SPORT IN SOMALILAND (Limited edition signed by Rowland Ward)

vii, 140 pages, coloured frontispiece of the author, 18 full page photogravure plates are printed on India paper– 5 double paged and mounted on canvas hinges, numerous text illustrations in colour and black and white, large folding coloured map at the end, simulated snake skin end papers, cream buckram with a lion's head on the upper cover with Potocki's signature underneath it, titled in gilt on the upper cover and spine, there is a watermark near the title on the upper cover and the back cover also has a few marks on it, corners bumped, top edge gilt, others uncut, printed on coated paper, a very good copy.

This edition consists of 200 copies, numbered and signed, of which this is No 49. Signed by Rowland Ward.

Casada (Jim) Sport in Somaliland. Count Josef Nicolas Xaver Maria Alfred Jacob Potocki was born on September 9th, 1862 in Lvov, Poland into one of the finest and wealthiest Polish aristocratic families. He died on August 25th, 1922 at Montresor in France. Well known to the cognoscenti of the international sporting circles, Count Potocki made big game hunting expeditions to India, Ceylon and the upper reaches of the Blue Nile. Sport in Somaliland details his three-month safari in the arid bush country and grassy plains between the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean in western Somaliland.

Writing in diary fashion, Potocki recounts his hunting experiences and those of his companions, Counts Tomasz Zamoyski and Jan Grudzinski. The hunters move through raw, primitive terrain, a land which was changeless yet ever changing. Clearly Potocki was entranced by his Somaliland experience. First published in Polish in 1897, illustrated by Piotr Stachiewicz an artist whose work is little known in the English-speaking world. Rowland Ward used the same illustrations in the English edition which was limited to 200 copies and sold for four guineas. It is now one of the rarities of the genre.

Czech (Dr. Kenneth) An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books 1785 – 1999, page 225: One of the rarest of all African big game hunting books, there were only 200 copies printed, apparently most or all signed by Rowland Ward. A sumptuous work, this volume recounts the 1895 safari of Polish aristocrat and sportsman Potocki and his comrades to Somaliland's Houd region, then into the Ogaden. The party bagged elephant, lion, leopard, rhino aoul, gazelle. Hartebeest and beisa( oryx). The excellent artwork in the book is from the talented Polish illustrator Piotr Stachiewicz.