During the latter period of Petherick’s experiences on the Nile (in 1858), he had been appointed consular agent for the British government at Khartum. In 1861, before starting to return to the Sudan, he was given the rank of consul. He left England in 1861 with his wife and with an English youth named Foxcroft, who accompanied him as bird-stuffer and natural history collector.[43] In 1861 he despatched to Gondokoro, to await the arrival of Speke and Grant, an expedition under the Turks and Arabs, with boats full of supplies. Petherick and his wife, accompanied by Dr. Murie (who had joined them from England) and by Foxcroft, then spent some years exploring the western affluents of the Nile which unite in the Bahr-al-Ghazal. In this way they revisited the Nyam-nyam country. Petherick seems to have been partly trading and partly collecting information on the slave-trade and prosecuting Maltese slave-traders; and these investigations seem to have rather taken his attention from one of the objects of his mission, which was to insure a proper relief to Speke and Grant. How far he was to blame in the matter it is difficult to determine. People in England seem to have doubted the effectiveness of his methods to insure this relief, and amongst others who thought it necessary to forestall Petherick was Mr. (afterwards Sir Samuel) Baker, who, in 1862–1863, got ahead of the Pethericks (then deciding to go in person to the relief of the explorers), and actually arrived at Gondokoro in time to afford much needed assistance to the exhausted travellers. Speke appears to have considered that Petherick had not acted up to the assurance he had given to the Royal Geographical Society, who intrusted him with the expenditure of the relief fund. This criticism, together with the bitter animosity aroused by Petherick’s prosecution of slave-traders and reports on the misgovernment of Egyptian officials, cost him the confidence of the Foreign Office, and in 1864 his consulate was abolished. It was actually alleged by some of his enemies that he himself carried on a trade in slaves,--an allegation for which there does not seem to have been the slightest foundation. In 1865 the Pethericks returned to England. Petherick’s second book (“Travels in Central Africa”) was not published until 1869. It is impossible, after careful observation and a more than thirty years’ interval, to avoid the impression that Petherick was treated by his country with some ingratitude. He did a great deal to increase our knowledge of the Nile basin and its remarkable fauna. His collections of beasts, birds, and fishes enriched the British Museum. He took a number of astronomical observations in order to fix important points on the White Nile and in the region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal. He died in 1882.