Which explorer discovered Lake Victoria and the source of the Nile?
"John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria. He is also known for propounding the Hamitic hypothesis in 1863, in which he supposed that the Tutsi ethnic group were descendants of the biblical figure Ham, and had lighter skin and more Hamitic features than the Bantu-featured Hutu over whom they ruled. Speke was born on"
"As of 2016, an environmental data repository exists for Lake Victoria. The repository contains shoreline, bathymetry, pollution, temperature, wind vector, and other important data for both the lake and the wider Basin. The first recorded information about Lake Victoria comes from Arab traders plying the inland routes in search of gold, ivory, other precious commodities, and slaves. An excellent map, known as the Muhammad al-Idrisi map from the calligrapher who developed it and dated from the 1160s, clearly depicts an accurate representation of Lake Victoria, and attributes it as the source of the Nile. The lake was first sighted by"
"source of the Nile when Burton regarded this as still unsettled. A very public quarrel ensued, which sparked a great deal of intense debate within the scientific community and interest by other explorers keen to either confirm or refute Speke's discovery. British explorer and missionary David Livingstone pushed too far west and entered the Congo River system instead. It was ultimately Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley who confirmed Speke's discovery, circumnavigating Lake Victoria and reporting the great outflow at Ripon Falls on the Lake's northern shore. European involvement in Egypt goes back to the time of Napoleon. Laird Shipyard of"
"a new expedition and took a boat along the entire shore of Lake Victoria; he established that Lake Tanganyika and the Nile were not connected in any way, and he explored the headwaters of Lake Edward. It was now proven that Speke had been right all along, and that the Nile flowed from Lake Victoria via Ripon Falls and Murchison Falls to Lake Albert and from there to Gondokoro. It was in later years, however, that other explorers found that Lake Victoria is not the southernmost source of the Nile, rather it is the Kagera River that flows from the"
"to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) located Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. It was eventually proved to be the latter from which the Nile flowed. Explorers were also active in other parts of the continent. Southern Morocco, the Sahara and the Sudan were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 by Georg Schweinfurth and Gustav Nachtigal. These travellers not only added considerably to geographical knowledge, but obtained invaluable information concerning the people, languages and natural history of the countries in which they sojourned. Among the discoveries"
"this point much of their surveying equipment was lost, ruined, or stolen, and they were unable to complete surveys of the area as well as they wished. Burton was again taken ill on the return journey, and Speke continued exploring without him, making a journey to the north and eventually locating the great Lake Victoria, or Victoria Nyanza. Lacking supplies and proper instruments, Speke was unable to survey the area properly but was privately convinced that it was the long sought source of the Nile. Burton's description of the journey is given in ""Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa"" (1860). Speke"
"But Burton was too weak to make the trip and thus stayed in base camp when the main caravan halted again at Kazeh. Speke went on a 47-day side trip that was 452 miles up and down in which he took 34 men with Bombay and Mabruki as his captains and on 30 July 1858 became the first European to see Lake Victoria and the first to map it. It was this lake that 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"
"for and successfully found the missionary and explorer Livingstone, greeting him with the famous (though disputed) words: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley's journey had four principal aims, to: There was controversy among earlier explorers as to whether these lakes and rivers were connected to each other and the Nile. Richard Burton thought that Lake Victoria might have a southern inlet, possibly from Lake Albert, meaning that the source of the Nile was not Lake Victoria as Speke had argued. Samuel Baker thought that Lake Albert might have an inlet from Lake Tanganyika. Livingstone thought that Lualaba was the source of"
"the source of the Nile. Between 1875 and 1876 Stanley succeeded in the first part of his objective, establishing that Lake Victoria had only a single outlet – the one located by John Hanning Speke on 21 July 1862. If this was not the Nile's source, then the massive northward flowing river called by Livingstone, the Lualaba, and mapped by him in its upper reaches, might flow on north to connect with the Nile via Lake Albert and thus be the primary source. It was therefore essential that Stanley should trace the course of the Lualaba downstream (northward) from Nyangwe,"
"many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds to further explore Africa. Nevertheless, John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard Thornton, the scientists appointed to work under Livingstone, did contribute large collections of botanical, ecological, geological, and ethnographic material to scientific Institutions in the United Kingdom. In January 1866, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar, and from there he set out to seek the source of the Nile. Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Samuel Baker had identified either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria as the source (which was partially correct, as the"
"1855, Livingstone became the first European to see the famous Victoria Falls, named after the Queen of the United Kingdom. From 1858 to 1864, the lower Zambezi, the Shire River and Lake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone. Nyasa had been first reached by the confidential slave of António da Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader established at Bié in Angola, who crossed Africa during 1853–1856 from Benguella to the mouth of the Rovuma. A prime goal for explorers was to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) located Lake Tanganyika"
"and Lake Victoria. It was eventually proved to be the latter from which the Nile flowed. Henry Morton Stanley, who had in 1871 succeeded in finding and succouring Livingstone (originating the famous line ""Dr. Livingstone, I presume""), started again for Zanzibar in 1874. In one of the most memorable of all exploring expeditions in Africa, Stanley circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria) and Lake Tanganyika. Striking farther inland to the Lualaba, he followed that river down to the Atlantic Ocean—which he reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the Congo. In 1895, the British South Africa Company hired the American"
"claims, calling his evidence inconclusive and his measurements inaccurate. Speke undertook a second expedition, along with Captain James Grant and Sidi Mubarak Bombay, to prove that Lake Victoria was the true source of the Nile. Speke, in light of the issues he was having with Burton, had Grant sign a statement saying, among other things, ""I renounce all my rights to publishing ... my own account [of the expedition] until approved of by Captain Speke or [the Royal Geographical Society]"". Burton and Livingstone were still unconvinced, but believing the matter had settled, the Royal Geographical Society awarded Speke its Gold"
"incompetent, unable even to learn how to use simple measuring devices, vital to serious exploration. Despite these obvious drawbacks however, it is Speke who eventually discovers Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile, due to Burton falling seriously ill with malaria and having to be left behind in an Arab trading camp. Here their mutual antipathy turns to bitter enmity when Speke, breaking his word to Burton, claims sole credit for the discovery. Unfortunately for Speke his lack of accurate readings and sloppy map making skills lead the scientific world to doubt his word. Speke dies from a self-inflicted"
"1864. After some time spent in the exploration of the neighbourhood, Baker demonstrated that the Nile flowed through the Albert Nyanza. He formed an exaggerated idea of the relative importance of the Albert and Victoria lake sources in contributing to the Nile flow rate. Although he believed them to be near equal, Albert Nyanza sources add only ~15% to the Nile flow at this point, the remainder provided primarily by outflow from Lake Victoria. While in this area, Baker and his wife became the first Europeans to see a substantial waterfall on the Victoria Nile, which Baker named Murchison Falls"
"being Lake Kyoga in Uganda further north. The small pipe flowing with the first Nile water appears from the ground below the summit of Mount Kikizi where the pyramid is found. The explorer missionary David Livingstone tried for many years to find the source of the Nile without success. Burkhart Waldecker ""'Burkhart Waldecker"" (born August 19, 1902 in Hagen – died 1964) was a German explorer who, in 1937, discovered the most southern source of the White Nile in Burundi. Waldecker came to the area to seek asylum from Nazi persecution. The true source is near Rutovu, where a pyramid"
"officer called John Wood, came with an expedition to find the source of the river in 1839. He found modern-day Lake Zorkul, called it Lake Victoria, and proclaimed he had found the source. Then, the French explorer and geographer Thibaut Viné collected a lot of information about this area during five expeditions between 1856 and 1862. The question of finding a route between the Oxus valley and India has been of concern historically. A direct route crosses extremely high mountain passes in the Hindu Kush and isolated areas like Kafiristan. Some in Britain feared that the Empire of Russia, which"
"questions about the height and extent of the lake could not be answered easily. Speke's eyes were still bothering him and he only saw a small part of the southern end of the lake and his view was blocked by islands in the lake so he could not judge the size of the lake well. However, Speke did estimate the elevation of Lake Victoria at 4000 feet by observing the temperature at which water boiled at that level. (This lake's being substantially higher than Lake Tanganyika did make it a more likely candidate for the source of the Nile.) From"
"although the pair seemed to have shared the hardships and labors of the journey pretty much evenly. Once it became clear that Speke might have found the source of the Nile the relationship deteriorated further. Why Burton did not journey back to Lake Victoria with Speke to make a better reconnoitre of the Lake after Speke returned to base camp in Kazeh is unclear. Burton was incapacitated and had to be carried by bearers but this had been true for a great deal of the trip. While Speke and Burton were instrumental in bringing the source of the Nile to"
"the three of them. The starting point was a small town in Uganda. After travelling to Lake Victoria, which many people think is the source of the River Nile, the boys noticed, that Lake Victoria is fed by several rivers that come from different locations. After a look on the map, the three found some other lakes further south which could be the source of the Nile. So they started their long drive south. After sleeping in a really poor hotel the boys decided to convert their cars into 'mobile homes'. Hammond installed a little kitchen, Jeremy a cooling box"
"and Speke, and Baker played into this so he could assume a greater role as an explorer and co-discoverer of the Nile. Speke, via Baker's ship, then continued to Khartoum from which he sent a celebrated telegram to London: ""The Nile is settled."" Speke's expedition 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. Baker and Florence, meanwhile, stayed in Gondokoro and tried to settle the flow of the river from there"
"Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert), the ""Albert Nile"" (to the South Sudan border) and then the ""Mountain Nile"" or ""Bahr-al-Jabal"" (down to Lake No). ""White Nile"" may sometimes include the headwaters of Lake Victoria, the most remote of which being from the Blue Nile. The 19th-century search by Europeans for the source of the Nile was mainly focused on the White Nile, which disappeared into the depths of what was then known as ""Darkest Africa"". The White Nile's true source was not discovered until 1937, when the German explorer Burkhart Waldecker traced it to a stream in Rutovu, at the"
"becoming one of the first Europeans to make an east-west crossing of Equatorial Africa. It was not until Stanley circumnavigated Lake Victoria in 1874–1875 that it was confirmed that the lake was the source of the White Nile. With Stanley's return to Zanzibar in 1877 the last of the main questions surrounding the Great Lakes drainage had been settled. Krapf had conjectured there was one great lake feeding the Congo, Zambezi, Nile and Benue. There had turned out to be three great lakes, feeding the Congo, Zambezi and Nile. Notes Citations Sources Lake Uniamési Lake Uniamési or the Uniamesi Sea"
"African national Hendrik Coetzee, navigated the White Nile's entire length of approximately . The expedition began at the White Nile's beginning at Lake Victoria in Uganda, on 17 January 2004 and arrived safely at the Mediterranean in Rosetta, four and a half months later. On the 30th of April 2005 a team led by South Africans Peter Meredith and Hendrik Coetzee, following again in the footsteps of John Goddard, navigated the major remote source of the White Nile, the Akagera river that starts as the Ruvyironza in Bururi Province, Burundi, and ends at Lake Victoria, Uganda. In April 2006, the"
"Khartoum, leaving that city in December 1862 to follow up the course of the White Nile. Two months later at Gondokoro he met Speke and Grant, who, after discovering the source of the Nile, were following the river to Egypt. Their success made him fear that there was nothing left for his own expedition to accomplish; but the two explorers gave him information which enabled him, after separating from them, to achieve the discovery of Albert Nyanza (Lake Albert), of whose existence credible assurance had already been given to Speke and Grant. Baker first sighted the lake on 14 March"
"she was one of the five subjects chosen for a 1997 book on women explorers in Africa. Florence Baker Florence, Lady Baker or Florica Maria Sas; Barbara Szász; Maria Freiin von Sass; Barbara Szasz; Barbara Maria Szász; Barbara Maria Szasz (; 6 August 1841 – 11 March 1916) was a Hungarian-born British explorer. Born in Transylvania (then Kingdom of Hungary), she became an orphan and was sold as a slave to Samuel Baker. Together they went in search of the source of the River Nile and found Lake Albert. They journeyed to Samuel Baker's home in England where they were"
"lake near Jinja, Uganda. In terms of contributed water, this makes Lake Victoria the principal source of the longest branch of the Nile. However, the most distal source of the Nile Basin, and therefore the ultimate source of the Nile, is more often considered to be one of the tributary rivers of the Kagera River (the exact tributary remains undetermined), and which originates in either Rwanda or Burundi. The uppermost section of the Nile is generally known as the Victoria Nile until it reaches Lake Albert. Although it is a part of the same river system known as the White"
"was told that a river left the north of the lake and flowed into the Nile. There was continued controversy about the Great Lakes and the rivers that fed and drained them. Speke made a long journey with James Augustus Grant between October 1860 and February 1863, traveling from the coast opposite Zanzibar via Tabora and Uganda to Khartoum. However, the question of whether the Nile issued from Lake Victoria was left uncertain. In 1866–73 David Livingstone left the coast at Pemba, followed the Ruvuma River inland and walked to the southern end of Lake Nyasa, which he rounded to"
"is in Hungarian sources known as Sass (or Szász) Flóra, and Florica Maria Sas in the Romanian sources. In March 1861 he started upon his first tour of exploration in central Africa. This, in his own words, was undertaken ""to discover the sources of the river Nile, with the hope of meeting the East African expedition under Captains Speke and Grant somewhere about the Lake Victoria."" After a year spent on the Sudan–Ethiopian frontier, during which time he learned Arabic, explored the Atbara river and other Nile tributaries, and proved that the Nile sediment came from Ethiopia, he arrived at"
"as the source of the Nile by Speke. He was received as a royal guest by Mutesa I of Buganda. Stanley wrote that Buganda would be an ideal country to establish missions, and for European trade. Stanley's party left on April 21, heading southward. First they reached the inlet of the Kagera river, which they would later explore on their way to Lake Albert. In an attempt to get supplies of food, they landed on the island of Bumbireh. The local inhabitants alternated peace talks with thefts and threats, and stole their canoe paddles. Ultimately the crew escaped, killing some"
"Henry Morton Stanley's first trans-Africa exploration Between 1874 and 1877 Henry Morton Stanley traveled central Africa East to West, exploring Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and the Lualaba and Congo rivers. He covered from Zanzibar in the east to Boma in the mouth of the Congo in the west and resolved a number of open questions concerning the geography of central Africa. This including identifying the source of the Nile, which he proved was not the Lualaba – which is in fact the source of the river Congo. This was Stanley's second journey in central Africa. In 1871–1872 he had searched"
"when the Pope sent monks as emissaries to Mongolia who passed India, the middle east and Africa, and described being told of the source of the Nile in Abyssinia (ancient European name for Ethiopia) Later in the 15th and 16th centuries, travelers to Ethiopia visited Lake Tana and the source of the Blue Nile in the mountains south of the lake. Although James Bruce claimed to be the first European to have visited the headwaters, modern writers give the credit to the Jesuit Pedro Páez. Páez's account of the source of the Nile is a long and vivid account of"
"Samuel Baker Sir Samuel White Baker, KCB, FRS, FRGS (8 June 1821 – 30 December 1893) was an English explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist. He also held the titles of Pasha and Major-General in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. He served as the Governor-General of the Equatorial Nile Basin (today's South Sudan and Northern Uganda) between April 1869 and August 1873, which he established as the Province of Equatoria. He is mostly remembered as the discoverer of Lake Albert, as an explorer of the Nile and interior of central Africa, and for his exploits as"