have had sexual relations with both of them, before handing over the youngest (whom he named 'Kahala') to another man. Speke fell in love with the elder girl, 'Meri', according to his diaries (which were redacted when they were published as books later). While Meri proved loyal to Speke and fulfilled her task at being a "wife" to him as commanded by the Queen Mother, Speke was distressed because he thought she had no love or deep attachment to him. He "divorced her on the spot" in April 1862 after she defied his orders regarding the sacrifice of a goat. Whilst Meri visited Speke several times after this incident, the couple did not reconcile. Speke claimed to have tried to arrange a better relationship for Meri with another man, without success it seems. Finally, given permission by Muteesa in June 1862 to leave, Speke then travelled down the Nile now reunited with Grant. Because of travel restrictions placed by the local chieftains, slave raiding parties, tribal wars and the difficulty of the terrain, Speke was not able to map the entire flow of the Nile from Lake Victoria north. Why he did not make more efforts to do so is not clear, but the enormous hardships of the journey must have played a large role. By January 1863 Speke and Grant reached Gondokoro in Southern Sudan, where he met Samuel Baker and his "wife". (Her name was Florence von Sass and she had been rescued by Baker from a slave market in Vidin during a hunting trip in Bulgaria.) Speke had expected to meet John Petherick and his wife Katherine at Gondokoro, as they had been sent by the RGS south along the Nile to meet Speke and Grant. However the Pethericks were not there but on a side expedition to trade ivory, as they had run out of funds for their expedition. This caused some hard feelings between Petherick and Speke, and Baker played into this so he could assume a greater role as an explorer and co-discoverer of the Nile. Speke, via Baker's ship, then continued to Khartoum from which he sent a celebrated telegram to London: "The Nile is settled." Speke's expedition did not resolve the issue, however. Burton claimed that because Speke had not followed the Nile from the place it flowed out of Lake Victoria to Gondokoro, he could not be sure they were the