Both were fearless and ambitious, but they had little else in common.īurton was a scholar and an adventurer - the first Englishman to travel to the forbidden city of Mecca (disguised as a Muslim), a linguist who spoke 25 languages, and a translator who would one day bring the Kama Sutra and “Arabian Nights” to a vast audience of titillated, scandalized Victorians. Speke was a skilled surveyor and geographer, Burton an astonishingly gifted linguist.
It would not come easy.īurton, six years older than Speke and more experienced, was the expedition leader. Filling in that tantalizing blank on the map would represent a genuine contribution to knowledge as well.
The search for the Nile’s headwaters was not simply a chase for fame and glory, though it was that.
Candice Millard, formerly a National Geographic writer and editor and the author of a gripping book about Teddy Roosevelt’s adventures in South America, has here plunged into another tale of exploration at the edge of disaster. The two men had set out, in 1857, to find the source of the Nile. “River of the Gods” is a lean, fast-paced account of the almost absurdly dangerous quest by those two friends turned enemies, Richard Burton and John Speke, to solve the geographic riddle of their era. Better yet, give us two Victorian rivals in East Africa, supposed colleagues who were consumed with hate for each other, weak from fever, half-starved and half-blind but nonetheless obsessed with solving a mystery that had mocked the world for 2,000 years. Give us a ship trapped in the ice or desperate wanderers sitting down to a meal of frozen boot. No reader wants to hear of well-made plans or sunsets that paint the sky in glorious reds and purples. The first law of travelers’ tales is simply put: the worse, the better. RIVER OF THE GODS: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, by Candice Millard
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