author
Sir William Cornwallis Harris
1807–1848
An English military engineer, traveler, and artist, he became known for vivid accounts of southern Africa and for animal studies drawn from life. His books helped shape how nineteenth-century readers imagined the region’s wildlife and big-game expeditions.
1 Audiobook
The Highlands of Ethiopia
by Sir William Cornwallis Harris
About the author
Born in 1807, William Cornwallis Harris trained at Addiscombe and joined the East India Company’s Bombay Engineers while still very young. Although he built his career in the army, he also developed a strong reputation as a sportsman, traveler, and skilled draughtsman.
In 1836 and 1837 he traveled in southern Africa, where he hunted extensively and made detailed sketches of animals in the field. Those journeys led to some of his best-known books, including Wild Sports of Southern Africa and Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa, works remembered for combining adventure writing with close observation and illustration.
Harris later served on a diplomatic mission to Ethiopia and was made a knight. He died in India in 1848, still relatively young, but his travel writing and wildlife art continued to stand out for readers interested in exploration, natural history, and the visual record of Africa in the nineteenth century.