MADAGASCAR (III) 247 
fall, for after that the ferry boys would most likely have been 
unavailable. 
It was a typical west-coast balmy evening as we made our way 
along the road that runs southward to Morondava, and for me 
adventure was in the air. We arrived at the Sakalava village of 
Beroboka about half an hour after nightfall; just beyond this the 
road entered the forest—a mere fragment of its former extent of 
over fifty miles from the Tsiribihina to the Morondava River. 
I asked my French-speaking native driver to stop at Beroboka 
and inquire for the village Chief. My driver knew the Sakalava 
country and spoke the language fluently, so I was able to employ 
him to translate the Chief’s remarks into French. 
My efforts to find out something useful about the Giant Rat 
were in vain, for I soon discovered that the Malagasy, on the 
whole, are very suspicious of strangers and will often go out of 
their way to give wrong information, even on matters of little 
consequence. 
The Chief admitted the existence of the Giant Rat in the nearby 
forest, but said that at this time of the year (the dry season) it 
remained underground and did not appear until the rains came. 
Although my knowledge of the animal was nil I guessed this 
latter part of the information to be humbug, and so with some 
impatience I told the driver to thank the Chief and tell him that 
I thought he was mad. And with that we drove on. 
In a few moments we were in the forest, so different in its 
aspect from the rain-forest of the east with its trees festooned with 
epiphytes. Here most of the trees had shed their leaves, their 
branches were devoid of mosses, ferns, and orchids, and the out- 
standing feature was the magnificent array of baobab trees that 
flanked the highway. 
Within ten minutes of leaving the Sakalava village Chief, who 
had stressed the subterranean habits of the Giant Rat, our head- 
lights caught some object in the distance and by the side of the 
road, which looked like a rabbit. Unfortunately, in the excitement 
my driver accelerated instead of going cautiously, so that when we 
passed the animal we were doing around fifty miles per hour, ane 
as the road was merely a hard earth track we were bumping too 
much for me to get a shot. We sped by the ceature as it leapt into 
