• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1191 0

’ recalled Burton, ‘before he announced to me the startling fact that he had discovered the sources of the White Nile.’ In the absence of any proof or even eyewitness testimony, Burton was unconvinced. But Speke would hear no doubts. And now came the oddest part of their epic journey. The two men simply decided not to discuss the matter further. ‘After a few days it became evident to me that not a word could be uttered on the subject of the Lake, the Nile, and his trouvaille generally without offence,’ said Burton. ‘By tacit agreement it was, therefore, avoided.’ In a letter to the Royal Geographical Society later, Speke gave his side of the breakdown. Burton, he said, ‘used to snub me so unpleasantly when talking about anything that I often kept my own counsel. B is one of those men who never can be wrong, and will never acknowledge an error so that when only two are together talking becomes more of a bore than a pleasure.’ Richard Burton’s line was not that he was especially miffed at being absent when the object of their shattering journey had been achieved, but that Speke was essentially guessing when he claimed that the lake (now, inevitably, christened Lake Victoria) was the source of the Nile. They should stick to what they had properly investigated.

At the end of September 1858, the expedition set off on the journey back to the coast. By now, both men were sick and exhausted and had to be carried for much of the way. At Zanzibar, in March the following year, they took ship for Aden, where they would join another vessel for the onward journey home to England. But it was there that the two men who had shared such hardships parted. By Burton’s account, they had agreed that they would go public with their discoveries only once both were back home. Instead, Speke set off for England on board HMS Furious, and when Burton reached England, twelve days behind him, he discovered that the younger man had already contacted the president of the Royal Geographical Society to pass on his theory about the source of the Nile. London was transfixed by the news that an Englishman had almost certainly settled the greatest challenge in exploration, and £2,500 was immediately raised to send him back to Africa to confirm his discovery. When the gaunt figure of Burton reached home, he discovered there was a great deal less popular interest in his more meticulous account of Lake Tanganyika, for the obvious reason that it was not the fabled source of the Nile.

Speke found his companion for his next expedition to be altogether more congenial. Captain James Augustus Grant was another officer in the Indian army, and had even taken part in the relief of the siege of Lucknow. But yet again, at the culmination of their journey, Speke contrived to keep the climax to himself. Grant had been immobilized for three months by an infected sore in his leg, during which time Speke had been a virtual prisoner of King Mutesa in Buganda. When Grant finally rejoined him, Speke argued that they should split the caravan, with Grant preparing the ground for their return, while he pressed on to investigate stories of massive waterfalls where Lake Victoria spilled its banks. Conscious that his injured leg would not allow him to match the furious pace which Speke now proposed – 20 miles each day – Grant claimed to be entirely happy with the arrangement. On 21 July 1862, Speke reached the Nile, where he told his men ‘they ought to shave their heads and bathe in the holy river, the cradle of Moses’. They turned to march towards the source of the river.

And so, one week later, on 28 July, Speke cast his eyes upon the great enigma of geography, the falls where Lake Victoria pours into the River Nile. ‘It was a sight that attracted one for hours,’ Speke wrote, ‘the roar of the waters, the thousands of passenger-fish leaping at the falls with all their might; the Wasoga and Waganda fishermen coming out in boats and taking post on all the rocks with rod and hook, hippopotami and crocodiles lying sleepily on the water.’ He named the place Ripon Falls, after the first Marquess