1911. Cynthia Stockley (Lilian Julian Webb ), a popular British novelist in the 1920s, who wrote from personal knowledge about the strange and terrible charm of the Dark Continent. Her books were described as having breezy freshness, strong masculinity and almost reckless abandon in the literary texture and dramatic inventions. The Claw, Stockley's popular novel set in Rhodesia, begins: Hour after hour Zeederberg's post-cart and all that therein was straggled deviously across the landscape, bumping along the rutty road, creaking and cracking, swaggling from side to side behind the blocky hoofs of eight mules. At five o'clock in the afternoon the heat was intense, but the sun lay in the west at last, and tiny flecks of cloud in the turquoise sky were transforming themselves into torn strips of golden fleece. The bare bleak tops of Bechuanaland were softened by amethystine tints, and the gaunt bush took feathery outlines against the horizon.