Big Game Shooting and Travel in South-East Africa - Findlay, Frederick Roderick Noble

Findlay trekked through the virtually unknown recesses of the vast swamp and forest lands of Portuguese Southeast Africa and along the Urema and Massarara rivers. The game encountered included buffalo, waterbuck, hartebeest, lion, leopard, reedbuck, and other game. He then travelled to Zululand and bagged black rhino, buffalo, kudu, hippo, and inyala near the Manzibomvu River. Findlay also describes a springbok and ostrich hunt in the karoo country of Cape Colony. Though an ardent sportsman, he also realized the limits of wild game in Africa and argues for the preservation of habitat and maintaining healthy numbers of game animals.' Olive Schreiner, the author's aunt, contributes Part I (8 pages) to Chapter 20, The Fauna of Africa: Conservation or Extermination , a paper entitled, Waste Land in Mashonaland in which she describes the destruction of the fauna of Mashonaland, 'For the moment we are so entirely bent on advancing the claims of a material civilisation, which we are inclined to regard as the all in all of life, that more subtle, if equally practical and important, considerations are apt to be forgotten. This view is forced on us when we consider the reckless and entirely wanton destruction of the one form of production for which the African continent, and more especially its southern portions, stand pre-eminent among the world's divisions - our astonishing fauna. Czech (Dr. Kenneth P.)

Hardcover. English. T. Fisher Unwin, London. 1903, 1st ed. ISBN: n/a. xii, 313 pages with frontispiece on grey paper, 16 full-page plates & numerous illustrations in the text including folding map. In original brown boards with front hinge cracked and which has come loose from book. Gilt title on spine and upper cover, grey frontis is frayed at the bottom, possibly some paper loss but frontis is complete. Tape residue and ex-libris on front endpapers. Book No: 2501238