From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North. GROGAN, Ewart S., & Arthur H. Sharp.

First edition, signed by the author in 1959 on his portrait frontispiece. He also dated the frontispiece. The book quickly became a bestseller and Grogan was invited to address the Royal Geographical Society. He was the youngest man ever to do so at the time. This copy was in the collection of Robert J. Belknap, the managing director of Esso East Africa. In his introductory letter, Cecil Rhodes remarks how he envied Grogan for "having done that which has been for centuries the ambition of every explorer, namely to walk through Africa from South to North" (p. vii). Grogan's book was promoted by its publishers as "the greatest book on African travel and sport ever published". "After a brief spell serving with Lord Milner's 'Kindergarten', an élite group of young imperialists charged with the reconstruction of South Africa after the Boer War, Grogan decided to settle in East Africa. There he became a leader among fellow pioneers and embarked on a lifetime of ambitious development schemes. He founded Kenya's timber industry, built Mombasa's first deep-water port, the country's finest hotel and its first children's hospital" (Howgego IV). He was also "the first passenger to fly across Africa from Cairo to Cape, 1932" (ODNB). Belknap's ink stamp is on the front free endpaper. Alongside being an oil company director, he also taught as a business professor at the Columbia-Greene Community College. Czech, p. 69; Howgego IV, G51; Mendelssohn I, p. 648. Large octavo. Photogravure portrait frontispiece with tissue guard, 2 plates (1 colour, 1 photogravure) 2 folding coloured maps, illustrations, maps, and headpieces in text. With 2 pp. of publisher's advertisements to rear. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front board stamped with central pictorial design, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Signature of Ian Firth in pencil on front free endpaper, loosely inserted postal ticket to Nairobi dated 20 February 1964. Binding marked and rubbed, front inner hinge and frontispiece sometime stabilized with tape, contents a little foxed and toned, closed tears in folding maps repaired, plates bright: a very good copy.