African Silences
Authors: Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen’s
AFRICAN SILENCES
“His latest,
African Silences
, is an account of two trips Matthiessen made to Africa; it’s as multifaceted as he is. It’s part travelogue, part nature study, part adventure; each of these parts benefits from the author’s keen observation and ability to describe what he sees in almost lyrical prose.”
—
Columbus Dispatch
“At times poetic … and always informative. Matthiessen is a great travel companion.… His knowledge of plants, animals and people is breathtaking.”
—
Boston Globe
“Matthiessen brings a needed balance to the question of wildlife preservation, never losing sight of the problem’s human dimension.”
—
St. Petersburg Times
“His work is that rare combination of solid information and splendid writing.… His book is elegant and elegiac. For his fans, that will come as no surprise. For new readers, it can be a wonder.”
—
Detroit Free Press
“What has been justly called the gravitas of Peter Matthiessen is here—the weight and honesty, the civility, the ironic balance, the clarity of intellect.”
—
Seattle Times
“If Matthiessen is always both literary stylist and naturalist, in his latest work,
African Silences
, the naturalist prevails … consistently absorbing.”
—
Newsday
“Matthiessen is an elegant writer and a reliable reporter. He stumbles upon strange scenes and boils the truth out of them.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
ALSO BY
PETER MATTHIESSEN
Fiction
Race Rock
Partisans
Raditzer
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Far Tortuga
On the River Styx (and Other Stories)
Killing Mister Watson
Nonfiction
Wildlife in America
The Cloud Forest
Under the Mountain Wall
Sal Si Puedes
The Wind Birds
Blue Meridian
The Tree Where Man Was Born
The Snow Leopard
Sand Rivers
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
Indian Country
Nine-Headed Dragon River
Men’s Lives
PETER MATTHIESSEN
AFRICAN SILENCES
Peter Matthiessen was born in New York City in 1927 and had already begun his writing career by the time he was graduated from Yale University in 1950. The following year, he was a founder of
The Paris Review.
Besides
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
, which was nominated for the National Book Award, he has published five other novels, including
Far Tortuga
and
Killing Mr. Watson
, as well as the collection
On the River Styx and Other Stories.
Mr. Matthiessen’s parallel career as a naturalist and explorer has resulted in numerous works of non-fiction, among them
The Tree Where Man Was Born
, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and
The Snow Leopard
, which won it. His other works of nonfiction include
The Cloud Forest
and
Under the Mountain Wall
(which together received an Award of Merit from the National Institute of Arts and Letters),
The Wind Birds, Blue Meridian, Sal Si Puedes, Sand Rivers, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Indian Country, Nine-Headed Dragon River
, and
Men’s Lives.
First Vintage Books Edition, July 1992
Copyright © 1991 by Peter Matthiessen
Maps copyright © 1991 by Anita Karl and Jim Kemp
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc.,
New York, in 1991.
Portions of this work were originally published in
Audubon
and
Outdoor
magazines.
“Pygmies and Pygmy Elephants: The Congo Basin” was originally published in
Antaeus
as
“Congo Basin: The Search for the Forest Elephants.” parts I and II.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Matthiessen. Peter.
African silences / Peter Matthiessen. — 1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
“Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc.,
New York, in 1991”—T.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81967-3
1. Africa—Description and travel—1977- 2. Matthiessen, Peter—
Journeys—Africa. 3. Natural history—Africa. 4. Naturalists—
United States—Biography. 5. Authors, American—20th century—
Biography. I. Title.
[DT12.25.M39 1992]
916.04’328—dc20 91–50730
Author photograph © 1991 Nancy Crampton
v3.1
For George Schaller, Jonah Western,
Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Alec Forbes-Watson,
Peter Enderlein, Brian Nicholson, and
other mentors and companions of immemorial
long days on foot in Africa.
In addition to Drs. Gilbert Boese and David Western, I am grateful for help and hospitality, instruction, and good company, to almost all those people, black and white, who are mentioned in the book. Dr. Richard Carroll and also Drs. William Conway and William Weber of the New York Zoological Society provided helpful information and support. Finally, my thanks to Mr. William Shawn of
The New Yorker
, which paid my share of the considerable expenses of the forest elephant survey made in 1986.
ROLOGUE
On African journeys that began with an overland trip from Egypt to Tanganyika in 1961, I traveled widely in East and southern Africa (Botswana), the last great redoubt of large wild creatures left on earth. Not until the winter of 1978 did I reach West Africa—specifically Senegal-Gambia and Ivory Coast—accompanying a primatologist, Dr. Gilbert Boese, on an informal survey of what was left of West Africa wildlife, from the Sahel region, south of the Sahara, to the Guinea forest of the coasts, then continuing eastward to Zaire, hoping to join an expedition in search of the rare Congo peacock, and enjoying two meetings with gorillas along the way.