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
John Hanning Speke his death appeared in "The Times": An inquest concluded that the death was accidental, a conclusion supported by his only biographer Tim Jeal, though the idea of suicide has appealed to some. Bearing in mind, however, that the fatal wound was just below Speke's armpit, suicide seems most unlikely. Burton, however, could not set aside his own strong dislike of Speke and was vocal in spreading the idea of a suicide, claiming that Speke feared the debate. Speke was buried in Dowlish Wake, Somerset, five miles away from the ancestral home of the Speke family. In 1874–1877, Henry Stanley mounted