Gerald Durrell - Overloaded Ark

The story of asix months collecting trip made by Gerald Durrell and John Yealland to thegreat rain forests of the Cameroons in West Africa to bring back alive some ofthe fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles of the region and to see one of thefew parts of Africa that remained as it had been when the continent was firstdiscovered.

... a book ofimmense charm. The author handles English prose with the same firmness anddiscretion that he used to dispense towards the pangolins and lemuroids thatfell to his snares and huntsmen in the Cameroons. How seldom it is that booksof this kind are written by those who can write!... a genuinely amusingwriter. Time and Tide

... I hail ahappy book out of Africa... and one amusing in its own right... I canthink of no more wholesomely escapist experience than travelling for anall-too-brief spell in Mr Durrells overloaded ark. No wonder it is a BookSociety choice. Daily Telegraph

... He has agift both of enjoyment and of description, and writes vividly and well. TheTimes

Coverillustration by Paxton Chadwick

Fora complete list of books available please write to Penguin Books whose addresscan be found on the back of the title page

PENGUINBOOKS

1228

THE OVERLOADED ARK

GERALDDURRELL

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

PENGUINBOOKS

INASSOCIATION WITH

FABERAND FABER

PenguinBooks Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex

AUSTRALIA:Penguin Books Pty Ltd, 762 Whitehorse Road.

Mitcham,Victoria

Firstpublished by Faber and Faber 1953

Publishedin Penguin Books 1957

Madeand printed in Great Britain

byPurnell and Sons, Ltd.

Paulton(Somerset) and London

FOR

JOHN YEALLAND

Inmemory of birth and beasts and

thebeef that no fit die

CONTENTS

A Word inAdvance

Prelude

PARTONE: ESHOBI

1. The Forestby Day

2. Smoke andSmall Beef

3. Bigger Beef

4. The Forestby Night

5. The Fossilthat Bites

6. Beef andthe Bringers of Beef

7. Drills,Dances and Drums

PARTTWO: BAKEBE & BEYOND

8. Snakes andSunbirds

9. ArctocebusAhoy!

10. Nda Ali

11. The Ju-juthat Worked

12. The Life andDeath of Cholmondeley

13. The Villagein the Lake

14. The ArkDeparts

Finale

INDEX

AUTHORSACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

Of the UnitedAfrica Company: Mr Baker and Mr Milsome of Mamfe, and Mr Coon at Victoria, whodealt with the many problems of supplies and transport.

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

To the variousDistrict Officers in the Cameroons who helped us in many ways, and inparticular Mr Robins, District Officer for the Mamfe Division, who did much tosmooth our difficulties for us.

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

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

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

ARTISTSACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

Dr L. Forcartand Dr E. Sutter, members of the staff of the Museum of Natural History ofBasle, very kindly sought out much useful material for me; and I amparticularly indebted to Dr A. Portmann for his criticisms and suggestions andfor his most valuable help in producing the necessary documents for mydrawings.

A WORD IN ADVANCE

THIS is thechronicle of a six months collecting trip that my companion and myself made tothe great rain forests of the Cameroons, in West Africa. Our reasons for goingon this trip were twofold: firstly, we wanted to collect and bring back alivesome 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 mansAfrica, with its macadam roads, its cocktail bars, its express trains roaringthrough a landscape denuded of its flora and fauna by the beneficial influencesof civilization. We wanted to see one of those few remaining parts of thecontinent that had escaped this fate and remained more or less as it was whenAfrica was first discovered.

This was to beour first collecting trip. John Yeallands interest lay with birds, while minelay 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 notfinanced by the zoos you collect for. However, they help you in every way theycan, and supply you with lists of the specimens they would like from the areayou are going to, so you know before you start which animals you particularlywant.

There has beenquite a bit written about the collecting of wild animals, and most of it givesa very untrue picture. You do not spend your time on a trip risking deathtwenty times a day from hostile tribes or savage animals; on the other hand youdo 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, butthey have been greatly exaggerated: nine times out often any dangers youencounter are of your own making. Without the help of the natives you wouldstand 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 tokeep it alive and well. If you left this part of it to the natives you wouldget precious little back alive. Ninety per cent of your time is spent tendingyour captures, and the rest of your time in tramping miles through the forestin pursuit of some creature that refuses to be caught. But in writing a bookabout a collecting trip you naturally tend to stress the highlights rather thanthe dull routine work. After all, you dont want to write two hundred and fiftypages on how you cleaned out monkey cages, or cured diarrhoea, or any one ofthe odd things you had to do every day. So, if the following pages containmainly descriptions of the more interesting adventures we had, it does not meanto say that there were not the dull and unpleasant periods, when the worldseemed to be full of uncleaned cages or sick specimens, and you wondered whyyou ever came on the trip at all.

Finally, I wouldlike to exonerate my companion from any blame in foisting this history upon thepublic. Having suffered much at my hands in the tropics, he now has to sufferonce more in print; that he will do this with his usual placidity, I have nodoubt. But I would like to place it on record that when I told him I was writinga book about our trip he made the following statement: Take my advice, oldboy, he said earnestly, and dont....

PRELUDE

THE ship nosedits way through the morning mist, across a sea as smooth as milk. A faint andexciting smell came to us from the invisible shore, the smell of flowers, dampvegetation, palm oil, and a thousand other intoxicating scents drawn up fromthe earth by the rising sun, a pale, moist-looking nimbus of light seen dimlythrough the mists. As it rose higher and higher, the heat of its rayspenetrated and loosened the hold the mist had on land and sea. Slowly it wasdrawn up towards the sky in long lethargically coiling columns, and graduallythe bay and the coastline came into view and gave me my first glimpse of Africa.