Ripon Falls Ripon Falls Ripon Falls at the northern end of Lake Victoria in Uganda was formerly considered the source of the river Nile. In 1862–3 John Hanning Speke was the first European to follow the course of the Nile downstream after discovering the falls that his intuition had marked as the source of the Nile. The water from Ripon Falls falls into a narrow opening and that is where some people believe the River Nile starts. He named the falls after George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon. The Falls functioned as a natural outlet for Lake Victoria, until in 1954 the
Burton and Speke (novel) Burton and Speke (novel) Burton and Speke is a 1982 historical novel by William Harrison recounting the 1857 expedition of the search for the source of the Nile by the famous Victorian explorer, linguist and anthropologist Sir Richard Burton and English aristocrat and amateur hunter John Hanning Speke. The book was adapted for film in 1990 by Harrison and director Bob Rafelson. Although both Burton and Speke were former military officers the expedition they agreed to undertake together was, according to the author, fated to be disastrous for them both, despite their ultimate success. They had no common bond, apart