Dowlish Wake home of the family of John Hanning Speke who took part in three expeditions to Central Africa from 1854-1862, the last two in search of the source of the Nile. He discovered Lake Victoria and maintained that it was the source of the White Nile. On his third expedition, Speke identified Ripon Falls, the outlet of Lake Victoria, as the source of the Nile; this was confirmed by Henry Morton Stanley in a later expedition. Speke was killed in Neston Park in Wiltshire by his own gun while hunting with his cousin on 18 September 1864; Dr David Livingstone and
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