Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Victory Medal 1914-19 (Capt. H. F. Varian), small edge bruise, good very fine £150-250

Henry Francis Varian was born in June 1876 and was educated at Southsea Preparatory School and Christ’s Hospital, London. He first came to Rhodesia in 1898, the commencement of a long and distinguished career as a pioneer railway engineer, explorer and big game hunter, a story recounted in his entertaining memoir Some African Milestones.

As an engineer his first big assignment was to raise the line above the level of floods on the Pungwe River flats, and it was here that he first met Cecil Rhodes, who ‘liked his face’. He was Assistant Engineer on the building of the Victoria Falls Bridge and after taking the line northward and across the Kafue River, he returned to make a survey of the Falls themselves, his report being published by the Royal Geographical Society (R.G.S.). The Benguela Railway, stretching from the coast of Angola to the Congo border was an historic work of which he was Chief Resident Engineer, Construction. The Gwelo-Blinkwater line, and the widening of the gauge on the Beira Railway were other important projects on which he was engaged.

As an explorer he made several reconnaissance surveys, sometimes over Livingstone’s old trails, sometimes through unknown territory. “Varian’s Trace” in Uganda was made with Taganyika Concessions, at the request of Sir Robert Williams, and during a safari of several months on the Angolan-Congo border he disappeared for a time. His observations on topography, flora and fauna were keen and interesting and he was appointed a Fellow of the R.G.S. and a Member of its Committee; two African animals were named after Varian, the famous Giant Sable Antelope and the Angolan Dik-Dik.

The story related in Varian’s Some African Milestones ranges through Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, Taganyika, Uganda and the highway across Kenya known as “The Varian Way”, his swan song discovery as a Chief Resident Engineer; the cast is equally varied - ‘from royalty to secret agents’ - and includes Cecil Rhodes, Selous and other “white hunters”, “Samaki” and Celia Salmon with gun-bearer Musia, Captain Monty Moore, V.C., and such characters as O’Rory of the Hills, Johnnie the Frenchman, Larsen the Swede and Bloody Bill Upscher, the whole intermingled with assorted African queens, witch doctors and snake-charmers.

Turned down for a commission in the British Army on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, on account of his advanced years, he bumped into an old friend and big game hunter - now a General - and was duly commissioned in the Royal Engineers. Attached to Fourth Army in France, his work on railways during the Somme and Passchendaele offensives was highly valued, likewise his services in the Railway Intelligence Service in Palestine under General Allenby.

Varian, who was also a Life Honorary Member of the American Museum of Natural History, died in December 1960; sold with a copy of Some African Milestones (George Ronald, Oxford, 1953), copied research.