In 1845 a Welsh[41] mining engineer named John Petherick entered the service of Muhammad Ali, the Pasha of Egypt. He was employed for some years in examining the countries of Upper Egypt, the coast of the Red Sea, and Kordofan for coal and other minerals, apparently with little or no success. In his interesting work, “Egypt, the Sudan, and Central Africa,” he has left us, amongst other things, a remarkably interesting account of Kordofan at the end of the forties of the last century, some twenty-five years after its conquest by the Turks from the mild rule of Darfur.[42] In 1848 Muhammad Ali died, and Petherick quitted the service of the Egyptian government. Trade in the Sudan had now ceased to be a government monopoly, partly owing to the efforts of the English Consul-General at that time. Petherick therefore resided at El Obeid in Kordofan for five years as a trader in gums and other produce. In 1853 he resolved to go in for the ivory trade on the White Nile and the Bahr-al-Ghazal. This great western feeder of the Nile was beginning to be opened up by the Nubian traders already referred to. For six years Petherick traded for ivory and explored some of the great rivers which flowed into the Bahr-al-Ghazal,--chiefly the Jur and the Yalo or Rōl. During the course of his explorations he was the first European (unless De Malzac preceded him) to reach the Nyam-nyam country (Mundo). He made some remarkable discoveries in natural history,--the splendid _Cobus maria_ or Mrs. Gray’s Waterbuck, and the _Balæniceps rex_ or Whale-headed Stork. Petherick’s skins of the _Balæniceps_ which he gave to the British Museum in 1859 were the only specimens in that collection for more than forty years, until they were reinforced by the first Whale-headed Storks obtained on the Victoria Nyanza, which were sent home by the author of this book. Petherick also captured and brought to Europe a young hippopotamus. [It is interesting to observe in his first book, “Egypt, the Sudan,” etc., published in 1859, that the classification of his bird collections is made by Dr. P. L. Sclater, then and until recently Secretary to the Zoölogical Society.] Petherick’s return to Europe with a recital of such wonders obtained for him considerable attention. He married in the early part of 1861, and was invited to take charge of a relief expedition to be sent up the Nile to meet Captain Speke and Grant, who were to attempt descending the Nile from its supposed source at the north end of the Victoria Nyanza. [Illustration: John Petherick.]