Chapter Eight 

 DUNNOTTAR DILEMMA 



ERIC Hunt first came into this story in 1952 in Zanzibar, 

 where we were working at that time as part of an extensive 

 expedition covering Zanzibar, Pemba, part of Tanganyika, and 

 Kenya. We had been greatly assisted in all phases of our work by 

 the authorities of each country, and at the close of our time in 

 Zanzibar, at the request of the authorities, we held an exhibition 

 of our discoveries for the public, and this was crowded out all day. 

 Hunt came late in the afternoon with a friend who knew my wife, 

 and so was introduced. He wanted certain information about fish, 

 as he did a good deal of commercial fishing. 



We had a pile of the Coelacanth leaflets there for people to 

 take, and Hunt spotted these and was soon immersed in one. My 

 wife noticed his absorption and asked if he was interested. His 

 reply left no doubt that he was, and he asked if he might have 

 some of the leaflets to take to the Comores. Comores ! My wife 

 jumped at this, as may well be imagined ; we might indeed have 

 been working at those very islands at that moment had not the 

 Kenya authorities been so anxious for us to come there. What did 

 Hunt know about the Comores? Well, he had a schooner and lived 

 by trading between Africa and the Comores, and knew them 

 well. Her quick reaction led him to ask my wife at once if she 

 thought there was any possibility that the Coelacanth might be 

 at the Comores? 



More than a possibility she told him, and that I had long believed 

 that Coelacanths would likely be found somewhere about Mada- 

 gascar — for one thing, fossils were well known there, and as for 

 the Comores, well, they had long been something of an obsession 

 with me. She told him how I wanted to go there, and how I had 

 tried to find out about their natural history, but there just didn't 

 seem to be any. She told him, too, something of our experiences 

 the year before when we had been working at the Querimba 



