African Game Trails. An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist.

ROOSEVELT, Theodore.

Item Number: 62035

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910.

First edition of Theodore Roosevelt’s classic work. Octavo, original cloth, gilt top edge, photogravure frontispiece, illustrated, 48 plates, map of Roosevelt’s route and hunting trips in Africa. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To General Sir Reginald Wingate with the high regard of Theodore Roosevelt April 21st 1911.” The recipient, Reginald Wingate was a British general and administrator in Egypt and the Sudan. He earned the nom de guerre Wingate of the Sudan. In December 1899, on Lord Kitchener being summoned to South Africa, Sir Reginald Wingate succeeded him as Governor-General of the Sudan and Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, being promoted to local major general on 22 December 1899. His administration of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, between 1899 and 1916, achieved the colonial goals of the British Empire, with the colony regaining a degree of prosperity and its infrastructure being rebuilt and expanded. In near fine condition with light rubbing and wear to the extremities. Housed in a custom half calf clamshell box. A nice association, signed trade editions of African Game Trails are rare.

"One of the most famous of all big-game hunting epics, this, with its larger than life sportsmen, was almost continuously in print until the 1930s. In British East Africa, Roosevelt hunted lion and plains game on the Kapiti Plains, while, in the Bondoni hill country, he collected rhinoceros and giraffe. On Juja Farm, his son Kermit faced leopard, while Teddy bagged rhino and hippopotamus. On the Kamiti River, buffalo were taken. Near the Sotik, additional rhino and lion were hunted, with elephant bagged near Mt. Kenia. On the Guaso Nyiro, giraffe and a variety of plains game were shot. Further adventures included hunting elephant near Lake Nyanza, rhino and plains game in the Lado, and eland on the Nile. Roosevelt’s total bag was enormous even by the liberal standards of that era" (Czech, 138-39).