Stewart Edward White (1873 - 1946) was a noted African big game hunter, explorer, outdoorsman, American writer, novelist, and spiritualist. IN 1910-11 Stewart Edward White, Mrs. White, and famous big game hunter R. J. Cuninghame, with a small safari of forty men "rediscovered " a tract of country lying on the German side of a barrier of mountains between British and German East Africa, and in this book he gives us his diary and notes of safari - elephant, antelope, rhinoceros, lion. THINK of starting out fearlessly under the tropical heat of the African July sun, with a gun over your shoulder, a few trusty colored guides, and a pack of stubborn lazy donkeys to carry your provisions, add to that the knowledge that you are going into a country hitherto unknown, and you have a picture of the beginning of Stewart Edward White's 1910 trip into German East Africa - an adventure no longer left in its freshness for any explorer. For although the territory which Mr. White visited will remain perfect in its wildness for many years to come, the man who now enters it will not have to blaze his own trail, or seek those made by the rhinoceros, buffalo or other animal inhabitants of these unknown woods; for the author-adventurer has done this much for him. He describes how in his 1915 book, The Rediscovered Country.
While South Africa, Nyassaland, Rhodesia, British East Africa and portions of the Congo, Uganda, and the Sudan all were well known, no hunter had penetrated into the part of German East Africa which lies between Lake Natron and Lake Victoria Nyanza. It is a big country, running from the British boundary southward for several hundred miles. A high range of mountains hems it in on the Anglo-German boundary.
"Never have I seen anything like that game. It covered every hill, standing in the openings, strolling in and out among the groves, feeding on the bottom lands, singly, or in little groups. It did not matter in which direction I looked, there it was; as abundant one place as another. Nor did it matter how far I went, over how many hills I walked, how many wide prospects I examined, it was always the same. During my stay at the next two camps I looked over fifty square miles. One day I counted 4,628 head! And suddenly I realized again that in this beautiful, wide, populous country, no sportsman's rifle has ever been fired. It is a virgin game country, and I have been the last man who will ever discover one for the sportsmen of the world. There is no other available possibility for such a game field in Africa unexplored. I moved among those hordes of unsophisticated beasts as a lord of Eden would have moved."
There are many unusual descriptions of dangerous huntings - several lion hunts and notably one of how the author killed four lions at once, as exciting as any fiction story. But perhaps the most remarkable is that of an elephant hunt which lasted for days. The silent cautious following of a great beast who could have killed any one of the men by a single stamp of his foot; how they saw him join a herd, and the skillful maneuvering they had to do in order to keep the pack off their scent; and finally how they brought him to death. In its thorough knowledge of the actions and habits of this great jungle king the tale is reminiscent of Kipling's Jungle Book.
This book originally published by Doubleday, Page, in 1915 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
While South Africa, Nyassaland, Rhodesia, British East Africa and portions of the Congo, Uganda, and the Sudan all were well known, no hunter had penetrated into the part of German East Africa which lies between Lake Natron and Lake Victoria Nyanza. It is a big country, running from the British boundary southward for several hundred miles. A high range of mountains hems it in on the Anglo-German boundary.
"Never have I seen anything like that game. It covered every hill, standing in the openings, strolling in and out among the groves, feeding on the bottom lands, singly, or in little groups. It did not matter in which direction I looked, there it was; as abundant one place as another. Nor did it matter how far I went, over how many hills I walked, how many wide prospects I examined, it was always the same. During my stay at the next two camps I looked over fifty square miles. One day I counted 4,628 head! And suddenly I realized again that in this beautiful, wide, populous country, no sportsman's rifle has ever been fired. It is a virgin game country, and I have been the last man who will ever discover one for the sportsmen of the world. There is no other available possibility for such a game field in Africa unexplored. I moved among those hordes of unsophisticated beasts as a lord of Eden would have moved."
There are many unusual descriptions of dangerous huntings - several lion hunts and notably one of how the author killed four lions at once, as exciting as any fiction story. But perhaps the most remarkable is that of an elephant hunt which lasted for days. The silent cautious following of a great beast who could have killed any one of the men by a single stamp of his foot; how they saw him join a herd, and the skillful maneuvering they had to do in order to keep the pack off their scent; and finally how they brought him to death. In its thorough knowledge of the actions and habits of this great jungle king the tale is reminiscent of Kipling's Jungle Book.
This book originally published by Doubleday, Page, in 1915 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
Used availability for Stewart Edward White's The Rediscovered Country