The road to Waterberg and other essays

Eugène N. Marais

Human & Rousseau

Dwaalstories

<p>This is a new edition of this important work which was first published in 1969, 33 years after Marais's death. He was the first man to conduct a prolonged study of primates in the wild.</p>

The Soul of the Ape

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

Human & Rousseau (Pty) Ltd

Eugène Marais was born in a farming community near Pretoria in 1872. Journalism was his first career, but he later studied law in London, and by 1910 was in Johannesburg trying to establish himself as an advocate. Increasing depression drove him to retreat to Waterberg, a mountain fastness in northern Transvaal. Settling near a large group of chacma baboons, he became the first man to conduct a prolonged study of primates in the wild. It was this period that produced My Friends the Baboons and provided the major inspiration for The Soul of the Ape. He returned to Pretoria to practise law, to resume his career as a journalist, to continue his animal studies and to write poetry in Afrikaans. In 1926, the year after he had published a definitive article on his original research and conclusions about the white ant, a world-famous European author took half Marais's life-work and published it as his own. This plagiarizing may well have been a major factor in Marais's final collapse. Plagued for many years by ill-health and an addiction to morphine, he took his own life in March 1936.

The Soul of the White Ant

Jonathan Ball

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Books by Eugène N. Marais