The Wind Makes Dust ; four centuries of travel in Southern Africa - Ben Maclennan

The wind makes dust; four centuries of travel in Southern Africa - Ben Maclennan - Tafelberg, 2003, first edition, first printing - 377pp, black and white photographs and illustrations - Softcover in good condition - Internally: one previous ownership, clean and tightly bound.

An off-beat anthology spanning four hundred years of travel in and around the southern tip of Africa.

From early European seafarers making sometimes bloody contact with Khoikhoi at the Cape, to the era of railways, hotels and pass laws, The Wind  Makes Dust takes us on as eccentric odyssey through the past. It parades a cast that includes soldiers and statesmen, cannibals both black and white, missionaries, elephant hunters, escaping slaves, circus showmen, fossil hunters, a shipwrecked Siamese mandarin in a homesick San shaman. It also contains instructions for cooking elephant's foot, some truly awful poetry, a quest for the unicorn, and a sprinkling of discreet sex

"A treasure trove of the trilling, terrifying and sometimes bizarre.." - Don Pinnock