A few years after Richardsons' return, the British government appointed him to lead an expedition to discover more about the great caravan routes between the oases of the Sahara and the cities on the southern fringe of the desert. Richardson wanted to make his expedition as international as possible, with the expedition members being men with a more scientific approach to exploration, rather than the romantic adventurers that had preceded them.
The Prussian ambassador in London suggested to Richardson the name of a young German, Heinrich Barth, who already had experience of exploration in the Middle East and in northern Africa. Barth had studied archeology, history, geography and law at the University of Berlin. He had also spent some time in London learning Arabic. He seemed an ideal candidate, and Richardson quickly asked him to join the expedition. Barth eagerly agreed, and at one began a strenuous course of physical training to get himself in good shape for the rigorous journey ahead. The third member of Richardson's party was young German geologist named Adolf Overweg.
The expedition which left Tripoli in 1850 appears to have been the best organised and equipped ever to have ventured across the Sahara. The three Europeans were accompanied by the usual retinue of guides and servants. They had with them great quantities of stores and equipment, including a large wooden boat in which they planned to explore Lake Chad. The boat was in two sections to make it easier to carry.
The explorers themselves were particularly suited to the job in hand. Barth especially was very well trained, and Richardson was familiar with the desert and its dangers. Unfortunately, soon after they set out, the two men seem to have developed a strong personal dislike for each other. >From the beginning the party was split into distinct national groups. During the heat of the day, the two German rode ahead, followed at a considerable distance by Richardson and a British sailor who had been sent along to manage the boat. Even in the cool of the evening the two groups and their servants settled down to eat and sleep in separate camps.
In this unfriendly atmosphere the party arrived in Marzuq in May 1850. From there they went on to Ghat. A few days out of Ghat, Barth decided to climb the mysterious Mount Idinen, which, according to the Tuareg, was inhabited by evil spirits. He reached the summit of the mountain, but was so exhausted and thirsty that, by the time he had made his descent, he had drunk all of his water. He then lost his way, and fell to the ground in a state of semi-consciousness. On regaining his senses, he managed to prevent himself from panicking, and cut open one of his veins to quench his thirst by drinking his own blood. A tuareg found him and helped him to get back to Overweg and the expedition. His companions bound up his wound and Barth quickly recovered.
From Ghat the party traveled through the Tassili-n-Ajjer where, nearly a century later, thousands of Neolithic rock paintings were to be discovered. Barth himself saw some rock carvings there. The party had a rough passage through the mountains. They were frequently attacked by marauders, forced to pay ransom money, and even so had to defend themselves by firing on their attackers. As they made their way through the Air Mountains they were threatened by the hostile Tuareg tribesmen, who demanded that they renounce their Christian religion or die by sundown. Luckily the Tuareg were willing to strike a bargain, and their religious fervor evaporated when they were offered one-third of the belongings of the British expedition.
From the Air Mountains, Barth traveled south to Agadez, once one of the great centres of commerce in the Sahara. By the mid-1800s, however, Agadez' prosperity had declined and Barth desribed it as an abandoned city whose population had dwindled from 50,000 to 7,000. Everywhere he saw traces of a vanished splendour.
It was soon after this that the three men decided to separate. Richardson headed directly for Lake Chad, and the two Germans set off to find a more westerly route to the lake. Shortly afterward, Barth parted from Overweg, and made an expedition on his own to Katsina and Kano. The three men had arranged to meet at Kukawa in April 1851, but Richardson never kept the rendezvous. Three weeks before Barth arrived at Kukawa to meet his companions, Richardson had died of fever.
Overweg was the last of the party to arrive at Lake Chad. When he finally arrived there in May, he was exhausted and suffering from fever. Nevertheless, while Barth explored the territory to the south and east of Lake Chad, Overweg recovered sufficiently to explore the lake itself in the boat they had brought with them across the Sahara. The two men stayed for about 15 months in the Lake Chad region. When the British government heard that Richardson had died, they appointed Barth the new leader of the expedition. They also sent sufficient funds for the two men to continue to their next objective - Timbuktu - but before they started on this stretch of their journey, Overweg died of malaria at the age of 29.
Barth, too, had suffered numerous attacks of dysentery and fever, but despite his own illnesses and the deaths of Richardson and Overweg, he was determined to go on. At the end of November 1852 he left the capital of Bornu. He had now been 32 months on the journey out from Tripoli, and knew that the journey to Timbuktu might take him another two years. He was confident, however, that he would reach his destination. He was certainly fortunate in his dealings with local tribesmen, and he attributed his luck to a single incident. One day when he was surrounded by a hostile group of fierce-looking townspeople, Barth fired off six rounds from his revolver into the air. In his journal he says that this show of force had great influence over his future safety. The Africans were afraid, believing that he had guns hidden in all his pockets and could fire them as and when he wished.
When Barth finally reached Timbuktu in September 1853, he found the city slightly more prosperous than Caillie had done 25 years earlier, but it had never regained the position as a trading centre for the Sahara that it had held in the 1500s.
Early in 1854 Barth left Timbuktu and began working his way eastward to Lake Chad. On the way he learned that a party of Europeans had been sent out by the British government to look for him and had already arrived at the lake. This party was led by another German, Edward Vogel, who when he met Barth explained that people in London had given him up for dead. After a brief discussion, it was decided that Barth should go on to Kukawa. Vogel, meanwhile, would make for Zinder, a town almost 300 miles west of Lake Chad. He was to rejoin Barth before starting the journey north across the desert.
Barth, however, eventually made the desert crossing without Vogel, who decided to stay in Africa and explore the Lower Niger. Vogel was murdered in 1856 on his way back to the Nile. Barth left for the desert in May 1855 and, despite the fact that it was the hottest time of the year, he managed to get back to Tripoli and on to London by early September. He had been away over five years.
The success of the British expedition of 1850 - 1855 was due almost entirely to Barth's single-mindedness. Despite innumerable difficulties and the very real threat of death from the fanatically religious tribesmen, he fulfilled his mission, and brought back a vast amount of information about northern Africa. It was Barth's scientific thoroughness that made him unique - no other explorer of the same area managed to accomplish as much as he had. He was the first man to make reliable maps of huge areas of Africa, and the first man to study the customs of the Negro tribes he encountered.
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This page was written for Discoverers Web by Leigh Rayment. For which our gratitude.