The Bafut Beagles

Behind lay the vast green forest, looking from this distance as tight and impenetrable as lambs wool; only on the hilltops was there any apparent break in the smooth surface of those millions of leaves, for against the sky the trees were silhouetted in a tattered fringe. Ahead of us lay a world so different that it seemed incredible that the two should be found side by side. There was no gradual merging: behind lay the forest of huge trees, each clad in its robe of polished leaves, glittering like green and gigantic pearly kings; ahead, to the furthermost dim blue homon, lay range after range of hills, merging and folding into one another like great frozen waves, tilting their faces to the sun, covered from valley to crest with a rippling fur of golden-green grass that paled or darkened as the wind curved and smoothed it. Behind us the forest was decked out in the most vivid of greens and scarlets - harsh and intense colours. Before us, in this strange mountain world of grass, the colours were soft and delicate - fawns, pale greens, warm browns, and golds. The smoothly crumpled hills covered with this pastel-tinted grass could have been an English scene: the downland country of the south on a larger scale. The illusion was spoilt, however, by the sun, which shone fiercely and steadily in a completely un-English manner.

From then onwards the road resembled a switchback, and we tattled and squeaked our way down into valleys, and coughed and grunted our way up the steep hillsides. We had paused on one hilltop to let the engine cool again, and I noticed in the valley ahead a village, looking at that distance like an irregular patch of black toadstools against the green. When the engine was switched off, the silence descended like a blanket; all we could hear was the soft hiss of the grass moved by the wind and, from the village far below us, the barking of a dog and the crowing of a cockerel, the sounds tiny and remote but clear as a bell. Through my field-glasses I could see that there was some activity going on in the village: crowds of people milled round the huts, and I could see the flash of machetes and spears, and the occasional glint of a gaudy sarong.

Na whatee dat palaver for dat place? I asked the driver.

He peered down the hill, screwing up his eyes, and then turned to me, grinning delightedly.

Na market, sah, he explained, and then, hopefully. Masa Want to stop for dat place?

You tink sometime we go find beef for sale dere?

Yes, sah!

For true?

For true, sah

You lie, bushman, I said in mock anger. you want to stop for dis place so you go find corn beer. No be so?

Eh! Na so, sah, admitted the driver, smiling, but sometimes Masa go find beef there also.

All right, we go stop small time.

Yes, sah, said the driver eagerly, and sent the lorry hurtling down the slope towards the village.

The big huts, with their conical thatched roofs, were grouped neatly round a small square which was shaded with groups of young eucalyptus trees. In this square was the market; in the patchwork of light and shadow under the slim trees the traders had spread their wares on the ground, each on his own little patch, and around them thronged the villagers in a gesticulating, chattering, arguing wedge. The wares offered for sale were astonishing in. their variety and, sometimes, in their incongruity. There were freshwater catfish, dried by wood smoke and spitted on short sticks. These are unpleasant-looking fish when alive, but when dried and shrivelled and blackened by the smoking they looked like some fiendish little juju dolls, twisted into strange contortions by a revolting dance. There were great bales of cloth, some of it the highly coloured prints so beloved of the African, imported from England; more tasteful was the locally woven cloth, thick and soft. Among these patches of highly coloured cloth were an odd assortment of eggs, chickens in bamboo baskets, green peppers, cabbages, potatoes, sugar-cane, great gory hunks of meat, giant Cane Rats, neatly gutted and hung on strings, earthenware pots and cane baskets, eroco-wood chairs, needles, gunpowder, corn beer, gin-traps, mangoes, pawpaws, enemas, lemons, native shoes, lovely raffia-work bags, nails, flints, carbide and cascara, spades and leopard skins, plimsolls, trilbys, calabashes full of palm wine, and old kerosene tins full of palm and groundnut oil.