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The Late Colonel J.A. Grant, C.B., F.R.S

Source: The Illustrated London News, Feb. 20, 1892 p.227

Another of the heroes of geographical exploration in the Equatorial Lake and Upper Nile region of bast Central Africa has passed away. Colonel James Augustus Grant, the companion of Captain Speke in his expedition of 1862 to Lake Victoria Nyanza and its outlet by the Nile, first discovered by Captain Speke, after Captain Burton's discovery of Lake Tanganyika, died on Feb 11, at Nairn, in the north of Scotland, his residence and birthplace. He was sixty-four years of age. The son of the parish kirk minister at Nairn. He was educated at Aberdeen, and in 1846 entered the Bengal Army; with which he did good service at the siege of Mooltan, the battle of Goojerat, in the Punjauh, and with the 78th Highlanders, at Sir Henry Havelock's relief of Lucknow in 1857. Captain Grant joined Captain Speke as an African explorer in 1860, and shared in the public applause with which the travellers were deservedly greeted in 1864 on their return to London. They had met Sir Samuel Baker at Gondokoro. In the narrative of their adventures and observations, written by Grant, entitled "A Walk across Africa," and in his scientific reports to the Royal Geographical and the Linnaean Society, there is much interest and some literary merit. He received medals of Honour and other tokens of distinction. with continued military promotion, being chief of the Intelligence Department in the Abyssinian Expedition under Lord Napier of Magdala; he was made a Companion of the Bath and of the Star of India. Colonel Grant has left a son who is also an African traveller, and who accompanied Mr. Joseph Thomson's recent expedition to Lake Bangweolo.