I have come to the definite conclusion that I enjoy reading books about explorers much more than I enjoy books by explorers. Speke spent the first 170 pages complaining about Africans — the porters he hired who kept deserting with his goods and the petty chiefs whose land he entered who kept demanding gifts. A rare paragraph briefly covered the culture or the wildlife, and then Speke got back to his whining. This, plus the endless recitation of names of small villages and small chiefs with no maps or other guide to help me keep track, convinced me to quit wasting my time.

It read very much like Stanley's Through the Dark Continent. What is needed, if it hasn't already been done, is for somebody to go through both books, make decent maps and then concisely tell the stories of the two trips in a single book of about 250 pages without all the whining.