Samuel Baker

In 1864 the English explorer Samuel White Baker (1821-1893) became the first European to sight Lake Albert Nyanza (now Lake Mobutu Sese Seko) in Central Africa and to discover that the Nile flows through it.

He founded an agricultural colony in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), built a railway across the Dobruja, and in 1861 set out to discover the source of the Nile. His wife, Florence von Sass, accompanied him. From 1869 to 1873 he was governor-general of the Nile equatorial regions, suppressing the Arab slave trade and opening up the lake areas to commerce.

Photographed by John Mayall of London and Brighton.