'The Penetration of Arabia a record of the development of Western knowledge concerning the Arabian Peninsula with illustrations from drawings, photographs, and maps by J. G. Bartholomew.' [‎40] (73/496)

4°
ARABIA
birth and a pupil of the great Linnaeus, was a physician
with special knowledge of botany; Christian Charles
Cramer, a surgeon and zoologist; Frederick Christian
von Haven, a philologist and Oriental scholar; George
William Baurenfeind, an artist; and, lastly, Carsten
Niebuhr, lieutenant of engineers, a mathematician and
practical surveyor. With them went an ex-hussar, the
Swede Berggren, as servant.
In this party of explorers, singularly well qualified
and equipped, none was to be before or after other,
according to the royal instruction. If any preference
was expressed by the king it was for Forskall and
Von Haven, on the ground of their greater proficiency
in Arabic. Each member was to help his fellow, but
each to have his own sphere of work, and report
thereon on return. Return, however, was reserved for
only one. Two of the party died in Yemen, one (and
the Swedish servant) at sea on the voyage to India,
and one on arrival there; none by violence, but all by
the poison of the Yemen air. Niebuhr alone brought
his report and the incomplete notes of his comrades
to Denmark again. If to some extent he has inher
ited other men's fame, to a far greater extent has
he earned fame for himself. If he was not the most
brilliant of the party, if any of his fellows surpassed
him in energy, courage, and endurance, in intelligence,
or in his measure of that scientific temper which is
equally free from prejudice and from laxity, then a
more remarkable mission was never despatched to
any land.