European arrival at Lake Tanganyika
Llegada europea al lago Tanganica
- Date
- 13 de febrero de 1858 · confidence high
- Place
- Ujiji, Kigoma, Tanzania
- Credited to
- Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
An expedition from Zanzibar following the Arab caravan route to Ujiji, on the shore of a long, deep lake that Burton and Speke recognised as the head of the western Rift. It is the world's second-deepest lake.
A discovery only for Europeans: Swahili and Arab traders and riparian peoples knew it. Burton, ill, did not see Lake Victoria, which Speke found afterwards.
What it led to
- Speke went on to Lake Victoria and the sources of the Nile
- Livingstone and Stanley at Ujiji (1871)
- mapping of the Great Lakes and the slave and ivory trade routes