John Hanning Speke | British explorer | Britannica.com John Hanning Speke Sir Richard Burton John Hanning Speke, (born May 3, 1827, Bideford , Devon , Eng.—died Sept. 15, 1864, near Corsham, Wiltshire ), British explorer who was the first European to reach Lake Victoria in East Africa , which he correctly identified as a source of the Nile. Speke Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd. Commissioned in the British Indian Army in 1844, he served in the Punjab and travelled in the Himalayas and Tibet . In April 1855, as a member of Richard Burton’s party attempting to explore Somaliland, Speke was severely wounded in an attack by the Somalis that broke up the expedition. In December 1856 he rejoined Burton on the island of Zanzibar. Their intention was to find a great lake said to lie in the heart of Africa and to be the origin of the Nile.

After exploring the East African coast for six months to find the best route inland, the two men became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika (February 1858). During the return trip, Speke left Burton and struck out northward alone. On July 30 he reached the great lake, which he named in honour of Queen Victoria. Speke’s conclusion about the lake as a Nile source was rejected by Burton and was disputed by many in England , but the Royal Geographical Society , which had sponsored the expedition, honoured Speke for his exploits. On a second expedition (1860), he and James Grant mapped a portion of Lake Victoria. On July 28, 1862, Speke, not accompanied by Grant for this portion of the journey, found the Nile’s exit from the lake and named it Ripon Falls . The party then tried to follow the river’s course, but an outbreak of tribal warfare required them to change their route. In February 1863 they reached Gondokoro in the southern Sudan , where they met the Nile explorers Samuel Baker and Florence von Sass (who later became Baker’s wife).

Speke and Grant told them of another lake said to lie west of Lake Victoria. This information helped the Baker party to locate another Nile source, Lake Albert . Speke’s claim to have found the Nile source was again challenged in England, and, on the day he was to debate the subject publicly with Richard Burton , he was killed by his own gun while hunting. Accounts of his explorations were published in 1863 and 1864. Learn More in these related articles: The Nile’s Source Discovered | History Today The Nile’s Source Discovered East Africa John Hanning Speke discovered the source of the Nile on August 3rd, 1858. John Hanning Speke, an army officer’s son from the West Country, was commissioned into the army of the East India Company in 1844 at the age of seventeen. In 1854 he eagerly joined an expedition to east Africa under the command of Captain Richard Burton, who had returned from his sensational visit to Mecca disguised as an Arab pilgrim the year before. The explorers came under a fierce attack by tribesmen at Berbera and both Speke and Burton were wounded, Speke almost fatally.

Rightly or wrongly, Speke believed that Burton had questioned his courage in this incident. It rankled with him all his life and underlay a growing antipathy between the two men, who were in any case extremely unalike. Compared with the brilliant and wildly unconventional Burton, Jack Speke seemed a plodder. Despite this, however, in 1856 Speke joined Burton on another expedition to east Africa, organized by the Royal Geographical Society. The purpose was supposedly to follow up rumours of a great lake in the interior, the so-called Sea of Ujiji, but in reality the search was on for the source of the Nile. The expedition moved inland from the coast opposite Zanzibar and, in February 1858, it discovered Lake Tanganyika. After three months exploring the lake, both Burton and Speke were ill and the expedition started back towards the coast. However, they had heard tell of another huge lake to the north of Tanganyika. Speke, who had by now recovered, set off in command of a small party and in August came upon what he later described as ‘a vast expanse’ of ‘the pale-blue waters’ of the northern lake.

He named it Lake Victoria and believed, correctly, that it was the source of the Nile. Burton would not accept Speke’s claim to have discovered the Nile’s source, for which he felt there was no convincing evidence. He believed that the true source was more likely to be ‘his’ Lake Tanganyika. But Speke got back to England in May 1859 before Burton, and announced that he had found the source of the Nile. Burton felt belittled and was infuriated by Speke’s account of the expedition in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. The breach between them was never healed. The Royal Geographical Society sent Speke back to Africa to substantiate his Nile claims. The expedition left the coast in September 1860 but there were difficulties because its two interpreters quarrelled, which complicated the negotiations with the local rulers through whose territories the expedition had to pass and with the Arab traders from whom it needed supplies. There were long delays before the explorers reached Gondokoro, 750 miles south of Khartoum, in February 1862.

After much politicking and intrigue the powerful king of Buganda, Mutesa, allowed Speke to proceed to the point on Lake Victoria where the White Nile issues from the lake. He reached what he named Ripon Falls on July 28th 1862. He was thirty-five and this was the crowning point of his life. Unfortunately, Speke did not follow the Nile stream northwards as closely as he might have, which enabled doubters to question whether ‘his’ river really was the Nile. Speke got back to Gondokoro in February 1863 and by May was in Cairo where he announced to the waiting world that the question of the source of the Nile was now ‘settled’. Returning to London to address a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, Speke was the hero of the hour. In December 1863 he published his book, The Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. Unfortunately for him, it had been badly edited and appeared both inaccurate and disagreeably boastful. In 1864 he published What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile about the earlier expedition, which also did his reputation no good.

Burton was still refusing to admit that Speke had discovered the source of the Nile, the two men were completely at loggerheads and a debate between them was scheduled at the British Association for September 16th. Speke went shooting partridges in Wiltshire the day before, climbed over a wall with his gun cocked and shot himself. His death was probably an accident, but word spread that he had committed suicide because he was too scared to face Burton in debate. Speke was thirty-seven when he died. It was not until years later that he was proved to have been right and that Lake Victoria Nyanza is the source of the White Nile (though the lake has several feeder rivers). BBC - History - Historic Figures: John Hanning Speke (1827 - 1864) z John Hanning Speke © >Speke was an English explorer and the first European to reach Lake Victoria in east Africa, which he correctly identified as the long-sought source of the Nile. John Hanning Speke was born on 4 May 1827 in Bideford in Devon.

He was commissioned into the British army in 1844 and posted to India where he served in the Punjab and travelled in the Himalayas and Tibet. In April 1855, as part of Richard Burton's expedition to explore Somaliland, Speke was severely wounded in an attack by the Somalis. Invalided home, he volunteered for the Crimea and served during the war with a regiment of Turks. In December 1856, Speke accepted an invitation from Burton to join an expedition to search for the reported great lakes in east central Africa and, particularly, to try and find Lake Nyassa, said to be the origin of the Nile. They left Zanzibar in June 1857 and, after exploring the East African coast for six months to find the best route inland, became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika in February 1858. During the return trip, Speke left Burton, who was unwell, and struck out northward alone. In July he found a great lake which he named in honour of Queen Victoria. Speke's theory that the lake was the source of Nile was rejected by Burton - beginning a bitter public dispute between the two men.

However, the Royal Geographical Society, which had sponsored the expedition, honoured Speke for his exploits and commissioned a second expedition in 1860 to resolve the dispute. Speke and Captain James Grant mapped a portion of Lake Victoria. In July 1862, Speke, unaccompanied by Grant, found the Nile's exit from the lake and named it Ripon Falls. The party then tried to follow the river's course, but an outbreak of tribal warfare required them to change their route. On his return to England, Speke was greeted with enthusiasm and published 'Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile' (1863). Yet Burton and others remained unconvinced. On 15 September 1864, shortly before Speke and Burton were to debate the subject publicly, Speke was killed by his own gun while hunting. It remains uncertain whether it was an accident or suicide. Speke Hotel| Hotels in Kampala » Speke History Speke History Speke Hotel is named after the famous British explorer, John Hanning Speke, who discovered "The source of River Nile".

Speke Hotel is the first and oldest hotel in Uganda, built in the British Colonial times of the 1920s. It has, of course, gone through renovations, but has maintained its colonial ambience. John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke born on 4th May 1827 was an officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa and who is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and the discovery and naming of Lake Victoria. In 1856, Speke and Burton went to East Africa to find the Great Lakes, which were rumored to exist in the centre of the continent. It was hoped that the expedition would locate the source of the Nile. The journey was extremely strenuous and both men fell ill from a variety of tropical diseases. After an arduous journey, the two became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika. They heard of a second lake in the area, but Burton was too sick to make the trip. Speke went alone and became the first European to visit Lake Victoria and discover the source of the Nile.

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He wrote Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863). Bibliography See biography by A. Maitland (1971). Speke, John Hanning Born May 4, 1827, in Jordans, Somersetshire; died Sept. 15,1864, in Bath. English explorer of Africa. Speke accompanied R. F. Burton on expeditions to Somaliland (1854–55) and East Africa (1856–59). Burton and Speke discovered Lake Tanganyika, and Speke independently discovered Lake Victoria. Between 1860 and 1863, Speke and J. Grant made a number of significant discoveries. The two men discovered the Kagera River, the main tributary of Lake Victoria. They discovered the outlet of the Nile from Lake Victoria and from there traced the Nile’s path to the Mediterranean Sea. This journey finally resolved the problem of the river’s source and its entire course.

WORKS John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke May 4, 1827 – September 15, 1864 An English explorer of Africa, John Hanning Speke solved the riddle of the Nile River by discovering its source during the course of an epic journey to and through the Great Lakes region of eastern Africa. Ever since the time of Herodotus, men had sought and speculated about the fountains - the ultimate origins - of the river that provided Egypt's life-blood and sustained classical as well as modern civilizations throughout much of its length. Ptolemy had hinted at the Nile's beginning in equatorial Africa, but only the 19th-century search for the sources of the main, or White, Nile (in the late 18th century James Bruce had seen the Blue Nile flow from Lake Tana in Ethiopia) produced John Speke's confirmation. John Speke was born at Jordans, Somersetshire, on May 4, 1827. He joined the Indian army in 1844 and saw considerable action in the Punjab campaign. He liked to fight but was bored by the longueurs between periods of combat.

Appropriately, he spent his local leaves shooting game in Tibet. In 1854 Speke obtained overseas leave in order to join Richard Burton in Somalia. While Burton was journeying to the "forbidden city" of Harar, Speke twice went eastward to Bunder Gori, a nearby Somali town. In an attack in 1855 by Somali on the British camp near Berbera, Speke almost died from wounds before he and Burton fled to Aden. Early Explorations Speke served as a captain in a Turkish regiment at Kertch during the Crimean War (1855-1856) and then returned to Africa as second-in-command of Burton's expedition to the lakes of the eastern interior. The Royal Geographical Society was sponsoring this attempt to locate the rumored Sea of Ujiji and to ascertain the sources of the Nile. Guided by Arabs and Africans, the expedition attained the Sea of Ujiji (modern Lake Tanganyika) in 1858.

Speke's eyes were then too clouded with ophthalmia for him to see the waters of the lake, but he had already learned that Tanganyika was but one of the component lakes - Victoria and Nyasa being the others - of the Sea of Ujiji. He had also surmised or gathered that it was from Victoria that the Nile River flowed north to Egypt. Despite the opposition of Burton, he tested this hypothesis later in 1858. From Tabora, Speke took a "flying trip" to the southern end of the lake along a route known but relatively little frequented by traders. Reaching the lake after several detours, he at last caught a murky glimpse of the southern waters of what he called Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria). With only the evidence of hearsay, Speke decided that this lake was in fact the source of the Nile. Sources of the Nile Two years later the Royal Geographical Society commissioned Speke to demonstrate his belief.

Accompanied by James Augustus Grant, a colleague from the Indian army, Speke reached Tabora in 1861, and they set out around the western side of Victoria Nyanza to Buganda, the capital of which they reached early in 1862. After several months the kabaka, or king, Mutesa, gave Speke permission to travel to the Nile and then northward. In July 1862 Speke stood above a point where the waters of the Victoria Nyanza cascaded down the White Nile on their way to Alexandria. "I saw," the exultant explorer wrote, "that old father Nile without any doubt [rose] in the Victoria Nyanza, and, as I had foretold, that [that] lake [was] the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief." Grant and Speke proceeded down the Nile, but they were inhibited from following its course, and from visiting other lakes of which they had heard rumor, by African warfare.

Even after Speke had seen the waters of Victoria coursing over Ripon Falls and down the Nile, however, there were some who remained unconvinced that Herodotus's fabled fountains had in fact been found. Burton was a leading critic: Speke had not, he said, followed the Nile the entire way from Victoria to Gondokoro. At a meeting of the august British Association for the Advancement of Science in September 1864, it was arranged that Burton and Speke present their theories. But on the day before the debate Speke went partridge shooting at Neston Park near Bath, mishandled a gun while crossing a stone wall, and fatally shot himself. The effect of Speke's discoveries, which he embodied in two narratives - Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863) and What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1864) - was to direct European interest to the peoples and regions near the headwaters of the Nile.

Subsequent European enterprise, and the way in which Buganda was regarded as a prize at the time of the scramble for Africa, indicated the result of Speke's journey to the Nile for both Africans and Europeans. ~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~ John Hannington Speke (May 4, 1827 – September 15, 1864) was an officer in the British Indian army, who made three voyages of exploration to Africa and who is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile. He is most commonly referred to as John Hanning Speke. Life In 1844 the British Indian Army served in the Sikh War under Sir Colin Campbell. He spent his leave exploring the Himalaya Mountains and once crossed into Tibet. In 1854 he made his first voyage, joining the already famous Richard Francis Burton on an expedition to Somalia. The expedition did not go well. The party was attacked and Burton and Speke were both severely wounded. Speke was captured and stabbed several times with spears before he was able to free himself and escape.

Burton escaped with a javelin impaling both cheeks. Speke returned to England to recover and then served in the Crimean War. In 1856, Speke and Burton made a voyage to East Africa to find the great lakes which were rumoured to exist in the center of the continent. Both men clearly hoped that their expedition would locate the source of the Nile. The journey was extremely strenuous and both men fell ill from a variety of tropical diseases. Speke suffered severely when he became temporarily deaf after a beetle crawled into his ear and he had to remove it with a knife. He also later went temporarily blind. After an arduous journey the two became the first Europeans to discover Lake Tanganyika (although Speke was still blind at this point and could not properly see the lake). They heard of a second lake in the area, but Burton was too sick to make the voyage. Speke thus went alone, and found the lake, which he christened Lake Victoria. It was this lake which eventually proved to be the source of the river Nile. However, much of the expedition's survey equipment had been lost at this point and thus vital questions about the height and extent of the lake could not be answered.

Routes taken by the expeditions of Burton and Speke (1857-1858) and Speke and Grant (1863). Speke returned to England before Burton, on 8 May 1859 and made their voyage famous in a speech to the Royal Geographical Society where he claimed to have discovered the source of the Nile. When Burton returned on 21 May, he was angered by Speke's precipitous announcements believing that they violated an agreement that the two men would speak to the society together. A further rift was caused when Speke was chosen to lead a subsequent expedition without Burton. The two presented joint papers concerning the expedition to the Royal Geographical Society on 13 June 1859. Together with James Augustus Grant, Speke left from Zanzibar in October 1860. When they reached Uganda Grant travelled north and Speke continued his journey towards the West. Speke reached Lake Victoria on July 28 1862 and then travelled on the west side around Lake Victoria without actually seeing much of it, but on the north side of the lake, Speke found the Nile flowing out of it and discovered the Ripon Falls.

Speke then sailed down the Nile and he was reunited with Grant. Next he travelled to Gondokoro in southern Sudan, where he met Samuel Baker and his wife, continuing to Khartoum, from which he sent a celebrated telegram to London: "The Nile is settled." Speke's voyage did not resolve the issue, however. Burton claimed that because Speke had not followed the Nile from the place it flowed out of Lake Victoria to Gondokoro, he could not be sure they were the same river. A debate was planned between the two before the geographical section of the British Association in Bath on 18 September 1864, but Speke died that morning from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound while hunting at Neston Park in Wiltshire. An inquest concluded that the death was accidental, a conclusion supported by his only biographer, though the idea of suicide has appealed to some. Speke was buried in Dowlish Wake, Somerset, the ancestral home of the Speke family. Controversy The film Mountains of the Moon (1990) (starring Scottish actor Iain Glen as Speke) related the story of the Burton-Speke controversy.

The film hints at a sexual intimacy between Burton and Speke. It also vaguely portrays Speke as a closeted homosexual. This was based on the William Harrison novel Burton and Speke, which explicitly portrays Speke as homosexual and Burton as rampantly heterosexual. Both of these portrayals are marked by conflations of fact and artisic license and should be treated skeptically. Mount Speke in the Ruwenzori Range, Uganda was named in honour of John Speke, as an early European explorer of this region. Speke's Journal, reviewed by Sean Redmond Reviewed by Sean Redmond The Journal of African Travel-Writing , Number 3 , September 1997 (pp. 87-91). � 1997 The Journal of African Travel-Writing John Hanning Speke's career as an explorer began inauspiciously in 1855, when he and his commander, the swashbuckling Richard Burton, were nearly killed by marauders on the beaches of Somalia. Less than a decade later, and amidst a terrible public battle with Burton over the source of the Nile, Speke lay dead, the accidental or suicidal victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

However, for a few short years in between, he was held by most to be one of the greatest European explorers of Africa and one of the bravest sons of England. In a history dominated by Burton's prolific writings, the Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, now reprinted by Dover, offers a self-portrait of Speke during the pinnacle of his brief career--his own three-year voyage into the heart of the African continent. In 1854, having gained fame as the first modern European to visit Mecca, Burton set out to explore Somalia, probably with an eye to finding the source of the Nile. At exactly that time, Speke was on furlough from the Forty-sixth Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry. An avid hunter who had already shot up the Himalayas, Speke thought he might make a two-year shooting expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, known from Ptolemy, and perhaps discover the source of the Nile along the way. When a member of Burton's expedition died unexpectedly, Speke was taken on as a replacement. He was first assigned the task of exploring, by himself, the Wadi Nogal, which he never reached.

While Speke was engaged with this, Burton repeated his feat at Mecca by becoming the first Christian to enter the holy city of Harare, but got no further. After they met back up with the others at Berberah, their camp was attacked by some Somali. One member of the expedition was killed, both Speke and Burton were severely wounded, and their expedition thus ended. In a spirit of goodwill and recompense for what Speke had suffered, Burton invited him on the second expedition to central Africa. Speke had planned to go shooting in the Caucasus, but he and Burton set out in June 1857 to investigate the truth about the Tanganyika, a reportedly huge lake in central Africa and perhaps the long-sought source of the Nile. This expedition, which lasted until the spring of 1859 and is described by Burton in The Lake Regions of Central Africa, was a failure as well. Hindered by expense, desertion, and illness, they were unable to explore Lake Tanganyika fully, and Burton was too ill to go to another lake they had heard of to the north. Speke went off by himself again, this time to discover the Victoria Nyanza.

Burton describes the fateful day: At length my companion had been successful, his "flying trip" had led him to the northern water, and he had found its dimensions surpassing our most sanguine expectations. We had scarcely, however, breakfasted, before he announced to me the startling fact that he had discovered the sources of the Nile. It was an inspiration perhaps: the moment he sighted the Nyanza he felt at once no doubt but that the "lake at his feet gave birth to that interesting river which has been subject of so much speculation and the object of so many explorers." The fortunate discoverer's conviction was strong; his reasons were weak. . . . Thus began a bitter conflict that flared up in public when Speke returned home in May 1859, ahead of Burton. By the time Burton arrived in England, his erstwhile companion had already gotten backing from Sir Roderick Murchison, president of the Royal Geographic Society, for a return to Africa in order to strengthen his claims about the Nile.

This time Speke traveled without Burton, choosing instead a young Captain James Grant, an acquaintance from India as unknown and untraveled as Speke himself had been on the original Somali expedition in 1855. In April 1860, less than a year after coming home, Speke set out again for Africa to explore the northern end of the Victoria Nyanza, confident of proving the truth of his "inspiration." He would then follow the river down to meet John Petherick, the ivory trader and vice-consul, coming up the Nile from Khartoum. Speke's shortcomings as a geographer and explorer were many. Skeptics immediately noticed, for instance, that by his calculations the Nile flowed uphill. Nonetheless, he had discovered the source of the Nile. And though his Journal lacks the historical and anthropological detail of Burton's Lake Regions, its narrative is finally much more interesting because, to put it simply, more happened the second time around. The goal of the first expedition, the city of Ujiji on the eastern shore of Tanganyika, turned out to be a disappointingly shabby village seen through the haze of their illnesses.

Burton and Speke had traveled on an ancient caravan route that passed through Kazeh, a settlement populated wholly and peacefully by Arabs. By contrast, when Speke returned to Kazeh the merchants were fighting their own colonial war against Manua Sera, a prince turned robber, "as fine a young man as I ever looked upon. . . . the very picture of a captain of the banditti of the romances." Speke had made friends with the previous sultan of Unyamwezi, and now Manua, his son, had been deposed by the Arabs for instituting taxation, which his father had never dared. Because Speke wants to show his influence on the personalities around him, we get much better pictures of his fellow travelers and of the people he meets than in the writings of the misanthropic Burton. Speke prides himself, inexplicably, on his talent for command and diplomacy. He undertook the task of negotiating an end to the war at Kazeh--a war between two men he respected, Manua Sera and Snay bin Amir, an Arab under whose hospitality they lived in Unyamwezi.

In the Journal we find recorded a long speech by Manua Sera about his deposition, demonstrating his injured pride ("the merchants were living on sufferance only in my country. I told them so, and defied them to interfere with my orders, for I was not a 'woman,' to be treated with contempt") as well as his frustrations and hopes ("I have been a wanderer since; and though I wish to make friends, they will not allow it, but do all they can to hunt me to death. Now, as you were a friend of my father, I do hope you will patch up this war for me, which you must think is unjust"). We can doubt the accuracy of Speke's report, but we do see the conflict on a human level, pride on both sides turned to arrogance, arrogance to violence. Speke failed at peacemaking, and Snay bin Amir would eventually die in the fighting. Another member of the expedition who is treated more fully here than in Burton's writings is Sidi Mubarak Bombay.

Though he accompanied both caravans, and later returned a third time with Stanley, Bombay is barely on stage in Burton's Lake Regions (the reader is in fact referred to Speke's portrait of him in Blackwood's). In the Journal he is a vivid and sympathetic character, and the rivalry between the faithful Bombay and his nemesis, the charismatic Baraka, runs like a leitmotif through most of the journey. The best portrait, however, is of Speke himself. Utterly unselfconscious, he is almost a parody of a British officer and colonist.

He often loses his patience with "nonsense," as when a chief gets troublesome over the matter of tribute: "I began seriously to consider whether I should have this chief shot, as a reward for his oppressive treachery, and a warning to others." Most unlike Burton, Speke in his pride prefers not to adopt the local customs: "Now I had made up my mind never to sit upon the ground as the natives and Arabs are obliged to do, nor to make my obeisance in any other manner than is customary in England." He even tells us a dream which he is too dull to comprehend: during my sleep I had all sorts of absurd dreams: for instance, I planned a march across Africa with Sir Roderick Murchison; and I fancied some curious creatures, half men and half monkeys, came into my camp to inform me that Petherick was waiting in boats at the southwest corner of the N'yanza. . . . The psychology is transparent. He did plan the march with Murchison. He was ever waiting for news of Petherick. The only discernible absurdity is Petherick's being too far south, for "half monkey" is a charitable way to put his opinion of most Africans.

If Burton introduced the word safari into English, Speke defined it. He writes that "a rich variety of small birds, as often happened, made me wish I had come on a shooting rather than on a long exploring expedition"; and "always eager to shoot something, either for science or the pot, I killed a bicornis rhinoceros . . . and I also shot a bitch fox of the genus Otocyon Lalandii. . . . This was rather tame sport; but the next day I had better fun." Then follow three pages and three engravings describing a buffalo hunt. Hunting is an obsession that overwhelms his purpose: I found myself at once in view of the Nile on one hand and the long-heard-of Asua River on the other. . . . The bed of the Asua seemed very large, but, being far off, was not very distinct; nor did I care to go and see it then, for at that moment, straight in front of me, five buffaloes, five giraffes, two eland, and sundry other antelopes, were too strong a temptation.

Speke finds a soul-mate in Muteesa (spelled Mtesa by Speke), the sporting young king of Buganda, who loved to see the Englishman shoot and learned quite well himself. The king's cruelty is shocking to Speke. But the irony of giving Muteesa a gun as a gift is lost on him, even when, after a show of shooting cows, "The king now loaded one of the carbines I had given him with his own hands, and giving it full-cock to a page, told him to go out and shoot a man in the outer court." With the Nile controversy long settled, this account of the kingdom of Buganda (which has given its name, in Swahili, to modern Uganda) is now the most important part of the book, for it is the earliest available eyewitness account of this country. It was, at that time, truly unknown to Europeans except for what Burton had learned second-hand from the Arabs. Snay bin Amir had visited the previous Kabaka (king), Ssuuna II, in 1852 but had not made much of an inroad.

When Speke arrived there, Muteesa, the last and greatest Kabaka of Buganda, was just beginning his reign. Internal power struggles and the arrival of outsiders were about to change things forever. Speke was less intent on learning the history of Buganda than on convincing the kings that they belonged to a different, aristocratic race, the Wahuma, originally from Abyssinia, and were descendants of King David, or possibly even "a small residue of the original European stock." The ruling Wahuma, he says, believed that the Europeans had come "to take back the country from them." It was an ideal justification for someone who believed that "They require a government like ours in India" and that they, as children of Israel, needed missionaries--though it was perhaps impious for this good Christian to tell Muteesa that the Baganda would count their years from the arrival of the first white man. Speke traces the ruling dynasty of Buganda back only eight generations, though the oral tradition records over thirty kings before Muteesa. Speke's account of their "paganism" is equally careless, and what religion he could discern is taken only as evidence of their fall from grace.

In four and a half months of living at the court, Speke did not learn Luganda, but relied on his Swahili and on interpreters. Thus he often misleads his readers on linguistic matters. You can discern the titles of Buganda's complex hierarchy in such names as "Mr. Pokino" and "Colonel Congow" (the Ppookino and Kangaawo, two of the Kabaka's sub-chiefs, who governed Buddu and Bulumezi respectively), but Speke constantly uses the nickname kamraviona (properly kamalabyonna) for the Katikkiro, the king's prime minister. In a rather significant blunder, he glosses the word mkavia as "monarch" when it is rather Muteesa's original name, Mukaabya. (He adopted "Muteesa," which means "he who governs," early in his reign). Nevertheless, Speke provides a truly valuable, day-by-day account of life at an African royal court. Muteesa was in a tender period between his election and his coronation.

Speke found himself in turn caught between Muteesa and the Namasole (the queen-mother, N'yamasore in Speke's spelling) as they maneuvered for prestige and power. The two were jealous of each other over Speke's company, so he favored now one, now the other, visiting them in turns, trying to cajole their permission to continue on to the Nile. Their personalities come alive in this rather novelistic triangle. What Speke's account lacks in history is made up for in the liveliness and spontaneity of his diary. With a pang of loss, Muteesa let his visitor depart, and the expedition did finally reach the Nile. Speke spends barely a third of a paragraph describing the moment. The place seemed to him to have "the kind of effect aimed at in a highly-kept park." He made a characteristically shoddy survey and could not be bothered to follow the stream the entire way down. Instead he took shortcuts between sections of the river and thus gave his detractors enough ammunition to keep from him the full credit for his very real accomplishment. The first expedition had gone nowhere that Arabs had not already established themselves.

Arab merchants had even come into Buganda, but Speke alone managed to cross it and to march north across Buganda's hostile neighbor, Bunyoro, and eventually all the way to Alexandria. But, as always, Speke's greatest shortcoming was his personality. His carelessness mixed with self-assurance alienated first Burton, then the Royal Geographical Society, then even the mysterious Laurence Oliphant who had originally convinced Speke to betray Burton and take all the credit for what was arguably a shared discovery. Fortunately for us, though, his quick, unreflective pen gives us a portrait, more intimate than intended, of the life and mind of one British traveler in the heart of Africa. This reprint is a sturdy paperback, like all Dover books, and even includes a fold-out map of Speke's voyages from the original. Dover has reproduced a posthumous American edition, published by Harper & Brothers in 1868. One of this edition's oddities is that it retains a map of central Africa "according to Hindu sources." The map had appeared in the first British edition, but was quickly discredited and removed from subsequent editions.

This American edition not only retains the map, but also a footnote explaining the map's omission! Uganda: Nile Source a Mystery 143 Years After Speke - allAfrica.com Uganda: Nile Source a Mystery 143 Years After Speke more By George Laghu Kampala — It will be exactly 143 years tomorrow since the legendary English explorer John Hanning Speke discovered the source of River Nile, on July 28, 1863. To date, emotional debates still rage high about the real source of the Nile, making it stand out as one of the greatest enigmas of the world. River Nile's allure lies in the fact that it is the world's longest river along whose immensely fertile delta the world's earliest civilisation started. Its unending large volumes of water supporting millions of people along its course adds to its fascination. The Nile snakes through 4,145 miles (6,671 kilometres) from the heart of Africa along the equator through North East Africa into the Mediterranean sea. While not disclosing its source, the great religions of the Middle East such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism refer to the Nile as the river of hope and liberation.

Indeed, Moses who later on led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt was hidden in the banks of the Nile to save him from the Pharoah's wrath. After defeating the Carthegeneans in the Punic wars of 149-146, the roman emperor Nero Agus sent an expedition to find the source of the Nile as a means of securing his empire, but the expedition stopped in the difficult Sudds of the Nile after which the name Sudan is delivered. In 6-BC, King Necho of Egypt also commissioned a boat trip to find the source of the Nile. Claudius Ptolemaues, commonly known as Ptolemy, in his famous work of geography in 150 AD wrote in his semi-mythical; work about the source of the Nile being a rem off from glaciers covering two giant mountains they called Mountains of the moon along the equator. His works including 26 maps of specific geographic interests in the world including the River Nile inspired great voyages in the world including that of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

In 1150AD, Arabian geographer Suleyman-al-Masud wrote a book showing the source of the Nile in three great lakes far to the South. His successor Ibn Batutta who travelled 75,000 miles reaching up to Timbuktu in West Africa wrote of the great River Nile along whose basin slave masters he called "slave farmers" took care of their slaves to earn good profits. Other sources of interest included an expedition under the French explorer Poncet in 1699, which reached Ethiopia from Cairo. The discovery of the source of the nile by Fr Paez of the Jesuit missionaries in 1613 showed rains rather than snow capped mountains caused the disastrous seasonal floods in Egypt. The narrative of Scottish explorer James Bruce who travelled up to Lake Tana, now Turkana, is perhaps the most revealing. Whether Englishman John Hanning Speke, a commissioned officer of the Indian army who fought in Punjab and spent time in exploring the Tibet mountains actually discovered the source of the Nile, largely remains a semantic issue between social and political historians, nationalists, linguistic experts and geomorphologic scientists.

However, the role of Speke undoubtedly made an indelible mark uncovering the Nile proving the Nile did not originate from an ice run off, but from large lake surrounded by snow capped mountains. Entering East Africa through, Zanzibar, Speke and his friend Burton went westward and saw lake Tanganyika from where at Tabora Burton suffered a bout of malaria as Speke continued northwards becoming the first white man to see lake Victoria. On the mainland to the north, he saw Rippon falls on the July 28, 1863, which he deemed as the source of the Nile. He moved along the Nile to the north only to miss its entry into lake Albert. To confirm his find, he returned a year later and walked to the west of lake Victoria, where he documented the presence of Kagera river as the remotest southern most source of the Nile with Lake Victoria as its major source of water.

Known by the different names of river Ruvuvu/Ruvusu, Luvirosa, Kagera, Kiira, Victoria Nile, Albert Nile and Blue Nile, along its odyssey astride the continent since speke's discovery, the Nile has played strategic roles to those living along its basin and the world as a whole. The Nile water has been a major force of consensus building for the nations, through which it passes and the middle East politics in general. Egypt, which irrigates up to six million acres (2.4 million hectares) by using the Nile waters to produce food, sees the nile as of immense strategic importance as is the Sudan, which irrigates 2.4 million acres. Because of this reason, colonial powers and especially Britain sought to control the Nile from its sources. For the same reason, the nile has directly shaped up ensuring that it is securely under British control. With its many cataracts aside, the River Nile has provided easy means of transport and communication to and from the heart of Africa for purposes of trade, security and dissemination of religion.

To date, the Nile has bound many countries in its basin into one political organisation, the Nile basin Organisation, which agitates for the equitable use of the Nile water resources for an environmentally friendly social and economic development. Many dams have been built across the Nile providing a cheap source of electricity to millions of homes and industries in the Nile Valley. Apart from providing power, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt has helped to stop the formerly hazardous seasonal flooding and has provided a regulated source of water for irrigation. Fishing in the Nile has not only provided an important economic activity in terms of employment, but also a cheap source of protein. The Nile has also offered inexhaustible sources of sporting activities such as deep water diving, white water surfing and boat racing with its allure remaining a major tourist attraction. Speke's discovery, which was precipitated by the desire of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London to find the sources of some of Africa's great rivers Niger, Zambezi and Congo after taking over the African Association in 1830, is one of the scientific explorations commissioned by the RGS.

Some schools of thought, however, say the discovery of the source of the Nile cannot be attributed to Speke because he never reached the remote source of the Nile in the Burundian highlands where it started as river Nile Ruvuvu, flowing further as Ruvusu, Luvironso and the Kagera in Rwanda and south Western Uganda before entering the down warp of lake Victoria. "Lake Victoria is the major contributor of water into the Victoria Nile, the point of exit to the Mediterranean sea at Ripon Falls in Jinja, where Speke made his discovery. I would call it a secondary source," says Moses Muthaura, a specialist of geomorphology in the lake Victoria basin organisation that brings together Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Muthaura's argument is corroborated by practical experience on lake Victoria maritime transporters and fishermen who talk of crossing the Nile when on the lake. The river Kagera water current flows through Lake Victoria in a deep brown colour and a high speed contrasting the deep blue and generally slow waters of the lake.

"That brownness flows to Jinja into the course of the Nile," says Yowasi Mutyaba ,as he accelerated the motor boat to cross the speedy current of River Kagera's brown invasion into the lakes' blueness. "It is possible that before the down warp, the Kagera river could be flowing towards Lake George to the West. lake Victoria is the authentic source of the Nile," said Glady's Akello of Makerere University. She argues that geological evidence shows the flow of Kagera river is much younger than that of the Nile at Jinja and further north. Therefore, the Nile waters flowed in that course even before it could have changed the course of Kagera River. Both groups, however, agree that Speke's activities around lake Victoria led to a discovery, which has to date immensely affected the social, political and economic metabolism in river Nile basin and valley. Copyright © 2005 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media ( allAfrica.com ). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 800 reports a day from more than 140 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals , representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica . To address comments or complaints, please Contact us . Speke | Article about Speke by The Free Dictionary Speke | Article about Speke by The Free Dictionary Related to Speke: John Hanning Speke Speke, John Hanning (spēk), 1827–64, English explorer in Africa. He joined Sir Richard Burton in his expeditions to Somaliland (1854) and to E central Africa (1857–59). Together they discovered (1858) Lake Tanganyika; then Speke continued alone and discovered Lake Victoria, which he believed to be a source of the Nile.

In 1862 he returned to the lake and proved that the Victoria Nile issues from the north end over Ripon Falls. He wrote Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863). Bibliography See biography by A. Maitland (1971). Speke, John Hanning Born May 4, 1827, in Jordans, Somersetshire; died Sept. 15,1864, in Bath. English explorer of Africa. Speke accompanied R. F. Burton on expeditions to Somaliland (1854–55) and East Africa (1856–59). Burton and Speke discovered Lake Tanganyika, and Speke independently discovered Lake Victoria. Between 1860 and 1863, Speke and J. Grant made a number of significant discoveries. The two men discovered the Kagera River, the main tributary of Lake Victoria. They discovered the outlet of the Nile from Lake Victoria and from there traced the Nile’s path to the Mediterranean Sea. This journey finally resolved the problem of the river’s source and its entire course.

WORKS James Augustus Grant | British explorer | Britannica.com James Augustus Grant Macgregor Laird James Augustus Grant, (born April 11, 1827, Nairn , Nairn, Scot.—died Feb. 11, 1892, Nairn), Scottish soldier and explorer who accompanied John Hanning Speke in the search for and discovery of the source of the Nile River . Commissioned in the British army in 1846, Grant saw action in India in the Sikh Wars and the Indian Mutiny of 1857. When Speke started his second African expedition in 1860, he asked Grant, his friend and comrade in India, to join him. A loyal lieutenant, Grant for long intervals during the expedition was given independent command of part of the caravan. After great hardship, they found the outlet of Lake Victoria from which the Nile issued (July 1862). For his services, Grant was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society .

During the 2 1/2-year journey, Grant had kept a journal describing events of geographic significance and the customs of native peoples; it was published under the title A Walk Across Africa (1864). In 1868 Grant served in the intelligence department under Lord Napier during the Ethiopian campaign, retiring from the service that same year with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Learn More in these related articles: in eastern Africa: The colonial era ...and had prompted the discovery in 1858 of Lake Tanganyika by the English expedition of Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. Speke returned first to discover Lake Victoria in 1858 and then with James Grant in 1862 became the first white man to set eyes on the source of the Nile, which Speke named Ripon Falls. By circumnavigating Lake Victoria 12 years later, Henry Morton Stanley stilled the... in European exploration: Africa ...to England, sure that he had found the source of the Nile. He was right—but he had not seen the outlet, and Burton did not believe him.

In 1862 Speke, traveling with the Scottish explorer James Grant, found the Ripon Falls, in Uganda (which was submerged following the construction of the Owen Falls Dam [now the Nalubaale Dam] in 1954), and “saw without any doubt that Old Father... More about James Augustus Grant 4 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted Reference James Augustus Grant - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) (1827-1892). Scottish soldier and explorer James Augustus Grant was born on April 11, 1827, in Nairn, Scotland. Commissioned in the British army in 1846, Grant saw action in India in the Sikh Wars and the Indian Mutiny of 1857. In India he befriended his fellow officer John Speke. In 1860 Grant joined Speke’s second expedition to eastern Africa, which found the outlet of Lake Victoria from which the Nile River issues. In 1868 Grant served in the British intelligence department. He died on February 11, 1892, in Nairn. Article History Corrections? Updates?

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Question: In 1862, English explorer John Hanning Speke discovered the source of the Nile in which lake?
Answer: Lake Victoria