The End of the Game Author:Peter Hill Beard The End of the Game blends past and present--a span of historical events and the author's own experiences within only two generations--to make stunningly clear how swiftly Old Africa has disappeared. It tells of Mackinder's feat of climbing Mt. Kenya in 1899, and of the ailroad's coming from the coast to what is now Nairobi: these were heroic ac... more »complishments of whie men, who then brought their technology, medicine, and government into East Africa. The tragic accompaniment, undreamed of by Europeans and Africans alike, has been the relentless distortion of the balance of nature that had supported the land, people, and animals for centuries. To understnad how this happened in little more than sixty years is to understand the tension in Africa today.
Then the photographs and text deal with Beard's camera safaris throught the Shag and Greater Shag, as the near and far reaches of Kenya are called. Beard visited remote ranches and native villages, knew game wardens and former poachers, and himself participated in the work of modern game control. Contrasting scenes from earlier days are here too, in the reminiscent talks he was privileged to have with some of the great white hunters whose entire lifetimes have been spent in Africa: Philip Percival, the dean of them all, who was Teddy Roosevelt's and Ernest Hemingway's hunter; and even E.S. Grogan, who accomplished the incredible walk from Cape to Cairo in 1900. J.A. Hunter, who pioneered new safari country with Isak Dinesen and was one of Africa's most experienced experts on African wildlife, saw Beard's manuscript and pictures ...Includes bibliography.« less