SPORT AND TRAVEL IN EAST AFRICA.
Sport and Travel in Abyssinia and British East Africa. By Lord Hindlip. (T. Fisher Unwin. 21s. net.)—Lord Hindlip has had more sport and pioneering in strange places than usually falls to the lot of a young man. In the present volume he has included the narrative of three journeys—one to Abyssinia, and the other two in various parts of the East Africa Protectorate. The first expedition took him to the capital of Menelik, where he attended a feast, of which he has given an amusing description. He reproduces the menu, with appropriate accounts against each dish, which looks as if he had eaten steadily through the whole of them. Unfortunately, he was unable to reach Lake Rudolf in the South, and had to be contented with Lake Margherita. He takes a gloomy view of the future of the country. With Menelik's death there is certain to be civil war, when he hopes that Europe will step in. "To any one who has travelled in the country and seen the Abyssinian in his true colours, the resent alliance with Menelik is a humiliating and almost degrading spectacle." The other two expeditions were more definitely sporting, and we commend Lord Hindlip's views to the attention of all big-game hunters. "Killing for the sake of killing has no charm for me, and shooting a species of animal when I have what specimens I want is a form of sport I have never indulged in, except when I have been in absolute need of meat." In these pages we have some stirring stories of adven- tures with lions, and a spirited account of giraffe-hunting on horseback, which on an open plain must be a sport indeed. There is also a most interesting narrative of a visit to the cave-dwellers of Mount Elgon. Interspersed with sport there are some shrewd comments on politics. Lord Hindlip does not love the ways of the Foreign oinCe, which he thinks rightly named, and he has many sound criticisms to make on the present laws which define the status of settlers in East Africa. As a settler himself, he speaks from personal knowledge.
Previous page
