IX. 



The Wilds of South-East Africa. 1 



TT is not difficult to prophesy that this handsome volume will be a 

 1 distinct and immediate success. The public have anxiously 

 waited to hear what Mr. Selous had to say on the Mashunaland 

 question, and they receive the information at the very nick of time. 

 But it is to a far larger section than to the political public that this 

 book will appeal, for the boy will welcome Mr. Selous' volume with 

 its stirring adventures as a companion volume to his " Robinson 

 Crusoe," while the man will read it with the pleasure derived from 

 his knowledge that it is written by one who knows the lions, elephants, 

 and other large game as perfectly as he knows his horse. 



Mr. Selous left England in November, 1881, for the Cape, and 

 travelling on horse by way of Kimberley reached Klerksdorp, sleeping 

 sometimes in the open, sometimes in the houses of the Boers, 

 according to the weather. Purchasing a waggon and a pair of oxen 

 and taking with him several Matabili boys from Klerksdorp, the 

 traveller started for the interior, passing through the Matabili country 

 and reaching the junction of the Loangwa and Zambesi rivers on 

 22 June. Here a camp was made, and for the next six months Selous 

 was hunting and travelling in a country where lions were always 

 prowling about, though nowhere plentiful. 



Returning to Klerksdorp to pack and despatch his collections to 

 England, the traveller laid in a fresh stock of provisions and trading 

 goods, and by May, 1883, had once more entered Mashunaland, and 

 pitched his camp on the Manyami River. In July he made a start 

 south for the Sabi River in search for the white rhinoceros (R. siiuus) 

 and Lichtenstein's hartebeest (Alcelaphus lichtenstcini), in the hope of 

 adding some skeletons and skins to the collections of the British 

 Museum. But he was unsuccessful, and in November he broke up 

 his camp and turned to the south-west, reaching Matabililand in 

 December, where after having a disturbance with Lo Bengula over 



1 Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa; being the narrative of the 

 last eleven years spent by the author on the Zambesi and its tributaries ; with an 

 account of the colonisation of Mashunaland, and the progress of the gold industry 

 in that country. By Frederick Courteney Selous. 8vo. Pp. xviii., 504, map, 

 portrait, 22 plates and 35 illustrations in the text. London, 1S93. Price 25s. 



