John Hanning 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
Unyamwezi would be held at Tabora, then sent down to the coast in small groups for onward shipment. The first Europeans to reach the region were Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, who had been sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and the British government to investigate the great Lake Uniamési said by German missionaries to lie in the region and determine if it was the source of the Nile. Burton and Speke reached Zanzibar on 20 December 1857, visited Johannes Rebmann (who had reported the lake) at his Kisuludini mission station, and paid a visit to Fuga, capital of