The Hunter is Death

(Cape Town: Books of Africa, 1968). Illustrated by C. T. Astley Maberly. 8vo; original grey boards; no dustwrapper; endpaper map; pp. viii + 348; line drawings in text. Sunned on backstrip; boards a bit bowed; damp stain to upper board; earlier owner's name signed on half-title verso; ripple and trace of damp-stain to several leaves; some foxing. Good reading copy. "This book is without doubt the most remarkable true account ever written of adventure in Africa. From its start in 1921 in a Salvation Army soup kitchen in Durban until its climax in Tanganyika in 1946, the reader is transported into a world of tumultuous and bizarre events. Here, for the first time, are the authentic details of an animalism, a lycanthropy and black magic almost beyond belief - the hyena cult of the Mbugwe people, the fearsome lion-men of the Singida district, and the twenty-two man-eaters of the Njombe district who killed and ate well over one thousand known human beings before nemesis brought them one by one to their deaths in the solitude of the bush. Here also are the great characters of the twilight of adventure in Africa; Jim Sutherland, prince of elephant hunters; Bill Cumming and his companions of the Lupa Gold Rush; and George Rushby whose story this is, the young man who went to South Africa in search of a new life and all the curious and violent things that befell him until, as a game ranger of Tanganyika, he faced and defeated the dread man-eaters of the Njombe district." .