Cape Town to Kafue: The Story of an Eighteen Thousand Miles Journey by Reverend Taylor (1916)

Published c.1916 by W. A. Hammond in London, a remarkable artifact of early 20th-century travel literature, African exploration, and missionary history.

The Primitive Methodist Expedition

The author, Reverend Henry James Taylor (seen in the top medallion of the frontispiece) was a prominent minister within the Primitive Methodist Church. Accompanied by Councillor Albert Shaw, J.P. (pictured below him), Taylor was sent by the denomination’s General Committee on a massive inspection tour of their expanding mission fields in Southern and Central Africa. The resulting book became a widely circulated text used to drum up support and financial backing among congregations back in Britain.

A Snapshot of the Cape-to-Cairo Dream

Undertaken around 1915, Taylor’s arduous 18,000-mile journey serves as a firsthand account of the practical realities—and immense difficulties—of transcontinental travel during the era of Cecil Rhodes’s envisioned Cape-to-Cairo Railway. Taylor traveled via a mixture of:

The incomplete rail network: Riding the stop-and-start trains as far north as the tracks would go, crossing over the Victoria Falls.

Traditional transit: Trekking immense distances on foot with local porters through malaria-prone wetlands and barren plains.

River navigation: Navigating the Zambezi River in dugout canoes and exploring the Kafue River (in modern-day Zambia) on a small steam launch.

380mm x 220mm

Spine faded; chipped at the bottom of the spine; foxed; owner’s inscription.

R1,000