GEOGRAPHY AND EAST AFRICA 199 



data from which it was constructed made it clear 

 that an exploration of those regions would be a 

 highly promising undertaking. I myself had been 

 strongly urged to investigate the neighbourhood of 

 Kilimandjaro, but felt insufficiently restored to health 

 to undertake the task. An expedition was at length 

 set on foot in 1856 under the command of Captain 

 Burton ( 182 1 -1890), with J. H. Speke (1827-1864) 

 as second, for which I myself drafted the instructions. 

 It accomplished great things, namely, the discovery of 

 the two lakes, Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza, but 

 at the painful cost of a serious breach of friendship 

 between its leaders. Burton was a man of eccentric 

 genius and tastes, orientalised in character and 

 thoroughly Bohemian. He was a born linguist, and 

 ever busy in collecting minute information as to 

 manners and habits. Speke, on the other hand, was 

 a thorough Briton, conventional, solid, and resolute. 

 Two such characters were naturally unsympathetic. 

 On reaching Tanganyika, Burton became seriously ill 

 and temporarily unfitted for travel ; his eyes, too, were 

 badly inflamed and gave him great trouble. Princi- 

 pally owing to Burton's restless spirit of inquiry, the 

 existence and position of the lake now known as the 

 Victoria Nyanza had been ascertained. Burton was 

 unable to go to it ; therefore Speke went as his deputy, 

 and so came upon what was suspected by him, and 

 has proved afterwards to be a headwater of the Nile. 

 Of course Speke got the credit, for without him the 

 lake would not have then been reached, but the dis- 

 appointment to Burton at being superseded in solving 

 the problem of ages by discovering the source of the 

 Nile was very bitter and very natural. Burton 



