Safari: The Last Adventure - Hardcover

Capstick, Peter Hathaway

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312696574 ISBN 13: 9780312696573

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1984

Synopsis

Peter Capstick's earliest books have firmly established him as the modern-day master of African adventure writing. Now, for all his readers who want to put their taste for adventure into practice, Capstick has written the first modern authoritative, comprehensive guide to African safari. Drawing on his years of experience as a professional hunter, Capstick explains everything a bwana needs to know: how to select and book a safari; where and when to go; fees and licenses; the guns, ammo, and personal equipment needed. Chapters on each of the Big Five (lion, Cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, and rhino-- the trophies most hunters want to take) describe the techniques, thrills, and dangers of hunting these clever and cunning animals. The other memorable delights of safari, like camp life, bird shooting, fishing, photography, and game viewing in wildlife parks, are also celebrated. A list of safari agencies, hunting companies and professional hunters, suggested equipment for a 21-day safari, and a trophy price list round out the most exhaustive guide to safari ever written.

Packed with solid advice and nuggets of campfire lore and hunting yarns, illustrated with thirty-four black and white photographs and six line drawings, Safari: The Last Adventure is sure to become a classic work in its field, essential equipment for anyone going on safari or just dreaming of one...

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Hathaway Capstick grew up in rural New Jersey and soon learned to love the outdoors and wildlife. After a career on Wall Street, he decided to heed his sense of adventure and became a professional hunter, first in the rain forests of Latin America and then in Central Africa. He now lives in Pretoria, South Africa, where he is a successful outdoor writer and the author of Death in the Long Grass, Death in the Silent Places, and Death in the Dark Continent, all published by St. Martin's Press.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Safari
ONEThe Great AdventureA pretty fair case could be made that the evolution of the African safari is really a historical overlay of the past century and a half of white expansion into the interior of Africa. After Jan Van Riebeeck, South Africa's founder, pitched up at the Cape in 1652, both he and another 180 years of descendants either had too much on their hands keeping body and soul in one chunk to make much of a dent in the continent, or various colonial policies kept them from it, which amounted to white expansion reaching only a vague 150 miles inland. There were still enough elephants in the general vicinity of urban Cape Town to get settler Pieter Roman trampled and tusked to death there after he presumably wounded one with what was definitely not enough gun in 1661. That there was still little pressure on the local fauna 145 years after Roman's death seems clear from a British dispatch written by the commander of the troops garrisoned there after capturing the area in 1806, describing the "roaring of lions" after dark.The Portuguese, who had long before established trading posts and forts on both the east and west coasts, showed even less interest in probing the secrets of the dark, dank, mysterious beauty that lay just past the bright beach sands. Ten miles inlandwas a long way for Portuguese influence to have any swat, even after literally hundreds of years of their presence.It wasn't until the mid-1830s that the Cape Dutch and other elements of the people who now thought of themselves as part of Africa, rather than Europe, decided they had had enough of British domination and headed off in a series of great treks upcountry, effectively changing the status quo of white tenure in Africa. Not only were there political and ethno-religious reasons for packing off to what was presumed to be the Land of Milk and Honey (bring your own cow and bee, said some on returning), but the technological improvements in firearms, resulting in more reliable muzzle-loaders, had an influence too.These ox-wagon pioneers were to change the profile of Africa forever. It is appropriate, in mentioning these early settlers as the first major white group to enter what at the time must have seemed unlimited game fields, to indicate the huge cultural differences between these people and their heritage and that of British hunters and sportsmen who had just started to get their feet wet in African big game shooting about this time.The Boers, as they were better known to the outside world, were essentially peasant farming stock. Boer in fact means "farmer." They were not sport hunters by tradition, that privilege of northern Europe having been pretty well reserved for the landed aristocracy, with some singularly unpleasant penalties for clumsy or unlucky poachers. In the new land of South Africa, though, as farmers, they tended to hunt for commercial reasons--especially elephant and hippo for ivory, antelope for meat and biltong (still the national snack of dried venison or beef) and to protect their herds and crops from animal encroachment. Any concept of preservation or conservation, at least at that time, would have seemed as strange to them as a notion that they should not kill the snakes in their homes because at some hazy point in the future the land might run short of mambas or cobras.The first British adventurers into the interior, other than the ubiquitous missionaries, saw things differently, even though they could hardly have been commended for any particularly naturalistic foresight. Most were army officers, usually with Indian service, where they had been able to expand the love of the chase they had learned at home as boys in Britain. Asia, with itstiger beats, pigsticking meets, buffalo hunts and other sporting succulents, had primed them for Africa and its renowned wild game. One who unquestionably influenced more sportsmen than any other over the next fifty years after his book was first published in 1838 was William Cornwallis Harris. Harris started his Indian military career as a sixteen-year-old second lieutenant of Engineers and, as a captain after thirteen years of service, was ordered to the Cape Colony for two years to recover from continued attacks of severe malaria. A gifted artist, he left us not only ethereal views of the land and game of the time, but also penned the only known and surviving portrait of Mzilikazi, the extraordinary Matabele king who figured so prominently in the war and peace of the region. A dedicated naturalist, he provided invaluable museum specimens crowned by the rarest of all, a completely new species of large antelope.Three years after he wrote his book--the version published in Bombay called Narrative of an Expedition into Southern Africa, and the more popular version reissued in London the following year, 1839, as The Wild Sports of Southern Africa--Harris led a mission from the Government of Bombay to the Ethiopian king, Sahela Selassie of Shoa, the success of which resulted in his being gazetted major and knighted. This last trip resulted in another book, The Highlands of Aethiopia, and closely coincided with the publication of a volume of lithographs of his paintings of southern African wildlife, which is today considered one of the rarest and most valuable of all Africana. Harris died of fever near Poona, India, on October 9, 1848. He was thirty-nine years old.Harris' recollections of his trip by ox-wagon north from the Cape Colony in 1836--7 represents the first book on African big game hunting, and is particularly notable as Harris' reasons for hunting were sporting, not commercial. So it might be argued that he was the first person to go on safari and leave a record--although he as likely as not had never even heard the word--despite the fact that many British officers must have done considerable hunting at least near Cape Town over the thirty years that troops had been garrisoned there.Although some of his fellow officers and relative contemporaries were mostly interested in how frequently and how quickly they could kill game, Harris was much more than just anothercap-popper. Actually, his scientific interest in specimens was about equal to his joy in the sport of obtaining them. Certainly, the Zoological Society of London was the richer for his trip. The sable antelope, Hippotragus niger, was long known as the Harrisbuck, and that such a scimitar-horned, anthracite-hued beauty does not still carry the name of its discoverer is more the loss. How the first sable was killed is one of the best early safari tales so let's off to the remote Cashan Mountains and try to see it through Harris' eyes ... . 
It is the afternoon of December 13, 1836, pleasantly cool for the rainy season, in what is now the Magaliesberg range, near my home in Pretoria. Four and a half months out from Cape Town, Captain Harris is with a party of Hottentots, following up a wounded elephant on horseback. One of his frequent falls has bashed up his favorite 10-bore percussion rifle and he carries a cumbersome, thundering great flintlock obtained from the soon to be famous missionary, the Reverend Mr. Moffat, at Kuruman. It is a cannon firing a quarter-pound hardened lead ball persuaded rather violently along by fifteen drams of coarse black powder. As he pounds rhythmically over a dried vlei or marshy area, he notices a small herd of oddly dark antelope about a half-mile off in a parallel valley. Reining in, he looks them over with his pocket telescope, a shock of realization that they are completely new to science shivering through him. Instantly, he forgets the elephant among the jeers and jibes of the Hottentots, who figure that anybody who trades an elephant for an "uglybuck" like whatever those are must have been out in the sun too long. Spurs flashing, Harris rushes his shooting horse toward them.After a hammering run, the officer is among the weird, dark antelope, two looming bulls and nine paler, buff-colored cows. Hauling up his pony, Harris leaps from the saddle only fifty yards away and sees the herd slow, then stop in curiosity, staring back at the odd white man, the iridescent purple-black skins of the loop-horned bulls gleaming like wet ebony in the summer sun. Harris takes a shooting breath, lines up the rough flintlock and squeezes the trigger at the biggest male. The smoothbore slips its hammer like a bear trap, the flint throwing a shower of sparks into the pan. Nothing. Misfire. A bull stampsa forefoot as Harris wipes the grime from his smeared forehead and recocks the big gun, centering the coarse bead of the front sight on the black chest once more. Snap! Clash! Flash! Silence. The antelope, now alarmed, begin to canter off, the furious Harris lining up yet another misfire. Then, they are gone.Harris, his frustration more than he can contain, howls a curse, throws the perfidious gun on the rocky ground and remounts to dash back to camp where he will try to repair his own weapon.It takes two hours before his own double-barreled, 10-bore rifle can be patched up and the hunter on a fresh horse, is back where he last saw the strange, dark antelope. Still, as hard as the Hottentot trackers work, the sun is gone before he catches another glimpse of the animals. Furious, and despairing of finding them again, Harris rides back to camp for the night.Dawn is still a coy blush somewhere over the light bushveld and feathery trees of the Cashans when Harris leaves camp and is back on the cold trail of the mysterious antelope, his frustration turned to obsession to collect one of the unknown, exotic creatures. For a whole searing, sweat-soaked day he and a tracker ride without a glimpse of the elusive wraiths, the black guillotine of darkness leaving them to sleep on the faint spoor, exhausted and with only tea and biltong to eat. The third day, they are again gone long before first light, cold tea and more biltong lumped like acid and harness leather in their stomachs.The sun is high and ferocious in a sailcloth sky before the Hottentot hauls up at the edge of a series of low, broken ridges stuttered with rocky hills. At the feet of their horses is a scattering of compact dung pellets near the heart-shaped hoof marks. Fresh. Harris changes the percussion caps of his rifle to be sure the dew has not affected them, eases the hammers down and removes the sling. Tethering the mounts, the Englishman and the Hottentot crab over the burning, saw-edged rocks to the lip of the emerald ravine, the officer's blood pounding in his temples with excitement. Will they be there?Through the shield of brush, Harris catches a flicker of movement and the dull gleam of arched horn where the antelope are resting in the heat at the end of the snarled draw. Slowly, he inches up the 10-bore, the sight settling on the chest of the big bull. PHUTTDOOM! The double fires, the hunter upand racing to see beyond the billowing bloom of white powder smoke. Score! The near hind leg of the bull has caught the big ball. Immediately, Harris touches off the second barrel, seeing and hearing the ball thump home into the animal's chest. No point in trying to reload as the antelope stream by, Harris watches them run out of the draw, past his hiding place, the big bull galloping well despite his wounds. The Englishman's hands are shaking as he reloads, powder, linen-wrapped ball, ram, recap. As the mutter of dust-muffled hooves dies away, the dry slither of the ramrod sliding into its housing under the barrels blends with Harris' call for the horses.Harris and the Hottentot follow the splashes of blood easily for a full mile along a dry watercourse with no indication of the wounded bull slowing down. And then, there he stands at bay, about one hundred yards off, the hind leg given out. Harris is off his pony in a single movement, raising the rifle for the final shot. As he glances at his priming, a rumble of fear runs through his bowels as he hears a squeal and a series of low, angry grunts mixed with the clatter of hooves. The bull is charging.Harris holds on the chest and touches off the first barrel, the quarter-pound shotput of lead knocking the black male down with a hollow thump as the big ball strikes. To Harris' growing fright, the bull scrambles back to his feet, the grunts of anger now a steady rumble of low, determined fury. Thoroughly scared, Harris slaps the wobbling foresight on the chest again and fires the last barrel. Whock! The bull falls and once more starts to rise to kill the man. Spilling powder, Harris manages to get a charge down one barrel, followed by a hasty ball. Still fumbling with the percussion cap, he realizes that it is not necessary. Halfway to his knees, the jet-black bull staggers, hooks his long horns twice and shudders as death takes him.Captain William Cornwallis Harris realizes he is the first man to take the sable antelope, in the opinion of many the noblest, fiercest and most handsome of his kin on the African continent. Kudu bulls are delicately beautiful, oryx are savage and stark. But, the sable? The sable is a man's trophy.I've often wondered if Cornwallis Harris' collecting the first sable--or Harrisbuck--just might not have been the grandest experience anybody ever had on safari. And, Harris did it the right way, spending three days to come up with his game andeven taking a half-charge at the end. It's likely that he who did the deed wrote it best."It were vain to attempt a description of the sensations I experienced," said Harris, "when thus, after three days of toilsome tracking, and feverish anxiety unalleviated by any incident that could inspire the smallest hope of ultimate success, I at length found myself in actual possession of so brilliant an addition to the riches of Natural History."That sort of talk makes me conclude that Harris was a pretty reasonable dude. Ah, but there were plenty of them.It's possible that Roualeyn George Gordon Cumming might have had a chance to read Harris' book, but if so, the second major writer on African hunting doesn't mention it. A very big man for his day at fourteen stone (196 pounds), Cumming was the perfect freelance individualist, replete with a beard like a wild bushfire and a penchant for wearing kilts under any and all circumstances. Tall and powerful, he was probably everything that the well-built but recuperating Harris wasn't: Cumming was a showman who became known throughout Europe and the British Isles by the sobriquet "The Lion Hunter," while Harris was much more the scientist, zoologist and artist.Roughly thirteen years younger than Harris, Cumming was an Eton graduate and the son of a noble Scottish family who had his first whiff of African sport on a South African stopover in 1838, the same year that Harris was back in India publishing his book. Evidently it made a lasting impression, because after a few years of wanderings through India and North America, Cumming joined the Cape Mounted Rifles and arrived back where it looked like he belonged.In 1843, Gordon Cumming took off for "the blue" and stayed there for five years, his adventures culminating in the 1850 book Five Years of a Hunter's Life in the Far Interior of South Africa. An instant success, Cumming gained a reputation not unlike a combination of Dick Butkus and Tom Selleck in one characteristically shirtless hunk. Of course, he was either fearless or crazy or, as anybody who has spent any time in the African bush will likely surmise, both. His specialty was jumping into crock-crawling waters after wounded hippos, cutting slots through their hides and draggin...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0312696574
• ISBN 13: 9780312696573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 291