Trekking the Great Thirst. Travel and Sport in the Kalahari Desert by Hodson, Arnold W

(Johannesburg: Africana Book Society, 1977) 0949973254. Text facsimile of the 1912 Unwin first edition, with a new introduction by Professor R. S. Roberts. 8vo; light brown rexine, with silver gilt lettering to spine; upper cover with silver gilt lettering, hunter and oryx device; tinted top edge; pictorial dustwrapper; pp. xvi + 359, incl. index; colour frontis. with tissue-guard; plates; four folding maps, including large folding map at end. (Czech, pp. 76-7 [1st edition]) Dustwrapper very slightly edgeworn, and sunned on spine panel; earlier owner's bookplate to front pastedown. Very good to near-fine condition. "Trekking the Great Thirst was first published in book form in 1912 (the edition now being reprinted) much of it having originated as contemporary articles written for sporting and other popular magazines. It deals mainly with the journeys and hunting expeditions of the author in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) in the years 1904-1910. His duties as policeman and magistrate took him into the most remote parts of the territory, one of his missions being to the Damaraland frontier at the time of the Herero and Nama Wars in German South-West Africa. He was also much involved in trying to reconcile conflicts between tribal chiefs. His several political missions, on which his narrative turns, cover a most important period in the history of Botswana, and his account gives an informative picture of the character of the people, their mode of living, and the harshness of the waterless regions with their great trackless distances." .