Paper long abstract:

The title of Mary Hall's travelogue, A Woman's Trek from the Cape to Cairo (London: Methuen, 1907) suggests an arduous journey by foot by a woman on her own. It also suggests that we will learn something of the Cape and Cairo. But these two key sites are only marginal as it turns out - noteworthy enough to be mentioned, but of little interest to Hall, because of their proximity, in character, to Europe. Hall describes her comfortable travel in the introductory pages - by train, boat, and Cape cart; and she informs us that the African Lakes Corporation will supply her with a staff and camping equipment, taking her as far as Lake Tanganyika. It is this area - the 'unknown country' of Stanley and Livingstone's Central Africa - that truly interests her. How then does the 'Cape-to-Cairo imaginary' - as Peter Merrington has called (2001) the imperial dream of Cecil Rhodes - play itself out in the narrative of this woman travelling across Africa, and 'alone' into the interior? If we compare it to the account of her male predecessors - Ewart Grogan and Arthur Sharp - the first men who actually trekked from the Cape to Cairo, can we identify, as Sara Mills (1991) has questioned, 'a specifically female genre of travel writing?'