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694 of the wounded, and he did what he could; but a large proportion of the cases, having received wounds in their vital parts, were past recovery. Having taken his leave of the Sultan of Bagirmi, Nachtigal, suffering a part of the time from fever, made his way through a flooded country, in which he had to wade or swim the rivers which he had before crossed almost dry, back to Kuka, in Bornoo, where he enjoyed another hospitable reception from Sultan Omar.

Nachtigal next undertook, in the face of what was considered extreme danger, to visit Wadai, on the eastern side of Lake Chad. It was a country of very bad repute. The only European who had ever reached it, Eduard Vogel, had been put to death by the command of the Sultan in 1856. Moritz von Beurmann, who had been sent out to learn Vogel's fate, had been murdered on the borders of the land. It took much courage even to think of a journey there, but Nachtigal had hope in the fact that a new Sultan, a more intelligent man than his predecessors, had come into power. He proceeded cautiously, in doubt as to what kind of a reception he might expect, but gradually found the way cleared, and was finally admitted to an audience from which he came away with a satisfaction he could not, he said in a letter to a friend, fully express. "I found Sultan Ali the most intelligent prince that reigns in all the Soudan, and was charmed with the friendly greeting he gave me. This was all the more remarkable, because, as I knew, he had at first hesitated to receive me, and was not at all glad that I had come." The murder of Vogel, eighteen years before, had been forgotten by most of the people, and the search for the papers he left was fruitless.

Nachtigal had by this time become quite exhausted with his five years of arduous travel and dangers, and early in 1874 started homeward. He went through Darfoor to Kordofan, where, meeting the Egyptian garrison, he almost felt as though he were in Europe. Khedive Ismail sent a steamer to bring him to Cairo, and was the first to receive him there. He stayed a year in Cairo to recover a degree of health, and then proceeded to Berlin, where he intended to make his home.

Here he at once assumed an active position among the scientific men interested in the promotion of geographical research. He was elected President of the German-African Society; was consulted by the King of the Belgians in the proceedings that have led to the formation of the Congo state, and was a most useful member of the Executive Committee of the "Association Internationale Africaine"; and was for three years in succession elected President of the German "Gesellschaft für Erdkunde," and was its representative at the International Congresses in Paris in 1875 and 1878, and in Venice in 1881. The Paris Geographical Society voted him its golden medal, and the other similar societies of the world gave him medals or diplomas of honor. He dwelt in Berlin till 1882, busily engaged most of the