Richard F. Burton - "Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1"

Elbert Hubbard - "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14"

Jules Verne - "20000 Lieues sous les mers Parts 1&2"

Charles Bennett - "The Frog Who Would A Wooing Go"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Five Weeks in a Balloon

J >> Jules Verne >> Five Weeks in a Balloon




"Confounded heat!" said Joe, wiping away the perspiration
that was streaming from his forehead.

"If we had water, this heat would be of service to us,
for it dilates the hydrogen in the balloon, and diminishes
the amount required in the spiral, although it is true that,
if we were not short of the useful liquid, we should not
have to economize it. Ah! that rascally savage who cost
us the tank!"*

* The water-tank had been thrown overboard when the native
clung to the car.

"You don't regret, though, what you did, doctor?"

"No, Dick, since it was in our power to save that unfortunate
missionary from a horrible death. But, the hundred pounds of
water that we threw overboard would be very useful to us now;
it would be thirteen or fourteen days more of progress secured,
or quite enough to carry us over this desert."

"We've made at least half the journey, haven't we?"
asked Joe.

"In distance, yes; but in duration, no, should the wind
leave us; and it, even now, has a tendency to die away
altogether."

"Come, sir," said Joe, again, "we must not complain;
we've got along pretty well, thus far, and whatever
happens to me, I can't get desperate. We'll find water;
mind, I tell you so."

The soil, however, ran lower from mile to mile; the
undulations of the gold-bearing mountains they had left
died away into the plain, like the last throes of exhausted
Nature. Scanty grass took the place of the fine trees of
the east; only a few belts of half-scorched herbage still
contended against the invasion of the sand, and the huge
rocks, that had rolled down from the distant summits,
crushed in their fall, had scattered in sharp-edged pebbles
which soon again became coarse sand, and finally impalpable dust.

"Here, at last, is Africa, such as you pictured it to
yourself, Joe! Was I not right in saying, 'Wait a
little?' eh?"

"Well, master, it's all natural, at least--heat and dust.
It would be foolish to look for any thing else in such a
country. Do you see," he added, laughing, "I had no
confidence, for my part, in your forests and your prairies;
they were out of reason. What was the use of coming
so far to find scenery just like England? Here's the first
time that I believe in Africa, and I'm not sorry to get a
taste of it."

Toward evening, the doctor calculated that the balloon
had not made twenty miles during that whole burning day,
and a heated gloom closed in upon it, as soon as the sun
had disappeared behind the horizon, which was traced
against the sky with all the precision of a straight line.

The next day was Thursday, the 1st of May, but the
days followed each other with desperate monotony. Each
morning was like the one that had preceded it; noon
poured down the same exhaustless rays, and night condensed
in its shadow the scattered heat which the ensuing
day would again bequeath to the succeeding night. The
wind, now scarcely observable, was rather a gasp than a
breath, and the morning could almost be foreseen when
even that gasp would cease.

The doctor reacted against the gloominess of the situation
and retained all the coolness and self-possession of a
disciplined heart. With his glass he scrutinized every
quarter of the horizon; he saw the last rising ground
gradually melting to the dead level, and the last vegetation
disappearing, while, before him, stretched the immensity
of the desert.

The responsibility resting upon him pressed sorely, but
he did not allow his disquiet to appear. Those two men,
Dick and Joe, friends of his, both of them, he had induced
to come with him almost by the force alone of friendship
and of duty. Had he done well in that? Was it not like
attempting to tread forbidden paths? Was he not, in
this trip, trying to pass the borders of the impossible?
Had not the Almighty reserved for later ages the knowledge
of this inhospitable continent?

All these thoughts, of the kind that arise in hours of
discouragement, succeeded each other and multiplied in
his mind, and, by an irresistible association of ideas, the
doctor allowed himself to be carried beyond the bounds
of logic and of reason. After having established in his
own mind what he should NOT have done, the next
question was, what he should do, then. Would it be impossible
to retrace his steps? Were there not currents higher up
that would waft him to less arid regions? Well informed
with regard to the countries over which he had passed, he
was utterly ignorant of those to come, and thus his conscience
speaking aloud to him, he resolved, in his turn, to
speak frankly to his two companions. He thereupon
laid the whole state of the case plainly before them; he
showed them what had been done, and what there was
yet to do; at the worst, they could return, or attempt it, at
least.--What did they think about it?

"I have no other opinion than that of my excellent
master," said Joe; "what he may have to suffer, I can
suffer, and that better than he can, perhaps. Where he
goes, there I'll go!"

"And you, Kennedy?"

"I, doctor, I'm not the man to despair; no one was
less ignorant than I of the perils of the enterprise, but I
did not want to see them, from the moment that you
determined to brave them. Under present circumstances,
my opinion is, that we should persevere--go clear to the
end. Besides, to return looks to me quite as perilous as
the other course. So onward, then! you may count upon us!"

"Thanks, my gallant friends!" replied the doctor,
with much real feeling, "I expected such devotion as this;
but I needed these encouraging words. Yet, once again,
thank you, from the bottom of my heart!"

And, with this, the three friends warmly grasped each
other by the hand.

"Now, hear me!" said the doctor. "According to
my solar observations, we are not more than three hundred
miles from the Gulf of Guinea; the desert, therefore,
cannot extend indefinitely, since the coast is inhabited, and
the country has been explored for some distance back into
the interior. If needs be, we can direct our course to that
quarter, and it seems out of the question that we should
not come across some oasis, or some well, where we could
replenish our stock of water. But, what we want now, is
the wind, for without it we are held here suspended in the
air at a dead calm.

"Let us wait with resignation," said the hunter.

But, each of the party, in his turn, vainly scanned the
space around him during that long wearisome day. Nothing
could be seen to form the basis of a hope. The very
last inequalities of the soil disappeared with the setting
sun, whose horizontal rays stretched in long lines of fire
over the flat immensity. It was the Desert!

Our aeronauts had scarcely gone a distance of fifteen
miles, having expended, as on the preceding day, one
hundred and thirty-five cubic feet of gas to feed the
cylinder, and two pints of water out of the remaining
eight had been sacrificed to the demands of intense thirst.

The night passed quietly--too quietly, indeed, but the
doctor did not sleep!



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH.

A Little Philosophy.--A Cloud on the Horizon.--In the Midst of a Fog.--The
Strange Balloon.--An Exact View of the Victoria.--The Palm-Trees.--Traces
of a Caravan.--The Well in the Midst of the Desert.

On the morrow, there was the same purity of sky, the
same stillness of the atmosphere. The balloon rose to an
elevation of five hundred feet, but it had scarcely changed
its position to the westward in any perceptible degree.

"We are right in the open desert," said the doctor.
"Look at that vast reach of sand! What a strange spectacle!
What a singular arrangement of nature! Why should there be,
in one place, such extreme luxuriance of vegetation yonder,
and here, this extreme aridity, and that in the same latitude,
and under the same rays of the sun?"

"The why concerns me but little," answered Kennedy,
"the reason interests me less than the fact. The thing is
so; that's the important part of it!"

"Oh, it is well to philosophize a little, Dick; it does
no harm."

"Let us philosophize, then, if you will; we have time
enough before us; we are hardly moving; the wind is
afraid to blow; it sleeps."

"That will not last forever," put in Joe; "I think I
see some banks of clouds in the east."

"Joe's right!" said the doctor, after he had taken a look.

"Good!" said Kennedy; "now for our clouds, with a
fine rain, and a fresh wind to dash it into our faces!"

"Well, we'll see, Dick, we'll see!"

"But this is Friday, master, and I'm afraid of Fridays!"

"Well, I hope that this very day you'll get over those
notions."

"I hope so, master, too. Whew!" he added, mopping his
face, "heat's a good thing, especially in winter,
but in summer it don't do to take too much of it."

"Don't you fear the effect of the sun's heat on our
balloon?" asked Kennedy, addressing the doctor.

"No! the gutta-percha coating resists much higher
temperatures than even this. With my spiral I have
subjected it inside to as much as one hundred and
fifty-eight degrees sometimes, and the covering does
not appear to have suffered."

"A cloud! a real cloud!" shouted Joe at this moment,
for that piercing eyesight of his beat all the glasses.

And, in fact, a thick bank of vapor, now quite distinct,
could be seen slowly emerging above the horizon.
It appeared to be very deep, and, as it were, puffed out.
It was, in reality, a conglomeration of smaller clouds.
The latter invariably retained their original formation,
and from this circumstance the doctor concluded that
there was no current of air in their collected mass.

This compact body of vapor had appeared about eight
o'clock in the morning, and, by eleven, it had already
reached the height of the sun's disk. The latter then
disappeared entirely behind the murky veil, and the lower
belt of cloud, at the same moment, lifted above the line
of the horizon, which was again disclosed in a full blaze
of daylight.

"It's only an isolated cloud," remarked the doctor.
"It won't do to count much upon that."

"Look, Dick, its shape is just the same as when we
saw it this morning!"

"Then, doctor, there's to be neither rain nor wind, at
least for us!"

"I fear so; the cloud keeps at a great height."

"Well, doctor, suppose we were to go in pursuit of
this cloud, since it refuses to burst upon us?"

"I fancy that to do so wouldn't help us much; it
would be a consumption of gas, and, consequently, of
water, to little purpose; but, in our situation, we must
not leave anything untried; therefore, let us ascend!"

And with this, the doctor put on a full head of flame
from the cylinder, and the dilation of the hydrogen,
occasioned by such sudden and intense heat, sent the
balloon rapidly aloft.

About fifteen hundred feet from the ground, it encountered
an opaque mass of cloud, and entered a dense
fog, suspended at that elevation; but it did not meet with
the least breath of wind. This fog seemed even destitute
of humidity, and the articles brought in contact with it
were scarcely dampened in the slightest degree. The
balloon, completely enveloped in the vapor, gained a little
increase of speed, perhaps, and that was all.

The doctor gloomily recognized what trifling success
he had obtained from his manoeuvre, and was relapsing
into deep meditation, when he heard Joe exclaim, in tones
of most intense astonishment:

"Ah! by all that's beautiful!"

"What's the matter, Joe?"

"Doctor! Mr. Kennedy! Here's something curious!"

"What is it, then?"

"We are not alone, up here! There are rogues about!
They've stolen our invention!"

"Has he gone crazy?" asked Kennedy.

Joe stood there, perfectly motionless, the very picture
of amazement.

"Can the hot sun have really affected the poor fellow's
brain?" said the doctor, turning toward him.

"Will you tell me?--"

"Look!" said Joe, pointing to a certain quarter of
the sky.

"By St. James!" exclaimed Kennedy, in turn, "why,
who would have believed it? Look, look! doctor!"

"I see it!" said the doctor, very quietly.

"Another balloon! and other passengers, like ourselves!"

And, sure enough, there was another balloon about
two hundred paces from them, floating in the air with its
car and its aeronauts. It was following exactly the same
route as the Victoria.

"Well," said the doctor, "nothing remains for us but
to make signals; take the flag, Kennedy, and show them
our colors."

It seemed that the travellers by the other balloon
had just the same idea, at the same moment, for the same
kind of flag repeated precisely the same salute with a
hand that moved in just the same manner.

"What does that mean?" asked Kennedy.

"They are apes," said Joe, "imitating us."

"It means," said the doctor, laughing, "that it is you,
Dick, yourself, making that signal to yourself; or, in other
words, that we see ourselves in the second balloon, which
is no other than the Victoria."

"As to that, master, with all respect to you," said Joe,
"you'll never make me believe it."

"Climb up on the edge of the car, Joe; wave your
arms, and then you'll see."

Joe obeyed, and all his gestures were instantaneously
and exactly repeated.

"It is merely the effect of the MIRAGE," said the doctor,
"and nothing else--a simple optical phenomenon due to
the unequal refraction of light by different layers of the
atmosphere, and that is all.

"It's wonderful," said Joe, who could not make up
his mind to surrender, but went on repeating his
gesticulations.

"What a curious sight! Do you know," said Kennedy,
"that it's a real pleasure to have a view of our
noble balloon in that style? She's a beauty, isn't she?--
and how stately her movements as she sweeps along!"

"You may explain the matter as you like," continued
Joe, "it's a strange thing, anyhow!"

But ere long this picture began to fade away; the
clouds rose higher, leaving the balloon, which made no
further attempt to follow them, and in about an hour
they disappeared in the open sky.

The wind, which had been scarcely perceptible, seemed
still to diminish, and the doctor in perfect desperation
descended toward the ground, and all three of the travellers,
whom the incident just recorded had, for a few moments,
diverted from their anxieties, relapsed into gloomy
meditation, sweltering the while beneath the scorching
heat.

About four o'clock, Joe descried some object standing
out against the vast background of sand, and soon was
able to declare positively that there were two palm-trees
at no great distance.

"Palm-trees!" exclaimed Ferguson; "why, then
there's a spring--a well!"

He took up his glass and satisfied himself that Joe's
eyes had not been mistaken.

"At length!" he said, over and over again, "water!
water! and we are saved; for if we do move slowly, still
we move, and we shall arrive at last!"

"Good, master! but suppose we were to drink a mouthful
in the mean time, for this air is stifling?"

"Let us drink then, my boy!"

No one waited to be coaxed. A whole pint was swallowed
then and there, reducing the total remaining supply
to three pints and a half.

"Ah! that does one good!" said Joe; "wasn't it
fine? Barclay and Perkins never turned out ale equal to
that!"

"See the advantage of being put on short allowance!"
moralized the doctor.

"It is not great, after all," retorted Kennedy; "and if
I were never again to have the pleasure of drinking water,
I should agree on condition that I should never be deprived
of it."

At six o'clock the balloon was floating over the palm-trees.

They were two shrivelled, stunted, dried-up specimens
of trees--two ghosts of palms--without foliage, and more
dead than alive. Ferguson examined them with terror.

At their feet could be seen the half-worn stones of a
spring, but these stones, pulverized by the baking heat
of the sun, seemed to be nothing now but impalpable dust.
There was not the slightest sign of moisture. The doctor's
heart shrank within him, and he was about to communicate
his thoughts to his companions, when their exclamations
attracted his attention. As far as the eye could
reach to the eastward, extended a long line of whitened
bones; pieces of skeletons surrounded the fountain; a caravan
had evidently made its way to that point, marking its
progress by its bleaching remains; the weaker had fallen
one by one upon the sand; the stronger, having at length
reached this spring for which they panted, had there found
a horrible death.

Our travellers looked at each other and turned pale.

"Let us not alight!" said Kennedy, "let us fly from
this hideous spectacle! There's not a drop of water
here!"

"No, Dick, as well pass the night here as elsewhere;
let us have a clear conscience in the matter. We'll dig
down to the very bottom of the well. There has been a
spring here, and perhaps there's something left in it!"

The Victoria touched the ground; Joe and Kennedy
put into the car a quantity of sand equal to their weight,
and leaped out. They then hastened to the well, and
penetrated to the interior by a flight of steps that was now
nothing but dust. The spring appeared to have been dry
for years. They dug down into a parched and powdery
sand--the very dryest of all sand, indeed--there was not
one trace of moisture!

The doctor saw them come up to the surface of the
desert, saturated with perspiration, worn out, covered with
fine dust, exhausted, discouraged and despairing.

He then comprehended that their search had been
fruitless. He had expected as much, and he kept silent,
for he felt that, from this moment forth, he must have
courage and energy enough for three.

Joe brought up with him some pieces of a leathern
bottle that had grown hard and horn-like with age, and
angrily flung them away among the bleaching bones of
the caravan.

At supper, not a word was spoken by our travellers,
and they even ate without appetite. Yet they had not,
up to this moment, endured the real agonies of thirst, and
were in no desponding mood, excepting for the future.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH.

One Hundred and Thirteen Degrees.--The Doctor's Reflections.--A Desperate
Search.--The Cylinder goes out.--One Hundred and Twenty-two Degrees.--
Contemplation of the Desert.--A Night Walk.--Solitude.--Debility.--Joe's
Prospects.--He gives himself One Day more.

The distance made by the balloon during the preceding
day did not exceed ten miles, and, to keep it afloat,
one hundred and sixty-two cubic feet of gas had been
consumed.

On Saturday morning the doctor again gave the signal
for departure.

"The cylinder can work only six hours longer; and,
if in that time we shall not have found either a well or a
spring of water, God alone knows what will become of us!"

"Not much wind this morning, master," said Joe; "but
it will come up, perhaps," he added, suddenly remarking
the doctor's ill-concealed depression.

Vain hope! The atmosphere was in a dead calm--one
of those calms which hold vessels captive in tropical seas.
The heat had become intolerable; and the thermometer,
in the shade under the awning, indicated one hundred
and thirteen degrees.

Joe and Kennedy, reclining at full length near each
other, tried, if not in slumber, at least in torpor, to forget
their situation, for their forced inactivity gave them
periods of leisure far from pleasant. That man is to be
pitied the most who cannot wean himself from gloomy
reflections by actual work, or some practical pursuit. But
here there was nothing to look after, nothing to undertake,
and they had to submit to the situation, without
having it in their power to ameliorate it.

The pangs of thirst began to be severely felt; brandy,
far from appeasing this imperious necessity, augmented
it, and richly merited the name of "tiger's milk" applied
to it by the African natives. Scarcely two pints of water
remained, and that was heated. Each of the party devoured
the few precious drops with his gaze, yet neither
of them dared to moisten his lips with them. Two pints
of water in the midst of the desert!

Then it was that Dr. Ferguson, buried in meditation,
asked himself whether he had acted with prudence.
Would he not have done better to have kept the water
that he had decomposed in pure loss, in order to sustain
him in the air? He had gained a little distance, to be
sure; but was he any nearer to his journey's end? What
difference did sixty miles to the rear make in this region,
when there was no water to be had where they were?
The wind, should it rise, would blow there as it did here,
only less strongly at this point, if it came from the east.
But hope urged him onward. And yet those two gallons
of water, expended in vain, would have sufficed for nine
days' halt in the desert. And what changes might not
have occurred in nine days! Perhaps, too, while retaining
the water, he might have ascended by throwing out
ballast, at the cost merely of discharging some gas, when
he had again to descend. But the gas in his balloon was
his blood, his very life!

A thousand one such reflections whirled in succession
through his brain; and, resting his head between his
hands, he sat there for hours without raising it.

"We must make one final effort," he said, at last,
about ten o'clock in the morning. "We must endeavor,
just once more, to find an atmospheric current to bear us
away from here, and, to that end, must risk our last
resources."

Therefore, while his companions slept, the doctor raised
the hydrogen in the balloon to an elevated temperature,
and the huge globe, filling out by the dilation of the gas,
rose straight up in the perpendicular rays of the sun.
The doctor searched vainly for a breath of wind, from the
height of one hundred feet to that of five miles; his
starting-point remained fatally right below him, and absolute
calm seemed to reign, up to the extreme limits of the
breathing atmosphere.

At length the feeding-supply of water gave out; the
cylinder was extinguished for lack of gas; the Buntzen
battery ceased to work, and the balloon, shrinking together,
gently descended to the sand, in the very place
that the car had hollowed out there.

It was noon; and solar observations gave nineteen
degrees thirty-five minutes east longitude, and six degrees
fifty-one minutes north latitude, or nearly five hundred
miles from Lake Tchad, and more than four hundred miles
from the western coast of Africa.

On the balloon taking ground, Kennedy and Joe awoke
from their stupor.

"We have halted," said the Scot.

"We had to do so," replied the doctor, gravely.

His companions understood him. The level of the soil at
that point corresponded with the level of the sea, and,
consequently, the balloon remained in perfect equilibrium,
and absolutely motionless.

The weight of the three travellers was replaced with
an equivalent quantity of sand, and they got out of the
car. Each was absorbed in his own thoughts; and for
many hours neither of them spoke. Joe prepared their
evening meal, which consisted of biscuit and pemmican,
and was hardly tasted by either of the party. A mouthful
of scalding water from their little store completed this
gloomy repast.

During the night none of them kept awake; yet none
could be precisely said to have slept. On the morrow
there remained only half a pint of water, and this the
doctor put away, all three having resolved not to touch it
until the last extremity.

It was not long, however, before Joe exclaimed:

"I'm choking, and the heat is getting worse! I'm
not surprised at that, though," he added, consulting the
thermometer; "one hundred and forty degrees!"

"The sand scorches me," said the hunter, "as though
it had just come out of a furnace; and not a cloud in this
sky of fire. It's enough to drive one mad!"

"Let us not despair," responded the doctor. "In this
latitude these intense heats are invariably followed by
storms, and the latter come with the suddenness of lightning.
Notwithstanding this disheartening clearness of
the sky, great atmospheric changes may take place in less
than an hour."

"But," asked Kennedy, "is there any sign whatever
of that?"

"Well," replied the doctor, "I think that there is
some slight symptom of a fall in the barometer."

"May Heaven hearken to you, Samuel! for here we are
pinned to the ground, like a bird with broken wings."

"With this difference, however, my dear Dick, that
our wings are unhurt, and I hope that we shall be able to
use them again."

"Ah! wind! wind!" exclaimed Joe; "enough to
carry us to a stream or a well, and we'll be all right.
We have provisions enough, and, with water, we could
wait a month without suffering; but thirst is a cruel
thing!"

It was not thirst alone, but the unchanging sight of the
desert, that fatigued the mind. There was not a variation
in the surface of the soil, not a hillock of sand, not a
pebble, to relieve the gaze. This unbroken level discouraged
the beholder, and gave him that kind of malady
called the "desert-sickness." The impassible monotony
of the arid blue sky, and the vast yellow expanse of the
desert-sand, at length produced a sensation of terror. In
this inflamed atmosphere the heat appeared to vibrate
as it does above a blazing hearth, while the mind grew
desperate in contemplating the limitless calm, and could
see no reason why the thing should ever end, since immensity
is a species of eternity.

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