BILL McALLISTER: Big game hunter Roualeyn Gordon Cumming showed his trophies to early Highland tourists
Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, a pioneer of big game hunting, exhibited his trophies for three years in London and also in circus magnate Barnum’s American museum in New York.
But in August 1853 his collection was put on show in the former Free Church building in Bank Street, Inverness, where locals flocked to see it – and to follow the kilted Cumming around the burgh.
This remarkable character, Eton-educated and known as “The Lion Hunter”, spent his final years in Fort Augustus, welcoming passengers off Caledonian Canal steamers and persuading them to view his collection while their boats passed through the locks.
He had brought back from Africa 30 tons of curios and several hundred thousand people eventually viewed them, gaining their first sight of creatures they had only previously read of.
A contemporary writer reckoned Cumming remarkable in appearance “for his great height and his massive symmetry of build. With handsome Highland features and the eye of an eagle, he was verily a king of men.”
Cumming was a major draw at the Northern Meeting in Inverness in September 1851. The Courier related he “was particularly distinguished by the singularity of the costume he wore, and his popularity amongst townspeople was abundantly evidenced by the admiring crowds who followed him wherever he went.”
Second son of baronet Sir William Gordon Cumming of Altyre and Gordonstoun, he spent his youth fishing for salmon and stalking deer, mainly in Ross-shire, before joining the army.
He acquired a commission in the Madras Cavalry but the Indian climate did not agree with him and he switched to Africa and the Cape Mounted Rifles.
Military discipline appealed much less than the lure of the hunt here. In 1843 he sold his commission and set out to earn a living hunting and trading.
His first expedition reached the Vaal river, his second, Bechuanaland. The Courier stated: “Already, the larger game were retreating before advancing civilisation. But once in the country of the Bechuanas, his most eager hopes were satisfied. Antelopes, oryxes, lions, buffalos, gnus, rhinoceroses, giraffes, zebras and other animals abounded. It was a hunter’s paradise.”
The paper added that when Cumming reached the Bamangwato Mountains “he was the first white man who had ever penetrated so far into the interior…”
He bagged his first elephant and came across a Bushman who had escaped from Boer captors. Named Ruyter by the Dutch, he was given a new suit and a glass of gin by Cumming. Ruyter became a loyal companion and would eventually go with him to Inverness and Fort Augustus.
Dr David Livingstone offered Cumming hospitality. By 1847 the hunter sold a store of ivory and ostrich feathers for £1000, to recoup past expenses and finance a new journey to the Limpopo Valley. Lions killed one of his men and two horses, while tsetse fly caused such illness Cumming needed Livingstone’s help to retreat.
His final expedition, in March 1848, was again to Limpopo where he shot his hundredth elephant.
Cumming returned to the UK in 1849, his collection one of the major attractions of London’s Great Exhibition of 1851.
He was only 46 when he died in Fort Augustus on March 24, 1866.
The whole village turned out for his departure, a steamer taking him to Inverness then the family kirk near Elgin.
Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
Inverness civic seat not always so grand
