and forcing his return to Kimberley. The Taylor family ran into financial difficulties, and Jim Taylor found a job as assistant bookkeeper with the firm of E.W. Tarry. In 1878 Taylor accompanied a trader Finnaughty on a trip to Kuruman and beyond. On returning to Kimberley he volunteered to join the Kimberley Artillery to subdue two Griqua chiefs whose followers had been murdering and plundering in the country around the Langeberg Mountains near Griquatown. This they managed with the help of the Kimberley Light Horse and the Kimberley Infantry. In 1879, having acquired a taste for exploration, Taylor joined Gus Fisher, a retired naval officer, on a journey to Spelonken in the Northern Transvaal. Piet Buyskes, a noted lawyer of the period, invited Taylor along on a trip to hear the grievances of Gasibone, a chief of the Batlapin or Tlhaping tribe and to relay these grievances to the British government. Paul Kruger on hearing about this, invited Buyskes to hear his own grievances against the Cape government in connection with the annexation of the Transvaal, which he also wanted communicated to London. They met Kruger near Rustenburg and Taylor was present when they appointed a committee charged with having the independence of the Transvaal restored. On Taylor's return to Kimberley, he took his first steps in diamond broking by joining Alfred Beit, a partner of Jules Porgès. Alfred Beit was at that time the leading diamond merchant in Kimberley and had established a reputation for being scrupulously fair in all his business dealings. However, he fell under the spell of Rhodes's imperial vision, whereas his partner Julius Wernher did not. Taylor's brother Bill went to London in 1880 to establish an agency. Jim Taylor followed a year later, visiting his ancestral country for the first time, and taking the opportunity of doing the Grand Tour. He returned to Kimberley in 1882 to find that a slumping market had financially crippled him. Family Taylor was married in Johannesburg on 10 March 1891 to Mary "Mollie" Gordon (*August 1863 Ballater, Scotland), daughter of a Pietermaritzburg physician. They produced a family of four children: Alfred Gordon Taylor (*1892) Lost a leg in the Great War of 1914/18. In the Second World War, as Major Gordon Taylor, he achieved distinction as one of S Africa's most famous war artists – his paintings are in the SA War Museum – and later was a