Meeting Barth
On 25 July, Vogel left Tripoli with a caravan to catch up with Barth. Vogel arrived at the end of the Trans-Saharan trade route, Kuka, the capital of Bornu on 13 January 1854. Vogel's specimens, and the fact that both expedition engineers were soldiers, made the king there suspicious of his intentions, and Vogel's movements were severely restricted.
Instead of waiting for Barth to return, on 19 July, Vogel joined a steamboat expedition heading up the Niger and Benue Rivers to the Mandara Mountains where he was imprisoned by the king of Mora who had received a message about the suspicious stranger from Bornu. Vogel eventually escaped to Marghi in Nigeria where he waited for news of Barth. Upon hearing of a change of king in Bornu, Vogel returned to wait for Barth, whom he met December 1854.
By some accounts Vogel was disliked by the other members of the expedition due to his poor attitude, difficult personality and unwillingness to learn Arabic, the lingua franca of north Africa. The arrival of Barth helped defuse some of the conflict, although one of the two engineers refused to travel any further while Vogel was part of the expedition. Barth himself contemplated getting rid of Vogel and stealing his equipment.
Read more about this topic: Eduard Vogel
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