8i 



Islands in the northern part of Mozambique, and how I had very 

 nearly set out to reach the Comores in the tiny vessel we had 

 then. As far as the leaflets were concerned, they should already 

 have gone to the Comores, because a big batch had been sent to 

 the French authorities in Madagascar some years before, and they 

 had been asked officially to distribute them. However, she was 

 pleased to give Hunt a batch of the leaflets, and he remarked that 

 if it should happen that they caused a fuzzy-headed Comoran to 

 get the ;£ioo reward for catching a Coelacanth, the Governor 

 would indeed be 'Tickled to death'. He himself would certainly 

 be thrilled to have a part in anything like that. After studying the 

 leaflet, Hunt asked many questions, and in addition my wife gave 

 him a good deal of extra information that might help him. She was 

 impressed by his quick grasp of essentials, and finally showed him 

 the account and pictures of the Coelacanth in a copy of my book 

 on South African fishes, which we had there and which he 

 studied closely for some time. Finally, he said that he was confident 

 he would recognise any Coelacanth he might come across, and 

 my wife told me she thought he would, too. She considered 

 Hunt to be 'all there'. In addition to this, he had undertaken to 

 try to get specimens of a certain peculiar small fish he had seen 

 in the Comores, but which we did not recognise from his descrip- 

 tion. It was arranged with people in Zanzibar that he was to be 

 supplied with formalin for that purpose. My wife emphasised the 

 importance of this, but as things turned out it was never sent to 

 Hunt, a not unusual type of failing in those climes. 



This was September 1952 and shortly afterwards Hunt took 

 the leaflets to the Comores, showed them to the authorities and 

 spoke about the Coelacanth. One visiting official had apparently 

 seen and heard about the leaflets before, but appeared to have the 

 impression that they represented an insane idea and a useless 

 search, for fish of that type lived in the deep sea, and it was certain 

 that they had never been seen anywhere round there. Hunt, how- 

 ever, had little difficulty in interesting the Governor, who had 

 them sent round to all the islands of the Comores and distributed 

 by native runners, who also as far as possible explained their 

 import to the natives. When you know natives of the type found 

 there, you wonder how anything like that could be explained to 

 them, except that money talks everywhere, especially big money 



