1. William Chapman Reminiscences - Edited and annotated by Nicol Stassen
An account of the entry of the Trek Boers into Angola and of their sojourn during the forty-eight years they struggled in that country under Portuguese rule.
2010 first edition with the dust jacket and 476 pages in fine condition.
William Chapman, the eldest son of the famous explorer James Chapman, grew up in Cape Town but was determined to go to Damaraland, being bent on following the life his father had led. He succumbed to the call of freedom and his ambition to become a big game hunter. He desired to see the hunting fields, the forests, the game, and everything he had read of in books of travel. He left Table Bay in 1874 for Walvis Bay and started his adventures from there. He tells of his life as a trader, also active in hunting, transport riding, road building, cattle farming, agriculture, gold prospecting, and an agent for the supply of wagons. Chapman's narrations of his journeys, travels and encounters are fascinating and give insight into the adventurous life at that time.
2. Running the Gauntlet - George Mossop
314 pages: illustrations, portraits (1 as frontispiece), map. Originally published in 1937. This is the second printed 1990. With the dust jacket, this copy is in very good condition.
There are sporting encounters with herds of wildebeest and other antelope, and a chapter on hunting rhinoceros, lion and giraffe. In the brush country near Delagoa Bay, the author and his companions collected buffalo, and there is a mention of an elephant hunt. (Czech: An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books, 1785 - 1950)
In this lively account of his youth days in Natal, Mossop recalls the events of the Zulu War and the first Boer War with gripping intensity. He describes big-game hunting with a party of Boers on the high veld of the Transvaal, transport wagons, riding with the Frontier Light Horse, Majuba Hill, an escape from Cetawayo’s warriors, etc.
3. Camp Life and Sport in South Africa - T. J. Lucas
1975 facsimile reproduction of the 1878 edition. Printed by the Africana Book Society, Johannesburg. 258 pages. A copy in good condition, the dust jacket has some wear around edges.
While most of the text relates military adventures, the author found time to hunt wildebeest and lion in the kopje country near Bloemfontein. (Czech: An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books, 1785 - 1950)
4. The Jackpot Story - Jack Stodel
1965 first edition in the red cloth binding. 196 pages. The dust jacket has seen better days.
Stodel describes leopard hunting, the Namib waterhole, big game fishing, crocodile killers, the Bushman and the Lion.
5. Travels in the Cape 1853- 1855 / J.F. Victorin
Hunting and nature pictures from the late young naturalist's letters and diaries, by J.W. Grill. Translated from the first Swedish Edition by Jalmar and Ione Rudner. With nine plates.
C. Struik Pty Ltd. Cape Town, 1968. Unnumbered copy of a limited edition of 1200. A copy in very good condition.
The collection that Victorin made at the Cape included 83 mammals (of 30 species), 517 birds (153 species), and 20 amphibians (14 species). The birds he mounted himself. Also included were 31 bird's eggs (11 species), some 2000 insects, a number of shells and other invertebrates, plants, seeds, bulbs, and lichens. Two mammals and two birds were new to science. His specimens were well prepared and carefully described. The greater part of his collection was included in the collections of the Royal Academy of Science and is now in the Riksmuseum, Stockholm. His insects were mostly Coleoptera (beetles); the Hemiptera and Orthoptera were described by C. Stål (1856, 1871) and the Diptera by H. Loew (1858, 1860, 1862). The latter group included 24 new species, of which Pentatoma victorini was named after the collector.
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