Although Americans had formed their own animal-importing firms, the business was still international in nature. Brown had a $10,000 line of credit from Barings of London. He also needed the permission of Egyptian rulers to smooth his travels and employed ordinary Egyptians as assistants. International competition for animals was stiff. Brown's colleague Stebbins June warned Brown to avoid a Frenchman in the area who was also trying to acquire animals. Steb June had set out on the trip for giraffes up the Nile and across the Nubian desert, but after suffering from a bad sunburn, declared that "this whole thing is crazy" and returned to Cairo. June then went to Alexandria to manage money and to find a vessel for shipping the giraffes to the United States. June spent months in Egypt and had also been to Syria and the Holy Land, but he did not think much of Middle Eastern travel. June worried incessantly about the plague then menacing Alexandria and wrote to Brown about his desire to be back in the States where it was possible to get "something more than Fried onions and Fried cheese for dinner."

This May 7, 1840, letter refers to a line of credit from Barings in London. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. Brown's passport. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. Pass, or furman, from Mohammed Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection.

This photograph, entitled Scene du Desert Ð Caravanne en Marche, was taken in Egypt in 1870 by Felix Bonfils. Photography was in its infancy when Brown was in Egypt and no photographs exist of Brown's trip to Egypt. This photograph, though it was taken three decades after Brown visited Egypt, perhaps provides a sense of what Brown would have seen there.

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Brown's undertaking to procure giraffes did not simply mean going to Egypt, buying the animals and shipping them home. Brown spent over a year, disguised in Egyptian garb, traveling on camelback in a caravan up the Nile and across the desert to buy the animals. According to an interview with his grandson, Brown demonstrated his Colt revolver with a revolving cylinder to a group of Arabs who were unfamiliar with that sort of firearm. The display led to a friendship between Brown's entourage and the Arabs, and, as a result, the Arabs provided buffalo milk to feed the giraffes.

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