LIFE OF FREDERICK
COURTENAY SELOUS, D.S.O.
CAPT. 25TH ROYAL FUSILIERS
BY
J. G. MILLAIS, F.Z.S.
Author of
"Rhododendrons,"
"The Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland,"
"The Wild Fowler in Scotland,"
"Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways,"
"The Natural History of the British Surface-Feeding Ducks,"
"British Diving Ducks," etc.
WITH 14 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR AND 2 PORTRAITS
SECOND IMPRESSION
NEW YORK:
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET
1919
PREFACE
In preparing the life of my friend, Fred Selous, I have to thank his brother Edmund, and his sister Mrs. Jones (Ann Selous) for contributions regarding his parents and early life. I am also indebted to his friends, Sir Alfred Pease, Captain P. B. Vanderbyl and Mr. Heatley Noble for certain notes with regard to short expeditions made in his company. Mr. Abel Chapman, a life-long friend, has also assisted me with numerous letters which are of interest. But most of all have I to thank Mrs. Selous, who from the first has given me every assistance in furnishing details of her husband's adventurous life, and allowed me to read and extract from the numerous letters he wrote to different members of his family during a considerable part of his life. Selous had many friends, but none evinced a more keen understanding of his life and work than Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Ex-President of the United States, and I feel grateful to him for the attention he has given to the following pages and the use he has allowed me to make of his numerous letters.
The Author has also to thank Messrs. Macmillan and Co. and Messrs. Rowland Ward and Co. for the use they allowed him to make of two of Selous' works, namely, A Hunter's Wanderings and Travel and Adventure in S.E. Africa. He is much indebted to their kindness in this matter, since they give in the hunter's own words accurate details of his life.