Percy C. Reid, explorer and hunter, was a former officer of the 15th Hussars and a nephew of Sir Henry Barkly*, former Governor of the Cape Colony. He came to southern Africa from England in 1885 to visit the Victoria Falls and to hunt, with the assistance of local traders. In later years he returned to the Zambezi in 1888, 1895 and 1899. In 1895 he explored parts of Barotseland (a region in the extreme south-west of Zambia), in collaboration with Captain Alfred Bertrand* and Major Alfred St Hill Gibbons. They undertook three journeys towards the north and east, each taking a different route from points on the Zambezi River, with the object of filling in a blank space on the map of Africa. Reid described his journey, with a map, in "A journey up the Machili" (a tributary of the Zambezi), in the Geographical Journal (1897, Vol. 9, pp. 143-145). The other two explorers published their accounts in the same issue. Reid collected butterflies in Barotseland, which he presented to the South African Museum, Cape Town, in 1895. Later he published a paper on his "Journeys in the Linyanti [or Chobe] region" (south of the Zambezi, in northern Botswana), also in the Geographical Journal (1901, Vol. 17, pp. 573-588).
