ps this humble work may make your names, O virtuous settlers at the
Cape, survive when I am in the grave! For thee, O ill-fated negro! that
weepest on the rocks of the Isle of France, if my hand, which cannot
wipe away thy tears, can but bring the tyrants to weep in sorrow and
repentance, I shall want nothing more from the Indies; I shall have
gained there the only fortune I require.

JOHN HANNING SPEKE

Discovery of the Source of the Nile

_I.--Beginnings in the Black Man's Land_

John Hanning Speke was born on May 14, 1827, near
Ilchester, Suffolk, England. He entered the army in 1844,
serving in India, but his love of exploration and sport
led him to visit the Himalayas and Thibet; leaving India
in 1854, he joined Sir Richard Burton on his Somali
expedition, where he was wounded and invalided home. After
the Crimean War he rejoined Burton in African exploration,
pushing forward alone to discover the Victoria N'yanza,
which he believed to be the source of the Nile. Speke's
work was so much appreciated by the Royal Geographical
Society that they sent him out again to verify this, his
friend, Captain Grant, accompanying him, and the exciting
incidents of this journey are set forth in his "Journal of
the Discovery of the Source of the Nile," which he
published on his return in 1863. Honours were bestowed on
him for having "solved the problem of the ages," though
Burton sharply contested his conclusions. An accident
while partridge shooting on September 18, 1864, suddenly
ended the career of one who had proved himself to be a
brave explorer, a good sportsman, and an able botanist and
geologist. His "Journal" is an entrancing record of one of
the greatest expeditions of modern times, and is told with
no small amount of literary skill. The work was followed a
year later by "What Led to the Discovery of the Source of
the Nile," these two forming, with the exception of a
number of magazine articles, Speke's entire literary
output.

I started on my third expedition in Africa to prove that the Victoria
N'yanza was the source of the Nile, on May 9, 1859, under the direction
of the Royal Geographical Society, and Captain Grant, an old friend and
brother sportsman in India, asked to accompany me. After touching at the
Cape and East London we made our first acquaintance with the Zulu
Kaffirs at Delagoa Bay, and on August 15 we reached our destination,
Zanzibar.