Stories from Deli

Szekely, 1920s

When we had traversed the lalang grass we reached the new clearing. Hundreds of axe-blows echoed through these wilds uninhabited by humans. The coolies, working as industriously as ants, lost themselves m the creeper thickets, and looked like dwarfs beside the hundred-metre high trees. In a dense network of lianas and climbing palms the poison green sea swallowed up the tiny brown men. The only sound was that of the axe-blows. Ghost-like and alarming was the cracking of the trees, as with yells and cries the coolies announced the felling of the trunks, so that those working in the vicinity could move away in good time. Cracking and rustling, pulling neighbouring tanks along with them, the trees fell. Each separate giant trunk shook the earth with a terrrible roar. Branches broke with a cracking sound, the lianas were pulled out by repeated jerks, and the coolies yelled loudly. The forest was being destroyed because a few months from now tobacco must grow there.

Dark and precipitous, the fringe of the forest reared skyward. Tomorrow those trees, too, would lie felled on the ground. With no mercy, no compassion, the human will here squander its energy. A few years hence bungalows would stand here, tennis courts and  streets would be built, automobiles would be tearing along and factory chimneys smoking.

Only yesterday the bloodthirsty tiger had here mangled his booty; frightened the herd of deer had fled; quietly and majestically the rulers of the desert, the elephants, had paced through their realm.

From: Tropical Fever (Ladislao Szekely) describing deforestation by European planters on North Sumatran soils