Even in. the 1960s the jungle remained terra incognita, -an unknown land with the power to hold the technology of mechanized warfare beyond its periphery. And with good reason, Munro thought. Men just did not belong there. He was not pleased to be back.
Elliot, never having been in a rain forest, was fascinated. The jungle was different -from the way he had imagined it to be. He was totally unprepared for the scale - the gigantic trees soaring over his head, the trunks as broad as a house, the thick snaking moss-covered roots. To move in the vast space beneath these trees was like being in a very dark cathedral: the sun was completely blocked, and he could not get an exposure reading on his camera.
He had also expected the jungle to be much denser than it was. Their party moved through it freely; in a surprising way it seemed barren and silent - there were occasional birdcalls and cries from monkeys, but otherwise a profound stillness settled over them. And it was oddly monotonous: although he saw every shade of green in the foliage and the clinging creeper vines, there were few flowers or blooms. Even the occasional orchids seemed pale and muted.
He had expected rotting decay at every turn, but that was not true either. The ground underfoot was often firm, and the air had a neutral smell. But it was incredibly hot, and it seemed as though everything was wet - the leaves, the ground, the trunks of the trees, the oppressively still air itself, trapped under the overhanging trees.
Elliot would have agreed with Stanley's description from a century before: "Overhead the wide-spreading branches absolutely shut out the daylight. . We marched in a feeble twilight. . . The dew dropped and pattered on us incessantly. . . Our clothes were heavily saturated with it.
Perspiration exuded from every pore, for the atmosphere was stifling. . . . What a forbidding aspect had the Dark Unknown which confronted us!"
Because Elliot had looked forward to his first experience of the equatorial African rain forest, he was surprised at how quickly he felt oppressed - and how soon he entertained thoughts of leaving again. Yet the tropical rain forests had spawned most new life forms, including man. The jungle was not one uniform environment but many different microenvironments, arranged vertically like a layer cake. Each microenvironment supported a bewildering profusion of plant and animal life, but there were typically few members of each species. The tropical jungle supported four times as many species of animal life as a comparable temperate forest. As he walked through the forest, Elliot found himself thinking of it as an enormous hot, dark womb, a place where new species were nourished in unchanging conditions until they were ready to migrate out to the harsher and more variable temperate zones. That was the way it had been for millions of years.
Amy's behavior immediately changed as she entered the vast humid darkness of her original home. In retrospect, Elliot believed he could have predicted her reaction, had he Thought it through clearly.
Amy no longer kept up with the group.
She insisted on foraging along the trail, pausing to sit and chew tender shoots and grasses. She could not be budged or hurried, and ignored Elliot's requests that she stay with them. She ate lazily, a pleasant, rather vacant expression on her face. In shafts of sunlight, she would lie on her back, and belch, and sigh contentedly.
"What the hell is this all about?" Ross asked, annoyed. They were not making good time.
"She's become a gorilla again," Elliot said. "Gorillas are vegetarians, and they spend nearly all day eating; they're large animals, and they need a lot of food." Amy had immediately reverted to these traits.
"Well, can't you make her keep up with us?"
"I'm trying. She won't pay attention to me." And he knew why - Amy was finally back in a world where Peter Elliot was irrelevant, where she herself could find food and security and shelter, and everything else that she wanted.
"School's out," Munro said, summarizing the situation. But he had a solution. "Leave her," he said crisply, and he led the party onward. He took Elliot firmly by the elbow. "Don't look back," he said. "Just walk on. Ignore her."
They continued for several minutes in silence. Elliot said, "She may not follow us." "Come, come, Professor," Munro said. "I thought you knew about gorillas."
"I do," Elliot said.
"Then you know there are none in this part of the rain forest."
Elliot nodded; he had seen no nests or spoor. "But she has everything she needs here."
"Not everything," Munro said. "Not without other gorillas around."
Like all higher primates, gorillas were social animals. They lived in a group, and they were not comfortable - or safe - in isolation. In fact, most primatologists assumed that there was a need for social contact as strongly perceived as hunger, thirst, or fatigue.
"We're her troop," Munro said. "She won't let us get far."
Several minutes later, Amy came crashing through the underbrush fifty yards ahead. She watched the group, and glared at Peter.
"Now come here, Amy," Munro said, "and I'll tickle you." Amy bounded up and lay on her back in front of him. Munro tickled her.
"You see, Professor? Nothing to it."
Amy never strayed far from the group again.
If Elliot had an uncomfortable sense of the rain forest as the natural domain of his own animal, Karen Ross viewed it in terms of earth resources - in which it was poor. She was not fooled by the luxuriant, oversized vegetation, which she knew represented an extraordinarily efficient ecosystem built in virtually barren soil.*
The developing nations of the world did not understand this fact; once cleared, the jungle soil yielded disappointing crops. Yet the rain forests were being cleared at the incredible rate of fifty acres a minute, day and night. The rain forests of the world had circled the equator in a green belt for at least sixty million years - but man would have cleared them within twenty years.