Lake Victoria Lake Victoria Lake Victoria (' in Luo; ' in Uganda; "" in Kinyarwanda and some Bantu languages) is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named after Queen Victoria by the explorer John Hanning Speke, the first Briton to document it. Speke accomplished this in 1858, while on an expedition with Richard Francis Burton to locate the source of the Nile River. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second largest fresh water lake by surface area after Lake Superior in North
Sidi Mubarak Bombay slave in India many years and learned Hindi. He was emancipated after his owner died, and returned to Africa. In Africa, Bombay met John Hanning Speke, who asked him to join his expedition to find the source of the Nile River. Bombay and Speke communicated with each other in Hindi, as it was the only language both of them understood. Bombay was well regarded by the British explorers; in the words of Burton, "The gem of the party, however, is one Sidi Mubarak, who has taken to himself the agnomen of 'Bombay.'" Between 1856 and 1876, Bombay participated in expeditions