The Adventurous Lives of the Great Explorers [antikvár]

John Manning Speke had a burning belief that he had solved one of the oldest mysteries of Darkest Africa. Risking ridicule and contempt he made his way back to prove his point. . . T Ihe sun was burning into (he young Englishman's skin with such ficrce, scalding pain thai he wanted to lie down and scream. Thirst seemed long ago to have bleached the last drop of moisture from his mouth and throat, and planted there a tongue (hat felt like cracked parchment. Weariness had hours since set trembling each nerve and muscle in his body till his every step was a separate agony. A glance at his companion in that cruel cauldron uf burning Africa, reinforced his will (o keep going. 'Tm hanged if Til complain,*' he thought. ''If he can stay the pace, so shall I!'' John Hanning Speke had already called on his body for too many reserves of stamina, hut now he demanded extra. Though he disliked the discomfort, he disliked his companion, the fiery-tempered and arrogant explorer, Richard Francis Burton, even more. The two men were in Somalia, and this was Spckc's first experience of Africa - the Dark Continent, as it was known then in 1854 -but it was an experience for which Spckc himself had pleaded. That was one of the reasons why he would show no sign of his personal torment. The two men already had seen too many hardships that few others would have survived. They had stalked warily through waving savannah in which lurked deadly beasts of frm