He was a well-travelled man who journeyed through Scotland, England, Ireland and the United States by rail. He made his first train journey in 1843 to Ayrshire then to the Trossachs where he met and travelled with Newman Hall (Christopher Newman Hall, known as the Dissenter’s Bishop, who was a notable English Nonconformist). Taylor’s first sea voyage was to the United States in 1855. In spite of the first sailing ship nearly sinking off Ireland, he returned to Scotland in 1862 and again in 1874, crossing the Atlantic five times in all. On his train travels he visited the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, the Niagara Falls, Washington and saw the ruins of Chicago a few days after the Great Fire in 1871.