Description:
The dramatic true account of the two legendary lions that terrorized railway workers during the construction of the Uganda Railway in East Africa at the end of the nineteenth century.
In 1898, Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson was sent to British East Africa to oversee the building of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River. What should have been a routine engineering assignment soon turned into one of the most famous man-eating lion incidents in history. Two enormous male lions began attacking the railway workers' camps at night, dragging men from their tents and spreading fear across the entire construction project.
In this gripping firsthand narrative, Patterson recounts the months of terror that followed as the lions repeatedly outwitted traps, guards, and hunters. Workers fled the site, construction halted, and rumors spread throughout East Africa of supernatural beasts haunting the railway line. Determined to end the attacks, Patterson undertook a relentless campaign to track and destroy the predators.
Part adventure narrative, part historical document, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo remains one of the great classics of big-game literature. Patterson's account captures both the dangers of colonial frontier life and the extraordinary confrontation between human determination and the raw power of the African wilderness.
Brief description: John Henry Patterson (1867-1947) was an Irish-born soldier, engineer, and author best known for his role in the construction of the Uganda Railway in British East Africa and for his famous encounters with the man-eating lions of Tsavo. Trained as an engineer in the British Army, Patterson was sent to East Africa in 1898 to supervise the building of a railway bridge across the Tsavo River. During the project he successfully hunted the two lions responsible for numerous attacks on railway workers, an episode he later chronicled in The Man-Eaters of Tsavo. Patterson went on to serve in the British military during World War I and remained a respected writer of adventure and travel narratives.