Gerald Durrell's adventurous spirit and his spontaneous gift for narrative and anecdote mark him as a rare bird indeed.In The Bafut Beagles he describes a collecting expedition to the Cameroons, where, with the assistance of a pack of African enthusiasts and mongrel dogs, he captured almost everything from flying mice to booming squirrels. The unconscious humour of a supercilious toad or a hypocritical chimpanzee is only surpassed by the electric charm of the convivial Fon of Bafut himself.There are not many travel books with a more natural sense of humour.
The Cross River picks its way down from the mountains of the Cameroons, until it runs sprawling and glittering into the great bowl of forest land around Mamfe. After being all froth, waterfalls, and eager chattering in the mountains, it settles down when it reaches this forest, and runs sedately in its rocky bed, the gently moving waters creating ribs of pure white sand across its width, and washing the mud away from the tree roots, so that they look as though they stand at the edge of the water on a tangled, writhing mass of octopus-like legs. It moves along majestically, its brown waters full of hippo and crocodile, and the warm air above it filled with hawking swallows, blue and orange and white.
Just above Mamfe the river increases its pace slightly, squeezing itself between two high rocky cliffs, cliffs that are worn smooth by the passing waters and wear a tattered antimacassar of undergrowth that hangs down from the forest above; emerging from the gorge it swirls out into a vast egg-shaped basin. A little further along, through an identical gorge, another river empties itself into this same basin, and the waters meet and mix in a skein of tiny currents, whirlpools, and ripples, and then continue onwards as one waterway, leaving, as a result of their marriage, a huge glittering hummock of white sand in the centre of the river, sand that is pockmarked with the footprints of hippo and patterned with chains of bird-tracks. Near this island of sand the forest on the bank gives way to the small grassfield that surrounds the village of Mamfe, and it was here, on the edge of the forest, above the smooth brown river, that we chose to have our base camp.
It took two days of cutting and levelling to get the camp site ready, and on the third day Smith and I stood at the edge of the grassfield watching while thirty sweating, shouting Africans hauled and pulled at what appeared to be the vast, brown, wrinkled carcass of a whale that lay on the freshly turned red earth. Gradually, as this sea of canvas was pulled and pushed, it rose into the air, swelling like an unhealthy looking puffball. Then it seemed to spread out suddenly, leechlike, and turned itself into a marquee of impressive dimensions. When it had thus revealed its identity, there came a full-throated roar, a mixture of astonishment, amazement, and delight, from the crowd of villagers who had come to watch our camp building.
Once the marquee was ready to house us, it took another week of hard work before we were ready to start collecting. Cages had to be erected, ponds dug, various chiefs from nearby villages interviewed and told of the animals we required, food supplies had to be laid on, and a hundred and one other things had to be done. Eventually, when the camp was functioning smoothly, we felt we could start collecting in earnest. We had decided that Smith should stay in Mamfe and keep the base camp going, gleaning what forest fauna he could with the help of the local inhabitants, while I was to travel further inland to the mountains, where the forest gave place to the great grasslands. In this mountain world, with its strange vegetation and cooler climate, a completely different fauna from that of the steamy forest region was to be found.
I was not certain which part of the grasslands would be the best for me to operate in, so I went to the District Officer for advice. I explained my dilemma, and he produced a map of the mountains and together we pored over it. Suddenly he dabbed his forefinger down and glanced at me.
What about Bafut ? he asked.
Is that a good place? What are the people like?
"There is only one person you have to worry about in Bafut, and that's the Fon, he said; get him on your side and the people will help you all they can.
Is he the chief?
He's the sort of Nero of this region, said the D.O., marking a large circle on the map with his finger, and what he says goes. He's the most delightful old rogue, and the quickest and surest way to his heart is to prove to him that you can carry your liquor. He's got a wonderful great villa there, which he built in case he had any European visitors, and I'm sure if you wrote to him he would let you stay there. It's worth a visit, is Bafut, even if you don't stay.
Well, I'll drop him a note and see what he says.
See that your communication is... er... well lubricated, said the D.O.
I'll go down to the store and get a bottle of lubrication at once, I assured him.
So that afternoon, a messenger went off to the mountains, carrying with him my note and a bottle of gin. Four days later he returned, bearing a letter from the Fon, a masterly document that encouraged me tremendously.
