AFRICAN HUNTING AND ADVENTURE FROM NATAL TO THE ZAMBESI

Including Lake Ngami, the Kalahari Desert etc .

From 1852 to 1860

With illustrations by James Wolf and J.B.Zwecker

Third edition: x, 428 pages, frontispiece portrait, 11 plates 4 of which are tinted lithographs, numerous illustrations in text and a folding map, corners slightly bumped, the bottom back corner is very bumped, original brown cloth with gilt vignette of a lion’s head on the upper cover and gilt titling on spine, a very good copy.

Czech (Kenneth) An annotated Bibliography of African Big Game hunting Books 1785 to 1999, page 16 -17, ‘A work of early sport and travel, this describes Baldwin’s journeys through Natal, Zululand, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, and Namaqualand to the Zambesi and the Victoria Falls (although not yet known as that). He hunted in the lands of the Amatongas and Zulus where he collected hippopotamus, lion, eland, rhinoceros, buffalo, kudu and giraffe. Near Lake Ngami, he bagged elephant, then crossed the Tugela River on his way to the Zambesi (Victoria) Falls where he encountered buffalo and lion.’

Dictionary of South African Biography Volume 111 p 42-3. Baldwin arrived in Durban in 1851 having been attracted to South African by Cumming’s 'Five Years of a Hunter’s Life' published in 1850. He made several hunting expeditions to Zululand, Marico, Matabeleland and Lake Ngami. In April 1860 he again left for Potchefstroom intent on reaching the Victoria Falls, which he succeeded in doing more by luck than good management on August 3rd. He was the second white man to see the falls, the first to have reached them from the east coast (Natal), and the first to describe them with exactness and give their true dimensions, the accuracy of which he vouched for to David Livingstone himself, when the great explorer arrived about 8th or 9th August.