Page 65 - Canadian Geographic

SOURCE OF THE NILE
Lake
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Speke claimed, but two — Lake Victoria (the aforementioned
Victoria Nyanza Lake) and Lake Albert, which are in turn fed by
two mighty rivers, the Kagera and the Semliki.
Before I made my Nile trip in 1996, I’d read Speke and the
Discovery of the Source of the Nile, Alexander Maitland’s gripping
1971 offi cial biography of Speke, which had made me want to
meet Maitland and discuss Speke’s source-of-the-Nile claim and
Sir Christopher Ondaatje during its legacy. When I fi nally had the chance to do so at length last
his 1996 journey to locate the summer, Maitland told me that, “In the 1960s, Speke’s claim to
Eldoret source of the Nile River. discovering the source of the Nile was still accepted without
question. It never occurred to me at that time that the hydro-
graphy of the White Nile [a tributary of the Nile proper] and its
K E N Y A sources needed to be re-investigated.”
Kisumu
Mount At approximately 6,700 kilometres, the Nile is the longest river
K K
K Keenynyn a in the world, but before 1858 the great geographical question
wasn’t “How long is it?” but “Where does all its water come
from?” In the course of centuries, Roman legionaries, Portuguese
Jesuits, adventurous Scots and erudite Frenchmen all tried to
solve this riddle. Herodotus quoted a story that the Nile rose from
two great equatorial lakes that in turn were fed by two snow-
NAIROBI capped mountains. Thus, following the European discovery of
E DDDDDDD
EHEHEHE two snow-capped mountains — Mount Kilimanjaro in 1848 and
Mount Kenya in 1849 — the Royal Geographical Society chose
Burton and Speke to lead an expedition to fi nd the Nile’s source.
Their journey is the stuff of Victorian-era exploration leg-
end — a caravan of about 20 porters and an escort of local
soldiers, plus sickness, desertion, arguments and seemingly
G ET I
petty impositions by chiefs — but it did result in Speke
becoming the fi rst European to reach Lake Victoria and mak-
I N
ing his claim, which many of his peers disputed, Burton ridi-
culed and the Royal Geographical Society eventually accepted.
Mount But nearly 50 years after his biography of Speke was pub-
Kilimanjaro
lished, Maitland wonders whether the explorer had private
doubts about his own claim. “Today, technology and satellite
Lake
M M
Lake Maanyaranyaran photography enable us to view the region in great detail.
E E Obviously, these weren’t available to Speke in the 1860s, nor to
Eyasi yasi
me in 1965, when I began my research for his biography. Only
Babati some years later was my attention drawn to an intriguing note,
one of 78 handwritten corrections in Speke’s own copy of his
book What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. It
revealed that he had wondered about the signifi cance of the
Kagera River. Perhaps with all the knowledge available to me
today, I should rewrite Speke’s biography — it would be a fas-
cinating experience.”
I urge Maitland to do this. It would allow him to present a
complete biography of one of the Victorian era’s greatest explor-
Ma
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Ma y y y y y y yonioni ers and explain to a whole new generation of geographers and
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historians the true mystery of the source of the Nile.
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Explore an interactive version of the map that
Bagam
Bagamooyo
appears on these pages at cangeo.ca/ma18/nile.
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CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC
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