page_title: James Augustus Grant
section_title: Grant's illness in Africa
hierarchical_section_title: James Augustus Grant / Grant's illness in Africa
caption_attribution_description: Routes taken by expeditions of Burton and Speke and Grant and Speke. Burton and Speke explored from the east coast as far as Tanganyika and then returned. Speke took a side journey to Lake Victoria on the return journey. Speke and Grant journeyed from the east coast and via Lake Victoria returned up the river Nile. Note that the country names and boundaries are the modern ones not the names of the time and the boundaries would, obviously, be uncertain at that point. Image produced by Richard G. Clegg using freely available map data and software.
context_page_description: Lieutenant-Colonel James Augustus Grant CB CSI FRS FRGS was a Scottish explorer of eastern equatorial Africa. He made contributions to the journals of various learned societies, the most notable being the "Botany of the Speke and Grant Expedition" in vol. xxix of the Transactions of the Linnean Society. He married in 1865 and settled down at Nairn, where he died in 1892. He was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral. Grant's gazelle, one of the largest and handsomest of that family in Africa, was named in his honor.
context_section_description: In his book, A Walk across Africa, Grant gives the following description of his illness, which broke out when they reached the native kingdom of Karague, on the western side of Lake Victoria in December 1861.
  (page 151): "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. Bombay  (an 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. Baraka  (another interpreter) was certain a serpent had spat upon my leg- "it could not have been a bite". Dr. M'nanagee, the sultan's brother, knew the disease perfectly; he could send me a cure for it – and a mild gentle peasant of the Wanyambo race came with his wife, a young pleasing like person, to attend me.  With the soft touch of a woman he examined the limb, made cuts over the skin with a penknife, ordered all lookers-on outside the hut, when his wife produced a scroll of plantain-leaf, in which was a black paste.  This was moistened from the mouth and rubbed into the bleeding cuts, making them smart; afterwards a small piece of lava was dangled against my leg and tied as a charm round the ankle. .....
  These  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.
  (page 187): By the end of March 1862 there were some hopes of my leaving Karague to join Speke in Uganda.  The king had sent an officer and forty of his men to convey me up to the kingdom I so long wished to see.  .... .... Being unable to walk, I was placed in a wicker stretcher (14 April 1862), and trotted off on the heads of four Waganda  (tribesmen of the area).
  (pages 189–90): On our journey, the stretcher was changed from head to the shoulder of the Waganda, who went at the rate of six miles an hour, jostling and paining my limb unmercifully. The coach and four, as I may term it, was put down every mile, or less, that the bearers might rest, laugh, joke, .... One great  difficulty was to make them carry the conveyance so that the country in front could be seen in travelling; this they, for some reason, refused to do, and persisted in carrying me head first, instead of feet (fig 1-10).
  (page 210): The stretcher which had carried me part of the way from Karague had been discarded, as the Waganda saw my only ailment was lameness and a stiff knee joint.
  (page 246-7): (July 1862). Speke asked me whether I was able to make a flying march of it with him, while the baggage might be sent on towards Unyoro. At that time I was positively unable to walk twenty miles a day, especially miles of Uganda marching, through bogs and over rough ground. I therefore yielded reluctantly to the necessity of our parting; and I am anxious to be explicit on this point, as some have hastily inferred that my companion did not wish me to share in the gratification of seeing the river. Nothing could be more contrary to the fact.  My state of health alone prevented me from accompanying Speke to set a
caption: Routes taken by the expeditions of Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863).
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