Kabanata Kabanata 38 · A Rapid Passage.—Prudent Resolves.—Caravans in Sight.—Incessant

. A Rapid Passage.—Prudent Resolves.—Caravans in Sight.—Incessant

Rains.—Goa.—The Niger.—Golberry, Geoffroy, and Gray.—Mungo

Park.—Laing.—René Caillié.—Clapperton.—John and Richard Lander.

The 17th of May passed tranquilly, without any remarkable incident; the

desert gained upon them once more; a moderate wind bore the _Victoria_

toward the southwest, and she never swerved to the right or to the

left, but her shadow traced a perfectly straight line on the sand.

Before starting, the doctor had prudently renewed his stock of water,

having feared that he should not be able to touch ground in these

regions, infested as they are by the Aouelim-Minian Touaregs. The

plateau, at an elevation of eighteen hundred feet above the level of

the sea, sloped down toward the south. Our travellers, having crossed

the Aghades route at Murzouk—a route often pressed by the feet of

camels—arrived that evening, in the sixteenth degree of north latitude,

and four degrees fifty-five minutes east longitude, after having passed

over one hundred and eighty miles of a long and monotonous day’s

journey.

During the day Joe dressed the last pieces of game, which had been only

hastily prepared, and he served up for supper a mess of snipe, that

were greatly relished. The wind continuing good, the doctor resolved to

keep on during the night, the moon, still nearly at the full,

illumining it with her radiance. The _Victoria_ ascended to a height of

five hundred feet, and, during her nocturnal trip of about sixty miles,

the gentle slumbers of an infant would not have been disturbed by her

motion.

On Sunday morning, the direction of the wind again changed, and it bore

to the northwestward. A few crows were seen sweeping through the air,

and, off on the horizon, a flock of vultures which, fortunately,

however, kept at a distance.

The sight of these birds led Joe to compliment his master on the idea

of having two balloons.

“Where would we be,” said he, “with only one balloon? The second

balloon is like the life-boat to a ship; in case of wreck we could

always take to it and escape.”

“You are right, friend Joe,” said the doctor, “only that my life-boat

gives me some uneasiness. It is not so good as the main craft.”

“What do you mean by that, doctor?” asked Kennedy.

“I mean to say that the new _Victoria_ is not so good as the old one.

Whether it be that the stuff it is made of is too much worn, or that

the heat of the spiral has melted the gutta-percha, I can observe a

certain loss of gas. It don’t amount to much thus far, but still it is

noticeable. We have a tendency to sink, and, in order to keep our

elevation, I am compelled to give greater dilation to the hydrogen.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Kennedy with concern; “I see no remedy for

that.”

“There is none, Dick, and that is why we must hasten our progress, and

even avoid night halts.”

“Are we still far from the coast?” asked Joe.

“Which coast, my boy? How are we to know whither chance will carry us?

All that I can say is, that Timbuctoo is still about four hundred miles

to the westward.

“And how long will it take us to get there?”

“Should the wind not carry us too far out of the way, I hope to reach

that city by Tuesday evening.”

“Then,” remarked Joe, pointing to a long file of animals and men

winding across the open desert, “we shall arrive there sooner than that

caravan.”

Ferguson and Kennedy leaned over and saw an immense cavalcade. There

were at least one hundred and fifty camels of the kind that, for twelve

_mutkals_ of gold, or about twenty-five dollars, go from Timbuctoo to

Tafilet with a load of five hundred pounds upon their backs. Each

animal had dangling to its tail a bag to receive its excrement, the

only fuel on which the caravans can depend when crossing the desert.

These Touareg camels are of the very best race. They can go from three

to seven days without drinking, and for two without eating. Their speed

surpasses that of the horse, and they obey with intelligence the voice

of the _khabir_, or guide of the caravan. They are known in the country

under the name of _mehari_.

Such were the details given by the doctor while his companions

continued to gaze upon that multitude of men, women, and children,

advancing on foot and with difficulty over a waste of sand half in

motion, and scarcely kept in its place by scanty nettles, withered

grass, and stunted bushes that grew upon it. The wind obliterated the

marks of their feet almost instantly.

Joe inquired how the Arabs managed to guide themselves across the

desert, and come to the few wells scattered far between throughout this

vast solitude.

“The Arabs,” replied Dr. Ferguson, “are endowed by nature with a

wonderful instinct in finding their way. Where a European would be at a

loss, they never hesitate for a moment. An insignificant fragment of

rock, a pebble, a tuft of grass, a different shade of color in the

sand, suffice to guide them with accuracy. During the night they go by

the polar star. They never travel more than two miles per hour, and

always rest during the noonday heat. You may judge from that how long

it takes them to cross Sahara, a desert more than nine hundred miles in

breadth.”

But the _Victoria_ had already disappeared from the astonished gaze of

the Arabs, who must have envied her rapidity. That evening she passed

two degrees twenty minutes east longitude, and during the night left

another degree behind her.

On Monday the weather changed completely. Rain began to fall with

extreme violence, and not only had the balloon to resist the power of

this deluge, but also the increase of weight which it caused by wetting

the whole machine, car and all. This continuous shower accounted for

the swamps and marshes that formed the sole surface of the country.

Vegetation reappeared, however, along with the mimosas, the baobabs,

and the tamarind-trees.

Such was the Sonray country, with its villages topped with roofs turned

over like Armenian caps. There were few mountains, and only such hills

as were enough to form the ravines and pools where the _pintadoes_ and

snipes went sailing and diving through. Here and there, an impetuous

torrent cut the roads, and had to be crossed by the natives on long

vines stretched from tree to tree. The forests gave place to jungles,

which alligators, hippopotami, and the rhinoceros, made their haunts.

“It will not be long before we see the Niger,” said the doctor. “The

face of the country always changes in the vicinity of large rivers.

These moving highways, as they are sometimes correctly called, have

first brought vegetation with them, as they will at last bring

civilization. Thus, in its course of twenty-five hundred miles, the

Niger has scattered along its banks the most important cities of

Africa.”

“By-the-way,” put in Joe, “that reminds me of what was said by an

admirer of the goodness of Providence, who praised the foresight with

which it had generally caused rivers to flow close to large cities!”

At noon the _Victoria_ was passing over a petty town, a mere assemblage

of miserable huts, which once was Goa, a great capital.

“It was there,” said the doctor, “that Barth crossed the Niger, on his

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.”