John Hanning Speke and Richard Francis Burton survived a disastrous first expedition to Somalia in 1855, despite receiving multiple stab wounds. Two years later, driven by curiosity and hope, they returned to Africa intent on discovering the source of the Nile River. According to the book, explorers throughout history share seven key traits: curiosity, hope, passion, courage, independence, self-discipline, and perseverance. The book uses the story of Burton and Speke's expeditions as a framework to examine these traits in various explorers through time. It highlights how Speke displayed these traits to continue exploring alone after Burton withdrew, ultimately discovering Lake Victoria and the source of the Nile.

1. It was no small miracle that John
Hanning Speke survived his first expedition
with Richard Francis Burton. On April
19, 1855, Speke fled down a Somali beach
loosing blood from eleven stab wounds,
one of which had passed through his right
thigh into the ground. Burton fared slightly
better; he extracted a long spear from his
face, through one side of his mouth and out
the other cheek. The Somaliland Expedition
ended in ignominy because on that idyllic
Indian Ocean night neither Burton nor Speke
had remembered to post sentries. Their
careers in exploration appeared to be over.
Yet two years later, the two explorers were
back in Africa to find the source of the Nile.
Why in God’s name would Jack Speke, who
barely survived his first trip with the bad boy
of Victorian exploration, sign up for years
of dysentery, parasites, malaria, and tribal
attacks?
According to Martin Dugard, in his
new book The Explorers: A Story of
Fearless Outcasts, Blundering Geniuses,
and Impossible Success, curiosity led Speke
and Burton into the interior of Africa, and
hope kept them moving. Until, that is, they
reached Lake Tanganyika, at which point
Richard Burton had had quite enough
of Africa. He was so palsied with fever
that he could not stand unassisted. Speke
could not see Lake Tanganyika because he
was blinded from burned retinas. Burton
retreated to the nearest slave-trading hub
to recuperate but Jack Speke, blind at times
and hard of hearing—he had punctured his
inner ear stabbing a beetle that had camped
inside—marched north to discoverer an
enormous lake, Victoria Nyanza. Why did
Speke soldier on? Because he possessed not
only curiosity and hope but all seven of
the traits that Dugard posits are common
to explorers: curiosity, hope, passion,
courage, independence, self-discipline and
perseverance. Not only must explorers have
all seven traits, the author maintains that
it is crucial they “display them in specific
order over the course of a journey. Take
away one—just one—and an expedition
was doomed to failure.” The Kirkus
Review called Dugard’s seven traits theory
a “gratuitous hook” that nearly ruins a fine
adventure story. I disagree. The Explorers
is not simply another book in the crowded
Burton-Speke canon, but an examination of
explorers’ motivation through the ages, from
the first lone African who walked out of the
Olduvai Gorge a half million years ago to
the Apollo moon landing. Dugard employs
the story of Burton and Speke as a loose
framing device, so loose in fact that the book
is in large part a digression into the tales of
other explorers. A chapter on each trait—
curiosity, hope, passion, courage, et al—gives
Dugard carte blanche to bring in any number
of wickedly interesting adventurers.
For example: we leave Burton and Speke
at the beginning of the chapter on hope
and during their 50-page absence meet
St. Brendan the Navigator, the Egyptian
Hannu, Christopher Columbus, Captain
James Cook, and the amazing Isabel Godin.
In the mid-1700s, Isabel walked from the
equatorial Andes to French Guiana, over
mountains, through jungles, seven days
naked with no supplies, the only survivor of
her 43-person entourage, to join her beloved
husband. It is the true outliers, like Isabel
and Ewart Grogan that make The Explorers
a gripping read.
Ewart Grogan is fittingly found in the
chapter on passion. He walked from Cape
Town to Cairo, 1897 to 1900, to prove his
mettle to his future father in law. We also
rejoin Burton and Speke and the inception
of their feud over the source of the Nile.
Burton claimed Lake Tanganyika was the
source. The moment he stood on its shores,
Jack Speke was convinced that Lake Victoria
was the source of the Nile. The feud became
an international sensation and spawned the
Victorian version of a media feeding frenzy.
In the hands of a lesser author, linking the
two intrepid explorers with a theory of traits
that explain the human urge to explore could
come off as pretentious, but Dugan’s passion
for explorers carries the reader with him.
That said, the author expands his hypotheses
into pop psychology and the reader might
find this just a tiny bit gratuitous.
Publisher Simon & Schuster is pitching
The Explorers with “Learn to unlock your
inner explorer.” The book claims that “there
is an explorer within each of us, silently
longing” to put curiosity, hope, passion,
courage, independence, self-discipline, and
perseverance to good use “to climb our own
personal Everest.” Has Dugard twisted one
of the richest sagas of the Victorian Age of
Exploration into psychobabble? Not at all.
His suppositions about our inner explorers
provide bookends for hundreds of riveting
pages—take them to heart or leave them
in the dust of a good read. The author’s
forays into brain chemistry, however, are
like interrupting ripping good yarns with
science lessons. Please, for the sections on
passion and courage in particular, do not
mention dopamine; let us keep our heads in
the clouds.
Speaking of which, Dugard’s claim that
“modern readers can thank mountaineers”
for lifting exploration writing from dry
reportage to poetic literature is followed
by what he calls the “defining climbing
quotation” of all time. It is George Mallory’s
brilliant page-long answer to the “Why climb
Everest?” question. (He later condensed his
answer into a sound bite for the New York
Times: “Because it is there.”) Mallory is
in good company with inspiring passages
from French climbers Lionel Terray, Louis
Lachenal and Gaston Rebuffat. Readers
who feel compelled to read fascinating
little known facts aloud should be warned:
The Explorers contains hundreds of them,
enough to send your partner running for
cover.
This fine writer circles effortlessly back
to Burton and Speke. The outcome of their
feud sent shock waves through the Victorian
world. Of that redoubtable pair—Richard
Burton, the dark and difficult hedonist
and Jack Speke, an ordinary man who
accomplished extraordinary things—it
is Speke whom Dugard holds up as the
“epitome of an explorer.”
The Explorers:
A Story of Fearless Outcasts, Blundering
Geniuses, and Impossible Success
Martin Dugard. Simon & Schuster, 288 pages (available in the Mazama library)
Review by Lacy Turner
12—Mazama Bulletin