A narrative of nine years spent amongst the game of the far interior of South Africa containing accounts of explorations beyond the Zambesi, on the river Chobe, and in the Matabele and Mashuna countries, with full notes upon the natural history and present distribution of all the large mammalia

This book is Selous's classic account of big game hunting in Southern Africa, being "a narrative of nine years spent amongst the game of the fair interior of South Africa, containing accounts of explorations beyond the Zambesi and in the Matabele and Mashuna countries, with full notes uponthe natural history and distribution of all the large mammalia".

"Selous is the most famous hunter in all Africa." - THE AMERICAN "Since the days of Baldwin there has not been published a book on South African sporting which equals in value and interest the volume brought out by Mr. Selous." -ACADEMY Frederick Courteney Selous (1851 - 1917) a British explorer, officer, hunter, and conservationist, famous for his exploits in Southeast Africa. His real-life adventures inspired Sir H. Rider Haggard to create the fictional Allan Quatermain character. Selous was also a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Cecil Rhodes and Frederick Russell Burnham. He was pre-eminent within a select group of big game hunters that included Abel Chapman and Arthur Henry Neumann. With but very few exceptions, Selous was the last of a long line of oldfashioned pioneer hunters of African big game. By long odds he was the most famous and conspicuous man of his kind. He lived and hunted from the period of the big-calibre smoothbore elephant gun that he loaded at the muzzle with a handful of powder as he ran at full speed, up through the 577 English express rifle of the 70's, to the highly finished Mannlicher of small calibre and tremendous power. In 1881 Selous published his book "A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa: Being a Narrative of Nine Years Spent Amongst the Game of the Far Interior of South Africa." His book, as a matter of course, abounds in hunting stories of the lion, elephant, rhino, ; and, as these are well told, and only just sufficiently flavoured with sporting slang to give them an air of reality or local colour, they are quite as likely to interest stay-at-home readers as sportsmen. We need hardly say that Mr. Selous was a successful sportsman, who made a good thing out of the ivory which he carried away as his spoils. The hunting of big game demands of its devotees many sacrifices. The hunter must be prepared to endure many and varied hardships in the pursuance of his vocation. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, the rigors of climate, the scorching sun by day, the fever-laden mists of night, these and many other trials must he encounter if he would taste to the full the joys of the hunter's life. Going to South Africa when he was 19, Selous travelled from the Cape of Good Hope to Matabeleland, which he reached early in 1872, and where (according to his own account) he was granted permission by Lobengula, King of the Ndebele, to shoot game anywhere in his dominions. From then until 1890, with a few brief intervals spent in England, Selous hunted and explored over the then little-known regions north of the Transvaal and south of the Congo Basin, shooting elephants and collecting specimens of all kinds for museums and private collections. His travels added greatly to the knowledge of the country now known as Zimbabwe. He made valuable ethnological investigations, and throughout his wanderings-often among people who had never previously seen a white man-he maintained cordial relations with the chiefs and tribes, winning their confidence and esteem, notably so in the case of Lobengula. In 1890, Selous entered the service of the British South Africa Company, at the request of magnate Cecil Rhodes, acting as guide to the pioneer expedition to Mashonaland. Over 400 miles of road were constructed through a country of forest, mountain and swamp, and in two and a half months Selous took the column safely to its destination. He then went east to Manica, concluding arrangements which brought the country there under British control. Coming to England in December 1892, he was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of his extensive explorations and surveys.

This book tells the story of an adventurer, hunter and naturalist in late nineteenth-century Africa, who would inspire novelists such as Rider Haggard and Wilbur Smith. The book describes Selous' extraordinary adventures, from elephant-hunting, and diamond-prospecting, to an early expedition to found Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the European scramble for Africa. The book also examines Selous' relationships with other influential people of the time, including Robert Baden-Powell, Frederick Russell Burnham, Cecil Rhodes, King Lobengula of the Ndebele, and American President Teddy Roosevelt. In Big Game Hunter Norman Etherington paints a skilful portrait of a complex man who started as an elephant hunter but who eventually founded some of the first game reserves in Africa and was acclaimed by both the National History Museum and the Royal Geographical Society for his collections and discoveries. Selous, who was killed by a German sniper bullet in Tanganyika in the First World War, was one of the world's great adventurers.

This book recovers the multiplicity of meanings embedded in colonial hunting and the power it symbolized by examining both the incorporation and representation of British women hunters in the sport and how African people leveraged British hunters' dependence on their labor and knowledge to direct the impact and experience of hunting.

Explorers and travellers have always been attracted by the lure of the unknown. By traversing and mapping our planet, they have played a vital role in mankind's development. For almost two hundred years, the Royal Geographical Society has recognised their achievements by awarding its prestigious gold medals to those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the world. Taking us on a journey across mountains and deserts, oceans and seas, Exploring the World tells the stories of more than eighty of these extraordinary men and women. Some, such as David Livingstone, Scott of the Antarctic and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, are well known; whilst others, such as William Chandless and Ney Elias, are today less familiar. Some dreamed of being the first to sight a lake or a river; others sighted some of the world's greatest natural features by chance. Some were naturalists, anthropologists or mountaineers; others went in search of explorers who had vanished without trace, or had been shipwrecked or marooned. Filled with epic tales of endurance and perseverance, Exploring the World celebrates a group of exceptional individuals possessed of indomitable courage, boundless determination and adventurous spirit. It portrays a variety of fascinating lives driven by curiosity, wanderlust and the pursuit of knowledge - and, in doing so, provides a unique overview of two centuries of exploration.

The study o f African history as an academic discipline is a rather new field and one that still has its detractors both w ithin and outside academics. This collection o f articles highlights for students and scholars the modern era in African history. It brings together published research on the colonial era in Africa, an era relatively brief but one that saw dramatic change in African societies.

The human body is always changing its meanings. Historical research on this can draw on a host of specialisms. Historians, lettrists and linguists contribute to this book a coherent little tumult of perspectives: what was thinkable for pagan and Christian Anglo-Saxons, and how far did the two really differ? Why did New English Puritans stop addressing God as if He were their breast-feeding Mother? How did Western colonisers’ perspectives on animals and on ‘subject races’ interact? How did Victorian and Edwardian women’s participation in sports grow? How transgressive was the figure of the ‘dandy’? What motivated late-Victorian panics over prostitution, and on what terms were victims helped? Why, in an increasingly ‘democratic’ age, did reactions to Britain's first universal health-measure become a basis for cynicism about the masses? Repeatedly, the rigidity of separation between male and female fluctuated, as did the boundaries themselves. Sometimes, the greater the rigidity, the less the sources may tell us of resistance to them. But sometimes this can be inferred indirectly. Better testimony than this volume to the liveliness and variety of body-studies is hard to imagine.