Nile (TV series) their mission Speke separated from the main party and discovered Lake Victoria. The vast lake retains water like a vast reservoir with evaporations drained back by surrounding mountains. Speke returned with James Grant a year later and discovered the outlet at Ripon Falls. The new moon rains trigger the emergence of vast breeding swarms of flies that plagued the expedition. Speke and Grant headed downstream from the outlet but were forced to take refuge at Gondokoro. Here they met with Samuel Baker and his wife who had travelled up stream in search of the source and discovered Lake Albert in
John Hanning Speke it was vast and they only could get small canoes from the locals. Burton was too ill to journey and thus Speke crossed the lake with a small crew and some canoes to try to rent a larger vessel from an Arab who, they were told, had a large boat and lived on the west side of the lake. (Lake Tanganyika is over 400 miles long on the north-south axis but only about 30 miles wide.) During this trip Speke, marooned on an island, suffered severely when he became temporarily deaf after a beetle crawled into his ear and he