Harris led a party into the Southern African interior in September 1836. His prime purpose was to hunt, and this he most certainly did. Harris was an accomplished writer and the first really competent wildlife artist to appear on the Southern African scene. At that time North Africa had been well known to the civilised West since Roman times and before, but South of the great desert, other than settlements on the East and West coasts, it was truly the dark continent, vast, mysterious and unknown. Hunters, mostly Boers, but some Englishmen as well, had undoubtedly penetrated far North into the interior, but either because they could not or were just not interested, few had left written records of their travels and even fewer had left artistic records. Stories of the wildlife paradise that the plains of Southern Africa were, had filtered through to the outside world, but there were minimal specimens to be found in the natural history museums and even less live ones in the zoos to confirm the existence of these many wondrous species.