Читать книгу Consider Her Ways - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 5

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As is well known to all Gigantean Attas, it has ever been one of the glorious traditions of our dynasty that each queen succeeding to the throne should, at least once in her reign, equip and send out, for the furtherance of knowledge, an expedition into distant parts of the world. In the past, such expeditions had consisted of from half a dozen to a score of ants who, as a rule, had gone south, east, or west. Their aim had invariably been that of geographical, geological, meteorological, botanical, and zoological exploration; and the result is known as consisting in the illustrious body of science contained and digested in the scented records traced on the sacred trees east of our city.

These records contain the natural history of our country. In the past, it had been found that each acquisition of knowledge opened up new provinces of ignorance. Each expedition that returned home, great as was the store of new knowledge acquired, had brought in its train new problems for investigation. For a long time, then, the object of a further expedition had defined itself by the very achievement of the one completed. Yet, when the last, undertaken a score of years ago, had returned, the problem defining itself had seemed to be of such a magnitude as to defy even the courage and enterprise of ants. This had been in the reign of Her Glorious Majesty's predecessor Orrha-wee CLXV.

When our present sovereign had entered upon the fourth year of her reign without sending out, in pursuance of that august custom, a new expedition, it was generally assumed that the apparent neglect was due either to a profound conviction that further knowledge was beyond our reach or to the suspicion that a greater interval of time was needed to digest the results so far attained.

It remained a profound secret from the multitude that Her Majesty, from the very beginning of her reign, far from being discouraged by the problem which had defined itself as the result of previous expeditions, had, on the contrary, conceived the plan of surpassing all her predecessors by the scope of her project. In preparation she had secretly, though in consultation with a few leading thinkers, sent out certain individuals and even groups to reconnoitre the country to the north which, so far, had been considered as presenting insurmountable difficulties to our advance. Her Majesty had honoured me by directing that all findings of these investigators were to be reported to myself; and that I should receive and store up these findings and ponder them till I had found ways and means to despatch an expedition into those terrestrial regions of this continent which lie north and west of the Great Narrows. In all my conferences with Her Majesty it struck me that she never enjoined upon me to ponder whether such an expedition would be possible; the problem was simply when and in what manner it would be advisable to launch it.

Her Majesty never doubted, never hesitated about the aim; but she was willing to bide her time. Her faith in the powers of the formicarian mind was nothing less than an inspiration; and when, in the fourth year, I outlined to Her Majesty a plan which, I never doubted, would be rejected, on account of the hazards which it involved and the uncertainty of its success, she embraced it with the greatest enthusiasm; and, a little to my discomfiture, she conferred upon me unheard-of powers, appointing me to lead that expedition myself and to take immediate steps to launch it into the unknown.

Now I had the honour of being of the exact age of Her Majesty; and I shrank from the weight of the responsibility. This will be readily understood: an Atta queen is, at four years, a young ant; but a mere maxim has, at the same age, in all formicarian probability, entered upon the declining quarter of her life. I pointed this out to Her Majesty; but she insisted, calling my attention to the fact that a great task had before this enabled ants of my caste to live beyond their traditionally allotted term of life. She was pleased to use many flattering expressions in explaining to me just why I was to act as her deputy, referring to my previous record as an investigator and organizer, and ultimately hinting that, in her opinion, the success of the whole unheard-of enterprise depended on my devotion to Her service; and perhaps I may add that at last she modified her request, changing it from a command into a prayer. At that I could no longer refuse.

Let me define the purpose of the expedition. To use Her Majesty's own terms, it was to complete such a survey of all antdom as to enable us to trace the evolution of the nation Atta from the humblest beginnings of all ants and to make it possible for us to arrange the whole fauna of the globe, or of such portions of it as could be explored, in the form of a ladder leading up to our own kind. This involved a cataloguing and a classification of all forms of life to be found on the continent; a tremendous task.

Let me skip an interval of eight years and speak of the present.

The results of the expedition which ultimately set out and which, with one exception, namely, myself, perished in the course of its work, have been set down in detail on 813 scent-trees surrounding our city. This having been done, it pleased Her Majesty to ask me to compose a popular account of the whole undertaking, to serve as an introduction to the detailed study of special subjects; and the present narrative is the result of my compliance with Her request. The sequence of events and investigations observed is not strictly chronological; and occasionally a record is introduced in an order the very reverse of chronological; for the present aim of Her Majesty is systemic rather than historical. It is to present the main results in such a way that they can be grasped as a whole. Still, a thread of narrative remains; for we found that, the farther we left our home country behind, the less dominant were ants on earth; and the more distinctly was their place taken by that curious mammal called man. More than that; as we proceeded north and left one climatic province after another behind, we found ever new genera and species of ants assuming the leading part in the control of the country; and, as the curious will scent, they offer, in their succession, a definite scale of development. It will become abundantly clear that our own race stands at the very apex of creation as far as that creation is completed today.