The author of this book, Hans Schomburgk (1880–1967), made ten journeys to Africa and saw it both at the end of the last century and in the second half of the present one. At first he was, by his own admission, one of those adventurers who flooded South Africa during the diamond and gold rush. Horse racing, card games, petty adventures in the “Golden City” — Johannesburg — alternated in the young Schomburgk’s life with hunting elephants and other large animals that abounded in the wilderness. Gradually, the wanderer and hunter was drawn to the interesting and risky craft of animal trapping. Later Schomburgk turned into a hunter with a movie camera, a creator of films about the nature and peoples of Africa. He became an explorer who enriched science with knowledge of the nature and wildlife of this continent.