Egypt he was attacked and wounded by robbers. Crossing the Sinai
peninsula he traversed Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Turkey and Greece,
everywhere examining the remains of antiquity; and returned to Berlin in
1847. For a time he was engaged there as _Privat-docent_, and in preparing
for publication the narrative of his _Wanderungen durch die Kuestenlaender
des Mittelmeeres_, which appeared in 1849.

At the instance of Bunsen and other scientists, Barth and Adolf Overweg, a
Prussian astronomer, were appointed colleagues of James Richardson, an
explorer of the Sahara who had been selected by the British government to
open up commercial relations with the states of the central and western
Sudan. The party left Tripoli early in 1850, but the deaths of Richardson
(March 1851) and Overweg (September 1852) left Barth to early on the
mission alone. He returned to Europe in September 1855, after one of the
most fruitful expeditions ever undertaken in inner Africa. In addition to
journeys across the Sahara, Barth traversed the country from Lake Chad and
Bagirmi on the east to Timbuktu on the west and Cameroon on the south,
making prolonged sojourns in the ancient sultanates or emirates of Bornu,
Kano, Nupe, Sokoto and Gando and at Timbuktu. He studied minutely the
topography, history, civilizations and resources of the countries he
visited. The story of his travels was published simultaneously in English
and German, under the title _Travels and Discoveries in North and Central
Africa_ (1857-1858, 5 vols.). For accuracy, interest, variety and extent of
information Barth's _Travels_ have few rivals among works of the kind. It
is a book that will always rank as a standard authority on the regions in
question, of which a great part, under the name of Nigeria, has since come
under British rule. Except a C.B., Barth himself received no recognition of
his services from the British government. He returned to Germany, where he
prepared a collection of Central African vocabularies (Gotha, 1862-1866).
In 1858 he undertook another journey in Asia Minor, and in 1862 visited
Turkey in Europe. In the following year he was appointed professor of
geography at Berlin University and president of the Geographical Society.
He died at Berlin on the 25th of November 1865.

See Schubert's _Heinrich Barth, der Bahnbrecher der deutschen
Afrikaforschung_ (Berlin, 1897). An edition of the _Travels_ in two volumes
was published in London in 1890 (Minerva Li