In September 1818, the naval officer, George Francis Lyon, was residing in Malta when the surgeon-naturalist Joseph Ritchie arrived on the island ahead of his journey to Tripoli before a planned expedition to reach Timbuktu from the north. Ritchie was to be accompanied by Frederick Marryat but when he was unable to do so, Lyon volunteered to take his place. Arriving at Tripoli in November, Lyon had some knowledge of Arabic and spent the following four months studying the language and customs of Libya, adopting the alias Said-ben-Abdallah.
After months of bureaucratic delays and mismanagement, Lyon, Ritchie and a servant, left Tripoli in disguise and headed for Murzuq, where the local bey was in support of the expedition. The extreme heat of the Libyan desert caused both Lyon and Ritchie to fall ill and Ritchie died in November 1819. In poor health, Lyon attempted to continue, reaching Tajarhi before heading back to Tripoli, arriving in March 1820.
Lyon published this account of the journey in 1821 with illustrations from his own drawings.