GREAT THIRST LAND A Ride through Natal, Orange Free State, Transvaal, and Kalahari Desert (1878)

Capt. Parker Gillmore (1835–1900) was a famous hunter and a daring traveller, full of pluck and infinite resources. In "The Great Thirst Land," Parker Gillmore gives many interesting accounts of the wild beasts of the parts of Central South Africa, over which he wandered for months, hunting. Large districts of the Kalahari Desert, which lies north of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, are almost destitute of water.

Captain Gillmore, it appears, was invited by a Scotch laird to accompany him on a shooting expedition in the great Kalahari desert, and his book will be more especially interesting to such Nimrods as are a little out of place at home. Well armed, and in every other way well equipped, they landed at the Cape and purchased a formidable Cape travelling waggon, with which they reembarked, and in good time reached Port Durban. Thence they made their way to Pieter maritzburg, learning on the trip the wonderful skill of the South African drivers, and the avarice and over-reaching tendencies of their Dutch masters. "The Boers," says Captain Gillmore " spare no game they meet with. Cows, elephants, or tuskless elephants are all the same to them, and are destroyed in countless numbers, even when no use can be made of their flesh." Apart from graphic sporting narrative, the captain gives us a good deal of interesting information.

He has published already some dozen books of travel, but none of them, perhaps, is the equal of this in interest. Mr. Gillmore is quite a different kind of traveler from Mr. Stanley. He belongs rather to the old school of adventurous explorers, men who travel chiefly from the love of the thing than from the desire to make much of their doings at home. As he says in his Preface, he only shoots what is necessary for food, and when that is done he ceases to take the lives of valuable animals. He also affirms that with moderate expenditure and half a dozen attendants he could pass through Africa from north to south, and probably not take more than a year to do it. His method is very simple, and would probably not involve the death of a single human being. He must decline, however, to impart the knowledge of his modus operandi, save to those who are desirous of assisting him in his undertaking. Meanwhile, he here gives us the results of his partial exploration of Africa. He simply records his experiences of the lands he explores, and the peoples with whom he comes in contact. The book's glimpses of African life and African scenery are singularly graphic and picturesque.

In describing his hunt for a lion he states that he learned that a day or two previously the lions had driven all cattle off from a fellow white hunter, and that even now an old mannikin was watching them, thus preventing their going out, even in search of their beasts. Says the hunter, "You would not let a confounded lion keep you prisoned up, surely?" "But he's an enormous brute." "He is, is he? and where can he be found?" inquired the visitor. "Oh, behind that bush; there, that one about a hundred yards off. You cannot see him now, but he's there, and has been there since the cattle were driven off," was the answer. The hunter simply exclaimed, "I'll soon make him quit," and walked out of the kraal straight up to the bush in question. Behind it was a tine old lion asleep, but who got roused up by the intruder's approach, and before the poor beast could do his yawning, stretching, and taking the kinks out of his back, he was bowled over with a two-ounce bullet through the head. The best hunter in South Africa, in his time, was the narrator of this deed.

We have to thank the captain for a work alike amusing and instructive. One fault we must find, and that is that our captain, when he does quote poetry—which is only once,—poetry as a rule is not much in demand among sporting writers—quotes it incorrect.

Originally published in 1878 reformatted for Kindle, occasional imperfection from original publication or refo