Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.S.O., Capt. 25th Royal FusiliersMillais, John Guille
Philosophy
Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.S.O., Capt. 25th Royal Fusiliers
Millais, John Guille
Selous, Frederick Courteney, 1851-1917; World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Africa
Passing along the Crocodile river, where a drought set in and drove the
game to the neighbourhood of the river, Selous managed to kill a few
good specimens of hartebeest and wildebeest which he preserved. Diamond
proved a splendid shooting horse, but another mount, Nelson, which was
at first intractable, eventually became a valuable animal, as he
successfully survived the prevalent sickness. This horse, though
somewhat slow, did Selous yeoman service for several years, and he
eventually sold it to Lewanika, chief of the Barotsi, in 1888.
At this time Selous hunted industriously to make a good collection of
butterflies, and after many years he did make a very complete
collection, which he presented to the Cape Town Museum. The curator of
this museum was the late Mr. Trimen--a man for whom Selous had a great
respect--who was ever delighted to receive any novelties, and many were
the new species discovered by these two active entomologists. Selous, in
fact, had all his life collected butterflies, and did so almost to the
day of his death in German East Africa, for it was nothing to him to
chase agile insects in the heat of the day, when other men only thought
of rest and refreshment. The capture of some new species was to him
always a great event, and though others, less interested than himself,
wondered at his taking so much trouble about a wretched butterfly, he
had all the absorbing pleasure of finding some new thing, the ambition
of all true naturalists.
One day, whilst butterfly hunting, he found an ox bogged in the mud of
the river. The poor beast had been badly bitten by crocodiles, which are
perhaps more numerous in the Limpopo than in any river in South Africa,
except perhaps the Botletlie. Numerous goats and calves belonging to
natives were annually destroyed there, whilst in 1876 a Boer hunter
named Berns Niemand met his death from these reptiles whilst crossing
the river.
At the Notwani river, on March 5th, Selous decided to visit Khama and
ask his permission to travel along the Limpopo and up the Mahalapsi
river to Matabeleland. He rode by night, and "off-saddled" to give his
horse a rest and feed for half an hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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