Catalogue - Reprints (Africana - Hunting)

Hunting the Elephant in Africa and other Recollections of Thirteen Years' Wanderings
By Capt. C. H. Stigand

Macmillan, New York, 1913.

Reprints: xl, 379pp., 23illus., new frontispiece, new Introduction and Bibliographical Note by Prof. James A. Casada.

ISBN (Std) 0 86920 250 2, (Dlx) 0 86920 249 9

Chauncey Hugh Stigand was born in France in 1877 while his father was the the British Consul there. He demonstrated early academic talents and was exposed to the maturing benefits of foreign travel at a youthful age. His cultured family background and meetings with many intellectuals and dignitaries influenced the shapings of his career.

He opted for the Army and obtained a commission with the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment with a posting to Burma. In 1900 he moved to Aden and from this base acquired a good knowlege of the East African coast. While a member of the First Somali Expedition, in 1901, he killed his first leopard. His entry to the hunting grounds of East Africa came by way of an appointment to the King's African Rifles at Zomba in Nyasaland. In this ideal environment he combined his military duties with the pursuits of field naturalist and a literary career through which he was to establish a reputation as an authority on African wildlife. His first book, Central African Game and Its Spoor, was jointly authored with Denis D. Lyell, who wrote The African Elephant and its Hunters (included in this series).

In 1908, in company with Capt. R.S. Hart, Stigand hunted through Uganda, the Congo Free State, the Lado Enclave and parts of Abyssinia. Two years later he was appointed British Representative in the Lado Enclave where he completed his magnum opus, the book now being introduced.

It carries a foreward by President Theodore Roosevelt and was published in 1913 before the outbreak of World War 1, in a single printing, which accounts for its rarity. In this wide-ranging and at times amusing work Stigand draws upon his wealth of experience to write upon a diverse range of African topics. Wrote one reviewer: "The elephant hardly more than justifies his place of honour in the title."

© Copyright 1967-2006 - Books of Rhodesia, Books of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, Books of Zimbabwe<br>Images and logos on this site may not be used or re-produced in any form without written permission from the respective owners.