Five Weeks in a Balloon

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

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Joe arranged their bivouac for that evening, as he had
done for the previous night; and during the watches kept
by the doctor and Kennedy there was no fresh incident.

But, toward three o'clock in the morning, while Joe
was on guard, the temperature suddenly fell; the sky
became overcast with clouds, and the darkness increased.

"Turn out!" cried Joe, arousing his companions.
"Turn out! Here's the wind!"

"At last!" exclaimed the doctor, eying the heavens.
"But it is a storm! The balloon! Let us hasten to the
balloon!"

It was high time for them to reach it. The Victoria
was bending to the force of the hurricane, and dragging
along the car, the latter grazing the sand. Had any portion
of the ballast been accidentally thrown out, the
balloon would have been swept away, and all hope of
recovering it have been forever lost.

But fleet-footed Joe put forth his utmost speed, and
checked the car, while the balloon beat upon the sand, at
the risk of being torn to pieces. The doctor, followed by
Kennedy, leaped in, and lit his cylinder, while his companions
threw out the superfluous ballast.

The travellers took one last look at the trees of the
oasis bowing to the force of the hurricane, and soon,
catching the wind at two hundred feet above the ground,
disappeared in the gloom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINTH.

Signs of Vegetation.--The Fantastic Notion of a French Author.--A
Magnificent Country.--The Kingdom of Adamova.--The Explorations of
Speke and Burton connected with those of Dr. Barth.--The Atlantika
Mountains.--The River Benoue.--The City of Yola.--The Bagele.--Mount
Mendif.

From the moment of their departure, the travellers
moved with great velocity. They longed to leave behind
them the desert, which had so nearly been fatal to them.

About a quarter-past nine in the morning, they caught
a glimpse of some signs of vegetation: herbage floating
on that sea of sand, and announcing, as the weeds upon
the ocean did to Christopher Columbus, the nearness of
the shore--green shoots peeping up timidly between pebbles
that were, in their turn, to be the rocks of that vast
expanse.

Hills, but of trifling height, were seen in wavy lines
upon the horizon. Their profile, muffled by the heavy
mist, was defined but vaguely. The monotony, however,
was beginning to disappear.

The doctor hailed with joy the new country thus disclosed,
and, like a seaman on lookout at the mast-head, he
was ready to shout aloud:

"Land, ho! land!"

An hour later the continent spread broadly before their
gaze, still wild in aspect, but less flat, less denuded, and
with a few trees standing out against the gray sky.

"We are in a civilized country at last!" said the hunter.

"Civilized? Well, that's one way of speaking; but
there are no people to be seen yet."

"It will not be long before we see them," said Ferguson,
"at our present rate of travel."

"Are we still in the negro country, doctor?"

"Yes, and on our way to the country of the Arabs."

"What! real Arabs, sir, with their camels?"

"No, not many camels; they are scarce, if not altogether
unknown, in these regions. We must go a few degrees farther
north to see them."

"What a pity!"

"And why, Joe?"

"Because, if the wind fell contrary, they might be of
use to us."

"How so?"

"Well, sir, it's just a notion that's got into my head:
we might hitch them to the car, and make them tow us
along. What do you say to that, doctor?"

"Poor Joe! Another person had that idea in advance
of you. It was used by a very gifted French author--
M. Mery--in a romance, it is true. He has his travellers
drawn along in a balloon by a team of camels; then a lion
comes up, devours the camels, swallows the tow-rope, and
hauls the balloon in their stead; and so on through the
story. You see that the whole thing is the top-flower of
fancy, but has nothing in common with our style of locomotion."

Joe, a little cut down at learning that his idea had
been used already, cudgelled his wits to imagine what
animal could have devoured the lion; but he could not
guess it, and so quietly went on scanning the appearance
of the country.

A lake of medium extent stretched away before him,
surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which yet could
not be dignified with the name of mountains. There were
winding valleys, numerous and fertile, with their tangled
thickets of the most various trees. The African oil-tree
rose above the mass, with leaves fifteen feet in length upon
its stalk, the latter studded with sharp thorns; the bombax,
or silk-cotton-tree, filled the wind, as it swept by,
with the fine down of its seeds; the pungent odors of the
pendanus, the "kenda" of the Arabs, perfumed the air
up to the height where the Victoria was sailing; the
papaw-tree, with its palm-shaped leaves; the sterculier,
which produces the Soudan-nut; the baobab, and the
banana-tree, completed the luxuriant flora of these
inter-tropical regions.

"The country is superb!" said the doctor.

"Here are some animals," added Joe. "Men are not
far away."

"Oh, what magnificent elephants!" exclaimed Kennedy.
"Is there no way to get a little shooting?"

"How could we manage to halt in a current as strong
as this? No, Dick; you must taste a little of the torture
of Tantalus just now. You shall make up for it afterward."

And, in truth, there was enough to excite the fancy of
a sportsman. Dick's heart fairly leaped in his breast as
he grasped the butt of his Purdy.

The fauna of the region were as striking as its flora.
The wild-ox revelled in dense herbage that often concealed
his whole body; gray, black, and yellow elephants of the
most gigantic size burst headlong, like a living hurricane,
through the forests, breaking, rending, tearing down,
devastating every thing in their path; upon the woody
slopes of the hills trickled cascades and springs flowing
northward; there, too, the hippopotami bathed their huge
forms, splashing and snorting as they frolicked in the
water, and lamantines, twelve feet long, with bodies like
seals, stretched themselves along the banks, turning up
toward the sun their rounded teats swollen with milk.

It was a whole menagerie of rare and curious beasts in
a wondrous hot-house, where numberless birds with plumage
of a thousand hues gleamed and fluttered in the sunshine.

By this prodigality of Nature, the doctor recognized
the splendid kingdom of Adamova.

"We are now beginning to trench upon the realm of
modern discovery. I have taken up the lost scent of preceding
travellers. It is a happy chance, my friends, for
we shall be enabled to link the toils of Captains Burton and
Speke with the explorations of Dr. Barth. We have left
the Englishmen behind us, and now have caught up with
the Hamburger. It will not be long, either, before we
arrive at the extreme point attained by that daring explorer."

"It seems to me that there is a vast extent of country
between the two explored routes," remarked Kennedy;
"at least, if I am to judge by the distance that we have
made."

"It is easy to determine: take the map and see what
is the longitude of the southern point of Lake Ukereoue,
reached by Speke."

"It is near the thirty-seventh degree."

"And the city of Yola, which we shall sight this evening,
and to which Barth penetrated, what is its position?"

"It is about in the twelfth degree of east longitude."

"Then there are twenty-five degrees, or, counting sixty
miles to each, about fifteen hundred miles in all."

"A nice little walk," said Joe, "for people who have
to go on foot."

"It will be accomplished, however. Livingstone and
Moffat are pushing on up this line toward the interior.
Nyassa, which they have discovered, is not far from Lake
Tanganayika, seen by Burton. Ere the close of the century
these regions will, undoubtedly, be explored. But," added
the doctor, consulting his compass, "I regret that the
wind is carrying us so far to the westward. I wanted to
get to the north."

After twelve hours of progress, the Victoria found herself
on the confines of Nigritia. The first inhabitants of
this region, the Chouas Arabs, were feeding their wandering
flocks. The immense summits of the Atlantika Mountains
seen above the horizon--mountains that no European
foot had yet scaled, and whose height is computed to be
ten thousand feet! Their western slope determines the
flow of all the waters in this region of Africa toward the
ocean. They are the Mountains of the Moon to this part
of the continent.

At length a real river greeted the gaze of our travellers,
and, by the enormous ant-hills seen in its vicinity, the
doctor recognized the Benoue, one of the great tributaries
of the Niger, the one which the natives have called "The
Fountain of the Waters."

"This river," said the doctor to his companions, "will,
one day, be the natural channel of communication with
the interior of Nigritia. Under the command of one of
our brave captains, the steamer Pleiad has already ascended
as far as the town of Yola. You see that we are
not in an unknown country."

Numerous slaves were engaged in the labors of the
field, cultivating sorgho, a kind of millet which forms the
chief basis of their diet; and the most stupid expressions
of astonishment ensued as the Victoria sped past like a
meteor. That evening the balloon halted about forty miles
from Yola, and ahead of it, but in the distance, rose the
two sharp cones of Mount Mendif.

The doctor threw out his anchors and made fast to the
top of a high tree; but a very violent wind beat upon the
balloon with such force as to throw it over on its side, thus
rendering the position of the car sometimes extremely
dangerous. Ferguson did not close his all night, and
he was repeatedly on the point of cutting the anchor-rope
and scudding away before the gale. At length, however,
the storm abated, and the oscillations of the balloon ceased
to be alarming.

On the morrow the wind was more moderate, but it
carried our travellers away from the city of Yola, which
recently rebuilt by the Fouillans, excited Ferguson's curiosity.
However, he had to make up his mind to being borne farther
to the northward and even a little to the east.

Kennedy proposed to halt in this fine hunting-country,
and Joe declared that the need of fresh meat was beginning
to be felt; but the savage customs of the country,
the attitude of the population, and some shots fired at the
Victoria, admonished the doctor to continue his journey.
They were then crossing a region that was the scene of
massacres and burnings, and where warlike conflicts between
the barbarian sultans, contending for their power
amid the most atrocious carnage, never cease.

Numerous and populous villages of long low huts
stretched away between broad pasture-fields whose dense
herbage was besprinkled with violet-colored blossoms.
The huts, looking like huge beehives, were sheltered behind
bristling palisades. The wild hill-sides and hollows
frequently reminded the beholder of the glens in the Highlands
of Scotland, as Kennedy more than once remarked.

In spite of all he could do, the doctor bore directly to
the northeast, toward Mount Mendif, which was lost in
the midst of environing clouds. The lofty summits of
these mountains separate the valley of the Niger from the
basin of Lake Tchad.

Soon afterward was seen the Bagele, with its eighteen
villages clinging to its flanks like a whole brood of children
to their mother's bosom--a magnificent spectacle for
the beholder whose gaze commanded and took in the entire
picture at one view. Even the ravines were seen to
be covered with fields of rice and of arachides.

By three o'clock the Victoria was directly in front of
Mount Mendif. It had been impossible to avoid it; the
only thing to be done was to cross it. The doctor, by
means of a temperature increased to one hundred and
eighty degrees, gave the balloon a fresh ascensional force
of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an
elevation of more than eight thousand feet, the greatest
height attained during the journey. The temperature of
the atmosphere was so much cooler at that point that the
aeronauts had to resort to their blankets and thick coverings.

Ferguson was in haste to descend; the covering of the
balloon gave indications of bursting, but in the meanwhile
he had time to satisfy himself of the volcanic origin of the
mountain, whose extinct craters are now but deep abysses.
Immense accumulations of bird-guano gave the sides of
Mount Mendif the appearance of calcareous rocks, and there
was enough of the deposit there to manure all the lands in
the United Kingdom.

At five o'clock the Victoria, sheltered from the south
winds, went gently gliding along the slopes of the mountain,
and stopped in a wide clearing remote from any habitation.
The instant it touched the soil, all needful precautions
were taken to hold it there firmly; and Kennedy,
fowling-piece in hand, sallied out upon the sloping plain.
Ere long, he returned with half a dozen wild ducks and a
kind of snipe, which Joe served up in his best style. The
meal was heartily relished, and the night was passed in
undisturbed and refreshing slumber.

CHAPTER THIRTIETH.

Mosfeia.--The Sheik.--Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney.--Vogel.--The Capital
of Loggoum.--Toole.--Becalmed above Kernak.--The Governor and his Court.
--The Attack.--The Incendiary Pigeons.

On the next day, May 11th, the Victoria resumed her
adventurous journey. Her passengers had the same confidence
in her that a good seaman has in his ship.

In terrific hurricanes, in tropical heats, when making
dangerous departures, and descents still more dangerous,
it had, at all times and in all places, come out safely. It
might almost have been said that Ferguson managed it
with a wave of the hand; and hence, without knowing in
advance, where the point of arrival would be, the doctor
had no fears concerning the successful issue of his journey.
However, in this country of barbarians and fanatics, prudence
obliged him to take the strictest precautions. He
therefore counselled his companions to have their eyes
wide open for every thing and at all hours.

The wind drifted a little more to the northward, and,
toward nine o'clock, they sighted the larger city of Mosfeia,
built upon an eminence which was itself enclosed between
two lofty mountains. Its position was impregnable,
a narrow road running between a marsh and a thick wood
being the only channel of approach to it.

At the moment of which we write, a sheik, accompanied
by a mounted escort, and clad in a garb of brilliant
colors, preceded by couriers and trumpeters, who put aside
the boughs of the trees as he rode up, was making his
grand entry into the place.

The doctor lowered the balloon in order to get a better
look at this cavalcade of natives; but, as the balloon
grew larger to their eyes, they began to show symptoms
of intense affright, and at length made off in different
directions as fast as their legs and those of their horses
could carry them.

The sheik alone did not budge an inch. He merely
grasped his long musket, cocked it, and proudly waited in
silence. The doctor came on to within a hundred and
fifty feet of him, and then, with his roundest and fullest
voice, saluted him courteously in the Arabic tongue.

But, upon hearing these words falling, as it seemed,
from the sky, the sheik dismounted and prostrated himself
in the dust of the highway, where the doctor had to
leave him, finding it impossible to divert him from his
adoration.

"Unquestionably," Ferguson remarked, "those people
take us for supernatural beings. When Europeans came
among them for the first time, they were mistaken for
creatures of a higher race. When this sheik comes to
speak of to-day's meeting, he will not fail to embellish the
circumstance with all the resources of an Arab imagination.
You may, therefore, judge what an account their
legends will give of us some day."

"Not such a desirable thing, after all," said the Scot,
"in the point of view that affects civilization; it would be
better to pass for mere men. That would give these negro
races a superior idea of European power."

"Very good, my dear Dick; but what can we do about
it? You might sit all day explaining the mechanism of
a balloon to the savants of this country, and yet they would
not comprehend you, but would persist in ascribing it to
supernatural aid."

"Doctor, you spoke of the first time Europeans visited
these regions. Who were the visitors?" inquired Joe.

"My dear fellow, we are now upon the very track of
Major Denham. It was at this very city of Mosfeia that
he was received by the Sultan of Mandara; he had quitted
the Bornou country; he accompanied the sheik in an expedition
against the Fellatahs; he assisted in the attack
on the city, which, with its arrows alone, bravely resisted
the bullets of the Arabs, and put the sheik's troops to
flight. All this was but a pretext for murders, raids, and
pillage. The major was completely plundered and stripped,
and had it not been for his horse, under whose stomach he
clung with the skill of an Indian rider, and was borne with
a headlong gallop from his barbarous pursuers, he never
could have made his way back to Kouka, the capital of
Bornou."

"Who was this Major Denham?"

"A fearless Englishman, who, between 1822 and 1824,
commanded an expedition into the Bornou country, in
company with Captain Clapperton and Dr. Oudney. They
set out from Tripoli in the month of March, reached Mourzouk,
the capital of Fez, and, following the route which at
a later period Dr. Barth was to pursue on his way back to
Europe, they arrived, on the 16th of February, 1823, at
Kouka, near Lake Tchad. Denham made several explorations
in Bornou, in Mandara, and to the eastern shores of
the lake. In the mean time, on the 15th of December,
1823, Captain Clapperton and Dr. Oudney had pushed
their way through the Soudan country as far as Sackatoo,
and Oudney died of fatigue and exhaustion in the town
of Murmur."

"This part of Africa has, therefore, paid a heavy tribute
of victims to the cause of science," said Kennedy.

"Yes, this country is fatal to travellers. We are moving
directly toward the kingdom of Baghirmi, which Vogel
traversed in 1856, so as to reach the Wadai country, where
he disappeared. This young man, at the age of twenty-three,
had been sent to cooperate with Dr. Barth. They
met on the 1st of December, 1854, and thereupon commenced
his explorations of the country. Toward 1856, he
announced, in the last letters received from him, his
intention to reconnoitre the kingdom of Wadai, which no
European had yet penetrated. It appears that he got as
far as Wara, the capital, where, according to some accounts,
he was made prisoner, and, according to others,
was put to death for having attempted to ascend a sacred
mountain in the environs. But, we must not too lightly
admit the death of travellers, since that does away with
the necessity of going in search of them. For instance,
how often was the death of Dr. Barth reported, to his
own great annoyance! It is, therefore, very possible that
Vogel may still be held as a prisoner by the Sultan of
Wadai, in the hope of obtaining a good ransom for him.

"Baron de Neimans was about starting for the Wadai
country when he died at Cairo, in 1855; and we now know
that De Heuglin has set out on Vogel's track with the
expedition sent from Leipsic, so that we shall soon be
accurately informed as to the fate of that young and
interesting explorer."*

* Since the doctor's departure, letters written from El'Obeid
by Mr. Muntzinger, the newly-appointed head of the expedition,
unfortunately place the death of Vogel beyond a doubt.

Mosfeia had disappeared from the horizon long ere this,
and the Mandara country was developing to the gaze of
our aeronauts its astonishing fertility, with its forests of
acacias, its locust-trees covered with red flowers, and the
herbaceous plants of its fields of cotton and indigo trees.
The river Shari, which eighty miles farther on rolled its
impetuous waters into Lake Tchad, was quite distinctly
seen.

The doctor got his companions to trace its course upon
the maps drawn by Dr. Barth.

"You perceive," said he, "that the labors of this savant
have been conducted with great precision; we are moving
directly toward the Loggoum region, and perhaps toward
Kernak, its capital. It was there that poor Toole died, at
the age of scarcely twenty-two. He was a young Englishman,
an ensign in the 80th regiment, who, a few weeks
before, had joined Major Denham in Africa, and it was
not long ere he there met his death. Ah! this vast
country might well be called the graveyard of European
travellers."

Some boats, fifty feet long, were descending the current
of the Shari. The Victoria, then one thousand feet
above the soil, hardly attracted the attention of the
natives; but the wind, which until then had been blowing
with a certain degree of strength, was falling off.

"Is it possible that we are to be caught in another dead
calm?" sighed the doctor.

"Well, we've no lack of water, nor the desert to fear,
anyhow, master," said Joe.

"No; but there are races here still more to be dreaded."

"Why!" said Joe, again, "there's something like a town."

"That is Kernak. The last puffs of the breeze are
wafting us to it, and, if we choose, we can take an exact
plan of the place."

"Shall we not go nearer to it?" asked Kennedy.

"Nothing easier, Dick! We are right over it. Allow
me to turn the stopcock of the cylinder, and we'll not be
long in descending."

Half an hour later the balloon hung motionless about
two hundred feet from the ground.

"Here we are!" said the doctor, "nearer to Kernak
than a man would be to London, if he were perched in the
cupola of St. Paul's. So we can take a survey at our
ease."

"What is that tick-tacking sound that we hear on all sides?"

Joe looked attentively, and at length discovered that
the noise they heard was produced by a number of weavers
beating cloth stretched in the open air, on large trunks of
trees.

The capital of Loggoum could then be seen in its entire
extent, like an unrolled chart. It is really a city with
straight rows of houses and quite wide streets. In the
midst of a large open space there was a slave-market,
attended by a great crowd of customers, for the Mandara
women, who have extremely small hands and feet, are in
excellent request, and can be sold at lucrative rates.

At the sight of the Victoria, the scene so often produced
occurred again. At first there were outcries, and
then followed general stupefaction; business was abandoned;
work was flung aside, and all noise ceased. The
aeronauts remained as they were, completely motionless,
and lost not a detail of the populous city. They even
went down to within sixty feet of the ground.

Hereupon the Governor of Loggoum came out from his residence,
displaying his green standard, and accompanied by his
musicians, who blew on hoarse buffalo-horns, as though
they would split their cheeks or any thing else,
excepting their own lungs. The crowd at once gathered
around him. In the mean while Dr. Ferguson tried to
make himself heard, but in vain.

This population looked like proud and intelligent people,
with their high foreheads, their almost aquiline noses,
and their curling hair; but the presence of the Victoria
troubled them greatly. Horsemen could be seen galloping
in all directions, and it soon became evident that the
governor's troops were assembling to oppose so extraordinary
a foe. Joe wore himself out waving handkerchiefs
of every color and shape to them; but his exertions were
all to no purpose.

However, the sheik, surrounded by his court, proclaimed
silence, and pronounced a discourse, of which the
doctor could not understand a word. It was Arabic, mixed
with Baghirmi. He could make out enough, however, by
the universal language of gestures, to be aware that he
was receiving a very polite invitation to depart. Indeed,
he would have asked for nothing better, but for lack of
wind, the thing had become impossible. His noncompliance,
therefore, exasperated the governor, whose courtiers
and attendants set up a furious howl to enforce immediate
obedience on the part of the aerial monster.

They were odd-looking fellows those courtiers, with
their five or six shirts swathed around their bodies! They
had enormous stomachs, some of which actually seemed
to be artificial. The doctor surprised his companions by
informing them that this was the way to pay court to the
sultan. The rotundity of the stomach indicated the ambition
of its possessor. These corpulent gentry gesticulated
and bawled at the top of their voices--one of them
particularly distinguishing himself above the rest--to
such an extent, indeed, that he must have been a prime
minister--at least, if the disturbance he made was any
criterion of his rank. The common rabble of dusky denizens
united their howlings with the uproar of the court,
repeating their gesticulations like so many monkeys, and
thereby producing a single and instantaneous movement
of ten thousand arms at one time.

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