A chance meeting around a safari campfire on the banks of the Mupamadazi River leads to The Last Ivory Hunter: The Saga of Wally Johnson , a grand tale of African adventure by renowned hunting author Peter Hathaway Capstick. Wally Johnson spent half a century in Mozambique hunting white gold―ivory. Most men died at this hazardous trade. He’s the last one able to tell his story. In hours of conversations by mopane fired in the African bush, Wally described his career―how he survived the massive bite of a Gaboon viper, buffalo gorings, floods, disease, and most dangerous of all, gold fever. He bluffed down 200 armed poachers almost single-handedly, and survived rocket attacks from communist revolutionaries during Mozambique’s plunge into chaos in 1975. In Botswana, at age 63, Wally continued his career. Though the great tuskers have largely gone and most of Wally’s colleagues are dead, Wally has survived. His words are rugged testimony to an Africa that is now a distant dream. “Capstick and Johnson are splendid raconteurs, vividly recalling a vanished era.” ― Publishers Weekly Peter Hathaway Capstick (1940-1996), a former Wall Street stockbroker turned professional adventurer, was critically acclaimed as the successor to Hemingway and Ruark in African hunting literature. After giving up his career, the New Jersey native hunted in Central and South America before going to Africa in 1968, where he held professional hunting licenses in Ethiopia, Zambia, Botswana, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Capstick also served in that most perilous of trades―Elephant and Buffalo Cropping Officer. In addition to writing about hunting, he was also featured in an award-winning safari video and audio tapes. Captstick settled in Pretoria, South Africa with his wife Fiona until his death at age 56. The Last Ivory Hunter By Peter H. Capstick St. Martin's Press Copyright © 1988 Peter H. Capstick All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312000486 Last Ivory Hunter, The 1 GABOON "For God's sake, Luis, help me! I'm dying!"  The Mozambican Shangaan looked at Wally with penetrating eyes, eyes whose quickness had saved lives time and again over the twenty years he had been with Wally, hunting in Mozambique. The head gunbearer's gaze was as bloodshot as usual, testimony to malaria, safari, and long hours after game. Though he was a good man--reliable as most to whom one entrusts one's life--he wanted nothing to do with this. His patrão was going to cash in and he wanted no part in the proceedings.   "No, Baas, you're going to die. We have been together a long time, and I don't want to be there when you die. You must die alone. It is the way of things.""My old friend of so much danger, help me! I don't want to die on a lonely road and the hyenas take my body. Help me! Vou morrer !""I can't, Baas. What if the authorities find out when you die? And you will die, because that is the worst snake. They will accuse me and the other men of killing you. What will I do then? You know they will then kill me ... .""Help me! You can do no less!"  Oh yes, he could do less. Odd chap, Luis.   On the day Wally was bitten by a massive Gaboon viper in 1957, it had been nearly a year since he had captured another snake, which he thought at the time to be a young python. He kept it in a wire cage and fed it mice, the snake apparently enjoying the easy life. Then, one day, Wally took it down to show his chums at the local sawmill. Much to his shock, the manager called him an unadulterated idiot and advised him that it was a Gaboon viper, one of the most feared snakes in Africa, and from whose bite only one person had been known to recover. Wally, however, told the manager that it was he who was the idiot. Clearly it was a young python.   "You madman! That thing is deadly poisonous! Are you some kind of nut?" "No, man," answered Wally. "It's a python. I've even had my fingers in its mouth!" "You've what?" "Sure. No fangs [he not realizing that they fold up against the roof of the mouth and that the snake had somehow tamed down]. I keep it in a wire pen as a pet. Give it frogs and mice and stuff." "Well, get it the hell out of here or I'll kill it. Now!"   The cocking clicks of his revolver were ominous in the silence, the other strong and able men having scrambled onto the dining-room table when Wally threw the snake on the floor for exhibition.   "Don't touch my bloody snake! You don't want him, I'll take him home."  And with that, he grabbed the snake by the back of the head and dropped him into a sack, the deadly reptile as docile as a pussycat. But Wally was wrong. It was a Gaboon ... . The Gaboon viper is certainly one of Africa's most dangerous snakes, possibly because of its lethargy, much like that of the puff adder, rather than because of great activity or aggressiveness. TheGaboon, happily, is a fairly rare snake. Its coloring closely resembles the colors of the Napier Clan tartan, the body pattern being a complex geometric