After abortive starts, the expedition left Zanzibar on June 27, 1857. Guides like Bombay, Millard argues persuasively, formed the indisputable backbone of British exploration. Drawing on archival sources and her own multiple trips to Africa following the explorers’ paths, Millard creates a palpable sense of the daunting task undertaken by three ambitious men: the magnetic, impulsive, and often combative Richard Burton John Hanning Speke, an aristocratic infantry lieutenant and passionate hunter whose initial interest in East Africa was largely for the animals he could kill and their devoted and resourceful native guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a former enslaved person whose intimate knowledge of tribes and terrain proved to be indispensable.
Bestselling author Millard, a former writer and editor for National Geographic, offers a tense, vibrant history of several dramatic expeditions across East Africa that finally resulted in a successful discovery. The Rosetta Stone-discovered by French soldiers in 1799, seized by a British envoy, and deciphered 23 years later-set off an obsessive interest in Egypt, including by the newly established Royal Geographical Society, to find the headwaters of the Nile.
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