The Lion in South Africa

By: F.C. Selous

Narrated by: Drew Baker

Length: 1 hr and 2 mins

Publisher's Summary

Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917) was a British explorer, hunter, and conservationist. Arriving in South Africa when he was 19, he traveled from the Cape of Good Hope to Matabeleland, where he obtained permission from King Lobengula to hunt in the area now called Zimbabwe. Selous explored all the then-unfamiliar regions north of the Transvaal and south of the Congo Basin, recording ethnographic notes, shooting elephants, and collecting specimens of all kinds for museums and private collections. His real-life adventures inspired Sir H. Rider Haggard to create the fictional Allan Quatermain character. 

In this work, The Lion in South Africa, he describes his numerous encounters with wild lions and notes that as far back as the 1890s, lion numbers were shrinking from overhunting.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks

Not an easy listen

I only listened to this audio book in it’s entirety because the information is vital to my research. I found the reading somewhat mechanical and lacked expression and difficult to follow in places. I also wondered why this reader chose this book when he struggled with pronoun citations of places, names and colloquial terms. So unfortunately, I couldn’t give it five stars.