On September 13, 1924, they set off from Cape Town in two Crossley 25/30 light trucks. They reached Cairo sixteen months (and 12,732 miles) later on January 24, 1926. The expedition was explicitly modeled after the fashion of Cecil Rhodes’ "red line" connecting the Cape Town to Cairo, and they restricted their route to territories under British rule. Fred Law's account of the beginning of the trip, Woman Pioneer of Empire: Cape to Cairo venture Begun (Daily Express, September 24, 1924), began with an invocation of Rhodes' racist vision of a network of roads and railroads linking up British colonial possessions to afford white settlement and the more effective domination of the continent and its people: "The second step towards the fulfilment of Cecil Rhodes’ scheme to open up the routes through darkest Africa began this morning, when Major and Mrs. C. Court Treatt left Capetown in an attempt to reach Cairo by motorcar." Stella observed the difficulties that the imperial route presented; "[had we taken an alternative route] our problems would have been simplified [. . .] we would have found roads [. . .] and we could have avoided bridgeless rivers and swamps. But the desirability of blazing a trail through British Africa was superior to every other consideration." Their route took them from Cape Town through Britstown, Pretoria, Polokwane (formerly, Pietersburg), Bulawayo (in Zimbabwe, formerly, Rhodesia, where they visited Cecil Rhode's grave), Livingstone (in Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia), Kabwe (in Zambia, formerly called Broken Hill), Mbala (in Zambia and formerly called Abercorn), Karonga (Malawi, formerly Nyasaland), Mwaya (Tanzania, formerly Tanganyika), Nairobi (Kenya), Mongalla (South Sudan, formerly the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), Rumbek, Wau, Al-Ubayyid (Sudan, formerly the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan; spelled, 'El Obeid,' by Treatt), Ed Dueim, Khartoum, Wadi Halfa, and finally Aswan (Egypt) to Cairo in Egypt.