Five Weeks in a Balloon
to throw it over on its side, thus rendering the position of the car
sometimes extremely dangerous. Ferguson did not close his eyes 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 Bagélé, 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 aëronauts 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.”[4]
[4] 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 aëronauts 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,