Vet in Africa

"John Smith's diaries and letters home tell a remarkable story, tracing the experiences of a young vet in a tiny, close-knit colonial society, and explaining the emotional pressures of trekking for weeks on end, alone with several scores of carriers, through bush and veldt. His close-quarter observations of Africans, early this century, is an important balancing contribution to our understanding of colonial history."--BOOK JACKET. "John Smith was born into a manufacturing family in Lancashire, but his interests lay in the countryside. Aged 30, he was recruited by Dr Starr Jameson, Cecil Rhodes' lieutenant, to introduce a hundred pedigree bulls into Northern Rhodesia and to trek the country attacking cattle disease, and improving African herd management. As a vet serving in France, he gives a harrowing account of animal suffering whilst tending to, and having to destroy, horses wounded on the Western Front. Back in Northern Rhodesia, he was head of veterinary and agricultural services when the territory became a crown colony in 1924, laying down policy to stabilize its whole economy, and establishing a major research centre at Mazabuka. As a member of Legislative Council and a senior administrator, he gives a graphic and authentic account of inter-war years in a crown colony, where social life revolved round the Club, and rigid class and occupational distinctions ruled as in Britain. A deep understanding of, and admiration for, the African - from humble carrier to imposing chieftain, from dugout paddler to village herdsman - distinguish John Smith's colonial service and give his story a singular emotional charge."--BOOK JACKET. "Tony Bagnall Smith has edited his father's diaries and letters and has researched his life in Zambia, almost literally following his footsteps in Livingstone where he, himself, was born. He has presented a sensitive, intimate and affectionate, but sharply and clearly etched, portrait of his father."--BOOK JACKET.