Nahum and his companion were punctilious in presenting an address on behalf of the Alliance to Emperor Menelik, who favoured them with a most friendly reception and provided them with a safe conduct for their journey. On 26 April the expedition set forth from the capital comprising 15 men, 3 riding mules and 12 baggage mules. They spent four days at Debra Tabor, the capital of Begemeder province, as honoured guests of Ras Gugsa, the emperor's son-in-law and the empress's nephew, and reached Atshera, on the east bank of Lake Tana, where they met their first Falashas.

Three years earlier Faitlovitch had been in the same region collecting material on which to base his report for Baron de Rothschild. The difference in the attitudes adopted by the two emissaries helps to explain why Faitlovitch had not seen fit to join forces with Nahum. The Alliance were at best lukewarm on the whole subject. They had done nothing to follow up Halevy's findings and they had shown little interest in Faitlovitch's proposals. Indeed, they seemed to be searching for an excuse not to get involved. They were anxious to show that the Falasha problem was marginal and that the numbers involved were minimal. To be fair, they did not, like subsequent Jewish leaders, try to show that the Falashas were not Jews. The Alliance instructed their mission to discover the size of the Falasha population, to investigate its social and economic situation and to assess its needs and state of mind. Faitlovitch had been invited to join the expedition in a subordinate position but, in view of his experience and knowledge of the country, he considered this an affront and declined. Instead, the pro-Falasha committee in Florence, piqued by the way the Alliance had behaved, decided to act independently and dispatched Faitlovitch on his second visit to Ethiopia.

As Nahum made his way northwards, Faitlovitch set off to the south from Massawa, where he had landed on 1 May 1908. The two expeditions crossed at Adi Shoa, in Tigrai province, on 21 June where, wrote Faitlovitch curtly, they greeted one another and exchanged a few words. There was little love lost between