Five Weeks in a Balloon
return from Timbuctoo. This is the river so famous in antiquity, the
rival of the Nile, to which pagan superstition ascribed a celestial
origin. Like the Nile, it has engaged the attention of geographers in
all ages; and like it, also, its exploration has cost the lives of many
victims; yes, even more of them than perished on account of the other.”
The Niger flowed broadly between its banks, and its waters rolled
southward with some violence of current; but our travellers, borne
swiftly by as they were, could scarcely catch a glimpse of its curious
outline.
“I wanted to talk to you about this river,” said Dr. Ferguson, “and it
is already far from us. Under the names of Dhiouleba, Mayo, Egghirreou,
Quorra, and other titles besides, it traverses an immense extent of
country, and almost competes in length with the Nile. These
appellations signify simply ‘the River,’ according to the dialects of
the countries through which it passes.”
“Did Dr. Barth follow this route?” asked Kennedy.
“No, Dick: in quitting Lake Tchad, he passed through the different
towns of Bornou, and intersected the Niger at Say, four degrees below
Goa; then he penetrated to the bosom of those unexplored countries
which the Niger embraces in its elbow; and, after eight months of fresh
fatigues, he arrived at Timbuctoo; all of which we may do in about
three days with as 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 and its
tributaries was the object of several expeditions, the principal of
which I shall mention: Between 1749 and 1758, Adamson made a
reconnoissance of the river, and visited Gorea; from 1785 to 1788,
Golberry and Geoffroy travelled across the deserts of Senegambia, and
ascended as far as the country of the Moors, who assassinated Saugnier,
Brisson, Adam, Riley, Cochelet, and so many other unfortunate men. Then
came the illustrious Mungo Park, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, and,
like him, a Scotchman by birth. Sent out in 1795 by the African Society
of London, he got as far as Bambarra, saw the Niger, travelled five
hundred miles with a slave-merchant, reconnoitred the Gambia River, and
returned 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 gang
of workmen; he reached Gorea, there added a detachment of thirty-five
soldiers to his party, and saw the Niger again on the 19th of August.
But, by that time, in consequence of fatigue, privations, ill-usage,
the inclemencies of the weather, and the unhealthiness of the country,
only eleven persons remained alive of the forty Europeans in the party.
On the 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, the unfortunate traveller’s boat was upset by the cataracts
in that part of the river, and he was murdered by the natives.”
“And his dreadful fate did not check the efforts of others to explore
that 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 the
exploration. In 1816, an expedition was organized, in which Major Grey
took part. It arrived in Senegal, penetrated to the Fonta-Jallon,
visited the Foullah and Mandingo populations, and returned to England
without further results. In 1822, Major Laing explored all the western
part of Africa near to the British possessions; and he it was who got
so far as the sources of the Niger; and, according to his documents,
the spring 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 to
believe tradition, whoever attempts to pass that spring, by leaping
over it, is immediately swallowed up; and whoever tries to draw water
from it, feels himself repulsed by an invisible hand.”
“I suppose a man has a right not to believe a word of that!” persisted
Joe.
“Oh, by all means!—Five years later, it was Major Laing’s destiny to
force his way across the desert of Sahara, penetrate to Timbuctoo, and
perish a few miles above it, by strangling, at the hands of the
Ouelad-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—I
mean the Frenchman René Caillié, who, after sundry attempts in 1819 and
1824, set out again on the 19th of April, 1827, from Rio Nunez. On the
3d of August he arrived at Timé, so thoroughly exhausted and ill that
he could not resume his journey until six months later, in January,
1828. He then joined a caravan, and, protected by his Oriental dress,
reached the Niger on the 10th of March, penetrated to the city of
Jenné, embarked on the river, and descended it, as far as Timbuctoo,
where he arrived on the 30th of April. In 1760, another Frenchman,
Imbert by name, and, in 1810, an Englishman, Robert Adams, had seen
this curious place; but René Caillié was to be the first European who
could bring back 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 Major Laing had been murdered; on the 19th, he arrived at
El-Arouan, and left that commercial town to brave a thousand dangers in
crossing the vast solitudes comprised between the Soudan and the
northern regions of Africa. At length he entered Tangiers, and on the
28th of September sailed for Toulon. In nineteen months,
notwithstanding one hundred and eighty days’ sickness, he had traversed
Africa from west to north. Ah! had Caillié been born in England, he
would have been honored as the most intrepid traveller of modern times,
as was the case with Mungo Park. But in 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 long
fatigues. They thought they had done enough in decreeing him the prize
of the Geographical Society in 1828; the highest honors would have been
paid to him in England.
“While he was accomplishing this remarkable journey, an Englishman had
conceived a similar enterprise and was trying to push it through with
equal courage, if not with equal good fortune. This was Captain
Clapperton, the companion of Denham. In 1829 he reentered Africa by the
western coast of the Gulf of Benin; he then followed in the track of
Mungo Park and of Laing, recovered at Boussa the documents relative to
the 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
arms of 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, bringing
with him the captain’s papers, and an exact narrative of his own
journey. He then offered his services to the government to complete the
reconnoissance of the Niger. He took with him his brother John, the
second 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 a
third trip to the Niger, and perished by a bullet, near the mouth of
the river. You see, then, my friends, that the country over which we
are now passing has witnessed some noble instances of self-sacrifice
which, unfortunately, have only too often had death for their reward.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINTH.
The Country in the Elbow of the Niger.—A Fantastic View of the Hombori
Mountains.—Kabra.—Timbuctoo.—The Chart of Dr. Barth.—A Decaying
City.—Whither Heaven wills.
During this dull Monday, Dr. Ferguson diverted his thoughts by giving
his companions a thousand details concerning the country they were
crossing. The surface, which was quite flat, offered no impediment to
their progress. The doctor’s sole anxiety arose from the obstinate
northeast wind which continued to blow furiously, and bore them away
from the latitude of Timbuctoo.
The Niger, after running northward as far as that city, sweeps around,
like an immense water-jet from some fountain, and falls into the
Atlantic in a broad sheaf. In the elbow thus formed the country is of
varied character, sometimes luxuriantly fertile, and sometimes
extremely bare; fields of maize succeeded by wide spaces covered with
broom-corn and uncultivated plains. All kinds of aquatic
birds—pelicans, wild-duck, kingfishers, and the rest—were seen in
numerous flocks hovering about the borders of the pools and torrents.
From time to time there appeared an encampment of Touaregs, the men
sheltered under their leather tents, while their women were busied with
the domestic toil outside, milking their camels and smoking their
huge-bowled pipes.
By eight o’clock in the evening the _Victoria_ had advanced more than
two hundred miles to the westward, and our aëronauts became the
spectators of a magnificent scene.
A mass of moonbeams forcing their way through an opening in the clouds,
and gliding between the long lines of falling rain, descended in a
golden shower on the ridges of the Hombori Mountains. Nothing could be
more weird than the appearance of these seemingly basaltic summits;
they stood out in fantastic profile against the sombre sky, and the
beholder might have fancied them to be the legendary ruins of some vast
city of the middle ages, such as the icebergs of the polar seas
sometimes mimic them in nights of gloom.
“An admirable landscape for the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho’!” exclaimed the
doctor. “Ann Radcliffe could not have depicted yon mountains in a more
appalling aspect.”
“Faith!” said Joe, “I wouldn’t like to be strolling alone in the
evening through this country of ghosts. Do you see now, master, if it
wasn’t so heavy, I’d like to carry that whole landscape home to
Scotland! It would do for the borders of Loch Lomond, and tourists
would rush there in crowds.”
“Our balloon is hardly large enough to admit of that little
experiment—but I think our direction is changing. Bravo!—the elves and
fairies of the place are quite obliging. See, they’ve sent us a nice
little southeast breeze, that will put us on the right track again.”
In fact, the _Victoria_ was resuming a more northerly route, and on the
morning of the 20th she was passing over an inextricable network of
channels, torrents, and streams, in fine, the whole complicated tangle
of the Niger’s tributaries. Many of these channels, covered with a
thick growth of herbage, resembled luxuriant meadow-lands. There the
doctor recognized the route followed by the explorer Barth when he
launched upon the river to descend to Timbuctoo. Eight hundred fathoms
broad at this point, the Niger flowed between banks richly grown with
cruciferous plants and tamarind-trees. Herds of agile gazelles were
seen skipping about, their curling horns mingling with the tall
herbage, within which the alligator, half concealed, lay silently in
wait for them with watchful eyes.
Long files of camels and asses laden with merchandise from Jenné were
winding in under the noble trees. Ere long, an amphitheatre of
low-built houses was discovered at a turn of the river, their roofs and
terraces heaped up with hay and straw gathered from the neighboring
districts.