The Bafut Beagles

Apparently I was not to be defiled by being watched by an indiscriminate mass of villagers, but any personal friends of Jacob's were in a different category. It was not until later that I learned that Jacob was something of a business man: after driving away the crowd, he had announced that those who would pay him a penny for the privilege of watching me bath would be allowed to return. He did quite a brisk trade among the smaller members of the village, many of whom had never seen a European, and who wanted to settle various bets among each other as to whether or not I was white all over.

Very early the next morning my hunters and my tree-climber appeared. The hunters, it transpired, had found and marked some thirty hollow trees in different parts of the forest. They were however dispersed over such a wide area that it would prove impossible to visit them all in one day, so I decided that we would visit .the farthest ones first, and gradually work back towards the village.

The path we followed was a typical bush path, about eighteen inches wide, that coiled and twisted among the trees like a dying snake. At first it led up an extremely steep hillside, through massive boulders, each topped with a patch of ferns and moss and starred with the flowers of a tiny pink primrose-like plant. Here and there the great lianas coiled down from the trees, and lay across our path in strange shapes, curving and twisting like giant pythons. At the top of this steep incline the path flattened out, and ran across the level forest floor between the giant tree-trunks. The interior of the forest is cool, and the light is dim; it flickers through the dense fretwork of leaves, which gives it a curious underwater quality. The forest is not the tangled mass of undergrowth that you read about: it is composed of the enormous pillar-like trunks of the trees, set well apart, and interspersed with the thin undergrowth, the young saplings and low-growing plants that lurk in the half-light. We travelled onwards, following the faint trail, for some four miles, and then one of the hunters stopped and stuck his cutlass into the trunk of a great tree with a ringing  chunk.

Dis na tree dat get hole for inside, sah, he proclaimed.

At the base of the trunk was a slit, some two feet wide and three feet high; I bent and stuck my head inside, and then twisted round so that I could look up the tree. But if there was a top opening, it was hidden from me by some bend in the trunk, for no light filtered down from above. I sniffed vigorously, but all I could smell was rotting wood. The base of the tree yielded nothing but a few bat droppings and the dried husks of various insects. It did not look a particularly good tree, but I thought we might as well try smoking it out and see what it contained.

Smoking out a big forest tree, when it is only done occasionally, is a thrilling procedure. During my search for Idiurus the thrill rather wore off, but this was because we were forced to smoke so many trees a day, and a great proportion of them proved to have nothing inside. Smoking a tree is quite an art. and requires a certain amount of practice before you can perfect it. First, having found your tree and made sure that it is really hollow all the way up, you have to discover whether there are any exit holes farther up the trunk, and if there are you have to send a man up to cover them with nets. Then you drape a net over the main hole at the base of the tree in such a way that it does not interfere with the smoking, and yet prevents anything from getting away. The important thing is to make sure that this net is secure: there is nothing quite so exasperating as to have it fall down and envelop you in its folds just as the creatures inside the tree are starting to come out.

With all your nets in position you have to deal with the problem of the fire: this, contrary to all proverbial expectations, has to be all smoke and no fire, unless you want your specimens roasted. First, a small pile of dry twigs is laid in the opening, soaked with kerosene and set alight. As soon as it is ablaze you lay a handful of green leaves on top, and keep replenishing them. The burning of these green leaves produces scarcely any flame, but vast quantities of pungent smoke, which is immediately sucked up into the hollow of the tree. Your next problem is to make sure that there is not too much smoke; for if you are not careful you can quite easily asphyxiate your specimens before they can rush out of the tree. The idea is to strike that happy medium between roasting and suffocation of your quarry. Once the fire has been lit and piled with green leaves, it generally takes about three minutes (depending on the size of the tree) before the smoke percolates to every part and the animals start to break cover.