Dowlish Wake home of the family of John Hanning Speke who took part in three expeditions to Central Africa from 1854-1862, the last two in search of the source of the Nile. He discovered Lake Victoria and maintained that it was the source of the White Nile. On his third expedition, Speke identified Ripon Falls, the outlet of Lake Victoria, as the source of the Nile; this was confirmed by Henry Morton Stanley in a later expedition. Speke was killed in Neston Park in Wiltshire by his own gun while hunting with his cousin on 18 September 1864; Dr David Livingstone and
Hamites language, culture, and much of their physiognomy as they intermarried with the local Bantus. The British explorer John Hanning Speke recorded one such account from a Wahuma governor in his book, "Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile". According to Augustus Henry Keane, the Hima King Mutesa I also claimed Oromo (Galla) ancestors and still reportedly spoke an Oromo idiom, though such Hamitic-Semitic language had long since died out elsewhere in the region. The missionary R. W. Felkin, who had met the ruler, remarked that Mutesa "had lost the pure Mhuma features through admixture of Negro blood,