SUNSHINE & STORM IN RHODESIA

SUNSHINE AND STORM IN RHODESIA: Being a Narrative of Events in Matabeleland Both Before and During the Recent Native Insurrection Up to the Date of the Disbandment of the Bulawayo Field Force.

xxix + 290mm + fold-out map + 10pp. Publisher's original tan buckram lettered and pictorially decorated in on the spine and lettered and blocked on the cover, with Rowland Ward's famous zebra-print endpapers. 17 illustrations and a folding map at the rear.

Spine is heavily tanned. The rear outer hinge is split at the bottom. Head and tail of spine frayed. Corners are bumped and frayed. Front EP gutter is cracked. Small prev. owner's name penned to 1st blank prelim next to book-sellers blind-embossed stamp. Light toning to prelims. Internally clean and tight.

F.C. Selous was already a well-known writer, explorer, and hunter when he published this work about his experiences before and during the 1896 British campaign against the rebellions of the war-like Matabele tribe in Rhodesia. The members of the Matabele tribe were chafing beneath the British conquest of three years before, and initiated their rebellion with the murder of a number of white settlers. Bulawayo (the largest town in the Western provinces) was threatened, and this put the rest of the country south of the Zambesi into a state of rebellion as the fervor rose. Very fierce fighting between the British and the natives shortly followed, but Rhodes hastened to propose peace talks, and the army shortly went unarmed into the heart of the Matappo hills to meet with native representatives. The interview involved great personal risk for the emissaries, and depended for its success entirely upon Rhodes' personality and influence over the native races, but luckily it was successful and terminated what promised to be a long and disastrous native war. (EB" 23-24). When the rebellion broke out, the author and his wife were newly settled on an estate in the Matabeleland. Selous served as an officer in the Bulawayo Field Force, and presents here some account of every skirmish which had taken place between the Colonists and the natives in Matabeleland up to the date of the above-mentioned Force. "To this I add a short account of my personal experiences in the country during the months immediately preceding the outbreak of the insurrection." An exciting account of the Matabele campaign of 1896 by a master writer of African exploration literature.