Cinq semaines en ballon. English

by Jules Verne

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTH.

  A Rapid Passage.--Prudent Resolves.--Caravans in Sight.--IncessantRains.--Goa.--The Niger.--Golberry, Geoffroy, and Gray.--MungoPark.--Laing.--Rene Caillie.--Clapperton.--John and Richard Lander.

  The 17th of May passed tranquilly, without any remarkable incident; thedesert gained upon them once more; a moderate wind bore the Victoriatoward the southwest, and she never swerved to the right or to the left,but her shadow traced a perfectly straight line on the sand.

  Before starting, the doctor had prudently renewed his stock of water,having feared that he should not be able to touch ground in theseregions, infested as they are by the Aouelim-Minian Touaregs. Theplateau, at an elevation of eighteen hundred feet above the level of thesea, sloped down toward the south. Our travellers, having crossedthe Aghades route at Murzouk--a route often pressed by the feet ofcamels--arrived that evening, in the sixteenth degree of north latitude,and four degrees fifty-five minutes east longitude, after havingpassed over one hundred and eighty miles of a long and monotonous day'sjourney.

  During the day Joe dressed the last pieces of game, which had been onlyhastily prepared, and he served up for supper a mess of snipe, that weregreatly relished. The wind continuing good, the doctor resolved to keepon during the night, the moon, still nearly at the full, illumining itwith her radiance. The Victoria ascended to a height of five hundredfeet, and, during her nocturnal trip of about sixty miles, the gentleslumbers of an infant would not have been disturbed by her motion.

  On Sunday morning, the direction of the wind again changed, and it boreto the northwestward. A few crows were seen sweeping through theair, and, off on the horizon, a flock of vultures which, fortunately,however, kept at a distance.

  The sight of these birds led Joe to compliment his master on the idea ofhaving two balloons.

  "Where would we be," said he, "with only one balloon? The second balloonis like the life-boat to a ship; in case of wreck we could always taketo it and escape."

  "You are right, friend Joe," said the doctor, "only that my life-boatgives me some uneasiness. It is not so good as the main craft."

  "What do you mean by that, doctor?" asked Kennedy.

  "I mean to say that the new Victoria is not so good as the old one.Whether it be that the stuff it is made of is too much worn, or that theheat of the spiral has melted the gutta-percha, I can observe acertain loss of gas. It don't amount to much thus far, but still itis noticeable. We have a tendency to sink, and, in order to keep ourelevation, I am compelled to give greater dilation to the hydrogen."

  "The deuce!" exclaimed Kennedy with concern; "I see no remedy for that."

  "There is none, Dick, and that is why we must hasten our progress, andeven avoid night halts."

  "Are we still far from the coast?" asked Joe.

  "Which coast, my boy? How are we to know whither chance will carry us?All that I can say is, that Timbuctoo is still about four hundred milesto the westward.

  "And how long will it take us to get there?"

  "Should the wind not carry us too far out of the way, I hope to reachthat city by Tuesday evening."

  "Then," remarked Joe, pointing to a long file of animals and menwinding across the open desert, "we shall arrive there sooner than thatcaravan."

  Ferguson and Kennedy leaned over and saw an immense cavalcade. Therewere at least one hundred and fifty camels of the kind that, for twelvemutkals of gold, or about twenty-five dollars, go from Timbuctoo toTafilet with a load of five hundred pounds upon their backs. Each animalhad dangling to its tail a bag to receive its excrement, the only fuelon which the caravans can depend when crossing the desert.

  These Touareg camels are of the very best race. They can go from threeto seven days without drinking, and for two without eating. Their speedsurpasses that of the horse, and they obey with intelligence the voiceof the khabir, or guide of the caravan. They are known in the countryunder the name of mehari.

  Such were the details given by the doctor while his companions continuedto gaze upon that multitude of men, women, and children, advancingon foot and with difficulty over a waste of sand half in motion, andscarcely kept in its place by scanty nettles, withered grass, andstunted bushes that grew upon it. The wind obliterated the marks oftheir feet almost instantly.

  Joe inquired how the Arabs managed to guide themselves across thedesert, and come to the few wells scattered far between throughout thisvast solitude.

  "The Arabs," replied Dr. Ferguson, "are endowed by nature with awonderful instinct in finding their way. Where a European would be ata loss, they never hesitate for a moment. An insignificant fragment ofrock, a pebble, a tuft of grass, a different shade of color in the sand,suffice to guide them with accuracy. During the night they go by thepolar star. They never travel more than two miles per hour, and alwaysrest during the noonday heat. You may judge from that how long it takesthem to cross Sahara, a desert more than nine hundred miles in breadth."

  But the Victoria had already disappeared from the astonished gaze of theArabs, who must have envied her rapidity. That evening she passed twodegrees twenty minutes east longitude, and during the night left anotherdegree behind her.

  On Monday the weather changed completely. Rain began to fall withextreme violence, and not only had the balloon to resist the power ofthis deluge, but also the increase of weight which it caused by wettingthe whole machine, car and all. This continuous shower accounted forthe swamps and marshes that formed the sole surface of the country.Vegetation reappeared, however, along with the mimosas, the baobabs, andthe tamarind-trees.

  Such was the Sonray country, with its villages topped with roofs turnedover like Armenian caps. There were few mountains, and only such hillsas were enough to form the ravines and pools where the pintadoes andsnipes went sailing and diving through. Here and there, an impetuoustorrent cut the roads, and had to be crossed by the natives on longvines stretched from tree to tree. The forests gave place to jungles,which alligators, hippopotami, and the rhinoceros, made their haunts.

  "It will not be long before we see the Niger," said the doctor. "Theface of the country always changes in the vicinity of large rivers.These moving highways, as they are sometimes correctly called,have first brought vegetation with them, as they will at last bringcivilization. Thus, in its course of twenty-five hundred miles, theNiger has scattered along its banks the most important cities ofAfrica."

  "By-the-way," put in Joe, "that reminds me of what was said by anadmirer of the goodness of Providence, who praised the foresight withwhich it had generally caused rivers to flow close to large cities!"

  At noon the Victoria was passing over a petty town, a mere assemblage ofmiserable huts, which once was Goa, a great capital.

  "It was there," said the doctor, "that Barth crossed the Niger, on hisreturn from Timbuctoo. This is the river so famous in antiquity, therival of the Nile, to which pagan superstition ascribed a celestialorigin. Like the Nile, it has engaged the attention of geographers inall ages; and like it, also, its exploration has cost the lives of manyvictims; yes, even more of them than perished on account of the other."

  The Niger flowed broadly between its banks, and its waters rolledsouthward with some violence of current; but our travellers, borneswiftly by as they were, could scarcely catch a glimpse of its curiousoutline.

  "I wanted to talk to you about this river," said Dr. Ferguson, "and itis already far from us. Under the names of Dhiouleba, Mayo, Egghirreou,Quorra, and other titles besides, it traverses an immense extent ofcountry, and almost competes in length with the Nile. These appellationssignify simply 'the River,' according to the dialects of the countriesthrough which it passes."

  "Did Dr. Barth follow this route?" asked Kennedy.

  "No, Dick: in quitting Lake Tchad, he passed through the different townsof Bornou, and intersected the Niger at Say, four degrees below Goa;then he penetrated to the bosom of those unexplored countries which theNiger embraces in its elbow; and, after eight months of fresh fatigues,he arrived at T
imbuctoo; all of which we may do in about three days withas swift a wind as this."

  "Have the sources of the Niger been discovered?" asked Joe.

  "Long since," replied the doctor. "The exploration of the Niger andits tributaries was the object of several expeditions, the principalof which I shall mention: Between 1749 and 1758, Adamson made areconnoissance of the river, and visited Gorea; from 1785 to 1788,Golberry and Geoffroy travelled across the deserts of Senegambia, andascended as far as the country of the Moors, who assassinated Saugnier,Brisson, Adam, Riley, Cochelet, and so many other unfortunate men. Thencame the illustrious Mungo Park, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, and,like him, a Scotchman by birth. Sent out in 1795 by the African Societyof London, he got as far as Bambarra, saw the Niger, travelled fivehundred miles with a slave-merchant, reconnoitred the Gambia River, andreturned to England in 1797. He again set out, on the 30th of January,1805, with his brother-in-law Anderson, Scott, the designer, and a gangof workmen; he reached Gorea, there added a detachment of thirty-fivesoldiers to his party, and saw the Niger again on the 19th of August.But, by that time, in consequence of fatigue, privations, ill-usage, theinclemencies of the weather, and the unhealthiness of the country, onlyeleven persons remained alive of the forty Europeans in the party. Onthe 16th of November, the last letters from Mungo Park reached his wife;and, a year later a trader from that country gave information that,having got as far as Boussa, on the Niger, on the 23d of December, theunfortunate traveller's boat was upset by the cataracts in that part ofthe river, and he was murdered by the natives."

  "And his dreadful fate did not check the efforts of others to explorethat river?"

  "On the contrary, Dick. Since then, there were two objects in view:namely, to recover the lost man's papers, as well as to pursue theexploration. In 1816, an expedition was organized, in which MajorGrey took part. It arrived in Senegal, penetrated to the Fonta-Jallon,visited the Foullah and Mandingo populations, and returned to Englandwithout further results. In 1822, Major Laing explored all the westernpart of Africa near to the British possessions; and he it was who gotso far as the sources of the Niger; and, according to his documents, thespring in which that immense river takes its rise is not two feet broad.

  "Easy to jump over," said Joe.

  "How's that? Easy you think, eh?" retorted the doctor. "If we are tobelieve tradition, whoever attempts to pass that spring, by leaping overit, is immediately swallowed up; and whoever tries to draw water fromit, feels himself repulsed by an invisible hand."

  "I suppose a man has a right not to believe a word of that!" persistedJoe.

  "Oh, by all means!--Five years later, it was Major Laing's destiny toforce his way across the desert of Sahara, penetrate to Timbuctoo,and perish a few miles above it, by strangling, at the hands of theOuelad-shiman, who wanted to compel him to turn Mussulman."

  "Still another victim!" said the sportsman.

  "It was then that a brave young man, with his own feeble resources,undertook and accomplished the most astonishing of modern journeys--Imean the Frenchman Rene Caillie, who, after sundry attempts in 1819 and1824, set out again on the 19th of April, 1827, from Rio Nunez. On the3d of August he arrived at Time, so thoroughly exhausted and ill that hecould not resume his journey until six months later, in January, 1828.He then joined a caravan, and, protected by his Oriental dress, reachedthe Niger on the 10th of March, penetrated to the city of Jenne,embarked on the river, and descended it, as far as Timbuctoo, wherehe arrived on the 30th of April. In 1760, another Frenchman, Imbert byname, and, in 1810, an Englishman, Robert Adams, had seen this curiousplace; but Rene Caillie was to be the first European who could bringback any authentic data concerning it. On the 4th of May he quitted this'Queen of the desert;' on the 9th, he surveyed the very spot where MajorLaing had been murdered; on the 19th, he arrived at El-Arouan, and leftthat commercial town to brave a thousand dangers in crossing the vastsolitudes comprised between the Soudan and the northern regions ofAfrica. At length he entered Tangiers, and on the 28th of Septembersailed for Toulon. In nineteen months, notwithstanding one hundred andeighty days' sickness, he had traversed Africa from west to north. Ah!had Callie been born in England, he would have been honored as the mostintrepid traveller of modern times, as was the case with Mungo Park. Butin France he was not appreciated according to his worth."

  "He was a sturdy fellow!" said Kennedy, "but what became of him?"

  "He died at the age of thirty-nine, from the consequences of his longfatigues. They thought they had done enough in decreeing him the prizeof the Geographical Society in 1828; the highest honors would have beenpaid to him in England.

  "While he was accomplishing this remarkable journey, an Englishman hadconceived a similar enterprise and was trying to push it throughwith equal courage, if not with equal good fortune. This was CaptainClapperton, the companion of Denham. In 1829 he reentered Africa by thewestern coast of the Gulf of Benin; he then followed in the track ofMungo Park and of Laing, recovered at Boussa the documents relative tothe death of the former, and arrived on the 20th of August at Sackatoo,where he was seized and held as a prisoner, until he expired in the armsof his faithful attendant Richard Lander."

  "And what became of this Lander?" asked Joe, deeply interested.

  "He succeeded in regaining the coast and returned to London, bringingwith him the captain's papers, and an exact narrative of his ownjourney. He then offered his services to the government to completethe reconnoissance of the Niger. He took with him his brother John, thesecond child of a poor couple in Cornwall, and, together, these men,between 1829 and 1831, redescended the river from Boussa to its mouth,describing it village by village, mile by mile."

  "So both the brothers escaped the common fate?" queried Kennedy.

  "Yes, on this expedition, at least; but in 1833 Richard undertook athird trip to the Niger, and perished by a bullet, near the mouth of theriver. You see, then, my friends, that the country over which we arenow passing has witnessed some noble instances of self-sacrifice which,unfortunately, have only too often had death for their reward."