Part 1 (1/2)

Five Weeks in a Balloon

by Jules Verne

CHAPTER FIRST

The End of a uson-Excelsior-Full-length Portrait of the Doctor-A Fatalist convinced-A Dinner at the Travellers' Club-Several Toasts for the Occasion

There was a large audience assembled on the 14th of January, 1862, at the session of the Royal Geographical Society, No 3 Waterloo Place, London The president, Sir Francis M--, ues, in an address that was frequently interrupted by applause

This rare speci sonorous phrases bubbling over with patriotisland has always marched at the head of nations” (for, the reader will observe, the nations always march at the head of each other), ”by the intrepidity of her explorers in the line of geographical discovery” (General assent) ”Dr Salorious sons, will not reflect discredit on his origin” (”No, indeed!” from all parts of the hall) ”This attempt, should it succeed” (”It will succeed!”), ”will coether the notions, as yet disjointed, which the world entertains of African cartology” (vehement applause); ”and, should it fail, it will, at least, re conceptions of hu) ”Huzza! huzza!” shouted the i words

”Huzza for the intrepid Ferguson!” cried one of the most excitable of the enthusiastic crowd

The wildest cheering resounded on all sides; the nauson was in everyin passing through English throats Indeed, the hall fairly shook with it

And there were present, also, those fearless travellers and explorers whose energetic telobe, rown old and worn out in the service of science All had, in soone the sorest trials They had escaped shi+pwreck; conflagration; Indian toot and the stake; nay, even the cannibal maws of the South Sea Islanders But still their hearts beat high during Sir Francis M--'s address, which certainly was the finest oratorical success that the Royal Geographical Society of London had yet achieved

But, in England, enthusiasm does not stop short with mere words It strikes off money faster than the dies of the Royal Mint itself So a subscription to encourage Dr Ferguson was voted there and then, and it at once attained the handsome amount of two thousand five hundred pounds The sum was made commensurate with the importance of the enterprise

A member of the Society then inquired of the president whether Dr Ferguson was not to be officially introduced

”The doctor is at the disposition of the ,” replied Sir Francis

”Let hi him in!” shouted the audience ”We'd like to see a , face to face!”

”Perhaps this incredible proposition of his is only intended to rowled an apoplectic old admiral

”Suppose that there should turn out to be no such person as Dr Ferguson?” exclai

”Why, then, we'd have to invent one!” replied a facetious uson to come in,” was the quiet remark of Sir Francis M--

And come in the doctor did, and stood there, quite unreeted his appearance

He was a ht and physique His sanguine temperament was disclosed in the deep color of his cheeks His countenance was coldly expressive, with regular features, and a large nose-one of those noses that resemble the prow of a shi+p, and stareat discoveries His eyes, which were gentle and intelligent, rather than bold, lent a peculiar char, and his feet were planted with that solidity which indicates a great pedestrian

A calravity seemed to surround the doctor's entire person, and no one would dreaent of any mystification, however harreeted hiesture, claimed silence on his own behalf He stepped toward the seat that had been prepared for hi erect and ht forefinger upward, and pronounced aloud the single word- ”Excelsior!”

Never had one of Bright's or Cobden's sudden onslaughts, never had one of Palmerston's abrupt delish coast with iron, made such a sensation Sir Francis M--'s address was completely overshadowed The doctor had shown himself moderate, sublime, and self-contained, in one; he had uttered the word of the situation- ”Excelsior!”

The gouty old ad fault, was coular man before hiuson's speech in ”The Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London”

Who, then, was this person, and as the enterprise that he proposed?

Ferguson's father, a brave and worthy captain in the English Navy, had associated his son with hi man's earliest years, in the perils and adventures of his profession The fine little felloho see of fear, early revealed a keen and active ence, and a remarkable turn for scientific study;himself fro his fork for the first tienerally have so little success

His fancy kindled early at the recitals he read of daring enterprise and maritime adventure, and he folloith enthusiasnalized the first part of the nineteenth century He o Parks, the Bruces, the Caillies, the Levaillants, and to some extent, I verily believe, of Selkirk (Robinson Crusoe), whom he considered in no wise inferior to the rest How many a well-employed hour he passed with that hero on his isle of Juan Fernandez! Often he criticised the ideas of the shi+pwrecked sailor, and sometimes discussed his plans and projects He would have done differently, in such and such a case, or quite as well at least-of that he felt assured But of one thing he was satisfied, that he never should have left that pleasant island, where he was as happy as a king without subjects-no, not if the inducement held out had been promotion to the first lordshi+p in the admiralty!

It may readily be conjectured whether these tendencies were developed during a youth of adventure, spent in every nook and corner of the Globe Moreover, his father, as a h instruction, oence by serious studies in hydrography, physics, and ht tincture of botany, medicine, and astronouson, then twenty-two years of age, had already alese Corps of Engineers, and distinguished himself in several affairs; but this soldier's life had not exactly suited hi but little for co He, therefore, sent in his resignation, and half botanizing, half playing the hunter, he made his way toward the north of the Indian Peninsula, and crossed it from Calcutta to Surat-aover to Australia, and in 1845 participating in Captain Sturt's expedition, which had been sent out to explore the new Caspian Sea, supposed to exist in the centre of New Holland

Saland about 1850, and, more than ever possessed by the de ti Captain McClure on the expedition that went around the A's Straits to Cape Farewell

Notwithstanding fatigues of every description, and in all cliuson's constitution continued marvellously sound He felt at ease in the midst of the most complete privations; in fine, he was the very type of the thoroughly accomplished explorer whose stoer or shorter according to the resting-place that each stage of a journey ; who can fall asleep at any hour of the day or awake at any hour of the night

Nothing, then, was less surprising, after that, than to find our traveller, in the period froion west of the Thibet, in co back soraphic observations frouson had been the raph, the penny newspaper whose circulation amounts to 140,000 copies, and yet scarcely suffices for its ions of readers Thus, the doctor had becoh he could not clairaphical Societies of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or St Petersburg, or yet with the Travellers' Club, or even the Royal Polytechnic Institute, where his friend the statistician cockburn ruled in state

The latter savant had, one day, gone so far as to propose to hi proble the circuit of the Globe, how many more had his head described than his feet, by reason of the different lengths of the radii?-or, the number of miles traversed by the doctor's head and feet respectively being given, required the exact height of that gentle him, but the doctor had held hi, as he did, to the church militant and not to the church pole than in discussing, in discovering rather than discoursing

There is a story told of an English to visit the lake He was placed in one of those odd vehicles in which the passengers sit side by side, as they do in an oot a seat that left him with his back turned toward the lake The vehicle co to turn around once, and he went back to London delighted with the Lake of Geneva

Doctor Ferguson, however, had turned around to look about hiood purpose that he had seen a great deal In doing so, he had siood reason to believe that he was, to some extent, a fatalist, but of an orthodox school of fatalism withal, that led him to rely upon himself and even upon Providence He claimed that he was impelled, rather than drawn by his own volition, to journey as he did, and that he traversed the world like the locouided and directed by the track it runs on

”I do not follow my route;” he often said, ”it is my route that follows me”

The reader will not be surprised, then, at the calmness hich the doctor received the applause that welcomed hi no pride, and less vanity He looked upon the proposition addressed to hi in the world, and scarcely noticed the immense effect that it produced

When the session closed, the doctor was escorted to the rooms of the Travellers' Club, in Pall Mall A superb entertainment had been prepared there in his honor The dimensions of the dishes served were e entertained, and the boiled sturgeon that figured at this uson himself

Numerous toasts were offered and quaffed, in the wines of France, to the celebrated travellers who had made their names illustrious by their explorations of African territory The guests drank to their health or to theirthe thing A those remembered thus, were: Abbadie, Adams, Adamson, Anderson, Arnaud, Baikie, Baldwin, Barth, Batouda, Beke, Beltranesi, Bolwik, Belzoni, Bonnemain, Brisson, Browne, Bruce, Brun-Rollet, Burchell, Burckhardt, Burton, Cailland, Caillie, Campbell, Chap, Cuny, Debono, Decken, Denham, Desavanchers, dicksen, dickson, Dochard, Du Chaillu, Duncan, Durand, Duroule, Duveyrier, D'Escayrac, De Lauture, Erhardt, Ferret, Fresnel, Galinier, Galton, Geoffroy, Golberry, Hahn, Halhton, Iue, Laing, Lafaille, Lambert, Lamiral, Lampriere, John Lander, Richard Lander, Lefebvre, Lejean, Levaillant, Livingstone, MacCarthy, Maggiar, Maizan, Malzac, Moffat, Mollien, Monteiro, Morrison, Mungo Park, Nei, Panet, Partarrieau, Pascal, Pearse, Peddie, Penney, Petherick, Poncet, Prax, Raffenel, Rabh, Rebawi, Roscher, Ruppel, Saugnier, Speke, Steidner, Thibaud, Thompson, Thornton, Toole, Tousny, Trotter, Tuckey, Tyrwhitt, Vaudey, Veyssiere, Vincent, Vinco, Vogel, Wahlberg, Warrington, Washi+ngton, Werne, Wild, and last, but not least, Dr Ferguson, who, by his incredible atteether the achievements of all these explorers, and complete the series of African discovery

CHAPTER SECOND