Publisher's navy blue cloth binding with gilt titles on spine and blind stamped title on front panel.
xxii + 370pp. Illustrated with plates (all present).
Binding tight. Contents clean. A very good copy.
'Few autobiographies tell so gripping a story as Frederick Russell Burnham's Scouting on Two Continents. The author was an American who, after spending his early years in the tough pioneering communities of the West, heard and obeyed the call of Africa. He had a fluent pen, a flair for the sensational and the ability to involve himself, directly and intimately, in dramatic events.
Burnham writes racily of his youth and early manhood in the American outdoors, and thereafter devotes most of the book to his experiences as a Scout (and later as Lord Roberts' Chief of Scouts) in the Matabele war of 1893, the Matabele Rebellion of 1896 and in the Anglo-Boer War.
The author was one of only three men to survive the massacre of the Allan Wilson Party on the banks of the Shangani river in December 1893. During the Matabele Rebellion, which broke out three years later, he was allegedly responsible for the shooting of the M'limo (the Kalangan deity - a powerful emotional influence on the rebels), claiming afterwards by this action he had 'done Rhodesians a stupendous service by exploding the myth of the cave and destroying the M'limo's power'. His part in both these incidents has been the subject of differing interpretation and lively controversy for the past eighty years.
Whether or not Scouting on Two Continents is good history, it is certainly an exciting story. said Rider Haggard of the author: 'In real life he is more interesting than any of my heroes of my romances.' Theodore Roosevelt read the book 'with enthralled interest'. - from the editor's note to the 1975 facsimile reprint (Rhodesia Reprint Silver Series, Volume 4)
- Binding Condition: Very Good
- Overall Condition: Very Good
- Size: 8vo
