AFRICAN JUNGLE

MEMORIES

By
JOHN F. BURGER

ROBERT HALE LIMITED
1958

First edition.

An exciting collection of the authors adventures over a 30 year period in central Africa during the first half of the 20th century.

In John Burger's volume of reminiscences, the reader is taken on the trail of the buffalo, lion, elephant, and leopard. There is a graphic description of a successful hunt, almost entirely under native direction, in the Kivu region of the Congo. There are recollections of the strange women he met, who took readily to the life of the jungle and who successfully hunted all the most dangerous game animals in the African bush. The law of the jungle, in its application to the lion, is truthfully recorded from observations made during a period of more than thirty years. Finally, the reader joins the author around the campfires at night, where the adventures, not only of that day, but of many other days, are passed in review. The narrative covers a wide area, stretching from the Congo forest to the Abyssinian border, and each country contributes its quota of thrills and exciting adventures.

John F. Burger was born on the Great Karoo in the Prieska District of South Africa, where his father farmed sheep and ostriches. He lived there until 1905, and during that time he saw the last of the great springbok migrations in which millions of these animals traversed the Karoo. He took part in a great trek which lasted nearly five months, traveling from the Orange River to Southern Rhodesia in donkey wagons. Part of the journey was through the Kalahari Desert, where he endured many hardships, suffering from thirst and hunger. The convoy finally arrived at King Khama's Kraal and was escorted by his men to the border of Rhodesia. On arriving in Bulawayo he was apprenticed as a compositor to a local newspaper, and during his early years in Rhodesia he joined many famous hunters on safari, including Selous, van Rooyen, v.d. Westhuizen, and Cooper. He joined the Rhodesian forces during the first world war, serving as a scout and hunter supplying meat to front-line troops and porters on the borders of Northern Rhodesia and German East Africa. He was wounded- in action and discharged in 1917; he then went to Durban, Natal, where he established a boxing school and gymnasium. Returning to the Belgian Congo, he became a field prospector and sampler for a mining company and was responsible for sampling some of the richest uranium deposits in the world. He also prospected for gold. He later became sole concessionaire for his company throughout Katanga, and during his time there he established the first talkie cinemas in the Congo. Throughout his fifteen years in the Congo, he hunted regularly, going on safaris through the Ituri Forest, Kivu, Ubangi, the Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya. For the next fifteen years he lived in Tanganyika, working for the Red Locust Control Staff, mining and hunting. He then returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1947, after spending a total of thirty-two years in Central Africa mostly in the bush, mining and hunting. He continued mining in Rhodesia until he settled in Spain.

22 x 14 cm. 192 pages + 15 b/w photo plates.

A good reading copy, ex-Boots Library, stamped on the front board, metal eyelet in the back strip, cloth nibbled on the top rear corner. A few spots of foxing to the page edges but otherwise OK.