CHAPTER, XXIX. 



PREVIOUS GREAT CONTROVERSIES OF EXPLORERS. 



The Cook-Peary controversy, though it bids fair to be the most famous 

 of the great contests of history, because of the startling facts at issue, has 

 aroused no greater bitterness than did several previous agitations of the kind. 

 Fifty years ago something similar aroused all those interested in exploration. 

 It lasted for years, with ever-increasing bitterness of feeling on both sides, and 

 was not definitely settled until long after one of the principals had died. 



This was the famous dispute between Sir Richard Francis Burton and Capt. 

 John Hanning Speke as to the source of the river Nile. Burton claimed that the 

 great stream rose in Lake Tanganyika, of which he was the discoverer. Speke, 

 Qjl the other hand, declared that Lake Victoria Nyanza, which he had first 

 seen, was the river's source. 



Speke was right. After mo'st acrimonious disputing, the question, already 

 half decided in his favor, was answered once for all by Henry M. Stanley, who, 

 having thoroughly explored the shores of Tanganyika, showed that it was 

 connected, not with the Nile, but with the Congo system. 



When Speke first came out in open contradiction to Burton, it seemed as 

 if he had undertaken a hopeless job. He was merely a young officer, while 

 Burton was already making himself known as one of the most daring, original, 

 and versatile men that ever lived. Before his journey to Lake Tanganyika he 

 had won world-wide fame by one of the most audacious exploits ever recorded. 

 Profiting by his remarkable knowledge of Oriental languages, he had, some 

 years before, disguised as an Afghan doctor, penetrated to the sacred Moham- 

 medan cities of Mecca and Medina, where detection by the Mohammedan pil- 

 grims would have meant instant assassination. 



This Mecca pilgrimage took place in 1855, when Burton was 34 years old. 

 In October, 1856, having succeeded in interesting influential Englishmen in the 

 exploration of unknown portions of Africa, Burton, then a captain in the 

 British army, sailed from home for Zanzibar with Speke, whom he had first 

 met as an officer of the Anglo-Indian troops garrisoning Aden, on the Red Sea. 



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