Furnished and equipped, and with a certain number of attendants varying from three to six, Mr. Cumming passed five years in the far African interior, amid all kinds of strange and beautiful varieties of the antelope of Africa; domesticated with lions, elephants, buffaloes, crocodiles, boas, leopards, tigers, wolves, hyaenas, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and hippopotamoi ; having no house but his waggon ; often deserting even that, while his followers remained encamped around it, for hunting holes it could not penetrate; and passing days and nights alone, or attended only by natives, watching the majestic carriage of the lion, the sagacious actions of the elephant, and the curious or fierce instincts of countless varieties of beasts unconsciously disporting themselves in his immediate proximity, till with a sharp ring of his rifle their sports are closed for ever.—-Examiner.
Mr. Gordon Cumming’s collection of trophies, won in mortal combat by himself from the monsters of the deserts of Southern Africa, still continues one of the marvels of the metropolis, and still draws the curious and the contemplative to his Museum. If Mr. Cumming had not brought over the spoils which constitute his exhibition, and demonstrated by these most irrefragable proofs his powers as a sportsman among such primeval quarry, the vivid descriptions he has given of his encounters with the lion, the tiger, the elephant, the hippopotamus, and other victims of his aidour as a Nimrod, might, in this age of doubting, have been regarded with something of the detraction that attends all heroic actions till they have been hallowed by time, We might have looked coldly on his book if we had not seen his collection.
The author of this book is one of the most extraordinary hunters ever heard of. Indeed, there is some doubt whether he has not surpassed Nimrod himself. Seldom will you peruse a book so full of the wild excitement of the chace, so stirring and effective in all its details, containing so many instances of extraordinary courage and self-possession. It is much more spirit-stirring than any modern fiction which has lately secured the much contested favours of the book-buying and reading public.
This book published in 1856 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
Mr. Gordon Cumming’s collection of trophies, won in mortal combat by himself from the monsters of the deserts of Southern Africa, still continues one of the marvels of the metropolis, and still draws the curious and the contemplative to his Museum. If Mr. Cumming had not brought over the spoils which constitute his exhibition, and demonstrated by these most irrefragable proofs his powers as a sportsman among such primeval quarry, the vivid descriptions he has given of his encounters with the lion, the tiger, the elephant, the hippopotamus, and other victims of his aidour as a Nimrod, might, in this age of doubting, have been regarded with something of the detraction that attends all heroic actions till they have been hallowed by time, We might have looked coldly on his book if we had not seen his collection.
The author of this book is one of the most extraordinary hunters ever heard of. Indeed, there is some doubt whether he has not surpassed Nimrod himself. Seldom will you peruse a book so full of the wild excitement of the chace, so stirring and effective in all its details, containing so many instances of extraordinary courage and self-possession. It is much more spirit-stirring than any modern fiction which has lately secured the much contested favours of the book-buying and reading public.
This book published in 1856 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
