Henry Morton Stanley's first trans-Africa exploration 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
John Hanning Speke Grant reached Gondokoro in Southern Sudan, where he met Samuel Baker and his "wife". (Her name was Florence von Sass and she had been rescued by Baker from a slave market in Vidin during a hunting trip in Bulgaria.) Speke had expected to meet John Petherick and his wife Katherine at Gondokoro, as they had been sent by the RGS south along the Nile to meet Speke and Grant. However the Pethericks were not there but on a side expedition to trade ivory, as they had run out of funds for their expedition. This caused some hard feelings between Pethrick