The African Adventurers
A Return to the Silent Places
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Hailed as the adventure-writing successor to Hemingway and Ruark, only Peter Hathaway Capstick “can write action as cleanly and suspensefully as the best of his predecessors’ (Sports Illustrated). This long-awaited sequel to Death in the Silent Places brings to life four turn-of-the-century adventurers and the savage frontiers they braved.
* Frederick Selous, a British hunter, naturalist, and soldier, rewrote the history books with his fearless treks deep into Africa.
* English game ranger Constantine “Iodine” Ionides saved Tanganyikan villages from man-eating lions and leopards. He also gained lasting fame for his uncanny ability to capture black mambas, cobras, Gaboon vipers, and other deadly snakes.
* The dashing Brit Johnny Boyes who gained the chieftainship of the Kikuyu tribe with sheer bravado and survived the ferocious battles and ambushes of intertribal warfare.
* And Scottish ex-boxer, Jim Sutherland, one of the best ivory hunters who ever lived. His tracking skills and stamina afoot became the stuff of African hunting legend.
In The African Adventurers: A Return to the Silent Places, Capstick delivers “the kind of chilling stories that Hemingway only heard second-hand...with a flair and style that Papa himself would admire” (Guns and Ammo). The author’s pungent wit and his authenticity gained from years in the bush make this quartet of vintage heroics an unforgettable return to the silent places.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Author of Death in the Silent Places and other books about big-game hunting, Capstick here profiles four British expatriates, all legendary figures in colonial Africa. Frederick Selous, a friend of Cecil Rhodes, hunted elephants in the 1870s. Constantine ``Iodine'' Ionides was a soldier, game ranger and professional safari leader in the 1920s and '30s who collected poisonous snakes for museums. Early in this century, ivory trader Johnny Boyes managed to subdue warring Kikuyu tribesmen, only to be arrested by the colonial government. At about the same time, Jim Sutherland was probably the most successful ivory hunter of all time; he also used his tracking skills to kill man-eating lions. All of these men brushed with death repeatedly, and Capstick gives the full details. He has a fund of macho stories that would fill Hemingway with envy. Big-game hunters and Old Africa hands will appreciate this re-creation of a vanished Africa.
