James Augustus Grant was a Scottishexplorer 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.
He returned to England in 1858, and in 1860 joined John Hanning Speke in the memorable expedition which solved the problem of the Nile sources. The expedition left Zanzibar in October 1860 and reached Gondokoro, where the travellers were again in touch with what they regarded as civilization, in February 1863. Speke was the leader, but Grant carried out several investigations independently and made valuable botanical collections. He acted throughout in absolute loyalty to his comrade. In 1864 he published, as supplementary to Speke's account of their journey, A Walk across Africa, in which he dealt particularly with "the ordinary life and pursuits, the habits and feelings of the natives" and the economic value of the countries traversed. 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. Grant served in the intelligence department of the Abyssinian expedition of 1868; for this he was made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India and received the Abyssinian War Medal. At the close of the war he retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
Grant's illness in Africa
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. Grant's illness prevented him from being with Speke when Speke became the first white man to see the outpouring of the White Nile from Lake Victoria. It may be the first recorded case and first description of Mycobacterium ulcerans infection. The print in his book shows Grant being carried on a wicker stretcher, leaving Karague.
Family
Grant married in 1865 Margaret Thompson Laurie, daughter of Andrew Laurie of Edinburgh, and an heiress of Sir Peter Laurie, her great-uncle. Their two sons became involved in Africa, James Augustus Grant as a surveyor and explorer, and Alister Grant killed in the Second Anglo-Boer War. There were three daughters, Mary, Christian and Margaret. Their eldest daughter married in 1905 Thomas Mackay as his second wife, dying in 1907. Christian married Harry Goschen in 1893.
