Five Weeks in a Balloon
are now deluging us, and remove you from this pestilential atmosphere.
I ask for only ten minutes, in order to dilate the hydrogen.”
The ten minutes had scarcely elapsed ere the travellers were beyond the
rainy belt of country.
“Wait a little, now, Dick, and you’ll begin to feel the effect of pure
air and sunshine.”
“There’s a cure for you!” said Joe; “why, it’s wonderful!”
“No, it’s merely natural.”
“Oh! natural; yes, no doubt of that!”
“I bring Dick into good air, as the doctors do, every day, in Europe,
or, as I would send a patient at Martinique to the Pitons, a lofty
mountain on that island, to get clear of the yellow fever.”
“Ah! by Jove, this balloon is a paradise!” exclaimed Kennedy, feeling
much better already.
“It leads to it, anyhow!” replied Joe, quite gravely.
It was a curious spectacle—that mass of clouds piled up, at the moment,
away below them! The vapors rolled over each other, and mingled
together in confused masses of superb brilliance, as they reflected the
rays of the sun. The _Victoria_ had attained an altitude of four
thousand feet, and the thermometer indicated a certain diminution of
temperature. The land below could no longer be seen. Fifty miles away
to the westward, Mount Rubeho raised its sparkling crest, marking the
limit of the Ugogo country in east longitude thirty-six degrees twenty
minutes. The wind was blowing at the rate of twenty miles an hour, but
the aëronauts felt nothing of this increased speed. They observed no
jar, and had scarcely any sense of motion at all.
Three hours later, the doctor’s prediction was fully verified. Kennedy
no longer felt a single shiver of the fever, but partook of some
breakfast with an excellent appetite.
“That beats sulphate of quinine!” said the energetic Scot, with hearty
emphasis and much satisfaction.
“Positively,” said Joe, “this is where I’ll have to retire to when I
get old!”
About ten o’clock in the morning the atmosphere cleared up, the clouds
parted, and the country beneath could again be seen, the _Victoria_
meanwhile rapidly descending. Dr. Ferguson was in search of a current
that would carry him more to the northeast, and he found it about six
hundred feet from the ground. The country was becoming more broken, and
even mountainous. The Zungomoro district was fading out of sight in the
east with the last cocoa-nut-trees of that latitude.
Ere long, the crests of a mountain-range assumed a more decided
prominence. A few peaks rose here and there, and it became necessary to
keep a sharp lookout for the pointed cones that seemed to spring up
every moment.
“We’re right among the breakers!” said Kennedy.
“Keep cool, Dick. We shan’t touch them,” was the doctor’s quiet answer.
“It’s a jolly way to travel, anyhow!” said Joe, with his usual flow of
spirits.
In fact, the doctor managed his balloon with wondrous dexterity.
“Now, if we had been compelled to go afoot over that drenched soil,”
said he, “we should still be dragging along in a pestilential mire.
Since our departure from Zanzibar, half our beasts of burden would have
died with fatigue. We should be looking like ghosts ourselves, and
despair would be seizing on our hearts. We should be in continual
squabbles with our guides and porters, and completely exposed to their
unbridled brutality. During the daytime, a damp, penetrating,
unendurable humidity! At night, a cold frequently intolerable, and the
stings of a kind of fly whose bite pierces the thickest cloth, and
drives the victim crazy! All this, too, without saying any thing about
wild beasts and ferocious native tribes!”
“I move that we don’t try it!” said Joe, in his droll way.
“I exaggerate nothing,” continued Ferguson, “for, upon reading the
narratives of such travellers as have had the hardihood to venture into
these regions, your eyes would fill with tears.”
About eleven o’clock they were passing over the basin of Imenge, and
the tribes scattered over the adjacent hills were impotently menacing
the _Victoria_ with their weapons. Finally, she sped along as far as
the last undulations of the country which precede Rubeho. These form
the last and loftiest chain of the mountains of Usagara.
The aëronauts took careful and complete note of the orographic
conformation of the country. The three ramifications mentioned, of
which the Duthumi forms the first link, are separated by immense
longitudinal plains. These elevated summits consist of rounded cones,
between which the soil is bestrewn with erratic blocks of stone and
gravelly bowlders. The most abrupt declivity of these mountains
confronts the Zanzibar coast, but the western slopes are merely
inclined planes. The depressions in the soil are covered with a black,
rich loam, on which there is a vigorous vegetation. Various
water-courses filter through, toward the east, and work their way
onward to flow into the Kingani, in the midst of gigantic clumps of
sycamore, tamarind, calabash, and palmyra trees.
“Attention!” said Dr. Ferguson. “We are approaching Rubeho, the name of
which signifies, in the language of the country, the ‘Passage of the
Winds,’ and we would do well to double its jagged pinnacles at a
certain height. If my chart be exact, we are going to ascend to an
elevation of five thousand feet.”
“Shall we often have occasion to reach those far upper belts of the
atmosphere?”
“Very seldom: the height of the African mountains appears to be quite
moderate compared with that of the European and Asiatic ranges; but, in
any case, our good _Victoria_ will find no difficulty in passing over
them.”
In a very little while, the gas expanded under the action of the heat,
and the balloon took a very decided ascensional movement. Besides, the
dilation of the hydrogen involved no danger, and only three-fourths of
the vast capacity of the balloon was filled when the barometer, by a
depression of eight inches, announced an elevation of six thousand
feet.
“Shall we go this high very long?” asked Joe.
“The atmosphere of the earth has a height of six thousand fathoms,”
said the doctor; “and, with a very large balloon, one might go far.
That is what Messrs. Brioschi and Gay-Lussac did; but then the blood
burst from their mouths and ears. Respirable air was wanting. Some
years ago, two fearless Frenchmen, Messrs. Barral and Bixio, also
ventured into the very lofty regions; but their balloon burst—”
“And they fell?” asked Kennedy, abruptly.
“Certainly they did; but as learned men should always fall—namely,
without hurting themselves.”
“Well, gentlemen,” said Joe, “you may try their fall over again, if you
like; but, as for me, who am but a dolt, I prefer keeping at the medium
height—neither too far up, nor too low down. It won’t do to be too
ambitious.”
At the height of six thousand feet, the density of the atmosphere has
already greatly diminished; sound is conveyed with difficulty, and the
voice is not so easily heard. The view of objects becomes confused; the
gaze no longer takes in any but large, quite ill-distinguishable
masses; men and animals on the surface become absolutely invisible; the
roads and rivers get to look like threads, and the lakes dwindle to
ponds.
The doctor and his friends felt themselves in a very anomalous
condition; an atmospheric current of extreme velocity was bearing them
away beyond arid mountains, upon whose summits vast fields of snow
surprised the gaze; while their convulsed appearance told of Titanic
travail in the earliest epoch of the world’s existence.
The sun shone at the zenith, and his rays fell perpendicularly upon
those lonely summits. The doctor took an accurate design of these
mountains, which form four distinct ridges almost in a straight line,
the northernmost being the longest.
The _Victoria_ soon descended the slope opposite to the Rubeho,
skirting an acclivity covered with woods, and dotted with trees of very
deep-green foliage. Then came crests and ravines, in a sort of desert
which preceded the Ugogo country; and lower down were yellow plains,
parched and fissured by the intense heat, and, here and there, bestrewn
with saline plants and brambly thickets.
Some underbrush, which, farther on, became forests, embellished the
horizon. The doctor went nearer to the ground; the anchors were thrown
out, and one of them soon caught in the boughs of a huge sycamore.
Joe, slipping nimbly down the tree, carefully attached the anchor, and
the doctor left his cylinder at work to a certain degree in order to
retain sufficient ascensional force in the balloon to keep it in the
air. Meanwhile the wind had suddenly died away.
“Now,” said Ferguson, “take two guns, friend Dick—one for yourself and
one for Joe—and both of you try to bring back some nice cuts of
antelope-meat; they will make us a good dinner.”
“Off to the hunt!” exclaimed Kennedy, joyously.
He climbed briskly out of the car and descended. Joe had swung himself
down from branch to branch, and was waiting for him below, stretching
his limbs in the mean time.
“Don’t fly away without us, doctor!” shouted Joe.
“Never fear, my boy!—I am securely lashed. I’ll spend the time getting
my notes into shape. A good hunt to you! but be careful. Besides, from
my post here, I can observe the face of the country, and, at the least
suspicious thing I notice, I’ll fire a signal-shot, and with that you
must rally home.”
“Agreed!” said Kennedy; and off they went.
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
The Forest of Gum-Trees.—The Blue Antelope.—The Rallying-Signal.—An
Unexpected Attack.—The Kanyemé.—A Night in the Open Air.—The
Mabunguru.—Jihoue-la-Mkoa.—A Supply of Water.—Arrival at Kazeh.
The country, dry and parched as it was, consisting of a clayey soil
that cracked open with the heat, seemed, indeed, a desert: here and
there were a few traces of caravans; the bones of men and animals, that
had been half-gnawed away, mouldering together in the same dust.
After half an hour’s walking, Dick and Joe plunged into a forest of
gum-trees, their eyes alert on all sides, and their fingers on the
trigger. There was no foreseeing what they might encounter. Without
being a rifleman, Joe could handle fire-arms with no trifling
dexterity.
“A walk does one good, Mr. Kennedy, but this isn’t the easiest ground
in the world,” he said, kicking aside some fragments of quartz with
which the soil was bestrewn.
Kennedy motioned to his companion to be silent and to halt. The present
case compelled them to dispense with hunting-dogs, and, no matter what
Joe’s agility might be, he could not be expected to have the scent of a
setter or a greyhound.
A herd of a dozen antelopes were quenching their thirst in the bed of a
torrent where some pools of water had lodged. The graceful creatures,
snuffing danger in the breeze, seemed to be disturbed and uneasy. Their
beautiful heads could be seen between every draught, raised in the air
with quick and sudden motion as they sniffed the wind in the direction
of our two hunters, with their flexible nostrils.
Kennedy stole around behind some clumps of shrubbery, while Joe
remained motionless where he was. The former, at length, got within
gunshot and fired.
The herd disappeared in the twinkling of an eye; one male antelope
only, that was hit just behind the shoulder-joint, fell headlong to the
ground, and Kennedy leaped toward his booty.
It was a _blauwbok_, a superb animal of a pale-bluish color shading
upon the gray, but with the belly and the inside of the legs as white
as the driven snow.
“A splendid shot!” exclaimed the hunter. “It’s a very rare species of
the antelope, and I hope to be able to prepare his skin in such a way
as to keep it.”
“Indeed!” said Joe, “do you think of doing that, Mr. Kennedy?”
“Why, certainly I do! Just see what a fine hide it is!”