"If I am described by my critics as a fanatic on the subject of the British Empire, I shall accept the description gratefully, as a high compliment; for, whenever I have been in a colony under direct Imperial control--and I have lived in many of these--there I have found the government carried on in accordance with the highest traditions of our race. " It is true to say that Southern and Central Africa had pretty much been successfully divided up between the European Powers by the time this book was written (in 1909). And yet, it is clear from these pages that the Central Africa described was still very much a wild, untamed frontier. Climate, the local peoples and the wildlife all conspired to make the area in and around Rhodesia (present day Zambia and Zimbabwe) a wonderful and yet hostile place.