The travellers, filled with enthusiasm for their task, had a long and difficult journey to take in the course of their investigations and search for spoils. It led them all, by ships, upon the backs of camels, and on foot, with many delays and digressions, into the heart of the African continent, as far as Khartoum at the junction of the two sources of the Nile. Then, alone except for the company of Abeken, Lepsius sailed on up the Blue River as far as the village of Romali, between Sennar, the celebrated ancient capital of the Sudan, which he visited, and Fazokl. The last letter from our wayfarer is dated from Smyrna, and was written on the seventh of December, 1845, much more than three years after his arrival at Alexandria. From the very first, a long period of traveling had been contemplated, and the leader had taken pains to establish his own position with regard to the whole party, and the rights and duties of each individual member of it, as well as to provide for “suitable intellectual diet.” The commanding nature of his distinguished and imposing personality had, if we except the excesses of the moulder Franke, obviated throughout the whole time any illegitimate opposition to, or rebellion against, his position as chief. How justly, kindly and wisely this was maintained may best be shown by the friendship and attachment manifested towards him till death by Abeken, Erbkam, the Weidenbachs, and all the other members of the expedition, with the exception of Franke. And this is no light matter, for nowhere do disagreements of every kind occur more readily than among a small party, who, separated from their native civilization, have to endure, in addition to many deprivations, the burden of an enervating climate; and who, tormented by discomforts, fatigue, and homesickness, yield only too easily to gloomy and discontented moods, beneath whose spell it is hard to be just and to submit cheerfully to the will of another. Lepsius himself says that from the beginning he tried to diversify the life of his party, and especially the irksome and very monotonous work of his artists, not only by the weekly holiday of Sunday, but also, as often as an opportunity offered, by cheerful merry-makings and pleasant diversions.