Royal Commonwealth Society : Second encampment on road to Uganda

Allen, Annie Emma (1853-1942)

Royal Commonwealth Society

<p style='text-align: justify;'>In 1900 Annie Emma Allen (1853-1942) travelled to Uganda where she began her career as an honorary missionary with the Church Missionary Society. Allen documented her long and arduous journey by steamer, rail, bicycle, foot and sail in an album containing 66 atmospheric watercolours. They provide vivid impressions of the people and places she encountered. 1-8 portray the outward trip to Port Said; 9-19 show Sinai, the Red Sea and Aden; 20-25 were painted in Mombasa and Freretown; and 26-66 illustrate the trip to Lake Victoria. Allen would serve as a CMS missionary in Uganda for the next 25 years, teaching and working in hospitals and dispensaries, before retiring in 1926, at the age of 73.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'> From Mombasa the party travelled upon the East African railway to the end of its line at Kilindini. Allen painted several watercolours illustrating work to push it further into the hinterland, at times over rough and hilly terrain. At the Kikuyu Escarpment, she recorded ‘the extremely steep descent over which the line is to pass. The trains are to be let down by wire ropes. The white tents in the distance are those of the Railway employees; they have 500 mules there for use on the works. The two big tents belong to our porters. The height down which the railway is being constructed is all wooded.'</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>See Janus record <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FRCMS%20158'>here</a></p>