Burton prepared himself for a confrontation

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His Luciferian pose attracted the attention of personalities who felt drawn to a kindred spirit, the eccentric Lord Houghton (Richard Monckton Miles), Algenon Charles Swinburne and the perverse and debauched Fred Hankey. One person who influenced his life was the ambitious officer John Hanning Speke, a passionate huntsman, who fitted more readily into the Victorian ideal of a gentleman than Burton did. With Speke, Burton launched an expedition to discover the source of the Nile and the two friends reached .

Lake Tanganiyka (at that time called the Ujiji Sea) on 14th December 1857. Speke pushed further and reached Lake Ukerrewe, later to be called Lake Victoria, which he declared was the source of the Nile. Burton, who had been struck down by sickness, remained sceptical of the claim, which Speke later presented to the Royal Geographical Society, and the phone number list friendship between the two cooled appreciably. Burton subsequently went to North America, where he reached Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital. In 1861, after many amorous adventures during his travels, Burton married Isabel Arundell, a fervent Roman Catholic, whom he had first met eleven years before. Mrs. Brodie notes that these two "tortured souls" could not do without each other, two beings who had little in common, yet someohow, remarkably, complemented each other.

Following a spell with the Diplomatic Service in Africa, with Speke concerning the dispute over the source of the Nile, but this was not to take place. Speke accidentally killed himself on a hunt in September 1864 (a subsequent expedition to Africa confirmed his hypothesis about the Nile). The English reading public followed these events with lively interest, opinion unjustly believing that Burton had driven Speke to suicide. Appointed Consul to Brazil, Burton visited South America with his wife, after which he travelled further, from Damascus to Ireland, to Trieste, Egypt, the Gold Coast.