Description
Major Sir William Cornwallis Harris ( 1807 –1848) was an English military engineer, artist and hunter, one of the more notable of the early Victorian hunters to visit Southern Africa .The period between 1835 and 1860 may be said to have been the heyday of great game sportsmen in South Africa. The early English hunters, pushing their way into the Bechuana and Transvaal country, towards 1840, found before them a veldt virgin to the rifle, and absolutely teeming with wild animal life. They had a glorious innings, and their exploits have never been surpassed. Captain, afterwards Sir William, Cornwallis Harris, passing through what is now the Transvaal, in 1836-7, found troops of hundreds of elephants among the Cashan Mountains—a range now much better known as the Magaliesberg, in the near neighbourhood of Pretoria—and enjoyed fine sport with them. Cornwallis Harris may be looked upon as the forerunner of British sportsmen in the countries beyond the Val and Orange. He wrote a celebrated book, which attracted much notice, and Oswell, Vardon, Gordon Cumming, and others undoubtedly fell beneath the glamour of his glowing descriptions, and followed keenly in his footsteps. When Cornwallis Harris trekked south, he encountered, in the country now familiar as the Orange River Colony, then a wilderness tenanted only by vast multitudes of wild game. (Goodreads)
