Hunter's Moon

Published by Macmillan and Co. London. 1st edition. 1933. 8vo (138 x 221mm). Ppxvi,268,ii[ads]. B/w photograph plates, illustrations, end-papers maps showing India, Burma and the Malay Peninsula. Very good blue cloth covers in a RARE pictorial dust jacket.

Major Handley describes two decades of big game hunting and observations of his surroundings, in India, Burma, the Mergui archipelago, and Malaya. "The knowledge and experience of twenty-two years are [here]; and the yearning desire to express them. But the ink was wrung from my infacile pen, even as the blood drops from the brow of a martyr. .I have striven to depart from the normal account of indiscriminate slaughter, and the incredibly dismal unfolding of the correct paraphernalia, and methods, necessary to outwit the jungle denizens. Striven to interest not only the tyro - eager to absorb jungle lore - but to inflame the average, out-door-loving reader with the glamour and romance of these vast green silences." Slightly over-written (see preceding quote) but nevertheless engaging and interesting. Chapters include: 'Jungle wise'; Gondia - the mhowa-scented valleys of laughter; Smoke in the wind; Through the Mergui archipelago to farthest Tenasserim; The man-eater of Danauli; Tanoy, Siamese; Another point of view; The great blue hills of Ranga. .