Customer Reviews

Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure

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Bartle Bull knows about Africa, having spent many of his formative years there among its beautiful places and with some of Africa's more interesting people. As proof that all of this was not wasted on the author, he has written a marvelously detailed account of the history of the most commonly known of African institutions, the Safari. In Safari a Chronicle of Adventure, Bartle Bull starts with the first travels of Europeans in Southern Africa, on their own and for themselves, and shows how Safaris evolved into a vehicle for Ivory Hunters and explorers and finally into a business of its own. During this history trip we meet many interesting people along the way and find out how their African experiences changed their lives. At times the author takes us on some side trips explaining the lives of travelers, writers,white hunters, even Presidents and movie stars before and after their safaris. In many ways the history of the safari is the history of the European experience in Africa and the book rises to this task by giving us a sideward glance at Africa outside the safari business.The book is also a record of the exploitation of the continent wildlife and how the fortunes of people changed as the game became scarce. In all the work is well crafted with Bartel Bull's usual attention to detail and his flare for adventure that lets all of us travel on safari if only from the comfort of our easy chairs.

This is a very well researched book, chronicling the history of African safari's from the first European safari starting in Cape Town. Packed with fascinating quotes and antecdotes, the book takes the reader on an action-packed safari through the history of Africa. Researching my own book on safari camps, I found this was a book that I continually referred to and was one of two books that proved to be the best of a great many that I read. For anyone who is planning a safari in Africa, I recommend this book -- whether you are traveling in East Africa or Southern Africa, you will find many historical references that will relate to your journey and will enhance your trip.

The author, Bartle Bull, wrote a very interesting overview of Safari, both in fact and in legend. Combining the histories of famous professional hunters and adventurers along with the mythological "Great White Hunter" of the silver screen, he brings a very candid and personal account based on his experiences in the bush. Highly recommended if you can find a copy, one of the best I've ever read.

I found the book to be an excellent companion on a recent mountain biking holiday in Colorado. It rekindled my desire to visit the "dark continent". I envy the men and women who were able to experience this majestic land prior to its being decimated by over population, mechanized tribal conflict and overzealous preservationists.

This book, Safari, is one of the best books I have ever read. The

chapters can be read individually yet read perfectly as a whole.

I bought a number of the books as gifts. They were VERY well received.

Thank you for this excellent product.

Safari: A Chronicle Of Adventure details the history of the African safari from its first expedition of 1836 to modern times. Bull is an environmentalist, so his survey Safari isn't your typical gun-hunter's celebration of good old days, but a survey of conflicts between hunting and conservation, weapons and transport, game control and more. From economics and financers of the safari to mishaps, adventures, and famous personalities involved in safaris, vintage black and white photos pair with wide-ranging personal and political stories for maximum effect.

A wonderful book covering the beginnings of the African Safari to the present. Many current authors use this book as reference for their own books such as Peter Beard, Bibi Jordan, Kuki Gallman, and Mirella Ricciardi. If all of these authors use this book as a reference and quote it throughout their own books it has just got be good. I recommend it highly for any African Safari book collection!

This well written book documents the evolution of Safaris from the early Boer settlers through the modern camera hunters.

Excellent book steeped in history and written with great style. One can almost feel Africa and how Safaris changed people as well as a country.

A came across this book in Nairobi and after skimming through the pages I had to buy it. I did not regret it. I got a book full with many rare photos which tell their own stories.
The main thing is the text. The author seems to have studied Black Africa for a long time. In fact he made his first safari in Kenya in 1959, at a time when the plains in Eastern Africa were already half empty of big animals.
With this book he paints a picture of how it was like in former times to make a safari, then when you had to use oxcarts and an army of black porters, you can almost smell the grass, animal spoor, thorny bush, wildflowers - and of course the tobacco and brandy, sitting around the campfire. The author: "The descent of the African night is never forgotten. There is nothing more complete than to rest by a fire on a canvas set, with tobacco and a drink, as the sky grows blue dark and the stars sharpen with the clarity peculiar to Africa, until the rim of the firelight seems surrounded by a second, outer world alive with the night sounds of contesting animals, and then to lie awake learning the language of the bush, the low, panting grunt of lion, the shudden rsuh of hooves as zebra or antelope flee, the menacing cough of a leopard defending its kill from hyena."
Fortunately even today you can get all these things if you stay away from the tourist buses and fly-in luxury camps. Even today you can do a safari close to nature. This book encourages you to do so, but please do not overestimate yourself. The guys of old were knowing what they were doing (or sometimes not for the last time), they were capable to be tough.
The author gives a lot of examples Frederick Selous as the British or Lettow-Vorbeck as the German. I did not find it necessary to include Theodor Roosevelt, who had all the support an American president could have. But that could be in regard of the American book market.
That the author also included the story of the German Schutztruppe is due to the fact that in the war till 1918 both Selous and von Lettow-Vorbeck faced each others as enemies. Von Letow-Vorbeck spared his antagonist on one occasion and completed himself with his Schutztruppe an own "Safari"-experience that stands alone by many reasons in the history of militairy campaigns and East-african hunting stories. For years the small never defeated "Schutztruppe", consisting of German soldiers and a majority of German-trained Askaris, maintained their positions and fooled the British forces.
"Schutztruppe morale was high to the end, the Africans and Germans hardened comrades, routinely marching fifteen to twenty miles across hard country in six hours, with half-hour stops every two hours. The Germans made bandages from bark, and resisted malaria by sipping the foul tasting Lettow Schnaps, a quinine drink made by boiling bark. A typical lunch on the march was hippopotamus fat spread over rough bread made from boiled rice and any available grain...Thirty-five years later, at the age of eighty-three, von Letow-Vorbeck was to return from Germany to Dar Es Salaam. His veteran Askaris, waiting at the dock, carried him through the town on their shoulders."
The book is full with stories like that. It covers the first years of Safari chronicles, starting from 1826 when unique conditions and eccentric individuals created a style of adventure that can never exist again.
It lays a little too much stress on the White hunters stories, who began to roam around already as soon as 1840. Of course the first explorers like Livingstone, Baker, Speke, Stanley, Burton they all were hunters. One chapter is dedicated to Selous who arrived in Africa 1871. He served in South Africa as a wildlife and safari guide and army scout, although he wanted to "be like Livingstone".
With the first women travellers to Africa came a change to Safari style. They got more complicated, slow, well sustained, lavish. By that time Winston Churchill devoured the books of Rider Haggard like "King Solomo`s Mines".
Professional hunters could make a living when they were hired by the British high society who found it "cool" to make a safari. Interestingly in Germanys African Colonies this kind of "sport" was only a trifling side issue.
Thanks to those visit-wildlife-parties we have today photos how it was like when the Earls and Admirals painted the wilderness. It was all about shooting, some shot with the camera. Bull calls this chapter "Cameras, Cordite and women"!
The vintage years were between the two wars, when the British settled down only to leave Africa after the war. Bull dedicates an own chapter to "Haggard, Hemingway and Hollywood", two writers who delivered stories for the filming of Safari-stories.
"Unflinching courage, quiet endurance and sportsmanlike respect for the game are taken for granted by hunters of this school". The same could be said for the last white hunters of the time after the last war.
Too much writing about hunting perhaps, hunting is not exactly the same as a safari. And too much about the British way of thinking. But who else hunted? There were others who made safaris on a more scientific approach: biologists, zoologists, wildlife preservers. It would have served the book right to give them a chapter. This is the weakness of the book, safari is hunting foremost.
Nevertheless a worthwhile reading for safari-ists! The old hands have broken their camps, the poachers not. I wonder who were more successful in playing natural selection. Today the hunting clients fly in, shoot their "one-of-the-big-five", no safari, no wildlife experience, and no risk at all. I find the photo-safaris more worthwhile.
Charles Cottar, one of the last old hands bled to death after a rhino fell on him. With his last words he stopped his son from raising a canvas to protect him from the hot sun, saying "No. I want to see the sky!"