The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build a new road,
for there is no ground on which he can build it. The government has
restricted him to a wild-pig trail which runs precipitously up the
mountain. I climbed the trail with him, and we had to climb with
hands and feet in order to get up. Nor can that wild-pig trail be
made into a road by any amount of toil less than that of an
engineer, a steam-engine, and a steel cable. But what does the
Nature Man care? In his gentle ethics the evil men do him he
requites with goodness. And who shall say he is not happier than
they?
"Never mind their pesky road," he said to me as we dragged ourselves
up a shelf of rock and sat down, panting, to rest. "I'll get an air
machine soon and fool them. I'm clearing a level space for a
landing stage for the airships, and next time you come to Tahiti you
will alight right at my door."
Yes, the Nature Man has some strange ideas besides that of the
gorilla pounding his chest in the African jungle. The Nature Man
has ideas about levitation. "Yes, sir," he said to me, "levitation
is not impossible. And think of the glory of it - lifting one's self
from the ground by an act of will.
