separatist movement,
which would allow the United States to build the canal. Following Panama’s secession
from Colombia that year, a new treaty was quickly signed that gave the United States
ownership of the canal and sovereignty over a zone extending 8 km (five miles)
on each side of the centerline of the canal (with the exception of Panama City and
Colón). The Canal Zone, inhabited by canal employees, the American military, and
their families, would be wholly government run, with schools, churches, hospitals,
libraries, and a commissary.
At first, the United States was on track to fail, just as France had, as yellow fever
returned and killed many workers. Then, in 1905, Colonel William Gorgas, Chief
Sanitation Officer of the Canal Zone, unleashed one of the most extensive sanitary
campaigns in history.18 More than four thousand people worked on his mosquito
╇ 9

T h e O t h e r W or l d â•… (â•›9â•›)

brigade in Panama. They drained ponds and swamps or covered all sources of stand-
ing water with kerosene to prevent mosquitos from laying eggs, fumigated areas
infested with mosquitos, and isolated disease-╉stricken patients with screening and
netting. They managed to eradicate yellow fever in the Canal Zone by 1906, and to
contain malaria during the ten-╉year period of canal construction.
When the construction of the Panama Canal began in 1904, American natural-
ists appealed for a biological survey to document native flora and fauna and their
distribution in the Canal Zone prior to the completion of the Panama Canal, just
as such provisions had been made prior to the building of the Suez Canal. Those
appeals were finally heeded in 1910, after various American scientific organizations
requested that the Smithsonian Institution undertake the work, and the proposal
was taken directly to President William Howard Taft.19 Collections of specimens
from the survey were taken to the new Natural History Building of the Smithsonian
in Washington, DC.
Opened in 1914, the Panama Canal was considered “the greatest engineering feat
of the modern age,” cutting the sailing distance from New York to San Francisco by
about 12,000 km (seven thousand miles).20 American success in constructing the
canal took advantage of the Chagres River, which John Stevens, the head engineer
of the canal project, proposed be dammed. It was the largest dam of its kind and
resulted in the creation of Gatun Lake, which took ships through 33 km (twenty-╉one
miles) of their 77 km (forty-╉eight-╉miles) transit across the isthmus.

BARRO COLORADO ISLAND

The flooding of lowlands formed several islands, formerly hills in a valley. Barro
Colorado was the largest of them. Before the flood, the name Barro Colorado had
referred to a few settlements where the flow of the river revealed the red mud of its
shores. All the old settlements had fallen beneath the waters of Gatun Lake by 1914.
Barro Colorado Island has an area of 3,840 acres (over five square miles) and a diam-
eter of approximately 3.5 miles; it rises to a height of about 450 ft above the lake and
is forested throughout.
“Red Mud Island” was a gross misnomer; it belied its rich, green, lush forest. The
main jungle roof was about 30 m (100 ft) high. The waters did not rise suddenly;
there was no deluge. Gatun Lake was four years in filling. Still, the island, it was said,
resembled Noah’s Ark because of the great diversity of animals that took refuge there
from the rising flood: puma, ocelots, tapirs, sloths, monkeys, deer, agoutis, peccary,
and various species of small mammals.21 The local nimrods declared the island to be
a “hunter’s paradise.”22
To American naturalists searching to develop research in tropical biology in the
1920s, Barro Colorado Island seemed to be the perfect spot for a jungle laboratory.
It was in the Panama Canal Zone over which the United States had sovereignty. The
Zone had hospitals, a commissary, and other facilities that would be great assets for
building and maintaining an island laboratory. The island was two miles across the
10

( 10 ) Coexistence

lake from a railway station at Frijoles, a fifty-​minute train ride from Panama City.
One could leave the island and be in the city two hours later.
The Barro Colorado Island Laboratory was certainly not the first station in the
tropics. There was a long tradition of colonial governments establishing gardens
in their tropical holdings. The Dutch government had established palatial gardens
and biological laboratories in Buitenzorg in Java (now Bogor) in 1817.23 Botanists
there introduced to Java such plants as the Australian Eucalyptus, tobacco, maize,
and Liberian coffee. Those gardens also played an important role in the intro-
duction of quinine produced from the bark of the Cinchona tree, originally from
Peru, used for treating malaria. Research there was also conducted on diseases
that threatened economically important plants such as coffee and sugar cane. The
British government also had maintained a fine garden and laboratory buildings in
Calcutta since 1786 and in Ceylon since 1821. The French founded the Saigon Zoo
and Botanical Gardens in 1865, but all of these colonial gardens were far removed
from the jungle.
The Barro Colorado Island Laboratory was different. It was situated in the midst
of an isolated rainforest, and it was not concerned with problems of economic impor-
tance to the United States or Panama. It was the most prominent tropical research
station in the world by the late 1920s, and it grew into a major tropical research insti-
tute focussed on studying the ecology, evolution, and natural history of tropical life.24
How that island laboratory came to be, how it was managed and emerged into
prominence, is a tale of complex relations among biological explorers and entre-
preneurs, philanthropists, scientific organizations, and government institutions.
╇ 11

CHAPTER 2
w
Legends

“I got Barro Colorado Island.”

James Zetek, April 19, 19231

W â•›hen the research station on Barro Colorado Island opened its doors in March
1924, it was a modest, all-╉in-╉one building, a laboratory and dormitory in the
jungle where small parties could live and work. Some naturalists referred to the island
itself as a “natural laboratory.” It was seen as a piece of “pristine primeval forest,” “the
Naturalist’s Paradise,” a veritable “Garden of Eden,” luxuriant in its primitive growth,
and a source of biological inspiration.2 It quickly emerged as the most scientifically
productive tropical biology station in the world.
The story of the establishment of the jungle island laboratory is complex and
clouded in confusion and controversy. Here we untangle that history through
close study of the discourse, aims, and strategies of a small group of natural-
ist adventurers—╉a coalition of Harvard professors and biologists who worked for
the USDA. In doing so, we shall see the unique and fragile ground on which such a
research station stood when dedicated solely to the natural history of the tropics.

CITY TO FOREST

Our story begins far to the north in the midst of a cold, dark winter when a group
of American naturalists, brought together by the National Research Council (NRC),
held a series of meetings in Washington, DC, to promote scientific and economic
development in tropical regions. The NRC had been established during the First
World War to further scientific and technical services for the military, and it contin-
ued in a nonmilitary capacity during the 1920s and 1930s with an aim “to promote
co-╉operative research among academic institutions and disseminate information in
regard to research opportunities.”3

(â•›11â•›)
12

( 12 ) Coexistence

In January 1921, the biologists at those meetings formed the Institute for Research
in Tropical America. Comprised of twenty-​two member institutions, including uni-
versities, museums, botanic gardens, and other scientific organizations, it would aim
to establish a tropical research station in Panama. A temporary executive committee
was formed with Albert Hitchcock as chairman. Hitchcock, a botanist who worked
for the USDA and the Smithsonian National Herbarium, was an experienced field
naturalist who traveled the world to amass one of the world’s largest collections of
grasses at the National Herbarium. Hitchcock had been to Panama in 1911 when the
Smithsonian Institution organized a survey of the flora and fauna in the Canal Zone
before the canal was completed (Chapter 1).4
Panama, with its American-​governed Canal Zone, with hospitals, commissary,
and other amenities, was indeed the obvious choice for a research station. It was
connected by steamship to all parts of the world and could be reached by scientists
from both sides of the continent, and it was relatively free of tropical diseases.5
However, the executive of the Institute for Research in Tropical America certainly
had no intention of building a research station in the midst of a rainforest when
they met to discuss plans at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC, in October 1922.
At that time, they were aiming for a research station in Panama City, one that
would be comparable to what the British had in the Peradeniya Gardens of Ceylon,
the Dutch in the Gardens of Buitenzorg, and the French in Saigon.6 Their idea was
to erect a research station next to a site that had been designated for the con-
struction of a laboratory for the study of tropical diseases—​the Gorgas Memorial
Laboratory in Panama City. They also aimed to have a marine station just outside
of the city.
In the spring of 1922, Thomas Barbour travelled to Panama on behalf of the newly
formed institute to investigate conditions.7 He was the right man for the job. Thirty-​
eight years old, he was already a seasoned scientific explorer with considerable expe-
rience working in the tropics, and he spoke Spanish. He had first visited Panama on a
collecting expedition for Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1909. He had
completed his doctorate at Harvard two years later, and then worked as curator of
reptiles and amphibians at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He would become
its director in 1927.
Though his specialty was herpetology, Barbour was a general naturalist, a dying
breed, interested in many aspects of natural history. He studied birds, insects, and
especially butterflies; he was keenly interested in botany and plant introduction.8 He
was also a man of means. His father, Colonel William Barbour, was founder and presi-
dent of the Linen Thread Company, the largest company of that kind in the world,
which employed some 2,000 people in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.9 Tom Barbour
himself would attain considerable wealth on the stock market, and he would play a
central part in establishing the Panama research station, funding it largely with his
own money.
Barbour had also played a key role in the founding of the Harvard Botanical
Gardens in Soledad, Cuba, a few years earlier. In 1919, he created an endow-
ment fund for Harvard dedicated to “tropical research in economic botany,” and
he funded the construction of Harvard House, which served as headquarters,
13

Legends ( 13 )

laboratory, and living quarters.10 Until the Cuban Revolution, classes for Harvard
students were held there in horticulture and collecting botanical specimens.
Barbour was custodian of those botanical gardens for two decades beginning in
1927.11
During his trip to Panama in the spring of 1922, Barbour met with Richard
Strong, founding director of Harvard’s School of Tropical Medicine, to discuss the
idea of building a research station near the proposed Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in
Panama City.12 Strong was enthusiastic about the idea, but plans would shift from city
to island forest after Barbour told a resident of Panama, James Zetek, an entomolo-
gist working for the USDA, of their plans. Several months later, Zetek would learn of
the possibility of acquiring Barro Colorado Island as a preserve for scientific study.
Born in Chicago, Zetek had moved to Panama after graduating with an A.B.
degree from the University of Illinois in 1911 to work as an entomologist for the
Isthmian Canal Commission. In 1914, he married Maria Luisa Gutierrez, a member
of a highly respected Panamanian family. Over the next six years, he held various
positions, including professor of natural sciences at Panama’s Instituto Nacional,
before beginning work for the USDA.13 Zetek was a member of the Ecological Society
of America and head of a committee on conservation for the Panama Canal Zone,
and he was knowledgeable about areas that might be studied. Hitchcock wrote to
him from Washington on November 17, 1922, asking for information about sani-
tary and social conditions, regions to be studied, road conditions, railroads, and
steamships.14
In early March 1923, Colonel William Erwin, Chief Land Inspector, and A. H.
Becker, Land Agent of the Panama Canal Land-​Lease Division, suggested to Zetek
the idea of acquiring Barro Colorado Island as a scientific preserve and building a sta-
tion there.15 Erwin and Zetek were very concerned about the depletion of the tropical
forest in the Canal Zone because of the large number of leases (about 1,800) given
to individuals for small-​scale agriculture. Virgin forests were cut down and burned.
Barro Colorado Island, an island of some four thousand acres, was considered to be
the only spot along the entire canal where the tropical jungle was almost just as it had
been before the canal was built. Four leases had been given to settlers on the island,
from 1 to 5 ha each, but Erwin managed to put a halt to all others.16
Acquiring the island as a preserve and location for the proposed research sta-
tion was an inspired suggestion, as Zetek saw it. He immediately relayed the idea
to Hitchcock, chair of the Institute for Research in Tropical America, on March 4,
1923: “The land agent and his chief inspector, Messers Becker and Erwin, have
very kindly suggested the possibility of getting a very large island in the canal, eas-
ily accessible and in virgin state… The only cost is the clearing for the laboratory
site and the building. In the meantime no leases will be let until we know of your
decision.”17
Zetek had not yet seen the island. He did so after he discussed the idea with Strong
and two entomologists who were attending a ceremony to lay the first stone for the
Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in Panama City—​Cornell Professor Oskar Johannsen
and Harvard University’s William Morton Wheeler.18 The four of them made a trip to
the island on March 20, 1923. They stayed for less than an hour, but it was enough
14

(â•›14â•›)â•… Coexistence

time to convince them that it was a great spot for a station. Wheeler wrote the next
day to his friend and colleague Tom Barbour about their visit to the island:

Yesterday Zetek, Johannsen, Dr. Strong and I spent an hour on the island which is
reached by launch in 20 minutes from Frijoles on the railroad, not far from Colon.
In a small clearing, less than an acre in area, I took 19 species of ants, Zetek took
10 species of termites (1 new species) and both of us took a dozen species of myr-
mecophiles and termitophiles (2 new genera, one beetle, very remarkable!). The
vegetation is extraordinarily diverse. It is an ideal place for a lab. in every way …
The ground is dry and rises in hills, one of which (“Gigante”) is about 500 ft. above
the level of Gatun Lake. A small bungalow with screened verandah for a lab., a good
launch, a resident director (Zetek would be just the man), a cook and one or two
competent negroes as assistants, the development of a few good trails across the
island, and we should have an ideal zoological and botanical paradise. The king of all
the tapirs lives on the island with many of his descendants, together with ocelots 9
ft. long and other beasts too numerous to mention.19

ZETEK’S LETTER TO GOVERNOR MORROW

On March 22, Zetek recommended to Hitchcock that the NRC and the Ecological
Society of America write to the governor of the Canal Zone, Jay J. Morrow, request-
ing that the island be made a preserve for scientific research; he said that he himself
would be willing to serve as island custodian.20 He wrote to Hitchcock again the next
day, telling him that it was “absolutely foolish to build a concrete building next to
the Gorgas Memorial. This would be the best way to kill the project. It would, in fact,
become a Mausoleum …”21 Hitchcock thought it was a great idea and informed him
that he would take the matter up with the NRC.
Zetek was under the impression that the NRC would have the funds to pay for
the project. But the relationship of the NRC to the Institute for Research in Tropical
America was solely administrative: It conducted elections for the institute’s executive
committee, and it received and dispersed funds of the institute, as directed by the
executive committee of the institute.22 That was it. There was no funding obligation.
“It is not the policy of the Research Council to finance projects,” Hitchcock explained
to Zetek on March 22, 1923. “They open a way for cooperation in various ways and
give various sorts of support that are not financial.”23
Zetek quickly became disenchanted with Hitchcock when he informed him that
funding was unlikely.24 Still, he wanted to get the island, and hopefully obtain fund-
ing from the NRC for it later. He wrote to Governor Morrow himself on March 27,
1923, as representative of the Ecological Society of America. He pointed to the NRC’s
interest in establishing a research station in Panama and requested that the island be
put aside as a protected area for scientific study.25 Morrow embraced the idea enthu-
siastically and on April 17, 1923, issued the following brief circular setting the island
aside for use as a natural park for scientific study.
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 CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SUMMONS.

In the moonlight, bright as day, Mr. Jervis rode home beside Miss
Gordon’s rickshaw. Her tell-tale fan stuck out of the pocket of his
overcoat.
Yes, their little world was not blind; it was evidently a settled thing.
Most people were glad. The Brandes were sure to do the wedding in
“style;” and a wedding would be an agreeable variety from dances
and picnics.
“I shall come up to-morrow morning,” he said, as he reluctantly
released her hand, “to-morrow before twelve.”
Mr. Brande, who had effected his escape early, had returned
home, and been in bed and asleep for some hours.
He was suddenly aroused by his wife standing at his bedside, her
cloak hanging off her shoulders, her coiffeur a little deranged, a lamp
in her hand illuminating an unusually excited countenance.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded with pardonable irritation.
“Oh, P.! what do you think? A man has come from Simla——”
“Yes,” suddenly sitting erect, his official mind at once on the alert
for some pressing and important dispatch.
“He came out with them in the same ship,” she panted.
Had Sarabella his wife gone suddenly out of her mind?
“He says that Mark, not Waring, is the rich man.”
“He said it after supper, I suppose,” snarled Mr. Brande. “He was
drunk!”
 “Not a bit of it! I tackled Mark himself, and he confessed. I was
very angry at being taken in. He declares they did it without meaning
a bit of harm at first, and that when it went too far he did not know
what to do. He is very sorry.”
“That he is a millionaire! Oh yes, I should think so!”
“He is coming up first thing to-morrow to tell you all about it; and,
unless I’m mistaken, to speak to you about Honor.”
“What about her?” sharply.
“Why, you dear, stupid man, are you asleep still? Can’t you
guess?”
“You told me that there was nothing of that sort; in fact,” with an
angry laugh, “that ‘the boy,’ as you called him, was desperately
devoted to you.”
“What stuff!” she ejaculated indignantly. “He will have thirty
thousand a year! I know that I shall never close an eye to-night!”
“And are good-naturedly resolved that I am to keep you in
countenance. You might, I think, have reserved this double-barrelled
forty-pounder for the morning.”
“And that’s all the thanks I get,” she grumbled, as she slowly
trailed away to her dressing-room.
Just about this very time, Mark Jervis was smoking a cigarette in
his bare sitting-room. Before him, on the table, lay a white feather
fan and a programme. He was much too happy to go to bed, he
wanted to sit up and think. His thoughts were the usual bright ones
incident to love’s young dream, and as he watched the smoke slowly
curling up the air was full of castles. These beautiful buildings were
somewhat rudely shattered by the entrance of his bearer—wrapped
in a resai, and looking extremely sleepy—with a letter in his hand.
“A Pahari brought this for the sahib three hours ago,” tendering a
remarkably soiled, maltreated envelope.
Of course it was from his father at last. He tore it open, and this
was what it said—
 “My dear Son,
“I am very ill. If you would see me alive, come. The
messenger will guide you. I live forty miles out. Lose no time.
“Your affectionate father,
“H. Jervis.”
The letter was forty-eight hours old.
“Is the messenger here?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then call up the grey pony syce; tell him to take gram and a jule,
and saddle the pony. I am going off into the interior. I must start in
twenty minutes.”
The bearer blinked incredulously.
“I need not take you.” The bearer’s face expanded into a grin of
intense relief. “I shall be away several days. Get out my riding kit,
shove some clothes in a bag, and ask the cook to put up some bread
and meat and things, and tell the coolie I will be ready very shortly.”
Then he sat down, drew his writing-case towards him, and began
to write a note to Honor. Her first love letter—and strange, but true,
his also. It was merely a few lines to say he had been most suddenly
called away by his father, and hoped that he would be back within
the week.
It was both a keen disappointment and a keen pleasure to the girl
when the ayah brought the letter to her at nine o’clock. She read it
over and over again, but she will not allow our profane eyes to see it,
nor can it be stolen, for she carries it about with her by day, and it
rests under her pillow by night: at the end of the week it was getting
a little frayed.
When the ayah handed the note to the Miss Sahib, the writer was
already twenty miles out of Shirani, following a broad-shouldered
Gurwali with his head and shoulders wrapped in the invariable brown
blanket.
 Their course was by mountain bridle-paths, and in an eastern
direction; the scenery was exquisite, but its beauties were entirely
lost upon Jervis, who was picturing other scenes in his mind’s eye.
The road crept along the sheer faces of bare precipices, or plunged
suddenly into woody gorges, or ran along a flat valley, with cultivated
fields and loosely built stone walls. The further they went, the lovelier
grew the country, the wilder the surroundings. At twelve o’clock they
halted to rest the grey pony—the messenger’s muscular brown legs
seemed capable of keeping up their long swinging trot all day. It was
four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at their journey’s end;
they abruptly descended into a flat wooded dale, surrounded by hills
on three sides, sloping away to the plains on the fourth. A path from
the bridle-road led them into a dense jungle of high grass, full of
cattle, pack ponies, and mules. Emerging from this, they came to a
wall, along which they kept for about three hundred yards, and
turning a sharp corner they found themselves outside a great square
yellow house, two stories high.
It seemed as if it had been bodily transplanted from England.
There was nothing irregular or picturesque about it—the windows
were in rows, the roof was square and had a parapet, the sole
innovation was a long verandah, which ran all round the building,
and was apparently of recent date, a mere after-thought.
Mark, as he rode up to the steps, looked about him for the coolie;
he had suddenly disappeared. There was no one to be seen. He
ascended to the verandah, it was deserted, save for some fowl, who
seemed delightfully at home. It was more the verandah of a native
dwelling than the entrance to the home of an Englishman.
The new-comer gazed around expectantly, and saw three string
charpoys, a bundle of dirty bedding, a pair of shoes, a huka, and a
turban.
The door, which was innocent of paint or bells, was ajar. He
pushed it open and found himself in a large, dim, very dirty hall. Here
he was confronted by an old nanny goat, and two kids; to the left he
saw a room, which appeared to be a mere repetition of the
verandah.
 As he hesitated and looked about, a man suddenly appeared, a
servant presumably, wearing a huge red turban, and a comfortable
blue cloth coat. He was stout and well to do, had a fat face, a black
square beard, and remarkably thick lips.
He seemed considerably disconcerted, when he caught sight of
the stranger, but drawing himself up pronounced the words,
“Durwaza, Bund,” with overwhelming dignity. Adding in English—
“The sahib never see no one.”
“He will see me,” said Mark, with decision.
“Sahib sick, sar, seeing no one, those my orders. Sahib seeing no
sahibs for many years.”
“Well, he sent for me, and I have come. Let me see him
immediately. I am his son.”
The Mahomedan’s expression instantly changed from lofty
condescension to the most unqualified astonishment.
“The sahib’s—son!” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes. I have told you that once already. Look sharp, and send
some one to see after my pony; I have come a long distance.”
The bearer went away and remained absent about five minutes,
during which time Mark had leisure to note the dirt, and neglected,
almost ruinous, state of the house—which had originally been a fine
mansion—to listen to loud jabbering and whispering in the room
beside him, and to observe several pairs of native eyes eagerly
peeping through a crack in the door.
“Come with me,” said the bearer, with a sullen air. “The sahib will
see you presently.”
“Is he better?”
“Yes, he is quite well; please to sit here,” and he opened the door
of an immense dining-room, furnished with Bombay carved black
wood furniture, and a dusty Indian carpet. It was a room that was
evidently never used, and but rarely opened. Its three great long
windows, which were caked and dim with grime, looked out upon the
snows. This was evidently the back of the house; the front
commanded a view of the plains. The site had been admirably
selected.
A black tray, with cold meat and some very sour bad bread, was
borne in, and a place cleared on the dusty table by the joint efforts of
the sulky bearer and a khitmaghar, with a cast in his eye, and the
very leanest figure Mark had ever beheld. However, he was much
too hungry to be fastidious, and devoured the refreshments with a
capital appetite. Meanwhile, after their custom, the two men stood by
in silence with folded arms, staring with concentrated attention and
unremitting gaze until the conclusion of the meal.
It was quite dark when the bearer reappeared, and, throwing open
the door, announced in a deeply resentful tone—
“The sahib will see the sahib.”
Mark followed the fat, square, aggressive-looking back, till he
came to a curtained archway, and was ushered into a lofty dim room,
so dim, that he could barely discern the figure which rose to greet
him—a tall bent man in a dressing-gown.
“Mark, my boy, it was like you to come so soon,” said a shaky
voice. “Like what you were as a child,” and he held out both his
hands eagerly.
“I only got your letter at four o’clock this morning, sir,” said his son.
“I hope you are better?”
“I am for the present. I sent for you by a private messenger post-
haste, because I believed that I had but a few hours to live, and I
longed desperately to see you.”
“I have been hoping you would send for me for the last two
months. I have been waiting, as you know, in Shirani.”
“Yes—yes—yes! Sometimes the temptation was almost
irresistible, but I fought against it; for why should I cloud over your
young life? However, I had no choice; the situation has been forced
upon me—and you. My faithful companion, Osman, died ten days
ago, but we will talk of this another time. These voices in my head
interrupt me; especially that woman’s voice,” with an irritable
gesture.
His son could not, for the life of him, think of any immediate or
appropriate remark, and sat in embarrassed silence, and then Major
Jervis continued—
“You are six and twenty now—a grown man, Mark, and speak like
a man! I have not had a good look at your face yet. I wonder if it is
the same face as that of my own honest-eyed boy?”
The answer would be prompt, if he so pleased, for the lean
khitmaghar now staggered in under the weight of a large evil-
smelling “argand” lamp (a pattern extinct everywhere save in remote
parts of India).
Mark looked over eagerly at his father. His head was bent in his
hands. Presently he raised it, and gazed at his son with a look of
unmistakable apprehension. His son felt as if he were confronting an
utter stranger; he would never have recognized this grey-haired
cadaverous old man as the handsome stalwart sabreur he had
parted with sixteen years previously. He looked seventy years of
age. His features were sharpened as if by constant pain, his colour
was ashen, his hands emaciated, his eyes sunken; he wore a
camel’s-hair dressing-gown, and a pair of shabby slippers.
“You are just what I expected,” he exclaimed, after a long pause.
“You have your mother’s eyes; but you are a Jervis. Of course you
see a great change in me?”
“Well, yes—rather,” acquiesced his son, with reluctant truthfulness.
“India ages people.”
“You think this a strange life that I lead, I am sure; miles away from
my fellow-countrymen, buried alive, and long forgotten?”
“No, not forgotten, sir. Do you recollect Pelham Brande of the Civil
Service? He was asking for you only the other day.”
“I think I remember him—a clever fellow, with a very pretty wife,
who people said had been a servant. (How long these sort of things
stick to people’s memories.) I’ve been out of the world for years.”
 “But you will return to it. Come back to England with me. What is
there to keep you in this country?”
“What, indeed!” with a jarring laugh. “No, my dear boy, I shall
never leave the Pela Bungalow, as they call it, until I am carried out
of it feet foremost.”
“Why do you say this? You are a comparatively young man—not
more than fifty-five.”
“I feel a thousand years old; and I often wish that I was dead.”
“I don’t wonder! I should say the same, if I had lived here alone for
seven years. How do you kill time?”
“I don’t kill time. Time is killing me. I walk in the garden sometimes,
but generally I sit and think. You must be tired, my boy,” as if struck
by a sudden thought.
“Well, I am, I must confess. I was at a ball until four o’clock this
morning.”
“A ball till four o’clock this morning!” he repeated. “How strange it
sounds. It seems the echo of a voice speaking twenty years ago!”

Dinner was served at a small table; a fowl for Mark, some patent
food for Major Jervis. The cooking was atrocious, the attendance
careless, the appointments splendid, but grimy. It was the same in
every department—an extraordinary mixture of squalor and
magnificence. It seemed to the indignant young man that these
ruffians of servants thought anything good enough for his father.
When Major Jervis’s huka was brought in he looked over at his
son and said—
“You smoke, of course?”
“Yes, thanks; but not that sort of thing. I would not know how to
work it.”
 Last time he had lit a cigarette between four walls he little guessed
at the style of his next surroundings. The room was not
uncomfortable, the furniture was massively carved and luxurious, the
carpet rich Persian; there were book-cases full of volumes, and there
were fine pictures on the walls; but the paper was peeling off in
strips, and cobwebs hung like ropes from the corners. The books
were grimy with mould, the carpets and curtains inches deep in dust;
certainly a sort of oasis had been cleared around Major Jervis’s
chair, but everywhere the eye turned were tokens of neglect, poverty,
and decay. His father’s slippers were in holes, his linen frayed;
apparently he was a poor man. What had become of the begum’s
fortune?
 CHAPTER XXXII.
“THE PELA KOTHI,” OR “YELLOW HOUSE.”

When Mark Jervis awoke the next morning, in a totally unfamiliar

room, he wondered if he was dreaming, as he gazed at the heavy
old carved furniture, the faded window hangings, the curious
devotional pictures, and the little black crucifix and holy water
receptacle at the foot of the bed. (The Cardozo family had of course
been Catholics.) No, he was not dreaming, but actually under his
father’s roof at last.
As soon as he had dressed, he went out before breakfast to see
after the welfare of his syce and pony. The yard resembled that of a
serai, it was so full of natives, who gazed at him inquiringly, as he
made his way through sheep, goats, buffalo calves, and children, to
the stables, the tumble-down remains of what had once been an
imposing pile. An old hairy Bhoetia pony and his own were now the
sole occupants. His syce came to him eagerly, with a face of pitiful
dismay.
“No gram for pony, sahib”—holding up his hands dramatically.
“Never giving gram here—nothing.”
“I’ll see about that—go and buy some”—handing him rupees.
“Oh, sahib”—now putting his hands into an attitude of prayer.
“Plenty, plenty Budmashes in this place. Sahib, let us travel to-day,
quickly to Shirani.”
“In a few days, Dum Sing—not yet; meanwhile take care of
yourself and the pony.” And he walked on to the garden.
The gardens, though somewhat neglected, were in perfect order in
comparison to the house; they were laid out in stony terraces, the
walls of which were loaded with fruit; there were flowers and
vegetables in abundance, a round fish-pond, several statues,
summer-houses, and a large staff of mallees working away with
surprising zeal. A broad terrace walk commanded, as you arrived at
one end, the snows, and a grand panorama of the plains as you
reached the other. A well-worn track was beaten in the middle of this
path, which indicated that it was a favourite promenade, and at the
end nearest to the plains there was a seat.
Here Mark was joined by his father. He was dressed in a shrunken
Puttoo suit, and looked frail and feeble, but such a gentleman in
spite of all his shabbiness!
“This is my walk and my seat,” he explained. “I sit here for hours.
That white line far below is the cart road, and with a good glass you
can make out carts and tongas; and far away on the plains, twice a
day in clear weather, you can see the smoke of the train. So I get
some glimpses of the world after all.”
“And how are you off for neighbours, sir?”
“My nearest is an American missionary and doctor; he is twelve
miles from here; and there is a German mission fifteen miles across
that hill”—pointing with a stick.
“And your post? What about your letters?”
“Oh, I don’t want a post; once in six months or so I send a coolie
down to Ramghur.”
“Then you don’t take a daily paper?”
“Oh no; why should I? There are stacks of old ones about the
house,” was the amazing reply.
“And books?”
“I’m a man of one book. I read the Indian Army List; that is quite
enough literature for me. Some fellow’s names alone call up a whole
novel.”
“You feel better to-day, I hope?”
“Yes, I am unusually well. You are not married, are you?” he asked
abruptly.
 “No, not yet”—rather startled at the sudden change of topic. “But I
hope to marry before long.”
“Hope, hope; that’s what we all say. Don’t let it go beyond that.
Hope told a flattering tale. I don’t believe in hope.”
“Why not?” inquired his companion rather anxiously.
“You see this terrace,” he exclaimed, as if he had not heard; “I
walk up and down it exactly a hundred times a day; I take a hundred
beans in my pocket, and put one of them on that bench every time I
come to it. I find it most interesting; only sometimes birds steal my
beans, and that puts me out, and I lose count, and I have to begin
the whole hundred over again, and I get so tired. But I must do it, or
they would be angry.”
“Who would be angry, sir?”
“I forget, just this minute—the beans or the birds.”
“You seem to have wonderfully fine fruit-trees here,” said Mark,
after an expressively long silence.
“Yes, the mallees work well, the rascals, because I give them all
the vegetables and flowers and fruit, as well as their wages. They
make a good thing out of it; the peaches and pears and plums from
the Yellow House are celebrated.”
Mark now remembered having heard of their fame in far Shirani.
“Let us sit down here and talk,” continued Major Jervis. “For once I
will forego my walk; it is not every day that I have my son to listen to
me. Recent events seem blurred and dim, but I remember years
back distinctly. Mark, my boy, shall I tell you something about myself,
and how I have spent my life? Would you care to know?”
“I would, of course.”
“Then listen to me. You know I am the younger son of a good old
family—Jervis of Jervis. My father, your grandfather, was General
Vincent Jervis, and—I can’t tell him that” (aside to himself). “My
family bequeathed me a handsome profile, an aristocratic type of
face, and something else (but I can’t tell him that). I married for love,
and I can recommend the experiment. Your mother and I scrambled
along most happily, though I had always extravagant tastes—
inherited, like my nose and yours. When she died, I lost my better
half indeed—my headpiece, my best adviser, my all. I drifted back
into my old squandering bachelor ways, and into debt; but I paid for
you to the hour. Then I came across Miss Cardozo. She was not
very young, but handsome, pleasant, and rich—she fell in love with
me. I was a good-looking, dashing, devil-may-care major in a crack
native cavalry regiment. She belonged to this country by race and
taste. There was a good deal of the begum about her; she hated the
idea of a stepson, and I reluctantly allowed your uncle to adopt you. I
knew you would be rich and well cared for; but even then, I struggled
against your uncle’s persuasions. I must have had a presentiment of
these days, when I would be desolate and alone. I was happy
enough with Mércèdes; we led a gay, roving, extravagant life. We
had plenty of friends, plenty of spirits, plenty of money. Mércèdes
had no relations, but one, thank God; a greasy-looking cousin in
Calcutta. Lord forgive me, but I hate him! My wife had a kind, warm
heart, but she was passionate, excitable—and jealous. She allowed
her feelings too much liberty; she slapped another woman’s face at a
public ball, she slippered her servants, she ran up huge bills, and
she could never speak the truth. She actually preferred to tell a lie,
even when she had nothing to gain by it. Can you imagine such a
thing? However, we have all our faults; and she was a good soul,
though she was not like your mother. They say a man prefers his first
wife, a woman her second husband—what is your opinion, eh,
Mark?”
“I am not in a position to offer one,” he answered, with a smile.
“Oh, I forgot—of course not. Well, eight years ago this very month
we were coming away from Mussouri to our place in the Doon; we
were in the mail tonga, our ponies were half broken; though we had
a good driver—the best on the road—it was all he could do to hold
them, as they rattled down with the heavy steel bar, going clank,
clank, clank. Just one mile out a goat on the cliff dropped suddenly
into the road, the brutes shied wildly across, the strong wooden
railings caught the side of the tonga, they strained—I hear them now
—snapped, crashed, then there was a moment’s mad struggle of
driver and ponies—too late, over we went! They show the place still,
I dare say—a drop of two hundred feet. The ponies were killed, and
the driver and my wife. How I escaped was a marvel. My leg was
broken, my head cut about, but I survived. Osman, my orderly, who
had been in the old regiment for twenty years, nursed me, at
Mussouri; and, as soon as I could be moved, I came here. I
remembered it as a retired, quiet spot, with a charming garden. I
wanted rest; my head was injured, and I thought I would pull myself
together here, and then go home—but here I am still.”
“Yes, but not for much longer,” added his son, cheerily; “you will
come home with me.”
“Mércèdes’ will was produced,” he proceeded, calmly ignoring the
question; “she had made it when she was not pleased with me,
seemingly. This place and three hundred acres are mine, and one
thousand rupees a month for life; also her jewels and gold
ornaments—as much use to me as a heap of stones. Fernandez
receives a fine income even now. All her wealth accumulates till my
death, and then everything—jewels, rents, shares—goes to him. He
is my heir. I cannot leave you a penny; nothing but the old Yellow
House.”
“I don’t want the Cardozo money, sir.”
“No; and you will have plenty. Meanwhile Fuzzil Houssan spends
my income on his relations to the third and fourth generation, and
laughs and grows fat.”
“Surely you do not leave it all in his hands?” asked his listener
incredulously.
“Yes, most of it. Only for that, I suppose he would poison me. I
believe he is in Fernandez’ pay—Fernandez, who I am keeping out
of thousands a year. Occasionally he comes in person to see if there
is any chance of my dying? I have given him great hopes more than
once. Now that Osman is dead, he and Fuzzil will certainly hurry me
out of the world—and that speedily.”
“Who was Osman?”
 “He was a sowar in my regiment—a Sikh—we had known each
other for half a lifetime, and he was more to me than a brother. We
joined the same month, we left the same day. He gave up home,
country, people, and followed my fortunes, and died in my arms last
week.” Here Major Jervis’s voice became almost inaudible.
“We had braved heat and snow, fire and water, together, and in the
long evenings here whilst I smoked my pipe, he would talk to me by
the hour of the old regiment; such talk is better than any book. If
Osman had lived, I never would have summoned you—no, never; he
stayed with me till death took him, and you must remain here till
death takes me.”
“I will take you with me,” said his son, resolutely. “All you have
been telling me shows me that this country is not the place for you.
The sooner you are back in England, the better; you will come home
with me, will you not?”
“I don’t want to see England,” he answered peevishly. “India is my
country, it has got into my blood. I have spent my bright days out
here, and here I’ll spend my dark ones. My days are dark indeed, but
they will soon be over, and so much the better. And now it is eleven
o’clock,” he said, rising stiffly. “Let us go in to breakfast.”
After breakfast Major Jervis promptly disappeared, leaving his
guest to wander about alone; to wonder at the extraordinary
ménage, the troops of native children, pattering in and out, the fowl,
the goats—who stumped through the hall as if they wore boots—the
overpowering smell of huka, the great dreary rooms, piled up with
rotting furniture, saddlery, and carpets. Among other wrecks, he
noticed an old dandy and a side-saddle—doubtless the property of
the dead Mércèdes.
He strolled about the valley, to the amazement of the hill people,
who stared at him open-mouthed. How, he asked himself, was he to
pass the long empty hours till sunset? For the bearer had
condescendingly assured him, that “the sahib would sleep until
then.” He had taken a violent dislike to fat-cheeked Fuzzil, who
scarcely troubled himself to obey an order, and had invariably to be
summoned several times before he condescended to appear. A civil
Pahari, touched by the young sahib’s forlorn and aimless
wanderings, volunteered to guide him to the cantonment. “A
cantonment here?” he echoed incredulously, and accepted the offer
with alacrity. A brisk walk by narrow tracks and goat-paths brought
them to the brow of a hill in a southward direction, overlooking an
abandoned station, Mark’s guide volubly explaining to him that thirty
years before had been full of gorrah-log (soldiers) from the plains.
There were the barracks, the bungalows, and gardens, with trees
that bore apples even now! But the cholera came one year and killed
half a pultoon (regiment) and the rest went away, and never came
back, except once or twice, so folks said, for “a tamashah.”
“A tamashah—what do you mean?” asked Jervis, sharply. Was
this burly hill man daring to chaff him?
“Sahibs and mem sahibs—eating, drinking, and having music and
nautches. For the rest,” with a shrug, “the place was given over to
Bhoots and fiends.”
A wide cart road, grass grown, led into the deserted cantonment,
and Mark followed it on to the parade ground. There was the mess-
house still habitable, the church roofless, encircled by a well-filled
God’s acre, kept in perfect order. Here was, indeed, a most
surprising sight, a graveyard in the wilds, not over-grown or choked
with weeds and bushes, but every stone and slab free from moss,
every grave tended with reverent care. He went into the old echoing
mess-house, and found it in excellent repair—thanks to its beams
and doors of deodar wood—as the Pahari proudly pointed out. There
were at least twenty bungalows standing, half buried among trees
and jungle; with creepers matted down over their windows; in some
the verandahs had given away, in some the roofs had fallen in,
some, on the other hand, appeared to set time at defiance. The site
was beautifully chosen, nestling in the lap of the hills, with a peep of
the far-away plains; not a sound was to be heard save the trickling of
a streamlet, nor a living thing to be seen, save a few hill cattle, and
under a tree some vultures who were picking the bones of a dead
pony. The condemned cantonment was, for all its beauty, a
melancholy place. Beyond Haval Ghat, and sloping towards the
plains, were fields of golden corn, and villages sheltering in clumps
of trees, picturesque bananas waving their graceful leaves over huts,
that with their comfortable slab roofs resembled English cottages.
The coolie now explained that he wished to show his honour yet
another sight, and to guide him home by a different route.
Half an hour’s climbing brought them to a good-sized street, of
carved-fronted, flat-roofed hill houses. To the stranger’s horror it
seemed to be altogether populated by lepers—lepers who were old,
middle-aged, young—there were also leper children. They swarmed
out and surrounded the sahib, exhibiting every form of their hideous
disease, as they clamoured for assistance. Jervis emptied his
pockets of everything they contained in the shape of money,
dispensed alms hastily, and among the worst cases, and then
hurried away. He felt heartily ashamed of his feelings of shuddering
repulsion. Supposing he had been a leper himself—and such things
as Englishmen who were lepers were known to exist. Still he turned
headlong from that awful village of life in death, and hastily
reascended the hill towards the Pela Kothi.
The desolate cantonment and the leper-colony combined to
depress him beyond words, although the scenery was unsurpassed,
the air as exhilarating as a tonic, and the scents and sounds of the
forest enough to stir the most torpid imagination; nevertheless, Mark
Jervis felt as if he had a load upon his back, as if he had grown ten
years older in the last two days. It was not merely the scenes of the
afternoon that preyed on his spirits. There was his father—his mind
was undoubtedly shaken—he must endeavour to get him away, to
take him home; yes, at all costs.
“What a curious way he talked. Sometimes so well and sensibly;
sometimes in such incomprehensible jargon. What did he mean by
saying, ‘Osman stayed here till death took him. You must remain
here until death takes me’?”
 CHAPTER XXXIII.
“HEREDITARY.”

His long afternoon rest had revived Major Jervis; he appeared to

be another man as he sat opposite his son at dinner, and talked not
merely sensibly, but wittily, across the grimy tablecloth, on which was
exhibited smoked goat-chops and other undesirable comestibles. He
discussed the condemned cantonment—he recollected its bygone
existence. The lepers—they were his pensioners, and came for their
dole weekly—they were well looked after between missionaries and
other people. He spoke of his regiment, his former comrades; he
gave vivid descriptions of shikar expeditions, of pig-sticking, of
thrilling scenes on active service. He related anecdotes of well-
known people of his acquaintance; he boasted of his brothers-in-
arms, and described a polo tournament as if it had come off
yesterday!
“And you have quite lost sight of all these friends?” inquired his
son, after a pause.
The question seemed to break a spell; all animation suddenly
faded from the major’s face, his whole expression changed into that
of a shrunken old man as he replied—
“Yes; I left the herd, like a wounded deer, seven long years ago. I
have hidden myself from them, and I am entirely forgotten. People
are forgotten out here sooner, more completely, than in any other
country.”
“Why do you say so?” asked his son, incredulously.
“Because life is so full; events march rapidly, changes occur daily.
Cholera, war, accidents, sweep away men—and memories.”
When the table had been cleared and cigarettes produced, and
Fuzzil and his satellite had somewhat reluctantly departed, Major
Jervis looked steadily at his companion for some time, and
exclaimed at last—
“You are very like me, Mark! I can see it myself; and I was
considered a good-looking fellow. I had a bigger frame, though; I
rode a couple of stone heavier. But you are a stronger man than your
father; you have a square jaw and a stern will. You can say no. I
never could get out that word in time—and many troubles were my
lot. You wish me to go home with you, my boy?”
“I do,” was the laconic and emphatic reply.
“And I want you to stay with me; you must remain with me. I have
not long to live. Look at me well.”
Mark glanced at his sunken eyes, his worn, emaciated features.
“And you must see the last of me. I don’t intend to let you go; no,
for once I, too, can say no.”
“But, nevertheless, I’m afraid you must let me go, sir, and shortly. I
promised Uncle Dan——”
“Yes,” he interrupted with unexpected passion, “I understand what
you would say; that you would thrust your uncle down my throat. But,
after all, are you not my son—not his? I reared you until you were
ten years old. When you were a small child and burning with fever,
who was it that used to walk up and down with you in his arms for
hours? Not your uncle Dan. Who was it that first set you on the back
of a pony and taught you to sit like a Bengal sowar? Not your uncle
Dan. Who was it that lifted you out of your dying mother’s embrace?
Not your uncle Dan. You are my own flesh and blood; in all the wide
world I have now no one but you. Since Osman died I have not a
single friend. I am surrounded by vampires of servants. My heir
prays on his knees nightly to his patron saint for the telegram that
will carry the news of my death. I believe the form is here in Fuzzil’s
possession, filled up, all but the date! I am a miserable, solitary,
dying wretch, and I appeal to you, my son, to spare me a few months
of your healthy, happy life, and to stay beside me and protect me. Do
I,” leaning his elbows on the table, and searching his son’s face
intently, “appeal in vain?”
 “You wish me to live here with you altogether?”
“Yes,” with curt emphasis.
“To give up my uncle?”
“For a time, yes. I seem cruelly selfish, but I am as a drowning
man snatching at a spar. You will stay?” A tremor ran through his
voice.
“I cannot. No; I promised Uncle Dan that I would certainly return,”
rejoined his son firmly.
“Your uncle has health, wealth, a wife, and many friends. Surely he
can spare you to a sick and desolate man. The Almighty has afflicted
me sorely. If you abandon me to my fate, and gallop back to your
gay life and companions, the day will come when you will bitterly
repent it. Osman’s burthen has fallen on you, and will my own son do
less for me than an alien in blood, a Mahomedan in faith, a poor,
unenlightened, faithful sowar?”
And he stretched out his hand, and fixed an interrogative gaze on
his companion. The paleness of concentrated feeling tinged the
young man’s face, a few drops of sweat stood on his forehead.
“Mark, what is your answer?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“Be quick. Say yes or no—yes or no.”
“Not now, sir,” suddenly standing up. “You must give me time. Give
me forty-eight hours.”
“Ah, there is something more than your uncle,” with a swift
expressive glance; and he rose and put his hands heavily on his
son’s shoulders. “I know,” gazing straight into his eyes with a mad
keenness in his look, “there is, of course, a woman in the case?”
“There is,” admitted Mark, holding himself erect. “An hour before I
got your letter, I had asked a girl to be my wife.”
“And you need not tell me her answer—yes, of course; young,
rich, handsome! The world is full of women—over-run with them. A
man can have fifty sweethearts, but he has only one father!”