After Big Game in Central Africa (Peter Capstick's Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)An account of his hunting exploits while leading an expedition sponsored by the French Ministry of Public Instruction, Edouard Foa's "After Big Game in Central Africa" is gem of a book. Foa resists the temptation to give a tedious day-by-day recounting of his travels or to pen a dry chronological sequence of events, noting himself that the moments of interest were interspersed among days and sometimes weeks of boredom and monotony. Rather, Mssr. Foa draws upon his keen skills as an observer and his evident scientific curiosity to create a literary survey of the land -- and time, no less -- in which he traveled. The result is a work that can, admittedly, be confusing for a reader who doesn't have a memory for dates and places as Foa occasionally jumps around in time and space, but which nonetheless excels as a descriptive portrait of Central Africa at the twilight of the 19th century.
Obviously well educated, Foa was not just another hunter but a true explorer who was literally studying his surroundings on his journey as part of his governmental charge. The resulting notes that he kept enabled him to accurately recreate his experiences and observations and sometimes the deep feelings they inspired.
From the opening chapters dealing with guns, equipment, and personnel to the actual recounting of the hunts, Foa establishes an objective to convey to his readers what his methods were and how effective they proved in practice. But more importantly, he imparts his passion for a life in the wilds and for hunting in particular, even with the inconveniences. Always candid and gifted with a sardonic sense of humor (kept wonderfully intact by Frederic Lees's superlative translation), Foa gives a fascinating and captivating account that is at least as entertaining and even more informative than his near-contemporary Col. John Patterson's "The Man-eaters of Tsavo." The great regret is that his other five books -- including "Mes Grands Chasses Dans L'Afrique Centrale", to which he makes frequent reference in this volume -- have apparently never found their way into print in the English language.

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In less than four years Edouard Foa covered 7200 miles, mostly on foot--from the Zambezi delta on Africa's east coast to the mouth of the Congo on the west. He risked every form of tropical disease and death from dangerous game and the unreliability of early guns. Foa succeeded in his efforts to create for the Paris Museum one of the finest collections of African animals and plants in the world. his account is full of hard, almost fatally earned bush knowledge. Frederick lee's able translation boosted this entertaining book to U.S. prominence (and two printings) in 1899.

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