African Game-Trails

Theodore Roosevelt’s African Game Trails is the second book in Boone and Crockett Club's new series of digitally remastered classics. Relive Roosvelt's account of his African wanderings as an American hunter-naturalist. This edition includes over 100 refined photographs, drawings, and maps from the original publication as well as bonus images not found in other editions. This superb volume is a classic among books of adventure. It shows the author not only as a mighty hunter, but as a profound student of natural history, a close observer of both plant and animal life, and a master of graphic and picturesque narrative. With his usual thoroughness he has added appendices from the naturalists’ note-books, and in general this volume in its permanent shape is the most important contribution to the literature of hunting, adventure, and scientific nature-study in Africa that has been produced. Mr. Roosevelt had in mind this great expedition for several years before its public announcement. With his accustomed foresight, as it began to take shape as a probability, he consulted all the leading authorities, not only through their books, but by personal interviews. Eminent African hunters, such as F.C. Selous and Sir Harry Johnston, were invited to the White House and gave him the benefit of their wide experience. Mr. Roosevelt and his son Kermit, who was the official photographer of the expedition, left New York on March 23d, 1909, and reached Cairo one year later. During that time they had traversed Africa from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to the Nyanza Lakes, and from Albert Nyanza down the White Nile, and the Nile to Khartoum and to Cairo. They secured superb specimens of all the big game of Africa. Many of which can be found at the Smithsonian Institution still to this day. Mr. Roosevelt’s object was not that of a mere sportsman to accumulate personal souvenirs of his hunting skill. He planned a serious scientific expedition to collect for the Smithsonian Institution at Washington as complete a representation as possible of the large and small game of Africa. Skilled naturalists were engaged to accompany the expedition and every arrangement made for the preservation and shipment of the trophies of the hunt. The descriptions of the African landscape, the great African plains in comparison with the bad lands of Wyoming, the solitary rides which he took across the veldt and his wise observations on the animal life, the life of the natives, and the thrill and adventure embodied in his account of tracking with enthusiasm and persistency the greatest game in the world—the elephant, lion, rhino, hippo, buffalo, the giant eland, and the many varieties of antelope—all these make this the greatest book of adventure, of hunting experiences and scientific observation of nature combined, that has been written about Africa.