Congo forests. Nobody else could do the work,
and he works in his own lazy fashion, leaving things to right themselves
and find their own salvation.

Just as there is eternal war to the death between the beasts of this
jungle, so there is war to the death between the trees, the vines, and the
weeds. A frightful battle between the vegetable things is going on; we
scarcely recognize it, because the processes are so slow, but if five
years of the jungle could be photographed week by week, and the whole
series be run rapidly off on some huge cinematograph machine, you would
see a heaving and rending struggle for existence, vegetation fed by the
roaring tropical rains rising like a giant and flinging itself on the
vegetation of yesterday; vines lengthening like snakes, tree felling tree,
and weed choking weed.

Even in the quietude of a moment, standing and looking before one at the
moss-bearded trees and the python-like loops of the lianas, one can see
the struggle crystallized, just as in the still marble of the Laocoon one
sees the struggle of life with death.

In this place which covers an unthinkable area of the earth, a vast
population has dwelt since the beginning of time. Think of it. Shut off
from the world which has progressed toward civilization, alone with the
beasts and the trees, they have lived here without a guide and without a
God. The instinct which teaches the birds to build nests taught them to
build huts; the herd-instinct drove them into tribes.

Then, ages ago, before Christ was crucified, before Moses was born, began
the terrible and pathetic attempt of a predamned people to raise their
heads and walk erect. The first lifting of purblind eyes destined never to
see even the face of Art.

Yet there was a germ of civilization amongst them. They had villages and
vague laws and art of a sort; the ferocious tribes drew to one side,
hunting beasts and warring with each other, and the others, the milder and
kindlier tribes, led their own comparatively quiet life; and Mohammed was
born somewhere in the unknown North, and they knew nothing of the fact
till the Arab slavers raided them, and robbed them of men and women and
children, just as boys rob an orchard.

But the birth of Christ and the foundation of Christendom was the event
which in far distant years was destined to be this unhappy people's last
undoing.

They had known the beasts of the forests, the storms, the rains, the Arab
raiders, but Fat