This collection consists of five folio sized albums of photographs taken by Thomas Hills, professor and later chair of the Geology department at Vassar College. The photographs document his combined family vacation and academic research tour of the African continent, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean coast of Europe in 1929. While on the African continent, he documented the mining industry, general landscape, cities, villages, and indigenous peoples with stops in South Africa (and also Rhodesia), Uganda, Tanganyika (or Tanzania), Sudan, Kenya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Italy. Specific African cities and provinces toured were Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Zululand, Jinja, Fort Portal, Kampala, Zanzibar, Dar-es-Salaam, Khartoum, Omdurman, Aswan, Karnak, Luxor, and Cairo. African geological, historical and industrial points of interest included Victoria Falls, Lake Victoria, Lake Naviasha, Lake Kyoga, the Nile and White Nile Rivers, Kimberley (De Beers) diamond mines, the grave of Cecil Rhodes, Zambezi River, Congo River, the temples of Abu Simbel, the temples of Luxor, Egyptian pyramids, Baalbek ruins, Jaffa Gate, and the Avenue of Sphinxes. Hills also specifically photographed the Kikuyu people of Kenya, the Acholi of Uganda, the Shilluk of Sudan, Bedouins in Syria, and Zulus in South Africa.

During the Middle Eastern and European leg of the trip, Hills photographed Damascus, Pompeii, Amalfi, Naples, and Venice and specific historic sites including Michelangelo Square, St. Mark's Square, the Colosseum, the Forum, and the Grand Canal.