The World of the Great Forest

The World of the Great Forest

The World of the Great Forest presents a vast forest as a society of animals, each species speaking its own language, claiming its own gifts, and struggling for food, safety, mates, and young. Guanioniens, immense eagles who call themselves leopards of the air, hunt monkeys from above. A mated pair endures hunger, finds monkeys feeding on red fruit, and carries away two victims. They travel to their old nest in the Land of Plenty, survive a tornado, repair their home, lay three eggs, and later feed their newly hatched young as monkeys, parrots, and other creatures gather where fruit and nuts ripen. Gray red-tailed ngozos meet in huge flocks on an island each evening to exchange news of food and danger. They bitterly hate monkeys, their rivals for fruit and nuts, and recount fights in which monkeys kill or injure them. A captive ngozo escaped from human beings joins a wild flock, learns the language of his kin, and teaches them human words. When the season changes, the flocks scatter toward the Land of Plenty. Troops of monkeys also migrate there, guided by experienced leaders. A troop of white-nosed ndovas travels by astonishing leaps through the trees, escapes a tree omemba, loses two members to human arrows, suffers bees, and is driven from food by stronger mondis and then by nshiegos. In the Land of Plenty, ndovas forget caution while feeding at the treetops. The guanioniens seize their chief and another ndova, feeding first themselves and then their young, while ngozos rejoice at the loss of monkeys who had harmed them. The narrative turns to night creatures, especially the njego, or leopard. A pair of njegos hunts separately, often goes hungry, and finally catches antelopes and gazelles. They raise three young, teaching them first to taste blood and then to hunt. When prey flees their country, the grown young depart, and the parents separate to find enough food. Starving, the male njego attacks a woman at a spring, becomes a man-eater, and terrorizes a village. The villagers protect themselves with fire and weapons, then trap him with a goat in a narrowing enclosure and kill him with spears. The forest’s ants are portrayed as industrious, intelligent communities. Mushroom-building nchellelays construct elaborate clay dwellings of chambers, tunnels, nurseries, and storehouses under the direction of chiefs and officers. When elephants crush their structures, they rescue wounded ants, young, and eggs. They discover that smaller intruding nchellelays have secretly built among them, defeat the intruders in a fierce battle, and rebuild their home. Giant nchellelays create even greater towers from countless grains of earth, but abandon a dangerous structure after repeated damage from falling branches. Other animals reveal the advantages and limits of their defenses. A porcupine trusts in its quills, which deter elephants, young leopards, and snakes, but accidentally wound a gorilla. Ipis, protected by scales and equipped with sticky tongues, live on ants and migrate when food grows scarce. A turtle, an ipi, and a porcupine each admire its own protective covering, though none can understand the others. Ngooboos, or hippopotami, live on river shoals, graze by night, visit the sea, and fight with tusks over a young female. A victorious young male mates with Miss Ngooboo, and the pair establishes a new home at a lake. The men of the woods include nginas, nshiegos, mbouvés, nkengos, and kooloo-kambas. The powerful ngina boasts of his strength, challenges a njokoo by roaring, protects his mate and baby, destroys leopard cubs, and travels in search of pineapples and plantains. He and his family repeatedly find desired food consumed by elephants, wild boars, or others. Human hunters pursuing animals near their plantain fields kill the female ngina and her baby. The male follows their tracks, discovers their severed heads, attacks in fury, and is shot dead by the hunters. Omembas, feared snakes of many kinds, hunt by concealment, poison, constriction, and enchantment. A huge ombama crushes and swallows a kambi but is later trampled to death by a rogue elephant. An ichneumon kills poisonous snakes with quick attacks at their necks, but in old age is himself crushed and swallowed by a snake. Spiders too survive by predation and defenses: a web spider builds a new net for insects, a trap-door spider constructs a hidden lined burrow but is eaten by mogara ants, and a house spider overcomes a cockroach only to be dismembered by a wasp. Two nkengos encounter a pale-faced, long-haired human called Paul, whose gunshot terrifies one of them. They build bowers in paired trees, move whenever nearby food is exhausted, flee before bashikouay ants, and continue to fear the strange human being and his thunder-making stick.

By Paul B. Du Chaillu · First published 1894 · Genre: Children's Literature, Animal Fiction, Natural History · 49 chapters · 85,463 words

First lines

A guanionien, as he soared between the great forest and the sun, said to himself: "I am the lord of the air; I am the largest and most powerful of all the eagles of the land. I am called the leopard of the air. I feed on monkeys."

Then he chuckled, the way the guanioniens do, and rose higher and higher in the sky at each circle that he made. It seemed as if he were going directly toward the sun. At last he flew so high that no eyes from the forest could see him.

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African rainforest · equatorial forest · animal fiction · natural history · anthropomorphic animals · animal languages · wildlife ecology · predator and prey · eagles hunting monkeys · monkey migrations · parrot flocks · animal societies

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