Ripon Falls construction of Owen Falls Dam was completed, effectively extending Lake Victoria and submerging Ripon Falls. (See p. 694.) Ripon Falls Ripon Falls at the northern end of Lake Victoria in Uganda was formerly considered the source of the river Nile. In 1862–3 John Hanning Speke was the first European to follow the course of the Nile downstream after discovering the falls that his intuition had marked as the source of the Nile. The water from Ripon Falls falls into a narrow opening and that is where some people believe the River Nile starts. He named the falls after George Robinson,
Jakob Erhardt then in the "Church Missionary intelligencer" in 1856. The map was reproduced with commentary in other publications. The reports of snow on mounts Kilimanjaro and Kenya, near to the equator, caused considerable controversy. The map caused the British government and the Royal Geographical Society to hire Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke to investigate the great lake, or lakes, and determine if they were the source of the Nile. The map came to be known as the "slug map" from the shape of the Uniamesi or Niassa inland sea. Burton called it the Mombas Mission Map. Erhardt worked in