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
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