Editing John Hanning Speke (section)

===Second journey to the source of the Nile, 1860-1861===
Together with [[James Augustus Grant]], Speke left Portsmouth on 27 April 1860 and departed from [[Zanzibar]] in October 1860. The expedition approached the lake from the south west but Grant was often sick and was not able to travel with Speke much of the time.  As during the first trip, in this period of history, Arab slave traders had created an atmosphere of great distrust towards any foreigners entering central Africa, and most tribes either fled or fought when encountering them as they assumed all outsiders to be potential slavers. Lacking a great deal of guns and soldiers, the only thing the expedition could do was make peace offerings to locals, and both men were severely delayed and their supplies depleted by demands for gifts and passage fees by smaller local chieftains. After numerous months of delays Speke reached Lake Victoria on 28 July 1862, and then travelled on the west side around [[Lake Victoria]] but only seeing it from time to time; but on the north side of the lake, Speke found the [[Nile]] flowing out of it and discovered the [[Ripon Falls]].<ref name="Jeal2011"/> 

[[File:Speke-Grant-1864.jpg|thumb|Speke introduces Grant to the Queen-Dowager of [[Uganda]]]]
Local Church Missionary Society records indicate that Speke fathered a daughter whilst staying at the court of [[Muteesa I of Buganda|Muteesa I]] the [[Kabaka of Buganda|Kabaka]] (or King) of [[Buganda]]. Whilst staying at the court Speke was given two girls aged about 12 and 18 from the entourage of the Queen Mother. Speke appears to have had sexual relations with both of them, before handing over the youngest (whom he named 'Kahala') to another man.<ref name=LastBlankSpaces>{{Cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Dane|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674074972|title=The Last Blank Spaces|date=2013|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-07497-2|pages=196–198|doi=10.4159/harvard.9780674074972}}</ref> Speke fell in love with the elder girl, 'Meri', according to his diaries (which were redacted when they were published as books later).<ref name="Jeal2011"/> While Meri proved loyal to Speke and fulfilled her task at being a "wife" to him as commanded by the Queen Mother, Speke was distressed because he thought she had no love or deep attachment to him. He "divorced her on the spot" in April 1862 after she defied his orders regarding the sacrifice of a goat.<ref name=LastBlankSpaces/> Whilst Meri visited Speke several times after this incident, the couple did not reconcile. Speke claimed to have tried to arrange a better relationship for Meri with another man, without success it seems.<ref name="Jeal2011"/>

Finally, given permission by Muteesa in June 1862 to leave, Speke then travelled down the Nile now reunited with Grant. Because of travel restrictions placed by the local chieftains, slave raiding parties, tribal wars and the difficulty of the terrain, Speke was not able to map the entire flow of the Nile from Lake Victoria north.  Why he did not make more efforts to do so is not clear, but the enormous hardships of the journey must have played a large role. By January 1863 Speke and Grant reached [[Gondokoro]] in [[South Sudan|Southern Sudan]], where he met [[Samuel Baker]] and his "wife". (Her name was [[Florence Baker|Florence von Sass]] and she had been rescued by Baker from a slave market in Vidin during a hunting trip in Bulgaria.) Speke had expected to meet [[John Petherick]] and his wife Katherine at Gondokoro, as they had been sent by the RGS south along the Nile to meet Speke and Grant.<ref name="Jeal2011"/> However the Pethericks were not there but on a side expedition to trade ivory, as they had run out of funds for their expedition. This caused some hard feelings between Petherick and Speke, and Baker played into this so he could assume a greater role as an explorer and co-discoverer of the Nile.  Speke, via Baker's ship, then continued to [[Khartoum]] from which he sent a celebrated [[Telegraphy|telegram]] to London: "The Nile is settled."<ref name="RGS1863">{{Cite journal  | title = Twelfth Meeting, Monday Evening, 11 May 1869  | journal = Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London  | volume = 7  | issue = 3  | pages = 108–110  | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=3XwMAAAAIAAJ&q=telegram+speke&pg=PA109  | publisher =  Royal Geographical Society|location= London  | editor1-last = Galton|editor1-first = Sir Francis  | editor2-last= Spottiswoode|editor2-first = William  | editor3-last= Markham|editor3-first = Sir Clements Robert  | year = 1863}}</ref>

Speke's expedition did not resolve the issue, however. Burton claimed that because Speke had not followed the Nile from the place it flowed out of Lake Victoria to Gondokoro, he could not be sure they were the same river.<ref name="Burton1864">{{Cite journal  | last = Burton  | first = R. F.| author-link1 =Richard Francis Burton  | title = Lake Tanganyika, Ptolemy's Western Lake-Reservoir of the Nile  | journal = Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London  | volume = 9  | issue = 1  | pages = 6–14  | date = 14 November 1864  | doi = 10.2307/1799295  | publisher = Blackwell Publishing  | jstor = 1799295 }}</ref>

Baker and Florence, meanwhile, stayed in Gondokoro and tried to settle the flow of the river from there to Lake Victoria by traveling south. They eventually, after tremendous hardships, such as being wracked by fevers and held up by rulers for months on end, found [[Lake Albert (Uganda)|Lake Albert]] and the [[Murchison Falls]].<ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=42346|first=Dorothy|last= Middleton|title=Baker, Florence Barbara Maria, Lady Baker (1841–1916) |author-link=Dorothy Middleton}}</ref>