First Edition: 455 pages, wood engraved frontispiece - 'A narrow escape; Mashuna Land, September 17, 1878,' folding map with minor repair with tape at the first fold, 17 engraved plates, original green cloth with the three antelope heads stamped in gold on the upper cover laid down, titled and gilt decoration on the spine, uncut edges, leaf 271/2 repaired in the gutter with tape, section 277/284 loose, binding split at pages 160/161and simply repaired, contents very good.
Inscribed on the half title page, 'To James S. Jameson with kind regards from the author Nov 1881'
Jameson is mentioned fifteen times in the index. On page 415 Selous writes, 'Jameson opened the ball by striking a large cow (hippo) right in front of the head with a 10-bore bullet....'
James Sligo Jameson, (1856–1888)naturalist and traveller in Africa....Towards the end of 1878 he went out to South Africa in search of big game, and hunted on the edges of the Kalahari Desert. In the early part of 1879 he returned to Potchefstroom, from where, despite the disaffection of the Boers, he reached the Zambezi district of the interior, trekking along the Great Marico River and up the Limpopo. Together with H. Collison he next passed through the ‘Great Thirst Land’ into the country of the Matabele (Ndebele), whose king received them hospitably. They were joined by the African hunter F. C. Selous and pushed on into Mashonaland, hunting lions and rhinoceroses; the party also confirmed the confluence of the Umvuli and Umnyati rivers. In 1881 Jameson returned to England with a collection of large hunting trophies as well as ornithological, entomological, and botanical specimens. 'This expedition to Mashona', wrote Bowdler Sharpe, 'added a great deal to our knowledge of the birds of South-East Africa'.(Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, M. G. Watkins, revised by Andrew Grout, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14632)
Czech (Dr Kenneth) An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books 1785 to 1999, page 251: ‘One of the most often reprinted African big game book titles, the first four are the most sought after. Selous travelled through Bechuanaland and Matabeleland with numerous hunting episodes after lion, black rhino, buffalo and elephant particularly in the Linquasi Valley. In the second half of the book he trekked across the Zambesi with a long hunt for elephant in Mashonaland. Throughout the text are descriptions of a wide variety of game bagged including hippo, sable, kudu. Eland and other antelope species. A true classic of the African sporting field.’
Taylor (Stephen): The Mighty Nimrod. ‘The author's first book A Hunter's Wanderings was an immediate success and the first edition of 1000 copies sold out within a year. The first edition of perhaps the most famous of all hunting books.’
- Size: 8vo (230 x 150 mm)
