Five Weeks in a Balloon the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern-day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern-day Central African Republic as a desert,
John Hanning Speke "race" comprised many tribes, including the Watusi (Tutsi). Speke described their physical appearances as having retaineddespite the hair-curling and skin-darkening effects of intermarriage"a high stamp of Asiatic feature, of which a marked characteristic is a bridged instead of bridgeless nose". Two species of African reptiles are named in his honor: Speke's hinge-back tortoise, "Kinixys spekii"; and Speke's sand lizard, "Heliobolus spekii". Two species of antelope are named in his honor; "Tragelaphus spekii" and "Gazella spekei". The film "Mountains of the Moon" (1990), starring Scottish actor Iain Glen as Speke, related the story of the Burton-Speke controversy, portrayed as having been