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 (182i-i890), 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. Principally 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got the credit, for without him the lake would not have then been reached, but the disappointment to Burton at being superseded in solving the problem of ages by discovering the source of the Nile was very bitter and very natural.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
