Part III Chapter 6 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
THE BUTTERFLIES' PARADISE
And thus we settled down, with our sentries to keep the world out, to try and get in touch with this strange creature who had visited us from parts unknown.
To begin with, of course, the Doctor, with his extraordinary knowledge of the moths and butterflies of almost every part of the civilized world, was able to eliminate a great deal of territory as an impossible source for the moth to come from. He had one theory which he followed for quite a time and that was that it had come from what is called the Subarctic Regions. Very little was known so far, he told me, about insect life in those parts.
Then he got another idea, very far removed from the first. He had noticed that the Giant Moth was very cold at night. John Dolittle was quite upset over this. He made all sorts of arrangements about warming the garden. He worried Dab-Dab to death by buying oil stoves by the dozen to set around the garden and supplemented these by hot-water bottles actually in hundreds. We had the most terrible time getting them in secretly, because of course the dealers insisted on delivering them by wagon. But we had to be just insistent and bring them up to the house ourselves. They of course wanted to know what on earth we were going to do with so many hot-water bottles. A small town is a difficult place to keep a secret in.
Then the Doctor, following up the idea that the moth might have come from the tropics, started to question Chee-Chee. He asked him if he had ever heard his grandmother speak of giant insects at any time.
Poor Chee-Chee thought very hard for quite a while. He could not seem to remember any occasion on which his grandmother had referred to such creatures. But presently he said:
"Oh, wait now—yes, I remember, there was something."
"Good!" said the Doctor. "What was it?"
And all the animals, hoping for another of Chee-Chee's stories of the Ancient World, gathered about him to listen with attention.
"Well," said he, "there is no record that I know of, of any such insects belonging to the tropics—I mean especially to those parts—either in past times or nowadays. But I do remember my grandmother saying that in those days before there was a Moon the world had no end of perfectly enormous creatures running about it and that Man had a terribly hard time to survive. This was particularly so at certain times when various species like the dinosaurs and some of the more dangerous animals multiplied in such quantities that they crowded everything else out of certain sections. It wasn't only by chasing Man and destroying him that they had made life hard for him. But for instance, when a swarm of these giant lizards descended on a farm where he had been growing corn and raising a few goats, they would eat up the whole crop, roots and all, in a few minutes, or clear off all the natural turf down to the bare ground so that there was nothing left for the goats to feed on."
"Yes, yes," said the Doctor, "but the insects, Chee-Chee. Do you recall your grandmother speaking of any giant moths, beetles or butterflies?"
"Yes, I was coming to that," said the monkey. "She used to tell us of one time—again in the days before there was a Moon—when a certain valley lay for a considerable time undisturbed by most creatures. You see, although there was occasional crowding in some areas, the world at that time had lots and lots of room in it. And, as I was saying, in this quiet forgotten valley a giant race of butterflies is said to have flourished. Of course my grandmother never saw them, they were millions of years before her time, and she only handed on the story to us as she had heard it. But she said it was still believed that these butterflies with their wings outspread were a hundred paces across from tip to tip."
"Had your grandmother ever spoken of other giant insects, Chee-Chee," asked the Doctor—"of moths, for example?"
"Oh, well," said the monkey, "when I called them butterflies I was merely thinking of the general term in our language for all big flies of that sort. It is quite possible that the insects she spoke of were really moths. In fact I think it is more likely, since they appear to have been exceedingly strong; and moths would be stronger than butterflies, wouldn't they?"
"Er—yes—generally speaking," said the Doctor, "they would. But how do you know they were strong?"
"Well, it seems," said Chee-Chee, "that when Man first came into the valley he found it full of extraordinary flowers and vegetation of all kinds. The soil seems to have been very, very rich there. It had been a lake up in the hills many years before, simply filled with fish. Then suddenly, through an earthquake or something, all the water drained away through a crack in the mountains and the fish of course died in the mud that was left. The smell of the rotting fish at first drove every living thing away. But it also seems to have fertilized the valley in a very extraordinary manner. After a while of course seeds from the ordinary wild flowers and weeds began blowing in across the mountains. They took root, sprouted, bloomed and died down. Then their seed was blown about and did the same thing. But the new seed was very much better than the old, for the plants from which it came had grown strong in the most fertile ground in the world. And so it went on, each spring bringing forth finer and larger plants until, they say, many little wild flowers that in other parts were no bigger than a button, had become here gigantic blossoms growing on bushes as high as an elm tree.
"And of course where there are flowers, butterflies and moths and bees and beetles will always come. And thus in time this deserted valley, once a dried-up sea of mud, stinking of rotten fish, grew into a butterflies' paradise. It was set deep down in a canyon whose walls were sheer and unscalable. Neither man nor beast came to disturb this flower-filled playground where the butterflies and bees led a happy gorgeous life of sunshine, colour and peace."
Chee-Chee's story of the Butterflies' Paradise—as did most of his yarns of the Ancient World—got us all deeply interested. From Gub-Gub to the Doctor, we were all listening intently as the little monkey, squatting tailor-fashion on the corner of the table, retold the legends of prehistoric times which his ancestors had handed down to him.
"Well," he went on, "as it was with the flowers that fed and grew larger on the rich soil of the valley, so it was with the butterflies and bees who fed on the flowers. They became enormous. The honey they got from the blossoms made—"
"Excuse me," the Doctor interrupted.—"Honey, did you say?"
"Yes," said Chee-Chee, "that was the food they got from the flowers of course. So it was believed that it was the honey, peculiarly rich in that district, which made them so big."
"Humph!—Yes, yes. Pardon me. Go on," said the Doctor.
"But naturally sooner or later such an extraordinary valley, filled with such extraordinary creatures, would have to be discovered and disturbed by strangers. There was a tradition among the monkey people, my grandmother said, that a party of baboons was the first to enter it. They however, when they had finally scaled the rocky heights surrounding the canyon and looked down into the valley filled with gaudy-coloured flies as big as ships, were so scared that they bolted and never went back there again. But some men who had watched the baboons climbing up and made a note of how they reached the top, followed over the same trail. Among this party there was one very bold spirit who often led the others in attacks upon the large animals. While the others hung back in hesitation he descended the break-neck precipices, determined to investigate those lovely giants. He reached the bottom and there, from the ambush of an enormous leaf big enough to hide a regiment under, he suddenly sprang out on to one of the butterflies as he crawled over the ground in the sun. The big insect, thoroughly frightened, took to his wings at once; and with the wretched man clinging to his shoulders, he soared away over the mountain-tops. Neither of them was ever seen again."