It is impossible for
most of the world's population to imagine what it is like, let alone
experience, to contact the really wild. It is also difficult to find anyone who actually
described it from personal experience. Such is a literary gem from a Welshman
who made contact with the African highlands in late colonial times. In his book Black
Laughter, Llewelyn Powys describes how his brother at that time was managing an
agricultural farm in the highlands leading to Laikipia. He lived in a small stone house
which had been built by an Indian mason. The veranda in front overlooked two
hundred acres of ploughed land, which grew peas, potatoes, flax and barley. This
diminutive farm was enclosed on one side by the rough scrub country of the ordinary
veldt, and on the other by a forest which stretched away at the foot of a tall
escarpment as far as eye could see. It was a surprise to come suddenly upon this
oasis of cultivation in the midst of a country which still remained virginal.
Towards evening, when
the mists of the light rains drove across the peas and
potatoes, or hung about the brown cone-shaped flax-stacks, the prospect would take
upon itself a strangely familiar appearance; but coincident with such reassuring
impressions would come others, impressions curiously disturbing. One had but to
step out of the little garden of geraniums, which his brother had arranged and planted
round the house, to find oneself in the actual jungle, in dark, overgrown places
which for thousands of years had remained undisturbed. It was this abrupt
juxtaposition of the tamed with the untamed, at one's very doorstep, so to speak,
which affected the nerves with an ever- present feeling of insecurity. He felt that even
their handful of black servants were permitted a foothold here on sufferance only -
that in a moment of time, for a mere whim, these stately, wicked, bearded cedar-
trees might conspire with their long-clawed parasitical creepers to obliterate one's
handiwork and reassert their ancient domination. He was conscious of this feeling
every single hour of his stay on that upland farm, and came to realize what it was to
live in a place where nature was in the ascendancy.
He would sit in a shaded
corner of the veranda watching the humming-birds flitting
about the petals of the coloured flowers which in all directions expanded so
passionately in the hard tropical sunlight, and then he would suddenly become aware
that I was being looked at, that from behind the trellis, or from behind the bloom of a
mammoth nasturtium, a haggard and very old chameleon was peering at him
intelligently, cynically.
At night it would be
even worse. Then, when the flat Equatorial moon would blandly
illuminate this unregenerate section of the earth's surface, the soul of Africa
would
become articulate. Hyenas would moan as they slunk along the darkened banks of
the forest streams nosing for death with heavy obtuse jowls. Leopards would cause
the pale trunks of the forest trees to echo and re-echo with the sound of their calling.
Jackals in an ecstasy of crafty expectation would go yelping across the open veldt.
From every festooned branch of the forest the hyraxes would cry and croon to one
another, while from tiny crevices in the bark of each piece of ancient timber the
African crickets would grow strangely vocal. Often at night when they went out to
draw water from the rain-tank at the back of the house they could hardly hear each
other speak so audible had the great continent become.
It is perhaps a truism
that when wild nature is everywhere, no human societies have
shown much interest in an altruistic protection of it. Pragmatic reasons such as the
perpetuation of a food supply or the maintenance of animals for hunting may have
been widespread, but the disinterested preservation of wild plants, animals and
ecosystems was rare. It has been said that in the European Middle Ages very blade
of grass was grazed with reverence, but that did not prevent the Europeans from
making over much of their continent at that time, and they were not alone in the
world.
In the agricultural
phase of world history there has been a considerable loss of
species during the transformation of wildland ecosystems to other types of terrain,
whether the results be agricultural land, peat diggings, or a multitude of other land
uses. The extension of Polynesians and Europeans into hitherto inaccessible regions
of the world made possible extinction of plants and animals on remote islands: the
dodo is a famous example. For a balance we should note that some biota inevitably
benefited from the human-organized transformations of the agricultural era: malaria
would be an example since more deforestation meant more silty deltas with stagnant
pools. Rats and fleas doubtless did well out of urban growth, and the common fox in
Europe found the increased quantity of woodland edge abutting farmland highly
congenial just as more recently the same species has taken well to city life.
Overall, however, many
species have suffered a diminished range even if not total
extinction and in most places this was found acceptable; in the 'development' of
Europe from say ad 1000-1800, nobody was very concerned to conserve wild pigs,
the European bison and the wolf, in the way we now urge upon the states of east and
central Africa, for example: is this progress or a double standard?