LTBP newsletter-Lakeside/Au Bord du Lac - Vol. 1 No. 1, 1999.
Though the riparian communities must have admired Lake Tanganyika’s beauty and depended upon it for freshwater, protein (from a fish-based diet), and regional transportation for centuries, the rest of the world first heard news of Lake Tanganyika when Richard Burton and John Speke set eyes upon it, on 13 February 1858. After travelling from Zanzibar eight months by boat and by foot, and facing
desertion by most of their porters, disastrous weather, attacks from hostile tribes, shortage of money, exhaustion, malaria, loss of an
expedition member to crocodiles, and ill health, Speke being temporarily blinded and Burton rendered mute and unable to eat owing
to abcesses in his mouth, Burton, setting eyes upon the lake, wrote in his diary, “Nothing, in sooth, could be more picturesque than
this first view of the Tanganyika Lake, as it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine...Forgetting
toils, dangers, and the doubtfulness of return, I felt willing to endure double what I had endured.”
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