The Bafut Beagles

When I returned from the mountains to our Cross River base camp there was only one gap of importance in our collection. The gap-was noticeable to me, for it was caused by the absence of a tiny animal which I wanted to catch more than practically any other creature in the Cameroons. The English name for this beast is the Pigmy Scaly-tail, while zoologists, in their usual flippant and familiar manner, call it Idiurus kivuensis. When in England I had pored over drawings and museum skins of the beast, and since our arrival in Africa I had talked about it incessantly, until even the staff knew that Idiurus kivuensis was the name of a beef that I prized beyond all measure. I knew that Idiurus was a strictly nocturnal animal; it was, moreover, only the size of a small mouse, which made it unlikely that any of the hunters would know it. I was right, for they did not recognize the drawing I had. From the small amount of literature dealing with the species I had managed to glean the fact that they lived in colonies in hollow trees, preferring the less accessible portions of the forest. I explained this to the hunters, in the faint hope that it would spur them on to search for specimens, but it was no use; the African will not hunt for an animal he has never seen, for he considers it likely that it may not exist - to hunt for it would be a waste of time. I had had precisely the same trouble over the Hairy Frogs, so I realized that my tales of small-small rats that flew like birds from tree to tree were doomed from the start. One thing was very clear: if I wanted Idiurus I would have to go out and hunt for it myself, and I should have to do so quickly, for our time was short. I decided to make the village of Eshobi my headquarters for the Idiurus hunt; it was a day's march from base camp, in the depths of the forest, and I knew the inhabitants well, for I had stayed there on a previous visit to the Cameroons. Hunting for a creature the size of a mouse in the deep rain-forest that stretches for several hundred miles in all directions may sound like an improved version of the needle-in-the-haystack routine but it is this sort of thing that makes collecting so interesting. My chances of success were one in a thousand, but I set off cheerfully into the forest.

The Eshobi road can only be appreciated by someone with a saint-like predilection for mortifying the flesh. Most of it resembles an old dried watercourse, though it follows a route that no self-respecting river would take. It runs in a series of erratic zig-zags through the trees, occasionally tumbling down a steep slope into a valley, crossing a small stream and climbing up the opposite side. On the downward slope the rocks and stones which made up its surface were always loose, so that on occasions your descent was quicker than you anticipated. As the road started to climb up the opposite side of the valley, however, you would find that the rocks had increased considerably in size and were placed like a series of steps. This was a snare and a delusion, for each rock had been so cunningly placed that it was quite impossible to step from it to the next one. They were all thickly covered with a cloak of green moss, wild begonias, and ferns, so you could not tell, before jumping, exactly what shape your landing ground was going to be.

The track went on like this for some three miles, then we toiled up from the bottom of a deep valley and found that the forest floor was level and the path almost as smooth as a motor road. It wound and twisted its way through the giant trees, and here and there along its length there was a rent in the foliage above, which let through a shaft of sunlight. In these patches of sun, warming themselves after the night's dew, sat a host of butterflies. They rose and flew round us as we walked, dipping and fluttering and wheeling in a sun-drunken condition. There were tiny white ones like fragile chips of snow, great clumsy ones whose wings shone like burnished copper, and others decked out in blacks, greens, reds, and yellows. Once we had passed, they settled again on the sunlit path and sat there gaily, occasionally opening and closing their wings. This ballet of butterflies was always to be seen on the Eshobi path, and is moreover the only life you are likely to see, for the deep forest does not teem with dangerous game, as some books would have you believe.