A Narrative of Twenty Months’ Travel and Sport in Unknown Lands and among New Tribes.
£1,750.00
Author: Major Powell-Cotton
Publisher: London Hurst and Blackett 1904
First edition. With 204 reproductions from drawings by A. Forestier and the Author’s photographs and two maps.
8vo., original cloth lettered in gilt on spine and upper board, upper board with gilt block of a giraffe’s head, spine with gilt block of a spear carrying warrior. Endpapers replaced, repaired split to folding map, a little occasional spotting, generally a very good bright copy.
Following a successful hunting trip in Abyssinia, Percy Powell-Cotton (1866-1940) travelled to British East Africa in 1902 in order to find a specimen of a five-horned giraffe recently discovered by Sir Harry Johnston. He pursued impala, rhinoceros and lion on the Athi River, crossed the Tana and lived among the Kikuyu, successfully hunting elephant, then collecting trophy kudu and lion on the Baringo plain. He eventually found a five-horned giraffe on the outskirts of Masai territory. Reviewing the work in the Geographical Journal, Harry Johnston praised its descriptions and photographs of big game as well noting that "from a geographical point of view also Major Powell-Cotton's journey is a remarkable one. He covered a little new ground north of the explorations made by Macdonald and Austin, and south and west of the journeys of Wellby and Donaldson-Smith".