SPEKE, JOHN an African traveler, was born near Bideford, Devonshire, in May, 1827; was educated at the Barnstaple grammar-school, and at the age of 1'i went to India. He entered the native Bengal infantry as a cadft, and saw much service dur ing the war in the Punjab. A keen sportsman, with a taste forThatural history, he employed his rifle with success in collecting for the museums specimens of the rarer mammals and birds of India, and with this view he undertook several exploratory trips into the Himalayas. It was while so employed that he first conceived the idea of becoming an African traveler. The English government had resolved, in 1854, to dispatch an. expedition from Aden into the neighboring region of Africa, under the command of rapt. Burton (q.v.). Speke, then a lieut. in the Indian army, reached Aden at this time, on kave of absence, and resolved to join Burton and his companions. lients. Herne and Stroyan. Burton went to Harar; and Speke was detached to visit the Dalbahantas, the most warlike of the Somauli tribes. On the return of the travelers to their starting-point on the coast, they were attacked by 150 men. Stroyan was killed, and Speke made a narrow escape with 11 wounds. The attention of the geographical society of London had now been called to the subject of the great lakes of tropical Africa; and in June, 1857, they dispatched Burton and Speke. These travelers entered
the country from Zammebar, as the German missionaries Krapf and Rebmann had done in- 1S47, and discovered the great lake Tanganyika. The details of their dis coveries till they reached Gondokoro, in Mar., 1863, are given in the article NILE. Speke and Grant had passed through the very heart of what remained of the terra incognita of eastern Africa. On their return to England they met with an enthusiastic reception, to winch they were well entitled, as two of the most daring and successful of modern explorers; although, perhaps, some of Spoke's most enthusiastic friends have gone too far in claiming for him is place above other travelers as " the discoverer" of the sources of the Nile. On Sept. 15, 1861, Speke was killed by a gun-accident while out shooting in the neighborhood of Bath, to which he had come to be present at a meeting of the British association.—Speke is the ant hor of a Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, and What led to the Discovery of the Source of the