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Nonfiction, Biography, History, Nature, Audiobook, Travel, Africa, Book Club, Historical, Adventure
Book
Hardcover
2022
Doubleday
English
052552407X
052552407X
9780525524076
PDF | EPUB
In the summer of 1857, two British explorers stood on the shores of Zanzibar, gazing westward toward the vast African interior. Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke were about to embark on one of history's most consequential expeditions - a journey to solve the ancient mystery of the Nile's source. This quest had tantalized minds since the time of Herodotus, but for Victorian Britain, it represented more than mere geographical curiosity. It was a prize that promised scientific glory, national prestige, and the advancement of imperial interests. The expedition would transform both men from obscure travelers into celebrated figures, before ultimately destroying their friendship in a bitter rivalry that would end in tragedy. Their story illuminates the complex intersection of science, imperialism, and personal ambition that defined the Victorian age of exploration. Through their journey, we witness how the "blank spaces" on African maps were filled not just with geographical features but with European assumptions, rivalries, and imperial designs. We see how exploration, presented as a noble scientific pursuit, often served as the vanguard of colonial expansion. Perhaps most importantly, we discover the forgotten African participants like Sidi Mubarak Bombay, whose crucial contributions were systematically erased from official narratives. For anyone interested in understanding how exploration shaped our modern world, how knowledge is produced and contested, and how personal rivalries can alter the course of history, this remarkable tale offers profound insights that resonate far beyond its nineteenth-century setting.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Britain stood at the zenith of its imperial power, with territories spanning the globe and a navy that dominated the world's oceans. Yet despite this global reach, vast portions of the African interior remained unknown to European cartographers. Maps of central Africa featured conspicuous blank spaces or were filled with speculative geography and illustrations of fantastical creatures. This ignorance was increasingly intolerable to Victorian sensibilities, which prized systematic knowledge and viewed unexplored territories as challenges to be overcome. The Royal Geographical Society, founded in 1830, made African exploration its primary mission, offering medals, funding, and fame to those brave enough to venture into the continent's heart. The quest for geographical knowledge was inseparable from Britain's imperial ambitions. As Sir Roderick Murchison, the influential president of the Royal Geographical Society, declared: "The geographer precedes the merchant, and the merchant precedes the soldier." Exploration provided intelligence about potential resources, trade routes, and strategic advantages that could later be exploited for colonial purposes. It also aligned with humanitarian concerns about the East African slave trade, which many Britons hoped to suppress through increased European presence. These overlapping motivations - scientific, commercial, strategic, and moral - created powerful incentives for African exploration that transcended mere curiosity. No geographical prize was more coveted than the source of the Nile River. This ancient mystery had fascinated humanity since classical times, with Herodotus speculating about it in the fifth century BCE and Roman emperors dispatching expeditions to solve it. The Nile's annual flooding had sustained Egyptian civilization for millennia, yet its headwaters remained hidden, protected by vast swamps, hostile territories, and deadly diseases. By the 1850s, solving this puzzle had become the ultimate achievement for any explorer, promising immortal fame and national prestige. When Richard Burton secured Royal Geographical Society backing for an expedition to find the great lakes of East Africa in 1856, with John Hanning Speke as his second-in-command, they were embarking on what contemporaries considered the greatest geographical quest of the age. The Victorian public followed these expeditions with extraordinary enthusiasm. Newspapers reported every rumor and development, while explorers' published accounts became bestsellers that captivated the imagination. This public attention transformed exploration into a form of celebrity, with successful explorers treated as national heroes whose achievements embodied British courage, determination, and ingenuity. The quest for knowledge thus became inseparable from the quest for fame, creating pressures and expectations that would ultimately drive Burton and Speke apart with tragic consequences. Their rivalry would be played out not just in scientific journals but in the court of public opinion, where geographical discoveries were judged as much for their patriotic value as for their scientific merit. The mapping of Africa's "blank spaces" had profound consequences that extended far beyond cartography. The knowledge acquired through exploration became a form of power, transforming territories from unknown spaces into potential possessions. Indigenous geographical knowledge was appropriated and reformatted according to European scientific standards, erasing local naming systems and spatial understandings. The maps produced by explorers would later serve as tools for colonial partition, with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 dividing Africa among European powers based largely on explorers' accounts rather than African political realities. What began as a quest for knowledge thus became instrumental in one of history's most consequential territorial transformations - the colonization of Africa.
Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke embodied starkly different aspects of Victorian society, their contrasting personalities setting the stage for one of exploration's most dramatic rivalries. Burton, born in 1821 to a minor military family, was a linguistic genius who spoke over twenty-five languages and dialects. His education in France and Italy gave him an outsider's perspective on British society, and he developed a lifelong fascination with foreign cultures and religions. By the time he met Speke, Burton had already achieved fame for his daring pilgrimage to Mecca disguised as an Arab, a journey that could have cost him his life had his true identity been discovered. Dark-featured, intensely charismatic, and deliberately provocative, Burton cultivated an air of dangerous mystery that both attracted and repelled Victorian society. Speke, six years younger than Burton, represented a more conventional British ideal. Born to an ancient Somerset family, he was reserved, aristocratic, and deeply patriotic. After joining the Bengal Native Infantry at age seventeen, he spent his leaves hunting big game in the Himalayas, developing the physical endurance and marksmanship that would later serve him in Africa. Unlike the scholarly Burton, Speke had little interest in languages or cultural immersion, viewing foreign peoples primarily through the lens of British superiority. When the two men first met in Aden in 1854, Burton saw in the younger Speke a useful subordinate for his planned expedition to Somaliland, while Speke viewed Burton as his ticket to adventure and recognition. Their first expedition together ended in disaster when Somali warriors attacked their camp, killing one member of their party and severely wounding both leaders. Speke suffered eleven spear wounds and was temporarily captured, while Burton had a javelin thrust through his face, leaving him permanently scarred. Despite this traumatic beginning, the Royal Geographical Society appointed Burton to lead a new expedition in 1857 to find the great lakes of East Africa and potentially the source of the Nile, with Speke as his second-in-command. Their journey would take them from Zanzibar into the uncharted interior, following trade routes established by Arab slave traders. As the expedition progressed through increasingly difficult terrain, the relationship between the two men deteriorated. Burton, frequently incapacitated by malaria and other tropical diseases, grew resentful of Speke's superior health and stamina. Speke, meanwhile, chafed under Burton's leadership and what he perceived as Burton's monopolization of credit for their discoveries. Their fundamental differences in worldview became increasingly apparent. Burton approached exploration as an ethnographer, immersing himself in local cultures and documenting languages, customs, and social structures. Speke viewed exploration more as conquest, focusing on geographical features rather than human societies. These divergent approaches reflected broader tensions within British imperialism between cultural understanding and territorial domination. The breaking point came when Burton, too ill to travel, sent Speke to investigate rumors of another great lake north of Lake Tanganyika. This fateful decision led Speke to the shores of what he named Lake Victoria, which he became convinced was the true source of the Nile despite having seen only a small portion of it. When Speke returned to Burton with his claim, Burton responded with skepticism, questioning how Speke could make such a momentous declaration without proper scientific evidence. This disagreement transformed their strained partnership into open rivalry, setting in motion a bitter controversy that would consume both men's lives and ultimately lead to tragedy. Their personal conflict would become inseparable from the scientific question of the Nile's source, demonstrating how exploration was never merely about objective discovery but was shaped by the complex personalities and ambitions of those who undertook it.
The journey into East Africa's interior subjected Burton and Speke to physical and psychological challenges that would have broken lesser men. Setting out from Zanzibar in June 1857, they faced an environment that had defeated countless European travelers before them. The coastal lowlands, with their stifling humidity and malarial swamps, quickly took their toll. Within weeks, both men were suffering from recurrent fevers, dysentery, and temporary blindness caused by ophthalmia. Burton described the fevers as leaving him with "swimming head and trembling hands," while Speke endured the excruciating experience of having a beetle burrow into his ear, causing partial deafness that would plague him for the rest of his life. Their caravan of over 130 men traversed landscapes of breathtaking beauty and terrible danger. They navigated dense forests where tsetse flies killed their pack animals and crossed sun-scorched plains where lions stalked their camp at night. Food supplies dwindled, forcing them to subsist on whatever local provisions they could obtain. Porters deserted, taking valuable equipment with them, while those who remained required constant management and motivation. Burton wrote that "every day witnessed some new disaster," yet they pressed on, driven by the promise of geographical immortality that awaited them if they succeeded where all others had failed. The human landscape proved as challenging as the natural one. The expedition traveled through territories controlled by various African kingdoms and Arab trading networks, each requiring careful negotiation and substantial payments for passage. They witnessed the devastating impact of the East African slave trade, with entire regions depopulated by slave raids. Burton described passing through villages where "the population had been driven away, the fields were overgrown with jungle, and the huts were burnt and broken down." This moral horror was complicated by the expedition's reliance on Arab slave traders for guidance and assistance, creating ethical contradictions that the explorers never fully resolved. By February 1858, after eight months of grueling travel, the expedition reached Lake Tanganyika, becoming the first Europeans to see this vast inland sea. Burton described it as "a long streak of light blue water" that appeared "like a bar of burnished steel" on the horizon. This moment of triumph was tempered by Burton's severe illness, which left him unable to fully explore the lake or determine whether it might connect to the Nile system. Speke, meanwhile, grew increasingly frustrated with Burton's leadership and convinced him to allow a side expedition to investigate rumors of another great lake to the north. This fateful decision would lead Speke to the shores of what he named Lake Victoria in July 1858, setting in motion the controversy that would define both men's lives. The physical and psychological toll of the journey transformed both explorers. Burton, once seemingly invincible, was reduced to being carried in a hammock, his body ravaged by tropical diseases that would affect his health for the rest of his life. Speke endured temporary blindness and the mysterious ailment he called "little irons," which caused excruciating pain in his legs and internal organs. Their relationship, strained from the beginning, deteriorated under these pressures. By the time they began their return journey to the coast in late 1858, they were barely on speaking terms, their partnership having collapsed under the weight of illness, hardship, and competing ambitions. Their experience demonstrated the extreme human cost of geographical discovery, revealing how exploration was not merely an intellectual exercise but a physical and psychological ordeal that tested the limits of human endurance.
The dispute over the Nile's source began in earnest when Burton and Speke returned to Zanzibar in March 1859. Both men were severely ill, but Speke, recovering more quickly, secured passage on the first available ship to England. Arriving in London weeks ahead of Burton, he immediately met with Sir Roderick Murchison, the influential president of the Royal Geographical Society. Speke presented his theory that Lake Victoria, which he had glimpsed briefly during his side expedition, was the true source of the Nile. Despite having seen only a small portion of the lake and lacking scientific measurements to support his claim, Speke spoke with absolute certainty. Impressed by his confidence and the potential significance of his discovery, Murchison declared, "Speke, we must send you there again." When Burton finally returned to England, he was shocked to discover that the Society had already committed to funding a new expedition led by Speke to confirm his discovery, deliberately excluding Burton himself. This perceived betrayal by both Speke and the Society would haunt Burton for the rest of his life. From his perspective, Speke had violated the principles of scientific exploration by making a momentous claim without adequate evidence, then securing institutional backing before his expedition leader could present alternative theories. Burton believed that Lake Tanganyika might still prove to be connected to the Nile system, and he considered Speke's hasty conclusion premature and unscientific. The controversy quickly spilled into the public sphere, captivating Victorian society. The quest for the Nile's source had become a matter of national pride, scientific prestige, and personal honor. Speke, though lacking Burton's eloquence and scholarly credentials, had powerful supporters in the geographical establishment and appealed to popular audiences with his straightforward narrative of discovery. Burton, despite his formidable intellect and previous achievements, found himself increasingly marginalized, his complex character and unconventional views making him a less sympathetic figure in the court of public opinion. The dispute was not merely about geographical facts but about fundamentally different approaches to exploration and knowledge. Speke's second expedition, launched in 1860 with James Augustus Grant as his lieutenant, succeeded in confirming his theory about Lake Victoria. After nearly three years of arduous travel, Speke stood at Ripon Falls (in present-day Uganda) and witnessed the Nile flowing northward from the lake. On July 28, 1862, he telegraphed the Royal Geographical Society from Egypt: "The Nile is settled." Upon his return to London in 1863, Speke was celebrated as a national hero, though some geographers continued to question aspects of his findings, particularly since he and Grant had been forced to detour around portions of the river's course rather than following it continuously. Burton refused to concede defeat, continuing to argue that Speke's evidence was incomplete and that Lake Tanganyika might still play a role in the Nile system. The controversy grew increasingly personal and bitter, with each man questioning the other's integrity and competence. Their dispute divided the scientific community and the British public, with prominent figures taking sides in what had become as much a clash of personalities as a geographical debate. The British Association for the Advancement of Science arranged for the two explorers to debate their competing theories publicly at their annual meeting in Bath on September 16, 1864. This anticipated confrontation promised to settle the controversy once and for all, but fate would intervene in a tragic manner that left the scientific question temporarily unresolved while permanently ending the personal rivalry.
While European explorers like Burton and Speke received the glory for "discovering" geographical features that had been known to local populations for centuries, their expeditions would have been impossible without the knowledge and skills of African guides and porters. Chief among these was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a man whose extraordinary life story embodied the complex history of East Africa during this period. Kidnapped from his Yao village as a child during a raid by slave traders, Bombay was transported to India where he served for twenty years before gaining his freedom upon his master's death. Returning to East Africa, he found work as a soldier in the Sultan of Zanzibar's army before joining Burton and Speke's expedition. Bombay's value to the expedition was incalculable. His linguistic abilities - he spoke several African languages as well as Hindi and Arabic - allowed him to serve as interpreter in regions where neither Burton nor Speke could communicate directly. His knowledge of local customs helped the explorers navigate complex cultural protocols when encountering different societies. His diplomatic skills proved essential in negotiating passage through territories controlled by suspicious chiefs and sultans. Perhaps most importantly, his unwavering loyalty and resourcefulness kept the expedition moving forward when disease, desertion, and dwindling supplies threatened to end it prematurely. Throughout the journey, Bombay served as a crucial mediator between the European explorers and their African porters. The expedition relied on over a hundred porters to carry supplies, equipment, and the explorers themselves when they were too ill to walk. These men faced the same hardships as Burton and Speke - disease, hunger, dangerous terrain - without the promise of fame or fortune that motivated their European leaders. Desertions were common, and maintaining morale required constant attention. Bombay's leadership was instrumental in keeping the caravan together, resolving disputes, and ensuring that essential tasks were completed even when the European leaders were incapacitated by illness. Bombay's importance was such that when Speke organized his second expedition to confirm his discovery, he specifically requested Bombay to accompany him. During this journey, Bombay's role expanded further as Speke relied on him not just as an interpreter but as a trusted lieutenant who could lead separate parties when necessary. After Speke's death, Bombay continued his career as an expedition guide, accompanying Henry Morton Stanley in his search for David Livingstone and later Verney Lovett Cameron on the first crossing of equatorial Africa from east to west. By the end of his career, Bombay had traveled more extensively throughout Africa than any European explorer, covering an estimated 6,000 miles mostly on foot. Despite his crucial contributions, Bombay remained largely invisible in published accounts of these expeditions. European explorers typically presented themselves as lone heroes conquering Africa through individual courage and determination. The reality was far different - their achievements depended entirely on African expertise, labor, and knowledge. The Royal Geographical Society eventually recognized Bombay's contributions with a silver medal and a pension, but his name remained unknown to the general public that celebrated Burton, Speke, and other European explorers. This erasure of African agency from exploration narratives reflected the racial hierarchies that underpinned European imperialism and continues to distort our understanding of how geographical knowledge was actually produced during this period. Recovering the stories of figures like Bombay is essential for developing a more accurate and ethical history of exploration that acknowledges the collaborative nature of geographical discovery.
The bitter controversy between Burton and Speke was scheduled to culminate in a public debate at the 1864 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Bath. This "great Nile debate" promised to be the Victorian equivalent of scientific theater, with two famous explorers facing off before an audience of scientists and the general public. The stakes were enormous for both men's reputations and for the resolution of the geographical question that had consumed their lives. Burton, the more experienced debater with his formidable intellect and linguistic skills, was widely expected to dominate the verbal confrontation. Speke, less articulate but convinced of his correctness, faced the prospect with growing anxiety. On September 15, 1864, the day before the scheduled debate, Burton and Speke encountered each other briefly in the lecture hall at Bath. According to witnesses, Speke appeared visibly distressed by the meeting and abruptly left the hall. Later that day, while hunting at his cousin's estate at Neston Park, Speke suffered a fatal gunshot wound. The official inquest ruled the death accidental, concluding that Speke's gun had discharged while he was climbing over a stone wall. However, rumors of suicide immediately began to circulate, with many believing that Speke had taken his own life rather than face Burton in debate. While most historical evidence supports the accident verdict, the timing of the tragedy inevitably linked it to the Nile controversy in the public imagination. Speke's sudden death at age 37 shocked Victorian society and transformed the Nile controversy. The scheduled debate was canceled, and Burton found himself in the awkward position of mourning a man he had spent years attacking. "The differences of opinion that are known to have lain between us while he was alive," Burton wrote, "make it more incumbent on me to publicly express my sincere feeling of admiration of his character and enterprise, and my deep sense of loss." This gracious statement could not erase years of bitter rivalry, but it did help rehabilitate Burton's public image, which had suffered during the controversy. With Speke unable to defend his theory, the controversy might have remained unresolved indefinitely. However, subsequent explorations by Samuel Baker, David Livingstone, and especially Henry Morton Stanley gradually confirmed Speke's basic claim. Stanley's circumnavigation of Lake Victoria in 1875 proved conclusively that it was indeed the primary source of the White Nile. Burton eventually acknowledged the evidence, though he never fully credited Speke with the discovery. The geographical question was settled, but the human tragedy remained - two brilliant explorers whose partnership had dissolved into enmity, with one dying before vindication and the other living with the shadow of controversy for the rest of his life. The tragedy at Bath cast a long shadow over Burton's remaining years. Though he continued exploring and writing prolifically, Burton never again led a major expedition. He spent his later career in a series of minor consular posts, translating Arabic literature, and writing ethnographic studies that often scandalized Victorian society. His translation of "The Arabian Nights" and other works on sexuality ensured his controversial reputation continued long after the Nile controversy had faded. Burton died in 1890 at age 69, his wife Isabel burning many of his unpublished manuscripts to protect his reputation. The rivalry that had defined much of his life had long since been resolved in Speke's favor, though Burton himself never fully accepted this verdict. The Bath tragedy transformed how history would remember both men. Speke, once celebrated as the discoverer of the Nile's source, gradually faded from public memory despite being proven correct. Burton, despite being wrong about the Nile, achieved lasting fame as one of history's great explorer-scholars. Their intertwined story reveals how historical reputation depends not just on being right but on who tells the story and how - a lesson that extends far beyond their specific geographical controversy to the broader question of how we remember and interpret the past.
The Burton-Speke expeditions occurred at a pivotal moment in African history, when European exploration was transitioning into colonial conquest. Their journeys helped transform East Africa from a region known primarily through Arab accounts and coastal contacts into a territory mapped for European interests. The detailed information they gathered about geography, resources, and political structures provided crucial intelligence for the imperial powers that would soon divide the continent among themselves. As Sir Richard Burton himself noted, perhaps with unintended prescience: "The geographer is now the pioneer of the traveler, and the traveler is the pioneer of the trader, and the trader is the pioneer of the colonist." The "Scramble for Africa" that followed these explorations was remarkably swift and comprehensive. In 1880, Europeans controlled only about 10 percent of Africa's territory; by 1900, they controlled over 90 percent. The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, where European powers established rules for claiming African territories, made no provision for African representation or consent. Exploration had created the conditions for this partition by mapping resources, identifying potential allies and enemies, and establishing European presence in previously independent regions. The lakes that Burton and Speke had "discovered" became reference points for colonial boundaries, with Lake Victoria eventually divided between British Uganda, German East Africa (later Tanganyika, now part of Tanzania), and British East Africa (now Kenya). For East African societies, the consequences were profound and often devastating. The kingdoms that Burton and Speke had encountered as independent powers - Buganda, Karagwe, and others - were incorporated into European empires, their traditional rulers reduced to colonial functionaries or replaced entirely. The slave trade that had horrified the explorers was indeed abolished, but new forms of exploitation emerged through forced labor, taxation, and resource extraction. Colonial boundaries, drawn with little regard for ethnic or cultural realities, created artificial divisions that would fuel conflicts long after independence. The maps that explorers had helped create became instruments of control, transforming geographical knowledge into political power. The legacy of exploration also shaped how Africa was perceived and represented in Western consciousness. Burton, despite his immersion in local cultures, helped popularize racial theories that would be used to justify colonial rule. Speke's writings promoted the "Hamitic hypothesis," which claimed that any signs of "civilization" in Africa must have come from lighter-skinned invaders from the north. These pseudo-scientific theories had devastating long-term consequences, contributing to ethnic tensions that would erupt in places like Rwanda more than a century later. The explorers' accounts, widely read in Europe and America, established enduring stereotypes about Africa and Africans that would influence Western perceptions for generations. Yet the story of African exploration cannot be reduced to a simple narrative of European conquest. African participants like Sidi Mubarak Bombay played crucial roles that were long overlooked in Western accounts. Local knowledge was essential to European "discoveries," with African guides showing the way to geographical features that had been known to regional populations for centuries. African societies engaged with explorers according to their own interests and strategies, sometimes facilitating their journeys and sometimes resisting them. The colonial systems that followed exploration were never simply imposed from outside but evolved through complex interactions between European ambitions and African realities. The territories mapped by Burton and Speke eventually gained independence in the mid-20th century, but the legacy of exploration and colonization continues to shape modern Africa. National boundaries still largely follow colonial borders, creating ongoing challenges for governance and ethnic relations. Economic relationships between African nations and former colonial powers often perpetuate dependency patterns established during the colonial era. Even cultural perceptions remain influenced by the narratives created during the age of exploration, though these are increasingly challenged by African scholars and writers reclaiming their own historical voice. Understanding the complex relationship between exploration and empire is essential not just for interpreting the past but for addressing contemporary global inequalities that have their roots in this pivotal historical period.
The race to discover the source of the Nile encapsulates the complex interplay between scientific curiosity, personal ambition, and imperial expansion that characterized the Victorian era. What began as a geographical question became inseparable from issues of national pride, individual reputation, and colonial ambition. Burton and Speke's bitter rivalry reveals how exploration was never simply about objective discovery but was embedded in cultural assumptions, institutional politics, and imperial objectives that shaped what was discovered and how it was interpreted. Their story demonstrates that historical "discoveries" are not neutral events but complex social processes that reflect and reinforce existing power structures. The maps they helped create, while expanding geographical knowledge, also served as tools for colonial partition, transforming blank spaces into territories claimed by European powers without regard for indigenous political realities. The legacy of Victorian exploration continues to shape our understanding of Africa and its relationship with the wider world. The erasure of African contributions to these expeditions, exemplified by figures like Sidi Mubarak Bombay, reflects patterns of historical silencing that continue to distort our understanding of global history. By recovering these forgotten stories and examining the complex motivations behind exploration, we gain a more nuanced perspective on how knowledge and power have shaped our modern world. This history challenges us to question whose perspectives are centered in historical narratives, to recognize the collaborative nature of scientific discovery, and to acknowledge how geographical knowledge has been used to advance political agendas. Perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that exploration's legacy is written not just in geographical discoveries but in the human relationships and power dynamics that continue to influence international relations, economic systems, and cultural perceptions in our increasingly interconnected world.
“The more I study religion,” he wrote, “the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anyone but himself.” ― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile
Strengths: The book provides a fascinating account of the mid-19th century exploration of the Nile, highlighting the bravery and personal stories of explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. The narrative is described as captivating, particularly Burton's story and the role of Sidi Mubarak Bombay, whose life is deemed cinematic.\nWeaknesses: The writing is criticized as very dry, with the reviewer expressing disinterest in the explorers' lives and personalities prior to the expedition. The reviewer found the content to be filled with what they considered unnecessary filler, detracting from the focus on the expedition itself.\nOverall Sentiment: Mixed. While there is admiration for the historical exploration and certain character portrayals, there is significant dissatisfaction with the writing style and content focus.\nKey Takeaway: The book offers a detailed historical account of the Nile exploration, but its narrative style and focus may not engage all readers, particularly those seeking a more expedition-centric story.
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By Candice Millard