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Trains on Uber. Hello and welcome to the Explorers podcast. This is part four in our series on German

explorer Heinrich Barth. Before we start, a reminder that you can go to Explorespodcast.com and

see a map of all the places that we will explore

today if that is of interest to you. Otherwise, let us get rolling. Last time, we left Barth and

Kukawa, the capital of the Borneo Empire in May of 1851, and the situation was not good. James

Richardson, the expedition's leader, had died of an unknown illness a few months

earlier, and Richardson had left the expedition owing a lot of money, 750 pounds, one and a half

times the enterprise's budget. It fell on Barth to try and address these debts. Adolf Overvank,

Barr's fellow German explorer, had gotten sick and nearly died.

Thankfully, he had recovered and reached Kukawa.

While he would need some time to recover, he was eager to continue the mission, just like

Barth.

And with that, the question that hung out there was, what should the expedition do?

They had very little hard cash or trade goods, and Richardson had left no

instructions as to what to do if he died. These major decisions would fall to Barth, as he was

considered the more seasoned and responsible of the two Germans. He thus sent back messages to the

British Foreign Office, asking for instructions as well as funding. With Richardson dead and

...