For whom the Bell tolls; it tolls for Elephants
BELL, Walter Dalrymple Maitland.
The wanderings of an elephant hunter.
London, The Offices of “Country Life” and George Newnes, and New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923.
4to, pp. ix, [1], 187, [1 (index)]; title in red and black, frontispiece, 42 plates, 38 with illustrations recto and verso, illustrations in text; a very little light spotting, occasional creasing to margins; a very good copy in original yellow buckram-backed grey boards, gilt lettering to spine, gilt lettering on pink cloth label to upper cover; corners slightly bumped, a few light marks to boards.
First edition of Bell’s first work, describing his ‘early elephant hunting days in the Karamojo region’ of Africa, in modern-day Uganda. According to Bell, ‘Karamojan elephants are distinguished for their bodily size, the quality and size of their ivory and for the quantity of fat on them’. In addition, ‘he also narrates his hunting expeditions through the Sudd, into the Lado Enclave and the interior of Liberia in the decade preceding World War I. The work is further distinguished by the author’s sketches of hunting elephant and their vital areas. He was, of course, a great proponent of small bore rifle shooting for elephant, killing them with carefully placed shots at close range’ (Czech).
Bell published this work several years after he had returned from Karamojo, and he admits that the days of unfettered elephant hunting may now be over. ‘The hunting of the African elephant is now restricted in so many ways that it is difficult for anyone to gain experience in the shooting of them’, he writes towards the beginning of his work. Fortunately, Bell’s handy advice is there to remedy this inconvenience, particularly given that the exorbitant cost of hunting licenses ‘therefore behoves the sportsman to make a good job of it when he does come face to face with these splendid elephants’ (p. 5).
Czech, p. 15; Hosken, p. 14.
