A HUNTER'S LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA (BOOKS), MITCHELLS PLAIN IN SOUTH AFRICA

About the product These are the first two volumes in the'African Hunting Reprint Series.'Text facsimile reprint of the two-volume John Murray 2nd edition of 1850, with a new introduction by Professor James A. Casada. Two 8vo volumes; original brown boards with gilt lettering to spine, and gilt elephant device to upper board in each case; pictorial dustwrappers; pp. xvii + xv + (i) + 388, (iv) + 381; plates, + route map in first volume. Dustwrappers slightly rubbed and edgeworn; a little foxing to endpapers, edges and reverse of dustwrappers, occasional fox spot elsewhere. Very good condition.'A particularly fine example of Victorian sporting literature, the book was markedly successful and ran to many editions. Gordon-Cumming writes of his hunting expedition which started from Grahamstown in October 1843 and which took him through countryside teeming with game -"not with herds, but with'one vast herd'of springboks; as far as the eye could strain."- to the Orange River and Griqualand West where he met Oswell, and, at Kuruman, Robert Moffat and, soon after, David Livingstone. He appears to have hunted every species of South African fauna and to have indulged himself in the sport to an extent almost unique even amongst the mighty hunters of Africa. The narrative is valuable for its description of the country and its inhabitants, and for its zoological and botanical notes.'