Hunting and Hunted in the Belgian Congo

Book Synopsis: "A real story of adventure in unknown lands ...concerned principally with elephant and other hunting---sometimes with the author himself as quarry...fortunately he escaped at the worst with an arrow wound." - The Academy, June 13, 1914

"Cooper...tells us the story of his adventures among the cannibals and big game of East and Central Africa, North Eastern Congo...hairbreadth escape from cannibals on the banks of the Insa reads like a chapter from Rider Haggard." - Manchester Courier, April 24, 1914

"Cooper...can set down his elephant-hunting exploits in a vivid fashion...to the big game hunter his book will be a continual delight...will make sportsmen envious of the author's life, hard and dangerous though it was." - Birmingham Post, June 26, 1914

"Cooper is one of the band of world wanderers who have in their blood the craving for the wild...as a record of the hardships and difficulties experienced by these poorly equipped hunters in search of elephants and ivory in out-of-the-way districts of Central Africa, the book is of interest." - The Geographical Journal (1914)

After several successful elephant hunts in the Congo, how did big game hunter Reginald Davey Cooper manage to narrowly survive after being wounded and hunted by cannibals who had killed several of his porters?

In 1914, Reginald Davey Cooper writes of his narrow escape with his life from angry elephants and hostile tribes inhabiting the Congo in his book titled "Hunting and Hunted in the Belgian Congo." It is this book of 240 pages that has been republished here for the convenience of the interested reader.

In introducing his book, Cooper writes: "I have been charged by elephants and wounded by cannibals in ambush....The life of a rolling stone, as I have known it, is always a glorious uncertainty, up one day and down the next; but I do not advise any one to try it, for in the long run the game is unprofitable financially, and you must be extremely versatile, able to adapt yourself to all grades of society, and willing to accept cheerfully whatever may come your way....Cannibals and so forth, they have all come true at last, lions, snakes, leopards, elephants, witch doctors, real bows and arrows, yes, it has all been very wonderful."

In describing being attacked by elephants, Cooper writes: "I thought my last moment had come, for as I dropped down on my belly, the boy imitating my example, I saw the whole herd advance and rush headlong at us. It was like seeing a wall hurling itself down on one. Clouds of dust shot up, the earth trembled, branches were crunched up; this was no earth tremor such as I had experienced before, but a solid mass of maddened tossing life, great carcasses, with gleaming tusks that reached within a foot of the ground, bore down upon us. I shut my eyes and waited motionless; every second I expected to be crushed to a pulp as the frenzied brutes tore past ... Can you imagine a more exciting sport than elephant hunting? Every other class of game hunting, even when the lion is the quarry, pales into insignificance besides such an experience as a stampede of elephants."

About the author: After fighting in the Zulu wars in the British military in South Africa, big game hunter Reginald Davey Cooper would go on an adventure and danger-filled elephant hunting Safari in Belgian Congo.