Weeks after Tarzan got a growth spurt as he reached 14 years old, his fellow animals gathered about a small natural amphitheater which the jungle had left free from its entangling vines and creepers in a hollow among some low hills. The open space was almost circular in shape. Upon every hand rose the mighty giants of the untouched forest, with the matted undergrowth banked so closely between the huge trunks that the only opening into the little, level arena was through the upper branches of the trees.
Here, safe from interruption, they often gathered. In the center of the amphitheatre are many of those strange earthen drums which Kerchak's mum Khumbu built for both the rites and sounds of which a few have heard in the hectic jungle, but which even fewer have ever witnessed. Many travelers have seen the drums of their late Byronic former leader Khumbu, and some have heard the sounds of their beating and the noise of the wild, weird revelry of these first lords of the jungle, but the teenaged Tarzan is doubtless, the only human being who ever joined in the fierce, mad, intoxicating revel of the summer Jagodan.
From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms and ceremonials of modern church and state, for through time, back beyond the uttermost ramparts of a dawning, embryonic humanity's amoral ancestors danced out the rites of the Jagodan to the sound of their earthen drums, beneath the bright light of a tropical moon in the depth of a rainforest which stands altered and is still changing fast, as it stood on that long forgotten night in the dim, unthinkable vistas of the long-dead past when humanity's (and his birth society's) first ancestor swung from a swaying bough and dropped lightly upon the soft turf of the first meeting place.
On the day that Tarzan won his emancipation from his adoption outcast status, his friends and neighbours trooped silently through the lower terrace of the trees and dropped noiselessly upon the floor of the amphitheater. The rites of the summer Jagodan marked important events in the life of the animals —a victory for Tantor's dying grandma Demba, the capture of Kairu, the betrayal of Tarzan by his one time hero Kerchak, the accession of Dungy as mayor, were conducted with set ceremonialism. They laid their burden before the earthen drum and then squatted there beside it as guards, while the other members of the community curled themselves in grassy nooks to sleep until the rising moon should give the signal for the commencement of their savage orgy.
For hours absolute quiet reigned in the little clearing, except as it was broken by the discordant notes of brilliantly feathered parrots, or the screeching and twittering of the thousand jungle birds flitting ceaselessly amongst the vivid orchids and flamboyant blossoms which festooned the myriad, moss-covered branches of the forest kings.