Gerald Durrell

 

 

The story of a
six months’ collecting trip made by Gerald Durrell and John Yealland to the
great rain forests of the Cameroons in West Africa to bring back alive some of
the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles of the region and to see one of the
few parts of Africa that remained as it had been when the continent was first
discovered.

 

“. . . a book of
immense charm. The author handles English prose with the same firmness and
discretion that he used to dispense towards the pangolins and lemuroids that
fell to his snares and huntsmen in the Cameroons. How seldom it is that books
of this kind are written by those who can write! . . . a genuinely amusing
writer.” —
Time and Tide

 

“. . . I hail a
happy book out of Africa . . . and one amusing in its own right . . . I can
think of no more wholesomely escapist experience than travelling for an
all-too-brief spell in Mr Durrell’s overloaded ark. No wonder it is a Book
Society choice.” —
Daily Telegraph

 

“. . . He has a
gift both of enjoyment and of description, and writes vividly and well.” —
The
Times

 

Cover
illustration by Paxton Chadwick

 

 

For
a complete list of books available please write to Penguin Books whose address
can be found on the back of the title page

 

 

 

 

PENGUIN
BOOKS

 

1228

 

THE OVERLOADED ARK

 

GERALD
DURRELL

 

 

 

 

And they went in unto Noah

into the ark, two and two of all flesh,

wherein is the breath of life.

GENESIS VII, 15

 

 

 

 

 

 

GERALD M. DURRELL

 

 

THE OVERLOADED ARK

 

 

 

 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

 

Sabine Baur

 

 

 

 

 

 

PENGUIN
BOOKS

 

IN
ASSOCIATION WITH

 

FABER
AND FABER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Penguin
Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex

 

 

AUSTRALIA:
Penguin Books Pty Ltd, 762 Whitehorse Road.

Mitcham,
Victoria

 

 

—

 

 

First
published by Faber and Faber 1953

 

Published
in Penguin Books 1957

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Made
and printed in Great Britain

by
Purnell and Sons, Ltd.

Paulton
(Somerset) and London

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR

 

JOHN YEALLAND

 

In
memory of birth and beasts and

the
beef that no fit die

 

CONTENTS

A Word in
Advance

Prelude

PART
ONE: ESHOBI

1.   The Forest
by Day

2.   Smoke and
Small Beef

3.   Bigger Beef

4.   The Forest
by Night

5.   The Fossil
that Bites

6.   Beef and
the Bringers of Beef

7.   Drills,
Dances and Drums

PART
TWO: BAKEBE & BEYOND

8.   Snakes and
Sunbirds

9.   Arctocebus
Ahoy!

10. N’da Ali

11. The
Ju-ju
that Worked

12. The Life and
Death of Cholmondeley

13. The Village
in the Lake

14. The Ark
Departs

      Finale

INDEX

AUTHOR’S
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BOTH John
Yealland and I would like to thank the following people, who, while we were in
the Cameroons, helped and advised us in many ways.

Of the United
Africa Company: Mr Baker and Mr Milsome of Mamfe, and Mr Coon at Victoria, who
dealt with the many problems of supplies and transport.

The Elders and
Fyffes representatives at both Victoria and Tiko who helped us to secure return
passages for ourselves and our animals, and the Captain and crew of the ship we
travelled back on, who did their utmost to make our voyage easy.

To the various
District Officers in the Cameroons who helped us in many ways, and in
particular Mr Robins, District Officer for the Mamfe Division, who did much to
smooth our difficulties for us.

We are deeply
indebted to the Reverend Paul Schibler and his wife, of the Basle Mission in
Kumba, who perhaps did more than anyone else in helping us in our work when we
stayed with them at Kumba.

We would also
like to thank all those Africans — personal staff, hunters, guides, and
carriers — without whose work and help we should have achieved very little.

Finally, I would
like to thank Miss Sabine Baur for the trouble and care she has taken over the
illustrations for this book, and my wife, who helped in the preparation of the
manuscript and who bravely undertook the dangerous task of criticizing my work.

ARTIST’S
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I MUST first of
all thank Mr Durrell for his very helpful sketches and photographs.

Dr L. Forcart
and Dr E. Sutter, members of the staff of the Museum of Natural History of
Basle, very kindly sought out much useful material for me; and I am
particularly indebted to Dr A. Portmann for his criticisms and suggestions and
for his most valuable help in producing the necessary documents for my
drawings.

A WORD IN ADVANCE

THIS is the
chronicle of a six months’ collecting trip that my companion and myself made to
the great rain forests of the Cameroons, in West Africa. Our reasons for going
on this trip were twofold: firstly, we wanted to collect and bring back alive
some of the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles that inhabit this region;
secondly, we had both long cherished a dream to see Africa: not the white man’s
Africa, with its macadam roads, its cocktail bars, its express trains roaring
through a landscape denuded of its flora and fauna by the beneficial influences
of civilization. We wanted to see one of those few remaining parts of the
continent that had escaped this fate and remained more or less as it was when
Africa was first discovered.

This was to be
our first collecting trip. John Yealland’s interest lay with birds, while mine
lay with mammals and reptiles. Together we had planned and financed the trip;
for a venture such as this you need a great deal of capital, as you are not
financed by the zoos you collect for. However, they help you in every way they
can, and supply you with lists of the specimens they would like from the area
you are going to, so you know before you start which animals you particularly
want.

There has been
quite a bit written about the collecting of wild animals, and most of it gives
a very untrue picture. You do not spend your time on a trip risking death
twenty times a day from hostile tribes or savage animals; on the other hand you
do not sit in a chair all day and let the “blacks” do all the work for you.
Naturally, doing this sort of work, you are bound to run certain risks, but
they have been greatly exaggerated: nine times out often any dangers you
encounter are of your own making. Without the help of the natives you would
stand little chance of catching the animals you want, for they know the forest,
having been born in it; once the animal is caught, however, it is your job to
keep it alive and well. If you left this part of it to the natives you would
get precious little back alive. Ninety per cent of your time is spent tending
your captures, and the rest of your time in tramping miles through the forest
in pursuit of some creature that refuses to be caught. But in writing a book
about a collecting trip you naturally tend to stress the highlights rather than
the dull routine work. After all, you don’t want to write two hundred and fifty
pages on how you cleaned out monkey cages, or cured diarrhoea, or any one of
the odd things you had to do every day. So, if the following pages contain
mainly descriptions of the more interesting adventures we had, it does not mean
to say that there were not the dull and unpleasant periods, when the world
seemed to be full of uncleaned cages or sick specimens, and you wondered why
you ever came on the trip at all.