In Closed Territory

"His descriptions of the experiences he had in the wilds of the African bush are thrilling...one of the few Americans who were admitted to the closed territory before the coming of Roosevelt." -El Paso Herald, March 10, 1910

"Bronson obtained permission of the British Government to make a journey through its 'closed territory' in search of big game...not only a sportsman but an excellent writer...highly entertaining book of adventure." -San Francisco Bulletin, March 19, 1910

"Bronson has been a cowboy, Indian fighter, and ranch owner...Bronson's description of his elephant hunting is very vivid, his experiences being thrilling in the extreme." -Washington Herald, March 20, 1910

"Bronson is the type of strenuous American hunter of big game, and like Roosevelt got his first inspiration in following the wild animals of the West while a ranchman in Wyoming...combines good hunting with good writing." -St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1910

Traveling to wild tribal areas of Africa where only several white men had ever ventured, American ranchman Edgar Beecher Bronson met up with an outlaw ivory hunter John Alfred Jordan who showed him into some of the best elephant, rhino, lion, and water-buffalo hunting areas. The ivory hunter Jordan would also relate to Bronson his verified story of his shooting of a "Dingonek" described as having a "head big as that of a lioness but shaped and marked like a leopard, two long white fangs sticking down straight out of his upper jaw, back broad as a hippo, scaled like an armadillo, but colored and marked like a leopard, and a broad fin tail."

Edgar Beecher Bronson (1856-1917) would tell of his successful safari adventures in his 1910 book, "In Closed Territory." It is this book of 225 pages that has been republished here for the convenience of the interested reader.

In introducing his book, Bronson writes:

"It was for me...a stroke of rare good luck, for which I shall always feel deeply indebted to him, when Lieut.-Governor the Hon. F. J. Jackson consented to issue me a pass for entering certain "Closed Territory," that enabled me to make a three months' safari through the countries of the Loita Masai, the Wanderobo, the Kavirondo, the Kisii, the Sotik, and the Lumbwa, the more for that both the Sotik and the Kisii had been in open, bloody revolt only a few months before the date of my pass. Lying ...in what is now German territory, most of the country I traversed under the pass still remains unmapped. It had never before been entered by white men save by the Anglo-German Boundary Commission."

About the author:

Edgar Beecher Bronson (1856-1917) was a Nebraska rancher, a West Texas cattleman, an African big-game hunter, a serious photographer and starting late in life, an author of personal memoirs. As he matured as a writer, his works showed a "marked advance...in characterization". Bronson was a nephew of famed abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. Formerly a reporter for the New York Tribune, Bronson headed west in 1877 to learn the cattle business under the directive of Clarence King - first director of the United States Geological Survey and owner of large mining and cattle operations in the American West. Bronson worked for one season in Wyoming before starting his own ranch with 716 cows with calves. Bronson chose Sioux County, Nebraska for the site of his first ranch.

Other books by Bronson include:

Reminiscences of a Ranchman (1908)

The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier (1910)

The Vanguard (1914)

The Love of Loot and Women (1917)