THE GORILLA HUNTERS...

 

 

I may still have my original copy of R.M. Ballantyne's book The Gorilla Hunters up in my loft somewhere.  If so, it lost its dust-jacket long ago, but I still have an image in my mind of what it looked like.  I wouldn't even know which box to start on in search of it, which is why I bought a 'generic' copy on ebay a month or two back when I fancied re-reading it 47 or so years after the fact.  At a guess, I got it in the late '60s or early '70s as a Sunday School prize for regular attendance, but I never got around to actually reading it until 1972 or '73.

At least that's the way I remember things, but my memory isn't quite as sharp these days as it once was.  I enjoyed reading the book again, though more from the perspective of revisiting a past pleasure than it being a particularly gripping book.  I remember taking it into secondary school with me one day and reading it in one of the annexe huts at the back end of the 'Old Block', though whether I'd started the book prior to that day is now beyond my ability to recall.

As an aside, the teacher in that hut once said an interesting thing to me, though I couldn't say whether it was on that day or another one.  "Gordon, you can tell you're an artist, because of your handwriting.  You've probably got the best handwriting in the school."  I find that interesting because I'd also been commended for my handwriting in my two primary schools, so that made my ability to produce pleasing penmanship  unanimous.  Perhaps I was destined to be a lettering artist from an early age, eh?

(Fairness demands I mention the fact that, when I later changed my style to using loops in my writing in the way that my mother did, another teacher said "Considering you're so good at drawing, it's surprising that your handwriting is so terrible."  I soon reverted to my previous style.)

Anyway, back to the gorillas.  In the late '70s I bought The Coral Island by the same author, published in 1857, four years before The Gorilla Hunters, which featured the same three, but older, main characters.  Again, I no longer recollect (at the moment of typing, maybe it'll come back to me) whether I happened upon The Coral Island by chance, or specifically acquired it because I'd read its 'sequel' several years before.  I'd have to re-read 'Coral' before I could tell you if it's as good as I remember it to be, but my general impression is that it was superior to 'Hunters'.

(Interestingly, R.L. Stevenson was so impressed by 'Coral' that he based features of Treasure Island on parts of it.)

There's quite a lot of use of the 'n' word in 'Hunters', but not necessarily in an intentionally insulting or demeaning way, and certainly not in a way which suggests that Ballantyne may have been a racist.  The book was written in 1861, so is obviously a product of its time, but probably best not to read it if you're easily offended by the language of a vanished age.

Anyway, to round this off (you'll no doubt be glad to hear), I saw a copy of the book with the dust-jacket I remember on ebay and bought it yesterday (the book, not ebay), so it's hopefully winging its way to me as I type.  That's the seller's photo at the top of the post, but I'll replace it with a scan of the cover when the book arrives.  (It'll be good to be reunited with yet another aspect of my past.)  Anyone else ever read The Gorilla Hunters?  If so, what was your impression of it?  Hit or miss?

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