Roualeyn George Gordon Gumming 



THE honour of being the Pioneer or Father of South 

 African Sport rests between two great British hunters 

 Sir William Cornwallis Harris and Roualeyn George 

 Gordon Gumming. In point of time Sir William Corn- 

 wallis Harris has undoubtedly first claim to the title. 

 But his book, which was published in 1837, though it 

 appealed powerfully to sportsmen, took little hold of the 

 general public, and his name is remembered now only 

 by those who are versed in the lore of Big Game 

 Shooting. Gordon Gumming, on the other hand, took 

 the public by storm with his " Five Years of Hunter's 

 Life in the Far Interior of South Africa." The book was 

 read with as much avidity as a romance by all sorts and 

 conditions of men ; the author became a " lion " in 

 society ; for years his name was as familiar in our 

 mouths as household words, and still keeps its place in 

 the memories of those of us who were boys when the 

 great " lion-hunter " was a popular hero in the full flush 

 of his fame. There was a mixture of sentiment and 

 sport in his pages which gave them a romantic interest 

 in the eyes of the great bulk of the reading public of 



