290 PREVIOUS GREAT CONTROVERSIES 



Burton's main object, of course, was to belittle Speke's discovery of Vic- 

 toria Nyanza. He tried to show that that lake was of no special importance, 

 merely a network of swamps and small lakes, and was overjoyed when Samuel 

 Baker, on returning from his explorations subsequent to those of Speke and 

 Grant, claimed that the Victoria Nyanza was the ultimate source of the White 

 Nile, not of the main river. Burton maintained that the Rusizi River flowed 

 out of the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, instead of into that lake, hoping 

 thus to prove that connection existed between Tanganyika and Lake Albert. 

 If successful, he realized that his would materially reduce the importance of the 

 discovery of Victoria Nyanza. He even published a map to illustrate his 

 theory, and worked hard to make geographers agree with him. 



The argument in print finally became so fierce that a joint debate between 

 the two rivals was arranged, to take place at Bath, Sept. 15, 1864. Instead of 

 the debate, Bath saw an astonishing and impressive scene of quite a different 

 sort. 



"The great day arrived," says Thomas Wright, Burton's biographer, "and 

 no melodramatic author could have contrived a more startling, a more shocking 

 denouement. Burton, notes in hand, stood on the platform, facing the great 

 audience, his brain heavy with arguments, bursting with sesquipedalian and 

 sledge-hammer words, to pulverize his exasperating opponent. 



"The Council and other speakers filed in. The audience waited expectant. 

 To Burton's surprise, Speke was not there. 



"Silence having been obtained, the president advanced and made the thrill- 

 ing announcement that Speke was dead. He had accidentally shot himself 

 that very morning while out rabbiting. 



"Burton sank into his chair, the working of his face revealing the terrible 

 emotion he was controlling, and the shock he had received. When he got 

 home he wept like a child." 



Burton's emotion was not deep or lasting enough, however, to prevent him 

 from hinting that Speke had committed suicide, fearing to face him and his 

 arguments. He had absolutely no justification for such an assumption. His 

 very biographer, avowedly his partisan, wherever possible remarks, that "it 

 was eminently characteristic of Burton to make statements resting on insuffi- 

 cient evidence." 



But it was all useless. Speke was right and Burton wrong. In 1870, 

 Stanley terminated successfully his world-famous search for Livingstone by 

 finding the latter at Ujiji, in the Tanganyika region. Together the two ex- 



