The Source
Tuesday, May 2nd 2006
The search for the source of the river Nile can be summarized thus:
Richard Burton and John Speke started from Zanzibar, in search of a “great lake in the mountains of the moon”, from where the Nile was said to originate.
The Egyptians believed that Isis, the goddess of fertility, sister and wife to Osiris the god of the dead, sat at the headwaters of the Nile. Ptolemy, the Greek geographer, placed Isis roughly in the middle of the African content, a place with a large lake, surrounded by snow capped mountains. This two thousand year old Ptolemaic inaccuracy was the map guiding the two explorers.
They reached Lake Tanganyika, now in modern day Tanzania. On the way, Burton mowed down a few locals, and obsessively took “measurements” of the men of various tribes along the way (the measuring instruments he had perfected while serving in India). Speke, the more diplomatic one, coerced and bribed and also studied the flora and fauna. Burton was tall and built like a prize fighter. He carried deep scars on his cheeks, where once a Somali javelin had pierced him. Speke was shorter and deaf in one ear (a beetle had crawled in, and he had dug it out using a knife). They were buddies, on a casual first name basis ( “Dick” and “Jack”).
At Tanganyika, Burton fell ill and dropped out. Speke was going blind in one eye, but pushed further north with a small party, and reached what the locals knew as the “Sea of Ukwere”. He christened it Lake Victoria and promptly headed back to England, where he grandly announced the “discovery” of the Source of the Nile – Isis was unveiled. Until then Burton had been the famous adventurer, the man with machismo, but now found himself out of the limelight.
Speke was given funds to go on a longer exploratory trip. The slighted Burton made some noises that Speke was mistaken, and that the Nile really originated further south at Lake Tanganyika. Few people listened. He grew a long beard, and went on a sabbatical to Mormon mecca – Salt Lake City. Here Burton quoted the Ancient Mariner upon sighting another lake – the great Salt Lake – ‘Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink’. After expressing his admiration for the practice of polygamy among the Mormons, he sailed back to England and married a staunch Catholic.
Speke navigated the Nile, reached Lake Victoria and named the waterfalls near the source as “Ripon Falls” after the main backer of the trip -- a Lord Ripon (who would later go on to become a Governor General of British India). Speke returned from his successful second voyage – and Burton immediately challenged him to a one-on-one debate on the matter of the true Source. It was to be a “duel for the Nile”. But, while out shooting partridges, Speke accidentally shot himself. Burton quietly spread a devious rumor that Speke had in fact, committed suicide.
The source in Jinja has a concrete plaque indicating the spot where Speke stood gazing at Lake Victoria and the Nile. There is a neglected golf club next to it, in which the English writer Evelyn Waugh once drank a cup of tea and noted: “…the only course in the world which posts a special rule that the player may remove his ball from hippopotamus footprints….” The hippos and resident crocodiles drowned after a dam was built across the Nile in 1954 at Ripon falls.
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