The Land of Footprints

Name: The Land of Footprints
Author: Stewart Edward White

by Stewart Edward White

Pages: about 350
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 6.4 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 3.6 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Books of sporting, travel, and adventure in countries little known to the average reader naturally fall in two classes-neither, with a very few exceptions, of great value. One class is perhaps the logical result of the other.
Of the first type is the book that is written to make the most of far travels, to extract from adventure the last thrill, to impress the awestricken reader with a full sense of the danger and hardship the writer has undergone. Thus, if the latter takes out quite an ordinary routine permit to go into certain districts, he makes the most of travelling in “closed territory,” implying that he has obtained an especial privilege, and has penetrated where few have gone before him. As a matter of fact, the permit is issued merely that the authorities may keep track of who is where. Anybody can get one. This class of writer tells of shooting beasts at customary ranges of four and five hundred yards. I remember one in especial who airily and as a matter of fact killed all his antelope at such ranges. Most men have shot occasional beasts at a quarter mile or so, but not airily nor as a matter of fact: rather with thanksgiving and a certain amount of surprise. The gentleman of whom I speak mentioned getting an eland at seven hundred and fifty yards. By chance I happened to mention this to a native Africander.
He laughed. “No,” said he, “the old chap was immensely delighted. 'Eight hundred yards if it was an inch!' he cried.”
“About three hundred and fifty. But it was a long shot, all right.”
And it was! Three hundred and fifty yards is a very long shot. It is over four city blocks-New York size. But if you talk often enough and glibly enough of “four and five hundred yards,” it does not sound like much, does it?

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The Land of Footprints

From the opening

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