James Augustus Grant
James Augustus Grant was born in1827 and became renowned as a Scottish explorer of eastern equatorial Africa.
In 1846 Grant joined the Indian army, seeing active service in the Sikh War and serving throughout the Indian Mutiny of 1857, in which many British soldiers and settlers were massacred and was wounded during the relief of Lucknow.
In 1860 joined John Hanning Speke as a member of the expedition which solved the problem of the Nile source, or sources. This expedition left Zanzibar in October 1860 and didn’t reach Gondokoro, where the travellers were again in touch with any element of civilisation, in 1863. Speke was the leader of the group, but with his support Grant carried out independent and scientifically valuable experiments and made a botanical collection.
John Hanning Speke was an unusual and controversial figure. In 1858 Speke and Richard Burton became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika. On the return trip Speke left Burton and struck out northward alone, reaching a great lake which he named Victoria, for the queen. His claim that it was the source of the Nile was questioned – especially bearing in mind that David Livingstone had claimed to have found the source elsewhere, but on a subsequent expedition he found the Nile's exit from the lake.
However, his claim to have found the Nile's source was again challenged in England, partly by Burton’s adherents who didn’t wish for the honour to go to Speke. In a bizarre twist, he was killed by his own gun while hunting on the very day he was to debate Burton publicly on the subject of the source of the Nile - Speke had been out partridge shooting and, when clambering over a stone wall he laid down his gun at half cock. As he was drawing the weapon towards him by the muzzle, one of the two barrels exploded causing a chest wound from which he died within minutes.
In 1864 Grant published, as an adjunct to Speke's official account of the expedition, a book called ‘A Walk across Africa’, which focused on ‘the ordinary life and pursuits, the habits and feelings of the natives’ and his assessment of the economic value of the countries they crossed. The first edition of this book now sells for several thousand dollars, although at the time it was considered suitable only for colonial administrators as it dealt with matters relevant to their work, not with the high issues of exploration and conquest. It is perhaps his reward that the Grant’s Gazelle was named for him, rather than Speke!
In this book Grant gives the following description of an awful illness he endured and which broke out when they reached the native kingdom of Karague, on the western side of Lake Victoria in December 1861. As he says, ‘The following account of my own ailments I give, not with a wish to parade them, but in order to convey information:- Having had fevers twice a month, in December my usual complaint assumed a new form. The right leg, from above the knee, became deformed with inflammation, and remained for a month in this unaccountable state, giving intense pain, which was relieved temporarily by a deep incision and copious discharge. For three months abscesses formed, and other incisions were made; my strength was prostrated; the knee stiff and alarmingly bent, and walking was impracticable. Many cures were attempted by the natives, who all sympathized with me in my sufferings, which they saw were scarcely endurable; but I had great faith - was all along cheerful and happy, except at the crises of this helpless state, when I felt it would have been preferable to be nearer home. The disease ran its course, and daily, to bring out the accumulated discharge, I stripped my leg like a leech. The interpreter had heard of a poultice made of cow-dung, salt, and mud from the lake; this was placed on hot, but merely produced the effect of a tight bandage .... [such] cures had no apparent effect, but the disease did improve. By the fifth month the complaint had exhausted itself; at last I was able to be out of the hut inhaling the sweet air, and once more permitted to behold the works of God's creation in the beautiful lake and hills below me.’
In 1864 he was awarded the patron's medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and in 1866 given the Companionship of the Bath in recognition of his services in the expedition. He then served in the intelligence department of the Abyssinian expedition of 1868; for this he was made C.S.I. and received the Abyssinian medal. At the close of the war he retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He had married in 1865, and he returned to Nairn with his wife, where he died in 1892.
Other Great Explorers
tenzing, Vancouver, Almagro, Alvarado, Balboa, burton, clark, drake, eriksson, grant, heyerdahl, hillary, humboldt, ingstad, james cook, livingstone, magellan, Piccard, Raleigh, Scott, Shackleton