Editing John Hanning Speke (section)

===Search for the Nile source 1856–1859===
[[File:BurtonExploration.png|thumb|300px|Routes taken by the expeditions of Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863)]]

In 1856, Speke and Burton went to [[East Africa]] to find the [[African Great Lakes|Great Lakes]], which were rumoured to exist in the centre of the continent. It was hoped that the expedition would locate the source of the Nile. The journey, which started from [[Unguja|Zanzibar Island]] in June 1857, where they stayed at the residence of [[Atkins Hamerton]], the British consul,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Moorehead |first1=Alan |title=The White Nile |pages=16–17|year=1960 |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |location=London}}</ref> was extremely strenuous and both men fell ill from a variety of [[tropical diseases]] once they went inland. Most of the day to day work of exploration was carried out by a large, diverse, and changing labour force of porters, soldiers, and guides, and cooks.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Armston-Sheret |first=Edward |date=2023-04-01 |title=Diversifying the historical geography of exploration: Subaltern body work on British-led expeditions c.1850–1914 |journal=Journal of Historical Geography |language=en |volume=80 |pages=58–68 |doi=10.1016/j.jhg.2023.02.004 |s2cid=257817700 |issn=0305-7488|doi-access=free }}</ref> 

By 7&nbsp;November 1857, they had traveled over 600 miles on foot and donkey and reached Kazeh ([[Tabora]]), where they rested and recuperated among [[Arab slave trade]]rs who had a settlement there. In Kazeh Burton became gravely ill and Speke went temporarily blind as they travelled further west. After an arduous journey, the two arrived in [[Ujiji]] in February 1858 and became the first [[White people|Europeans]] to reach [[Lake Tanganyika]] (although Speke was partially blind at this point and could not properly see the lake). They decided to explore the lake, but it was vast and they could get only small canoes from the locals.  Burton was too ill to journey, and thus Speke crossed the lake with a small crew and some canoes to try to rent a larger vessel from an Arab who, they were told, had a large boat and lived on the west side of the lake. (Lake Tanganyika is over 400 miles long on the north–south axis but only about 30 miles wide.) During this trip Speke, marooned on an island, suffered severely when he became temporarily deaf after a beetle crawled into his ear and he tried to remove it with a knife. Unable to rent the larger vessel from the Arab, Speke returned. The pair were unable to explore Lake Tanganyika properly and they initially misunderstood that a river flowed out of it from the north side. A few weeks later the explorer and guide [[Sidi Mubarak Bombay]] confirmed via locals that the river flowed into the lake; however, since neither man actually saw this river, this remained a source of speculation.<ref name="Jeal2011"/>