By July 1858, the English explorer John Hanning Speke had been in Africa for 18 months. His eyes and body were weakened by fever, and he still hadn’t found what he set out to discover – the source of the River Nile.
Squinting through the heat on July 30, however, he spotted a body of water, about four miles away, surrounded by grass and jungle. At first, he could see only a small creek, flanked by lush fertile land used for growing crops and grazing by local people. But he pressed onward, dragging a reluctant donkey through jungle and over dried-up streams.
It wasn’t until August 3 that he could comprehend the full size of the lake. After winding up a gradual hill near Mwanza, located in the north of modern-day Tanzania, Speke was finally able to see a “vast expanse” of “pale-blue” water. He gazed on the lake’s islands and could see the outline of hills in the distance. Speke was arrested by the “peaceful beauty” of the scene. At the same time he was excited – he was convinced that this lake was what he’d been looking for. He was right. The Nile is the lake’s only outlet, and the huge body of water – now known as Lake Victoria – is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake.
