FREDERICK SELOUS

written by Katherine Millett

Frederick Courtenay Selous (1851-1917), after whom the world's largest game reserve is named, epitomized the British colonial gentleman. During the late nineteenth century, when the term "great white hunter" still had a romantic ring, he tracked big game throughout southern Africa and bagged lions, elephants, greater kudus, sable antelope, and other species. When the British established the Game Department in 1922, they named the Selous Game Reserve in his honor. It has grown from lands originally set aside by Germans in 1905 to cover 22,000 square miles of Tanzania, and today it preserves game for both photographic and traditional safaris.

Selous's appetite for adventure combined with his narrative wit and disarming modesty to earn him the friendship of Theodore Roosevelt, a fellow hunter and the twenty-sixth president of the United States. Roosevelt wrote about Selous:

There was never a more welcome guest at the White House than Selous He told [me and my children] stories of his hunting adventures. He not only spoke simply and naturally, but he acted the part, first of himself, and then of the game, until the whole scene was vivid before our eyes He led a singularly adventurous and fascinating life, and he closed his life exactly as such a life ought to be closed, by dying in battle for his country while rendering her valiant and effective service

A zealous and respected naturalist, whose precise observations about wildlife continue to provide a valuable historical record, Selous managed to stay on the right side of the line between responsible hunter and wanton killer. He hunted before breakfast and again in the late afternoon. In between, while lesser men retreated from midday heat and humidity, he brandished his net collecting butterflies. Hundreds of his trophies and specimens now belong to the British Museum.

Even after years of hunting, Selous readily admitted his shortcomings as a marksman. When a writer dubbed him "the greatest of the world's big game hunters" in 1911, Selous dismissed the accolade as "all bunkum." He added that "because I have hunted a lot, that is not to say I am a specially good hunter." Selous's accuracy improved considerably with the development of small-bore, high-velocity rifles, and he favored a .450 single shot made by Gibbs of Bristol.

Selous's father was an official on the London Stock Exchange, his mother a poet who loved adventure but despised killing. As a child, Frederick idolized David Livingstone, the explorer who crossed southern Africa in search of navigable rivers. While a 9-year-old student at the Rugby boarding school, Selous was constantly in trouble. One night, he was found sleeping on a cold floor in his nightshirt. He explained to the dorm master, "One day I am going to be a hunter in Africa, and I am just hardening myself to sleep on the ground."

Physically strong and straight, with muscular arms and legs, Selous had a handsome face and clear, blue eyes that were said to be his most memorable feature. Ascetic in his personal habits, he ate sparingly and seldom drank anything stronger than tea. At 42, he married Gladys Maddy, 20, and they had two sons.

Selous's resonant voice frequently related tales of his adventures in Africa, illustrated by his acute observations of the natural world. These stories were always told, according to biographer J.G. Millais, at the urging of his audience and never in the service of vanity. Selous's fireside entertainment might also include a few tunes on the zither with selections from a repertoire that included Strauss waltzes.

Selous may not have been a very good shot, but he was a crack cricket and croquet player, passable at tennis, and an indefatigable bicyclist. At the age of 57, he made several 80-100-mile trips through the British countryside on the type of bicycle that was common in 1910.

During World War I, Selous became a captain in the 25^th Royal Fusiliers stationed in East Africa. He commanded troops on patrol and against German forces along the coast of Tanzania and southern Kenya, from Mombasa to Dar es Salaam. The company's battles were few, but miserably hot and humid conditions forced the men to march through deep mud and disease-ridden swamps. By the end of 1916, after driving German troops out of the fortified village of Kissaki, only 60 of Selous's original 1166 soldiers remained fit for duty.

In January of 1917, Selous and his troops encircled a German force led by General von Lettow-Vorbeck. Outnumbered five to one, the Fusiliers were attempting to close a road and prevent the Germans from escaping. Selous was shot in the head during this conflict, a few days after his sixty-fifth birthday. Lettow-Vorbeck so admired his adversary that he sent a message of condolence. One observer wrote, "If there ever was such a thing as a gentlemen's war, this may well have been one of the last examples."

After surviving numerous encounters with lions and elephants, wounds from misfiring guns, several violent uprisings of African natives, and two years of action in World War I, Selous died at Beho Beho near the Rufiji River. He lies buried there under a simple wooden cross, beside a tamarind tree, inside the boundaries of the Selous Game Reserve.

Selous wrote nine books, the most popular of which were A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (1881), Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia (1896), and African Nature Notes and Reminiscences (1908), as well as numerous articles on hunting and natural history.