Part 19 (2/2)
”Civilized? Well, that's one way of speaking; but there are no people to be seen yet”
”It will not be long before we see theuson, ”at our present rate of travel”
”Are we still in the negro country, doctor?”
”Yes, and on our way to the country of the Arabs”
”What! real Arabs, sir, with their camels?”
”No, not ether unknown, in these regions We rees farther north to see them”
”What a pity!”
”And why, Joe?”
”Because, if the wind fell contrary, they ht be of use to us”
”How so?”
”Well, sir, it's just a notion that's got into ht hitch the What do you say to that, doctor?”
”Poor Joe! Another person had that idea in advance of you It was used by a very gifted French author-M Mery-in a ro in a balloon by a team of camels; then a lion comes up, devours the camels, ss the tow-rope, and hauls the balloon in their stead; and so on through the story You see that the whole thing is the top-flower of fancy, but has nothing in common with our style of loco that his idea had been used already, cudgelled his wits to iine what aniuess it, and so quietly went on scanning the appearance of the country
A lake of medium extent stretched away before him, surrounded by an anified with the na valleys, nuled thickets of the most various trees The African oil-tree rose above the th upon its stalk, the latter studded with sharp thorns; the bombax, or silk-cotton-tree, filled the wind, as it swept by, with the fine down of its seeds; the pungent odors of the pendanus, the ”kenda” of the Arabs, perfu; the papaw-tree, with its palm-shaped leaves; the sterculier, which produces the Soudan-nut; the baobab, and the banana-tree, coions
”The country is superb!” said the doctor
”Here are some aninificent elephants!” exclai?”
”How could weas this? No, dick; you must taste a little of the torture of Tantalus just now You shall make up for it afterward”
And, in truth, there was enough to excite the fancy of a sportsrasped the butt of his Purdy
The fauna of the region were as striking as its flora The wild-ox revelled in dense herbage that often concealed his whole body; gray, black, and yellow elephants of thehurricane, through the forests, breaking, rending, tearing down, devastating every thing in their path; upon the woody slopes of the hills trickled cascades and springs flowing northward; there, too, the hippopota as they frolicked in the water, and la, with bodies like seals, stretched the up toward the sun their rounded teats swollen with erie of rare and curious beasts in a wondrous hot-house, where nuleaality of Nature, the doctor recognized the splendid kingdo to trench upon the realm oftravellers It is a happy chance, my friends, for we shall be enabled to link the toils of Captains Burton and Speke with the explorations of Dr Barth We have left the Englisher It will not be long, either, before we arrive at the extre explorer”
”It seems to me that there is a vast extent of country between the two explored routes,” ree by the distance that we have made”
”It is easy to deteritude of the southern point of Lake Ukereoue, reached by Speke”
”It is near the thirty-seventh degree”
”And the city of Yola, which we shall sight this evening, and to which Barth penetrated, what is its position?”
”It is about in the twelfth degree of east longitude”
”Then there are twenty-five degrees, or, counting sixty miles to each, about fifteen hundred miles in all”
”A nice little walk,” said Joe, ”for people who have to go on foot”
”It will be acco on up this line toward the interior Nyassa, which they have discovered, is not far froanayika, seen by Burton Ere the close of the century these regions will, undoubtedly, be explored But,” added the doctor, consulting his co us so far to the ard I wanted to get to the north”
After twelve hours of progress, the Victoria found herself on the confines of Nigritia The first inhabitants of this region, the Chouas Arabs, were feeding their wandering flocks The immense summits of the Atlantika Mountains seen above the horizon-ht is computed to be ten thousand feet! Their western slope deterion of Africa toward the ocean They are the Mountains of the Moon to this part of the continent
At length a real river greeted the gaze of our travellers, and, by the enornized the Benoue, one of the great tributaries of the Niger, the one which the natives have called ”The Fountain of the Waters”
”This river,” said the doctor to his companions, ”will, one day, be the natural channel of coritia Under the command of one of our brave captains, the steamer Pleiad has already ascended as far as the town of Yola You see that we are not in an unknown country”
Nued in the labors of the field, cultivating sorgho, a kind of millet which forms the chief basis of their diet; and the most stupid expressions of astonishment ensued as the Victoria sped past like athe balloon halted about forty miles from Yola, and ahead of it, but in the distance, rose the two sharp cones of Mount Mendif
The doctor threw out his anchors and h tree; but a very violent wind beat upon the balloon with such force as to throw it over on its side, thus rendering the position of the car souson did not close his 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 alar
On the morrow the as 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 toborne 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 e 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 s, and where warlike conflicts between the barbarian sultans, contending for their power ae, never cease
Nu low huts stretched away between broad pasture-fields whose dense herbage was besprinkled with violet-colored blossoe beehives, were sheltered behind bristling palisades The wild hill-sides and hollows frequently rehlands 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 theclouds The lofty suer from the basin of Lake Tchad
Soon afteras seen the Bagele, with its eighteen villages clinging to its flanks like a whole brood of children to their nificent 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 i to be done was to cross it The doctor, by rees, gave the balloon a fresh ascensional force of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an elevation of ht attained during the journey The temperature of the atmosphere was so much cooler at that point that the aeronauts 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 in of the mountain, whose extinct craters are now but deep abysses Iave the sides of Mount Mendif the appearance of calcareous rocks, and there was enough of the deposit there to dom
At five o'clock the Victoria, sheltered fro the slopes of theremote from any habitation The instant it touched the soil, all needful precautions were taken to hold it there fir-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 ht was passed in undisturbed and refreshi+ng slumber