East Africa Exploration
And there it was finally in 1874 John Hanning speke finding about Lake Victoria being the source of Nile was verified. Rippon falls in Uganda is the only source of River Nile.
 The greatest challenge of the 19th Century has been solved declared Sir. R. Murchison.
The Legacy and Heritage of British Geographical Exploration in East Africa
Tanzania, East Africa, is historically synonymous with epic geographic exploration and discovery. In 1858, British explorer John Hanning Speke, alongside Richard Francis Burton—both men originating from Devon—arrived in Zanzibar, entering mainland Tanzania through Bagamoyo. Their mission was among the great scientific quests of the nineteenth century: to locate the source of the River Nile.
After months of extreme hardship, they reached Lake Tanganyika on 14 February 1858. When Burton fell gravely ill, Speke pressed north alone. On 3 August 1858, he stood on the shores of Lake Victoria (then known as Victoria Nyanza) and declared it to be the Nile’s source.Speke was later commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to return and validate his findings. In 1862, he identified the lake’s northern outlet at Ripon Falls, confirming the hydrological link to the Nile. Yet skepticism persisted in London, and Speke died tragically in 1864—before his discovery could gain universal acceptance.Ten years after his death, a historic Anglo-American expedition sponsored jointly by the Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald sent Henry Morton Stanley to circumnavigate Lake Victoria. Aided by lady Alice and a 40-foot boat designed in sections that could be carried overland and bolted together. Morton circumnavigated the perimeter of Nile in 57 days and confirmed beyond doubt that Ripon Falls was indeed the Nile’s singular outlet—formally vindicating Speke’s theory.
Terry Blake and His Quest to Unearth the Mystiques of East Africa’s Geology in Tanzania
More than a century and a half later, history quietly echoed. In 2007, another British explorer from Devon—Terry Thomas Blake—arrived in northern Tanzania, first setting foot in Merelani near Arusha, where world’s only known occurrence of the rare Tanzanite Gemstone is found, near the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Blake was an entrepreneur and Devonshire land merchant with a deep passion for mining and a profound love for Tanzania.Â
 In 2008 he established operations in Singida, Central Tanzania hanging a simple sign: St. Clair Mines — Buying and Selling Gold. Two years later, he moved north to Tarime District, founding the Kerende Gold Project at Golden Glory. There, two quartzite shear zones—the Musoma and Mara structures—intersect at approximately 060 degrees, a geological
configuration associated with significant gold mineralization and concentration.
Kerende sits on the same prolific greenstone belt as the historic Old German Colonial Mine and Barrick Gold’s North Mara Mine that has over 4 million ounces of gold.
