Five Weeks in a Balloon

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.

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 ma­noeu­vre 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 aero­nauts 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 aero­nauts 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.