David Livingstone many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds to further explore Africa. Nevertheless, John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard Thornton, the scientists appointed to work under Livingstone, did contribute large collections of botanical, ecological, geological, and ethnographic material to scientific Institutions in the United Kingdom. In January 1866, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar, and from there he set out to seek the source of the Nile. Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Samuel Baker had identified either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria as the source (which was partially correct, as the
John Hanning Speke tried to remove it with a knife. Unable to rent the larger vessel from the Arab, Speke returned. The pair were unable to explore Lake Tanganyika properly and they initially misunderstood that a river flowed out of it from the north side. A few weeks later Sidi Mubarak Bombay confirmed via locals that the river flowed into the lake; however, since neither man actually saw this river, this remained a source of speculation. They had also heard of a second lake to the north-east, and in May 1858, they decided to explore it on the way back to the coast.