Friday, April 22, 2016

What Really Happened To John Henning Speke.

This is a copy of the diary of Major Reginald “Reg” Mucker-Mafic, Royal Geographic Society found by my grandfather Isadore in 1916:

“17 September, 1864: Burton, Speke are GREAT LIARS! The day after the scheduled debate at the British Society, I went to the cellar to find a bottle of amontillado, and to my surprise found Sidi Mubarak Bombay sprawled on the floor, semi incoherent, a bottle of gin at his side. I went to help him get up, but he grabbed me by the collar, and begged me to listen to his besotted confession. He claimed that on their first voyage, Burton and Speke had attempted to enter the region west of Victoria Nyanza, where they had observed strange lights in the evening sky. This is his story:
'The porters and I warned them not to pursue that plan, but they insisted. They sent out two scouting parties that never returned, and so they decided to scout the area themselves. After days of preparation, on the scheduled day of departure, Burton, unsettled by the rumors he heard from the porters about a great and powerful kingdom that permitted no outsiders to enter, claimed illness and fell into his cot with a fever. Mad Speke on the other hand, buoyed by the rumors and strange unnatural phenomena we had observed on our approach decided to press on. I left a couple of men behind to tend Burton in his illness, and set off with Speke at a bruising pace. We travelled through a sun blasted country, devoid of flora and fauna, like nothing man had ever seen. The strange lights increased in frequency until they could be seen at all hours of the day. Speke’s madness seemed to increased every mile, so that on the third day, he was no longer muttering under his breath, but cursing the sky on each step in agonized screams. He started to drop and destroy his equipment, and it was all I could do to get the porters to gather the pieces and carry the extra load. Finally, as the sun set on that third day, a strange vibration could be felt on the ground. The vibration was strong enough to make the pebbles on the ground dance weirdly. It was impossible to rest. Taking matters in my own hands, I struck the now almost insensate Speke on the crown with my rifle butt. I had the porters drop the measuring equipment, pick up Speke in a carefully made up litter, and we reversed our course back to Burton’s camp before we met our doom in the inhospitable hinterlands. We never circled Victoria Nyanza on the western shore. It was impossible. When Speke and Grant tried the same, the result was not different. This is a great deception of which I am terribly ashamed and I will speak to no one else about.'

I am committing this confession to my diary. Obviously, the influence on Speke’s mind of the unnatural phenomena of the region and the strain of having to live a lie proved too much, and goes far in explaining Speke’s “hunting accident.” Of Burton, we know he was never trusted again, or commissioned with any position of value or responsibility for the rest of his life.”

Major Mucker-Mafic mysteriously disappeared one month after this diary entry was made. Only fragments of his diary have ever been found, scattered among the belongings of contemporary members of the British Society Of The Advancement Of Science.

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