The author recounts three extended journeys across southern Africa during a seven-year period, combining travel narrative, natural history, and ethnographic observation. He describes routes between coastal ports, diamond-mining settlements, and inland rivers and highlands, noting landscapes, geology, and wildlife, and recording hunting expeditions and encounters with local communities. Chapters detail camp life, practical difficulties of travel, markets and camps, hunting scenes, and structural and social customs of multiple indigenous groups. The account intersperses scientific curiosity about flora and fauna with vivid scene-setting, practical notes for travellers, and numerous illustrations and maps to support the observations.