Life Of Frederick Courtenay Selous D S O

Author : John Millais
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781973847618
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (476 download)

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Download or read book Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous written by John Millais and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-23 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is with the feeling of a hungry man attacking a banquet that every admirer of Selous will take up Millais' volume... A stirring and adventurous life." -The Review, 1919WITH but very few exceptions, Captain Frederick Courtenay Selous was the last of a long line of oldfashioned pioneer hunters of African big game. By long odds he was the most famous and conspicuous man of his kind. He lived and hunted from the period of the big-calibre smoothbore elephant gun that he loaded at the muzzle with a handful of powder as he ran at full speed, up through the 577 English express rifle of the 70's, to the highly finished Mannlicher of small calibre and tremendous power. A stirring and adventurous life of sixty-five years is not to be dismissed with a few perfunctory and double-leaded pages. And it is quickly discerned that Mr. Millais, who never yet did a poor bit of work, has in this volume come mighty near to turning out a masterpiece of biography. John Guille "Johnny" Millais (1865 -1931) was a British artist, naturalist, author, and big game hunter, who in 1919 published "Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous." This volume is not only the life story of Selous, but incidentally, it is also a valuable history of the development of South Africa, including the recent conquest of German East Africa. The actual amount of stirring history is really great, and it throws a searchlight on many things that to some of us were hitherto quite unknown. When Selous attempted to enlist in the British Army of Defense in 1914, Lord Kitchener flatly refused to accept him, on the ground that his age rendered him useless as a soldier. Kitchener never made a greater blunder in his life. Although sixty-five years of age when he went to Africa, Selous was as tough as a pine knot, and while younger and stronger men fell victim by scores and hundreds to hardship and disease, Selous marched, fought, and slept in liquid mud, in torrential and increasing rains, absolutely unscathed save for one slight ailment that sent him home for an operation, and a sound return after three months. Selous gloried in his remarkable health and hardiness; and Kitchener should have known that even at sixty-three the tough old outdoors man was still in his prime. Selous began his adventures haltingly. He made his full share of mistakes and failures. Often he called himself the most unlucky of hunters. He strove to kill elephants in order to get money from ivory to finance more hunting trips, to kill more ivory and pay for more trips. In every sense of the word, Selous was a mighty hunter, a great admirer of big game, a close observer and a strictly truthful chronicler. His books contributed immensely to the world's knowledge of African fauna. It is a pleasure to see it recorded in cold type that Captain Selous was throughout life highminded, a lover of justice, and a hater of meanness and folly. A hunter born, his energy was boundless and irrepressible. His friends were a host and his admirers legion. In general, he knew that he was appreciated, even though he felt that Cecil Rhodes never gave him a tithe of the credit that was justly his due for his wise and valuable assistance in the acquisition of Rhodesia and the founding of the Great Britain's South African empire. Mr. Millais has done well by his friend, "Great-heart" Selous.