We considered the haughty Mauritius kestrel. It considered us. ‘The world’s rarest bird of prey,’ sighed Carl. ‘I know of two pairs in the wild and I have three birds which I hatched in incubators.’
‘Will they breed, do you think?’ I asked.
‘With great difficulty,’ he sighed. ‘They’re all males.’
On my last day in Mauritius I went back to see the Dodo, in Port Louis, and stood in the museum marvelling at the wondrous bird. It is only a model, a reconstruction (if the Dodo was ever constructed in the first place). Its twin is in the British Museum.
I could have stood admiring him all day. The size of three turkeys, with the doleful eyes and long face, he looked like my dog, my basset-hound.
Over the years this baggage of a bird was ridiculed by the name Dodou, Portuguese for a simpleton; the French called it en sot; it was also labelled Didus Ineptus. Unbelievably it is a member of the pigeon family; but it is a big pigeon.
There are stories of the poor, dopey creature being displayed in Europe, to great laughter which must have caused it embarrassment. An English sailor, writing to his brother in 1638 says, ‘You shall receive . . . a strange fowle . . . which I had at the Iland Mauritius called by ye portugalls a Do Do, which by the rareness whereof I hope will be welcome to you . . . if it live.’
Perhaps it did for in the same year Sir Hamon l’Estrange, in his diary, records seeing a Dodo in London where its keeper demonstrated its ability to ‘swallow large pebble stones . . . bigger then nutmegs.’ Poor Dodo.
Looking at him, there safe at last in his case in Port Louis, I realized that this great ball of feathers with the hangdog look is (or was) the world’s most wonderful bird. I thought that I, at least, would give him a proper name and immediately Maurice came to mind. I believe Mauritius was named for him not for some nebulous Dutch prince. Perhaps, and I hope, somewhere up in those green hills he still harmlessly potters about.
Long live Maurice the Dodo!
It was ten years before I returned to Mauritius. The dodo had still not reappeared. How strange that what is probably the world’s most talked-about bird has never been seen by anyone.
On the British Airways flight I met Sir James Mancham, once deposed Prime Minister of the Seychelles and now in opposition in the restored island democracy. He told me that he had purloined part of the Seychelles chapter in the original edition of this book and used it in a volume of his own. He owed me a drink, he said. He left the plane at Mahé, dandily dressed and larger than life, inviting me to revisit the islands and see how much changed and happier they were. The Russians had gone.
Changes there may be; history moves irrevocably. But the Indian Ocean below the wings of the plane was still the same deep peaceful purple, decorated with small fluffy clouds moving slowly like homegoing sheep. There was still enough light when we reached Mauritius to discern the wide grin of the coral reef, the darkening deep sea held outside it, at arm’s length from the land. The lagoons held within the reef were swirling and turquoise.
Those curiously peaked mountains, like some Disney cut-outs, cast their pointed shadows over the green land of the afternoon. Once again I was able to pick out clearly the piles of slave-stones scattered among the pale sugar-cane. Nobody had attempted to move them. We dipped and came into Plaisance Airport. This time I had my wife Diana with me. I was pleased to be back.
Proudly they told me that since my last visit Mauritius had gained its millionth inhabitant and no longer needed the population of Rodriguez, its satellite island, 370 miles away, to reach the grand total. Since I was last there it had also become a republic and we saw the President one day driving through the coastal villages in his car accompanied by only one motorcycle-borne policeman whose chief function seemed to be to scatter dogs and chickens. It is a peaceful place.
The 1,100,000 Mauritians seem to get along together. The Indians, the Creoles of African descent, and the small Chinese segment, active in business, the culinary arts, and games of chance live side by side in Port Louis, in Curepipe and in the small towns and villages scattered through the 720 square miles of the island.
‘Nobody fights very much,’ said Ravi Misra, a travel consultant who once managed Bombay Airport for Air India. He is a benign man with amused eyes who during our stay became quite proud of the sunburn on his dark, smooth forehead. ‘I’m peeling,’ he said pointing every day to the changing skin line. He looked like that advertisement for Ovaltine, a smiling globe, proclaiming ‘The World’s Best Nightcap’.
‘Here in Mauritius races and religions knock along together pretty well,’ he said. ‘They live next to each other, not in separate communities, and they tolerate other people’s way of life and religious beliefs and festivals. Everybody pushes the boat out at Christmas.’
The island appears more settled, more sure of itself, and more prosperous than when I was last there. The hotels on the resort coasts would be hard to better anywhere in the world. They help to provide high employment. ‘I was sorry to hear about Fergie and Andrew,’ said the boatman taking us from Le Touessrok to the Ile aux Cerfs, a mile offshore. ‘They were here, customers of mine. And George Best. He’s been here too.’ He patted the hull proudly. ‘In this boat.’
Each of the island parishes – the romantically named Pamplemousses, Savanne and Rivière Noire, among them – has its own preserved characteristics and local rivalries. The Mauritians love football and important matches (the Fire Brigade versus the Cadets) are televised. Always the mountains push against the sky, but somehow they seem permanently just out of reach, misty, dreamlike in their strange shapes. Every village is busy with people going to and from the sugar-cane fields (forty per cent of the land is still taken up with these), carrying a few bamboos home for private use. The simplicity of a village house is enhanced by a cloud of bougainvillaea or the flamboyant flash of the flame tree. At weekends there seem to be weddings going on in every settlement, the cars decorated as extravagantly as the guests. Mauritians love their cars and, in a country where a new vehicle can cost many times more than a house, there are dazzling old Morris Minors and Austin Princesses. A visiting automobile enthusiast might think with pleasure that he had arrived in a time warp.
In Port Louis one evening we had a meal at a Chinese eating house and realized happily why all Mauritians, whatever their race, eat that way when they go out for a treat. We were then ushered into the Chinese gambling room next door, up some mysterious stairs, past a guard lolling on a chair, and onto a landing like an Eastern temple. It was like walking into an old movie starring Sydney Greenstreet wearing a creased suit. Walls and ceilings were decorated with shapes of red and gold, with symbols and lettering, and large tanks housing fish with dangerous expressions. There were notices on the walls, all in Chinese characters, except one which warned significantly in English, ‘Obscene oaths not allowed.’
They would have been heard immediately, for in the gambling room, overlooked by a bronze bust of the establishment’s founder, there was silence. People stood around the tables but it was so quiet you could hear the cards being dealt. There were five tables. Everything looked dusty and intriguing, not a bit like the glittering casino at the opulent San Geran Hotel, where once at roulette I had come up on the same number, nineteen, three times in succession. Nobody in the Chinese room was dressed up. They sat and stood around the tables, expressions orientally inscrutable. The game was pontoon.
One of the house rules is that if you are occupying a seat and not playing then you must give up the place to someone who wants to join in. As soon as I showed signs of interest a man at the far side of one table stood up, bowed graciously and indicated that I should take his place. A small lady dealt the cards. My first two hands were twenty-ones.
Eventually, well, not eventually, fairly quickly in fact, the house got its money back, and we set out for our hotel at San Geran on the far coast. Every journey in Mauritius takes at least an hour and you can drive on one route for two hours. That is a lot for an is
land only just over thirty miles from top to bottom and under thirty across the waist. But there are a lot of corners, some vertical.
I found that Carl Jones was still on the island, still intent on saving the wildlife. Almost ten years after I had seen him with his fruit bats and his pink pigeons, and he had told me of his efforts to save the Mauritian kestrel, he was still working, having done that particular job. Up in the foothills they have a colony of these small, fierce birds, and there are now 200 in the wild. ‘The problem is,’ said Alain O’Reilly who manages the reserve, ‘that those reared here have no fear. They don’t even keep a lookout when they are feeding. If you watch two mynah birds, one will feed and the other will watch for enemies. But not the kestrel. Sometimes the mongoose will get him.’
The mongoose, brought in to kill the rats at the time of the establishment of the sugar plantations, has proliferated and is now a major pest. ‘We kill them and give them a post-mortem,’ said Alain. ‘We find toads, birds, lizards, but we’ve never found that they’ve eaten a rat.’
A quizzical Irishman with the party wondered about the plural of mongoose. We were eating venison curry. ‘A chap in County Sligo,’ he related, ‘sent off for two mongooses, but he didn’t know what the plural was, so he asked for one and added a P.S. “Please send another one as well.”’
We saw a kestrel, no bigger than a small owl, dive from a tree to pick up a mouse. It returned to its nest to feed its young. Without the work of Carl Jones the bird would now be extinct. If Carl had lived a couple of hundred years earlier perhaps the dodo would still be with us.
MAURITIUS situated between latitudes 19°58’–20°32’S and longitudes 57°17’–57°46’E; area 729 sq. m (1,888 sq. km); population approx. 1,100,000; independent state within the Commonwealth
Lamma and Lantau Islands
China ’cross the Bay
The heart is an island
But the soul is the sky.
Old Chinese Proverb
Hong Kong, one of the world’s most confined and congested places, is cast about by more than two hundred islands where it is possible to walk for many solitary hours among butterflies and birds.
On Lamma Island, sitting by, but not on, an armchair-shaped tomb on a sunny hill, I watched the distant harbour of Aberdeen on Hong Kong, looked across to the buildings piled like luggage on a wharf, and noted the aircraft shuttling towards Kai Tak Airport. I was so alone that, guided by only Chinese signposts, this intrepid explorer once more lost his way.
Even if I were still wandering there now, which by the way events turned out would not be all that unlikely, the adventure would have remained a satisfaction. In order to reach Lamma you go along the frenetic waterfront of Hong Kong Island and buy a ticket at the Outer Islands Ferry. Many of the population of the colony live on boats, or travel by them, and as the ferry pushed its way across the humid harbour, the spread of the remarkable city opened out like a frieze. It was mid-morning and the ferry was the least crowded place on that side of the water. I had a whole deck to myself, one man among rows of empty benches, like a lone, conscientious voter at an unpopular election meeting. At the centre of the vessel a cookshop blew out delicious noodly smells; from the rail I looked out onto the ominously thick water with its thousand boats; junks, tenuous sampans, often with a thin woman poling at the stern, fellow ferries, a hydrofoil, rushing, red and white striped like a footballer; a dense cargo ship, registered in Southampton, England, with railway carriages lining her deck giving her the appearance of a floating railway terminus. Our – or rather ‘my’ – ferry hooted, important hoots not much milder than a departing ocean liner, as we moved out into the streams of marine traffic. For all the varying sizes and speeds, for all the crossing courses, the frailty of some craft and the hugeness of others, there seemed little danger of collision.
Eventually the activity began to thin and, although we were still hemmed in by the city and its hills, the seaway opened out and I could see the outlying isles, approaching beyond the bow. Lamma is the third largest with an area of five square miles, much of which is green and open hillside, its population concentrated mainly in two settlements by the sea. There are no paved roads or vehicular traffic. My scheme was to arrive at the waterside village of Sok Kwu Wan, have a fish lunch, and walk across the rising land to Yung Shue Wan where I could conveniently board the return ferry. So much for the plan; in reality it was a little different.
We passed an islet with a coffee-pot lighthouse and a Union Jack, and then the ferry nosed into an opening in the side of the lofty island which grew ahead. The next hour was one of unexpected delight.
There was a festival taking place in Sok Kwu Wan. Its harbour was blowing with coloured flags and banners, the bom-bom of drums sounded from its random waterfront, and out in the open water were three immensely long canoes, ornamented with omens, each manned by fifty paddlers. Every boat had a dragon’s head at its bow and at its centre a man pounding out time on painted drums. The three crews, each one in different colours, had just raced across the bay and there was overwhelming acclamation on shore, and on the boats, as the winners were announced. Drums rattled and boomed, and at the end of the jetty dragons were dancing. Chinese music clanged out from every alley and place. I saw it all, spellbound, while the ferry went between the jubilant flags to the quay.
For a while I watched the canoes, with their crews wearing fancy hats, race again across the olive water, urged on by drums, between the hundreds of houseboats, sampans and junks jammed against the harbour pontoons. Then the streets claimed my delighted attention; tight alleys, birds in cages, flowers tipping over, children shouting, people carrying great bundles on heads and shoulders, and – joy – the exquisite smell of Chinese cooking. All along the waterfront were outdoor cafés, crowded with families on this festive day – I counted twenty-three people around one table, great-grandmother down to the newest staring infant. I knew how he felt.
The lady at the place I had lunch (I kept to fish and rice in anticipation of my walk across the island) tried to explain the reason for the festivities. It was religious, she said, but not Christian. She was anxious to define the point. ‘Lamma,’ she said pointing to the ground, ‘Lamma don’t like Jesus. Hong Kong like Jesus.’ I nodded that I understood there were other religions available. She told me the Chinese opera was making its once-a-year visit. That night would be one to remember.
I could have stayed in Sok Kwu Wan all day (or all month for that matter) but I had decided to explore the interior and I proceeded along the waterfront, past the exotic façade which was being erected for the opera performance, ducking under hanging banners and dangling laundry (the Chinese are never short of flags of one sort or another) and then out by a single path around the bay and up into the hills.
There was a softness up here, a humming quiet of bees and dragonflies, birds sounding drowsily, only for the music from the village to come to ear immediately I gained an exposed position. With no noise from vehicles it vibrated from far over the bay.
Once I was in the middle of the island, however, the noise ceased. I came upon a line of Chinese people, each with a black umbrella open, progressing in single file down the path, like a silent patrol. There was a school where children’s chiming filtered out into the sunshine. I was reminded of the little school on Great Barrier Island, New Zealand. It might have been the same place. I suppose schools are much the same in such places everywhere. Two boys with satchels, almost as big as they were, approached grinning.
‘How are you?’ said one. I was not sure whether he was enquiring after my health or telling me his name. ‘I am fine,’ I ventured. ‘How are you?’
‘I am fine,’ he replied.
‘I am fine,’ added his companion. They went on their way, apparently feeling a sort of triumph. I did too.
Down in the bay a figure in a wide straw hat paddled a raft scarcely the size of a suitcase. I descended the path to the beach and saw it was a woman. I waved but I realized she would be too occupi
ed to respond. She could hardly have let go of that paddle without tumbling into the water. I came to a halt; a small group of houses with not a soul there except an old woman cleaning some fish. She politely waved a fish in greeting.
The interior of the island was empty. Not a living soul did I see as I walked the meandering path, through thickly smelling trees and hems of flowers, including the bougainvillaea which seems to grow everywhere that has a taste of warmth. There were patches of cultivated gardens, with beans and the sort of vegetables grown in England. Up in the silent paths, where the ground is pierced by rocks and the way climbs more than 1,000 feet into Mount Stenhouse, the central peak of the island, there were curious Chinese tombs, shaped like armchairs so that the dead can rest comfortably.
It was entirely pleasing wandering through that unusual country but it also seemed to be taking a long time. I kept catching a glimpse of the brow of a white chimney (true to modern form, a power station was being built on Lamma which only narrowly escaped the excesses of an oil refinery) and I attempted to navigate by that. The signs at the pathside, painted on rocks, were copious but were inconveniently in Chinese characters.
After two and a half hours on what should have been an amiable hour’s stroll, I knew that once again this Doctor Livingstone had got himself lost. It was not so desperate as my experience on Dunk Island in Australia (there were no snakes for a start), but it was still hot and exhausting. Eventually the path unrolled to the seashore by a rubbishy little bay and I saw a man in a sampan shovelling a dreadful mess of food scraps into a container, presumably for his pigs or chickens. I went along the wooden jetty and asked him the way to Yung Shue Wan.
He appeared aghast and pointed vaguely far over the hills. A young woman arrived with a baby and she said, ‘Long way, long way.’ Once again I wondered if she were telling me her name.
My World of Islands Page 24