Chapter Chapter 13 · Change of Weather.—Kennedy has the Fever.—The Doctor’s

. Change of Weather.—Kennedy has the Fever.—The Doctor’s

Medicine.—Travels on Land.—The Basin of Imenge.—Mount Rubeho.—Six

Thousand Feet Elevation.—A Halt in the Daytime.

The night was calm. However, on Saturday morning, Kennedy, as he awoke,

complained of lassitude and feverish chills. The weather was changing.

The sky, covered with clouds, seemed to be laying in supplies for a

fresh deluge. A gloomy region is that Zungomoro country, where it rains

continually, excepting, perhaps, for a couple of weeks in the month of

January.

A violent shower was not long in drenching our travellers. Below them,

the roads, intersected by “nullahs,” a sort of instantaneous torrent,

were soon rendered impracticable, entangled as they were, besides, with

thorny thickets and gigantic lianas, or creeping vines. The

sulphuretted hydrogen emanations, which Captain Burton mentions, could

be distinctly smelt.

“According to his statement, and I think he’s right,” said the doctor,

“one could readily believe that there is a corpse hidden behind every

thicket.”

“An ugly country this!” sighed Joe; “and it seems to me that Mr.

Kennedy is none the better for having passed the night in it.”

“To tell the truth, I have quite a high fever,” said the sportsman.

“There’s nothing remarkable about that, my dear Dick, for we are in one

of the most unhealthy regions in Africa; but we shall not remain here

long; so let’s be off.”

Thanks to a skilful manœuvre achieved by Joe, the anchor was

disengaged, and Joe reascended to the car by means of the ladder. The

doctor vigorously dilated the gas, and the _Victoria_ resumed her

flight, driven along by a spanking breeze.

Only a few scattered huts could be seen through the pestilential mists;

but the appearance of the country soon changed, for it often happens in

Africa that some of the unhealthiest districts lie close beside others

that are perfectly salubrious.

Kennedy was visibly suffering, and the fever was mastering his vigorous

constitution.

“It won’t do to fall ill, though,” he grumbled; and so saying, he

wrapped himself in a blanket, and lay down under the awning.

“A little patience, Dick, and you’ll soon get over this,” said the

doctor.

“Get over it! Egad, Samuel, if you’ve any drug in your travelling-chest

that will set me on my feet again, bring it without delay. I’ll swallow

it with my eyes shut!”

“Oh, I can do better than that, friend Dick; for I can give you a

febrifuge that won’t cost any thing.”

“And how will you do that?”

“Very easily. I am simply going to take you up above these clouds that

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.