[This sensational photo archive documents the African big game hunting safaris of Colonel Francis Colby in East Africa, the Belgian Congo, French Cameroon, and Ethiopia in the 1930s, filled with images of natives, native villages, sweeping landscapes filled with game, trophies down, as well as images of gazelle, elephants, rhinos, herds of giraffe, crocodiles, and many other wild game. Colby was famous for his well-outfitted safaris, including masses of medical supplies which he would distribute to native villages as he trekked through the bush. He is now best remembered for the Colby Trophy Room which opened at the Boston Science Museum in 1965, and re-created his trophy den in Hamilton, MA, including the enormous elephant doors from the palace of the Sultan of Witu, with pelts, mounted heads, horns, and antlers, and more lining the walls].

[Hamilton, MA: Colonel Francis T. Colby, ca. 1920-1940]. Two vols. Oblong 4to. [80; 86 leaves (unnumbered).], archival mylar sleeves including 166 original silver gelatin photographs, printed on thick photo paper stock with almost all sized from 7 x 9.5 in. to 8 x 10 in., many with Francis T. Colby photo stamps on versos, many with pencil and ink annotations in bold hand (occasional creasing, a few w/ minor soiling, a couple with very minor closed tears). Recent cloth post-binders, lettering stamped on front covers, a superb archive from the collection of Massachusetts gunsmith, Thomas F. Moseley. This extraordinary archive of original African safari photos across East Africa, the Belgian Congo, French Cameroon, and Ethiopia, document a big game hunter during the heyday between 1900 and 1945, when Edouard Foa, Major Foran, William Buckley, Theodore Roosevelt, and others hunted across Africa. Colby (1882-1953) graduated from Harvard in 1905, and as an investment banker with Kidder, Peabody & Co. in Boston, began trekking through Alaska, Asia, and finally reached Africa in 1910 where he lived at the Muthaiga Country Club in Nairobi, and became one of the major big game hunters before World War I. In 1915, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Belgian Army, heading up an ambulance column where he remained through World War I, and in 1920 he served in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery of the US Army, and later with Army Intelligence in Hawaii. In 1928, he resigned his commission, and returned to Hamilton, Massachusetts, and after a short stay, returned to Africa in 1929. He traveled through Ethiopia -- including photos here of his trips on the Baro River, later he represented the U.S. at the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie, and enthusiastically threw himself into big game hunting, fishing, playing polo, and traveling through Ethiopia, Equatorial East Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, the Belgian Congo, and more, photographing and hunting his way across the continent. These astonishing photographs largely document the years from 1929 through 1945, including images of loaded safari cars driving through the rough and non-existent roads, riding on very rough dugout canoe ferries, as well as a typical ferry in the Belgian Congo; African villagers across the continent in native dress, the Kings African Rifles on parade formation in 1930; the dressing out of lion carcasses; displays of trophies and guns including zebra, leopard, gazelle, buffalo, and lion skins with porters and trucks; African warriors armed with spears & shields driving game; typical villages in French Cameroon; a safari vehicle trapped in the mud at the Uganda-Sudan border with sign post in the fore-ground, and much more. There are also photos of the Uele River at Bondo in the Congo; his record-making elephant tusks; elephants being washed & ridden; hunting lions, crocodiles, wild boar, gazelle; crossing rivers in safari trucks in Tanganyika, as well as a nice series of rhinoceros photos. Colby loved an audience, and was a tremendous host at his famed home in Hamilton, MA. He would often call the maid by taking up one of his big game rifles and firing a shot, left his German shepherd dog David undisciplined so he often bit visitors and laughed about it, and was an active member in the Boone and Crockett Club. He helped supply funds which would eventually helped refurbish the American Museum of Natural History Hall of North American Mammals dioramas which was completed in 1987. His trophy room at the Boston Science Museum contains many trophies including an Alaskan Kodiak Bear, many African buffalo horns, African shields made by Masai tribesmen from buffalo shot by Colby, Zebra skins, Impala skins, Ibex, Gazelle skulls, and more. See: Bradford Washburn, A Man of His Time, Francis Thompson Colby, Museum of Science Publication (1973); Boston Museum of Science, The Colby Trophy Room, Permanent Exhibit; Barbara Zdravesky, Colby Clan Communications, Interesting Colby Facts (2012); Colonel Francis T. Colby, Correspondence, Boone & Crockett Club Records, Mansfield Library, Univ. of Montana.