John Hanning Speke 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
John Hanning Speke Kazeh was started with 152 porters; both men had to return as their military leaves were coming to and end although Jeal contends that they could have extended the trip by asking for an extension as their clear mission statement of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) was to find the source of the Nile. The expedition had lost a great many people through desertions, disease and hostilities but in Kazeh, on the return journey, Mabruki had recruited local porters. Again Speke and Burton suffered from severe illnesses and had to be carried in a litter (machilla) by the porters some